all thank you all and welcome to the wellington school thank you all for your flexibility of coming here and said of the tenor of this evening i would start to follow the agenda and start with citizens concerns if anyone in the audience has any concerns they'd like to raise sense to start with the superintendent's report so superintendent failing can explain a little bit more about what happened at the cherry today and while we're here at the wellington and then just continue on with his report mine is going to be quite brief tonight so i follow the superintendent and then we will go on to the student representative report and i think everything else will follow as outlined in the agenda anyone else has and to change with that said i will turn it to you superintendent failon and please  experiencing some difficulty with logical system that has been being worked on for the last six weeks at the chinnery by the director of consolidated facilities gerry boyle and for domenici in the parents are are asking what's going on at the general electrical system principal st george sent out a communication today outlining some of the concerns that we've been experiencing and that we are looking forward to fixing in finding resolution to essentially the electrical p like you would have in your house seems to be breakers seem to be popping in and our traditional attrition in house in our usual vendors have not been able to find the root issue as to why that's happening we we have had several vendors in analysis will start tomorrow morning at eight am and will be conducted for a few days an analysis be brought back to us as to what would need to be fixing what the timeline would be in quite frankly what some of the expenses could be incurred during this process of fix electrical work so we appreciate the patient said all the parents have shown one of the days when students had to be dismissed it was a driving rainstorm of last tuesday so that combined with some confusion about how students were getting home that day because we had no intercom system and no computers at the site i want to commend the staff at the cherry on the lessons learned from last week combined with some of the conversations we had with parents in principal st george with her staff  school runs runs well so thank you to parents staff and the general public for moving the meeting tonight i also want to just give a quick update on a few items that have happened since our last time in front of the community and in the school committee if you read the news letter in the blog that i send out every two weeks you load the commissioner of education bishop chester visited belmont high last friday it was a great visit he had a focus group for staff at the butler school the week prior both the commissioner in the secretary toward the schools in were very impressed with our teachers and our students and in the belmont public schools and as always principal richards in principal mcallister were great hosts and they showed off the school to the best way possible which we're very thankful for we look forward to some work that we have relative to one of our modeling groups as you know and we have already presented that the social emotional priority of the district is one that we're taking on the share along with the romans in safety and it was very very time that our students brought this topic to the attention of the school committee at our last meeting and we want to say out loud that we will be commissioning a small group to take that modeling group document and move that forward to operationalize it and what i mean by operationalize is really look at the document in the research done not repeat that but learn from it take the recommendations and narrow that work down to something that we can use in september of two thousand and fifteen at all levels and that will include everything from looking at the staffing in the services that we have in place to the recommendations that were made by the modeling group but it's very very timely to say out loud that the district understands the concerns of our students and the concerns of our families and that work it already started prior to my arrival in belmont and i'm thankful to be able to continue that could work with the administration in teaching staff that will serve on that small committee this spring i want to announce that the massachusetts school building authority did email the public schools in the selectmen yesterday afternoon late to let us know the high school project will not be taken on this session by the state for all of you who have been watching and waiting we were hoping that the high school project would be moved forward by the  b a this year because they did come up for a senior study which fell to the district that that was one step closer for the town and the school to be done relatively soon and accepted into the the next level of the work but we did get notification yes in that that would not happen we were encouraged to reapply for the april deadline and i have already been in communication with principal dan richards in we feel that a good hard look at our application process in the statement of interest will be done and now that we have a better look at what we think schools should look like in the future and some of the collaborative learning space that would like to put in place in twenty first century skills that we feel fit those types of spaces in the fact that our romans has reached a very critical level at the in the district end up on one high that we're going to craft that statement of interest and in a way in which we hope will be accepted in the next round of offerings at the high school we had a great hour of code  in like the think diane for putting it on at the high school we invited representative katherine clark to come in take part in the coding exercise that we did at the high school she was great she got down she tried to create her own app and she did a great job she didn't need that much help at all the kids are obviously a lot quicker take to this work and they did a great job so i like to thank the high school high school administration and dianne for inviting all of us  including representative clocks district i would like to say congratulations to the burbank families and students who just completed their follow walking wednesdays they do that from september all the way to december every year and they will pick that work back up in april when the weather gets a little nicer so well done to the burbank folks i want to make sure that every save the date we have a great which a concert of double high school tomorrow night at the donmar the tournament seven pm we also have the martin luther king breakfast that will take place on monday january nineteenth at eight forty five am in the cafeteria in the auditorium that's a great fundraiser for for our community in our medco students and a great morning to celebrate dr king and lastly were really excited that i would the sports season has been report and first i would like to thank you john for them why did you put out i think that's so helpful bringing all these events and celebrations to everyone's attention i've heard a lot of feedback that they really appreciate it and they capture some much of all the good work that's going on in the district so thank you very much for that and as i said my own report is going to be quite brief tonight i just wanted to say that janice darrius and john feal and i went to the foundation for belmont education board meeting back on the third of  december i think it was just after our last school committee meeting and it's always great to see a very group of energetic people all committed to supporting the belmont schools and as i think i've mentioned there are two fundraisers this fall are very successful the dan scharf and ron as well as the spelling bee that in a profit of over twenty thousand dollars over was very excited about that and they also at the meeting voted a series of learning excellent grants for the schools which totaled over twenty two thousand dollars and this is something that goes through quite a rigorous process where the teachers and staff can apply for the grants and then they are reviewed quite carefully but it's always very exciting to see the range of projects that are funded i think everything is available on example a grow web indoor guard there all kinds of things that really hit every level of the school district and allow teachers to provide these innovative and creative projects at the school budget just doesn't support so i'd like to say thank you again to the foundation and also another date which is a seems a long way away right now as the gala coming up in march on the twenty first but i think the save the date notes of already been sent out so put that on your calendar as well as we turn to two thousand and fifteen  annual fundraisers where they sold snowflakes for a dollar and a dollar fifty with the candy cane to anyone who wanted to buy them you can buy them for students were teachers and their computer to the end of this week so it's kind of a nice kind of brings the holiday spirit and the profits go to a family with a chronically ill father so it really goes to a good cause another thing is the my school performing arts company they have their annual coffeehouse this friday at six fifteen where student groups have a singing group or a musical group you can go perform and all those proceeds go to the women are going to be a trip to new york city which they're going to broadway all sorts of innovative workshops and really running the back to your the next thing is the college application process obviously the decisions are coming in and actually going to school ha one of the record numbers of people accepted to harvard for early there were actually ten people who were accepted early to harvard which was really pretty amazing and then finally the which is one of the stronger clubs at the store they had there any was simply called everyone is gay and last year they had the p flag parents and friends of those being gay students which was great but it was really heavy so which is totally reasonable but to me makes everyone sad whereas this one was really light headed and it made people happy they sing songs and it put everyone in a really good mood so it  really improved the atmosphere and i think was really effective in getting the message across and i guess in terms of those you can t issues that come up high i think we're definitely much much better than the rest of the nation but there is there's still work to be done and there's still that occasional time where someone uses the word gay in the wrong context or something like that so i think these programs are really helpful in making it a really welcoming atmosphere community service today despite the fact that the electricity was out and the channeling was delivering over state to live or die over seven thousand pieces of canned goods boxed goods that they had rain that they clocked in for the fall seventy pounds seventy seven well seven thousand over seven thousand two hundred last year it was forty five hundred and even though things were sort of chaotic at the end of the day i'm well day who is a social setting seventh grade teacher and rebecca greene who is a seventh grade science teacher came over with six of the twenty five kids that are part of the community service club and it is for truckloads hour and a half it was really amazing the food pantry filled again when i went through that will be able to put on the shelves and it was you know incredible dedication for these these teachers so and and the students so that was it was really business so we had could invite our guests up this evening scott strafford and jeff hansel to come up to talk about the belmont media center and all that we can do in partnership i think we'll do that first since they have so graciously joined us and then we'll move on to the f fifteen budget update which is the other piece of major business this week so we just kind of a strange set up here but thank you very much for  me scott is the school committee appointee to the board of the belmont media center so we are grateful that both of you are here this evening and the two of the four of us spent together jeff and scott as well as john and i met the other day and i'm very excited the board i have for you know voting hours one of nine members of the board and i think it is a special responsibility to make sure that there is good communication and opportunity both for reflection of what we're doing and what we can be doing more we have to make sure the problem we get center which y agreed to come this evening and kind of recap some of the ways in which we're currently working with the schools the most significant projects and then we'd like to have a bit of a discussion in your books books and possible other ideas thoughts that members of the it might school to the residents just a couple of years as brief as i can when we started out in the high school in two thousand and six we were in a room about this size for the office for the studio for the  syllabus but we did a lot in that room including working with the lab program work with medco program working in part of this letting department and a number of different departments and teachers over time then move into they square was actually getting a funny way and made us more accessible to more people in the school system specially teachers who use the facility off you know after school for targeted program so that's been helpful to have that there for some of the teachers for example like a group of our teachers gets together once a year puts a student show in our gallery there and so they really like having the facility there open all  hours for them to access and i'll just give you sort of a brief overview of what we have been doing and what we're doing we work with i think part of this is because we've tried to promote our services in many different platforms many different ways and so what has happened is over time people who've heard about media center and seen different projects we've talked to different people it starts to within the sport program which is not necessarily in it if i understand it right it's not the sort of the education program the school system but involves a lot of it just puts they heard about us through other school representatives and so we're starting a regular training and production program support program but we also started working with through one of our volunteers michael kim was on the v h s p t o we started a series of lectures called p h s p t o presents and he's doing that on his own a lot of what we do is based on volunteer involvement he's maybe the most valuable player at d m c right now just the amount of time he spent on these projects  of working with v h s on a series of educational lectures with the principal and other departments in high school as you may have heard in recent years we've increased our own with the athletic department both women's and men's sports and  we've gotten a lot of volunteers through that a lot more interest from people we're also working on some of the individual coaches to videotape some of the games for their use to help develop teach when they don't necessarily have somebody who have the equipment we're able to get them equipment in fact like tomorrow for example for hiking and of course we do a lot of the bigger events graduation the spelling bee with the foundation for both cation a lot of the music concerts are captured  recorded by another volunteer who works tirelessly in that area of the school and using a lot of the equipment that we develop over time and we did a couple of placement playground documentaries on the building of joyce park and the butler with b and c when he was twelve he stayed with it the whole time and now he's as good as any professional producer you would see we took him to yes pm on a student field trip in bristol connecticut he came back and just transformed everything he's  done i don't know if you guys anyone saw the coverage of what are the thanksgiving day football game but he did a sixty minute pre game show on the field with multiple cameras multiple guests and it was it was amazing and of course it was snowing  the best weather but then the other thing that you probably don't see is that we work a lot with school staff in different schools to support the a v needs and especially with treasury in the high school in terms of helping to provide microphones and sometimes the support for some of these meetings that are both done for a live audience and for the live audience and so we're working currently with conversation the next conversation the superintendent has to be about how we develop a permanent venue for the scope committee and a more hands to environment that can be used by not just a school committee but other groups so that over so that s pretty busy in that way and we're having to do that but we did have a great meeting and i appreciate all the partnering that you're doing with the belmont public schools the teachers the coaches the administration has been fantastic and i think to a large point earlier and into our discussion that we had the other day that partnering with the belmont media center in relation to some of the good news that we have across the district as a po extension of the newsletter that i send out every two weeks and bringing in to the public not just our parents but to the overall general public of the belmont community all the good things that are happening in classrooms and across our schools so we did component we have a content piece where we could showcase our music department something that's happening in math or any in all aspects of a part of the belmont schools to begin the process of using our  cable support as a way to connect with the public and i think that as scott had pointed out of the meeting that one of the unique parts above belmont media centers that they actually store all the video on the web and it's accessible so it's almost works as an archive for anybody in the community but especially for the schools to be able to use that as a video component to say to parents or anybody who's asking about a topic that if we did present on that topic we could ask them to go back and see that clip if they had missed it so that could be anything from welcoming news new parents to the community if they were in rolling into but the school has the video but the but the school to when we present the budget to this to the community that we could have a budget link and we supreme as a partner and we look forward to working very closely share in starting that relationship and and hopefully getting students involved i think that it would be really nice to think about how our students who are talented mention of the thing which i just said getting but i'm doing a lot of projects and we've got a lot of almost next to be ten years history but sometimes you get catalyst in some areas and i would just want to thank scott because it is a sort of the transmission on the web is actually you know higher definition better quality than what the cable channels are capable caring whether it's a four hour town meeting in its entirety twenty minutes chunk of a school  meeting that's about the latest on the budget some part of the school based there are all sorts of possibilities for ways to make specific and concrete to the community what it is this wonderful happening in our schools and also to point out those things which helpful i'm not and i see in the media of obstacles so i can put it out there first for people to understand what elementary school is like today that is what the classroom really is  and whether you're someone of you know my era where we sat in rows and you know really didn't move around that much to the way classrooms are structured now and and  how how students might be pulled out for this or someone may come in to enhance a particular lesson and the obstacle i see is the permissions and i know that that's a big time but it's so so my point is more just sort of what is education look like today because i think for a lot of people it's quite different and i think it can even be different than you know thirteen years ago when my own child was in you know the former school here so so if there were a way to to do some of that haven't been helpful when i think one of the things that struck me when we had our conversation going was the opportunity to have conversations in the studio bringing people in and then being able to pull some of these clips together or have sort of that the shots are pictures a broader than slight sort of be able to meld the two and perhaps i g editing opportunities to students or other volunteers i mean there's an awful lot of ways to pull that together but i think you're right sort of to be able to get a glimpse in the small things would be great opportunity to do it in terms of some shorter form to i don't know  barrier as it once was and i do wonder whether or not you know it becomes easy to engage students to do things like you know put together a three minute video collaboration of the teacher who's production value maybe is a bit less than it would have been in the past but still very much three minutes each easy to watch you kind of get a feel for what's going on in the community it's interesting supercenter darrius and i were talking about bringing in some content discussions to the school committee meetings and wanted to talk about whether it be p l t the teachers have experience together all the new math program that we started at the at the elementary level having the coding students come in but this would just be an extension of that that we could have put put this information in the hands of the students from the  teachers and let them develop some of the content to let that be part of how we projected to the full community if we did use the example of the teaching that goes on in elementary schools today and how classrooms do different where teachers are working  harder in some ways by being facilitators more in not teachers as much so they don't have twenty six students or twenty three students in rows and telling them what to do they're actually teaching a standard and the scaffolding learning by putting students in groups and working in small groups and checking for understanding and in facilitating that work with students working together so that might seem like less work but that's actually ten times more preparation for teachers but seeing that in action and seeing house how teachers are actually differentiating instruction in scaffolding learning for some students is one idea that would be a great way for parents to get a good feel for a while that's what an elementary third grade class looks like now when they do english language arts but also to scott's point about some of the the more media subjects like when we do talk about budget or would you talk about a roman and i do think in this world of you tube that it doesn't have to be half an hour despite the fact that if you actually watch the news the other night they say the channel that got a whole lot of hits on the internet was that they broadcasted sixty hours of choral singing from like the netherlands and that millions of people i say you know twenty hours of that was not one of the but i do think that media and communication expression is done in smaller bites and i do think it can be very very effective in the small voice as long as you provide the context and we direct it in a way that is toward some of the goals that we have as a district so we have a lot of good things happening in beaumont public schools a lot of good stories to share in a lot of important issues to bring to the attention of the public that can attend the meetings that might not go to a p t o meeting that may not be apparent and so i look forward of i look forward to the ideas that the committee has and the central office team has and then our teachers have to bring that information and i think the media center for bringing that that vehicle to the to the public schools to use on behalf of the community i think one of the i mean i think a really good example of using using media that didn't necessarily connect to the media center was when we were doing the dead exclusion for this building and there was and scott i know you and laurie were both that really instrumental in producing this video that would show this is what it's like to be in this building and this what helped to lay the foundation and get that debt exclusion passed so that people who didn't have kids in this school or didn't have kids in the system can see this and so it be great to be able to use that kind of thing in the house or what to do rather than oh my gosh this is why we need to have this building up to show what education is like and so even you know the changes have been made at the high school library and that this is real life this is what really happens this is the way kids were collaboratively this is what we're  doing with the money that that the townspeople gave us i think would be hugely positive when the more you can type the students into doing that the better so that they're they're able to learn some production values as well i mean i'm sure they're all really expert at doing the you tube piece but but having those things go out in the public is huge so i think that we've got a good groundwork especially stuck with you and people been on the school committee who use this tool like you know it's  progress certainly in the last five or six years since since we've been since we got that debt explosion so just an couple things are coming together in my head i'm thinking about the social emotional that must have goals and safety and so on and i'm wondering if there are opportunities for small segments dealing with  challenging tough things for parents or others thinking about race relations that students are going to campus about you know that happening in our country and what efforts are being made to have conversations about that but even if there is an opportunity how do you talk to your child that about how do you talk to you know a parent about you know in just giving people boyce to have six pieces to have some conversations that might not otherwise have  snippets of some of the debt that was broadcast or even having some kind of a sit down with that person in a studio setting you know to have a sort of more coherently structured you know of video that some of washington would be able to attend that meeting but we wanted to get a few at are you able to tell what sorts of shows are being watched more like your viewership to just i'm just curious because you might then use some of that data to say well people are really watching x but they're very some of the some of the other programs would be unlike some of the athletic events that are put on there's a great deal of interest in them we just if we can get that you know we get some of that that it figure out where where does there seem to be more interest and focus on that but it's also from the community that comes forward and says could we get more coverage of this issue and we just did a couple of forums at the high school and already getting calls from people about w you're talking about as if at the leadership council just mention it to the directors the principals and sort of spread it make sure the teachers i mean i think most people are really to get it out there and probably the students we really can there's a lot of opportunity here and even at the the association of the sc committees the conference at the cape i know some of the superintendents were sort of pointing at the design they had this partnership where families would turn to the local station to find out about the park or any any topic of interest was sort of that was the go to place and i was thinking at that point some of the volunteers you have going out and getting that content to bring it back so to the community and especially to our students who may or may not watch the parents may watch the show that they should ask about how they can get involved and we will be looking for folks to get involved and so this does a good start to promote the idea that there is another medium out there another vehicle for students for community members for teachers for the administration the school committee to to utilize the services in that they level we talked about fifteen concerns in that there really the issue of having a deficit at this point in time projected not a deficit as we speak but one that we feel if the  before this year so some of this information is not new to the teachers when we asked them to slow down this spending a little bit more frugal but we have added things to this list that we want to make sure that our  t that we have would have to pay for could be reduced into a decline to folks would like to go in that kind of professional development again professional development is the single most important thing for teachers to go out and get skills to put in their repertoire bring back to the belmont public schools in their classrooms so those a hard to implement and not things that we take lightly additionally we're looking at how we communicate how we access some legal counsel to attempt to reduce that budget line and we also have looked at if there are any cases where positions are vacated during the year we are really looking hard at whether or not we can combine schedules for any kind of educational assistance of clerical support or even custodial support that we can maybe go without a position for a few months or part of the air or the remainder of the year in an attempt to achieve some budget savings these are taking a lot of time  for the administration to go through to scrutinize it we're doing so to make sure that we do uncover any kind of savings that we can during the school year but they do come across if in fact we have an educational system that serves in the classroom or two classrooms and we remove that person from that process they are working with students every day we did hire that person for a reason they do serve an important role and if we are doing it by trying to combine schedules or ask people to take a larger groups there will be a bit of a less than ideal circumstance or educational opportunity that will result so we're trying to balance that as a school department and as a set of principles and leadership folks because we do have an obligation to our families and our students and teachers we're trying to balance everything forward so we look at all aspects of our budget we're looking at  quarter to report that will be presented by by tony at our january twentieth meeting after he presents that report to this committee we will then follow up with the one committee to let them know how we are standing at that point in time of early february and have a better handle on some harder numbers that would represent our forecasting for the remainder of the fist a year i can't thank tony enough for a lot of the work that's happening behind the scenes to get an accurate picture of where we are physically i can't thank the principals enough who are trying to support their teachers day with not enough substitute teachers that they're doing these puzzles to get coverage for folks to make sure that students how would they need their teachers  need and i ask for their patience i know that this is an exercise that is unfortunately familiar to our teachers in our department heads and principals but want to make sure that the community knows that we take this this  role very seriously and wanted to come in at the number that we told them that we budget people might ask why is it why is there kind of a delta in between what we budget what we're  expanding a lot of it comes in to do with the amount of students that we have coming into our schools were seeing a very steep increase in our role which means we have more students to service some of those students have certain needs that we have to staff for and  that is a major piece of why we're experiencing some of this this this budget needed to support in time all those things we're obligated to provide and deliver to our students in our community and that's the reality of how we  we sit with this budget year so we bring this your attention because they did all that one of the measures in this report which is the one around how we would provide substitutes for teachers and aides and clerical folks we did give the principal would have more authority over how that would work in their individual building so that's a slight change in what was presented last time so we did want to present that to you to be transparent about what that that document looks like that we sent out to the principals and the leadership council can then again the talking to their staff as it comes along with certain things that the staff might need to staff know that that we do need to be more frugal at this point in the year than we would like to be so we thank everybody for their patience in we look forward to working with the war gap that we need to challenge that we need to take on this year as we as we complete the school year thank you are there any questions and have a question about our today's example  and some of the facilities that have come up already this year and i think a boiler i know that there perhaps some of us i know that the they have had an impact and one of the good things about the consolidated facilities department where the schools are joining forces and some areas with the town were not completely in meshed yet but we are working facilities that has a revolving account that goes back to the facilities that we can use for some of those types of expenses but we did this year have worked out of the pool that was partly paid for out of the consolidated saudis extraordinary funds in part by the school department we did have a boiler at the hot water heater that unlike your house that might be a couple hundred dollars a hot water heaters is a large undertaking in a school the size of the generator we have some boiler work to do we have some  back units on top of the high school that need to be looked out we had the electrical issue that is really you know impeding the the educational process of the cherry middle school and i you know i say that not all seriousness sued to have to stop school holds students in place to then stop teaching and learning to dismiss students safely over a longer period of time those students have missed periods six and seven three times already and if that's not class that's a big deal  so there is a press on the budget that is related to facilities and the needs and jerry boiling for dummies she worked very hard david kill and i meet with gerry boyle and have created a facilities just for capital needs a list that has a school component and has a town component that ranges from a small cost items to some of the bigger items that we would be facing so that is a part of we're putting only items on the list to be fixed that we think that raised it to the level of being safety issues right now and it would be a better situation to have where we have a and allocation where we can should teachers we prioritize and make a plan over time to address these capital needs proactively so we know that the roof of one of the schools is going to be about adults and in three years and that should be on the list to be fixed in two years you know if we know that certain things have a ten year life span then we should be looking at scheduling some funds to be allocated in the ninth year so we we look forward to that work with the consolidated facilities department i applaud gerry boyle and fred for creating a list that looks good on paper but then has to be put aside because something will pop to the top like the electrical issue is as a as a as a circumstance that you didn't really know was going to happen in any particular year and i think that that would be one of the main reasons why the schools new towns entering into a more substantial relationship around this consolidated facilities department makes a lot of sense on behalf of the schools we are teachers and educators and we're not  folks that know how to fix stuff and if we can have a department of the town that helps us do that and that's their expertise and then that would allow us to spend more time on the teaching and learning so i think it's a good match and i think it's one that it's actually spread cities and towns especially smaller towns are trying to navigate a lot of buildings that are aging a lot of facilities issues that are coming to bear that have high expenses that they are taking that out of the school students and putting it into  staff and teachers who routinely seek grants from external sources and so on and i'm wondering if there's a communication a system in place to help communicate about grant opportunities to share sample grant said i've been successful or something to help encourage seeking outside funding i don't know i have no idea what i would be but i just wonder if there's a mechanism that's either in place or that we c funded and how do you write a grammar puzzle that has a better chance of getting money what are the kinds of things are looking for which i think teachers have found very helpful and aside from that they're always very willing to share gambles of successful grants that they have in there are hives and and answer questions that people might have they have leaves on site to help with that so that's that's probably the most frequent grant that the people that teachers do although they're also different healthy habits at the schools so there are fewer of grant grants like like that and there are teachers here so i guess to answer your question there isn't really a systematic i think that one of the one of the other sources of grants besides the foundation which is an extremely generous group of folks is our p t o is it very active in raising money for schools and they put me grits together i think for teachers for  different programming after school and a lot of our parents through the piece yos and some of the things that we're hearing at the wellness committee you know the grammar around people reaching out to try to secure partnerships or prints around different things that they're offering for students and teachers so one of the things they're working more with the wellness committee is cataloguing all that in that might be a nice modeling of how we can catalog other types of grants or opportunities or things for c platform for that this year but i think that it's something that we should explore because we just don't want everybody to have to recreate the wheel all the time if we want to talk to this teenager but it's really easy to share it to get it so simple so that's a great idea i know burbank one of the p t a meetings i went to her bank they were talking about some funding that they had first kind of small mini grants i can't remember what that source was it was it was kind of like the equivalent free cash it was money that had been raised for something and they didn't need that entire amount so the p t a there were setting up a way with with the principal to to look at what kinds of grants we think they need and they are compared to some of the ones from the f t they're relatively small but it was to me too to try and encourage teachers to ask for this and so be great if there was some s having gone for crowds it's amazing when you walk around classrooms especially in an elementary room that that how many things you can point to an elementary question that have been purchased by passion teacher grants that the foundation offers are are deeply appreciated in well utilized by teachers because those are things that just extend a lesson and extend an opportunity to create a system in their room that that wouldn't be in place unless for that small amount of funds whether it be eighty three dollars at staples or two hundred dollars for a set of an extra set of workbooks or one of the teachers had one of the sure executed put in the back of your door that has all the spaces and that's where aren't porton that seeking them out and helping some teachers kind of have an outlet to search for those things if we can help them make that step in that actual funny way can be it also makes us appreciate the p t o s the foundation now which more when we look at those types of funds going such a long way and i know that the teachers very much appreciate it well thank you thank you very much for all about the hard work is going into this i think it's obviously struggling important work to do at this point i think it's  also gave some thought to planning to begin to look forward to budgets for the future coming fiscal year and then also went through a process of evaluating or at least looking at our rental income and the various different approaches that we take to enabling different community groups whether or not there are school affiliated or just some other way how do we make our facilities available to those groups and are we doing so in a way that is supporting this group supporting the activities of the school but also making sure that we're next amazing the revenue  revolving accounts the trends associated with those revolving accounts and any steps we want to take to ensure that their health going forward anything else i just think it's really important for the public to know that when we talk about the rentals as an example that we have great relationships with our town departments and that's the majority of the folks that use our space and so we're really talking a little bit about those folks we're not really because we we have three partnerships of those but when we feel our calendar of how our space is used and we feel it would school things first and then park and reckon town things and then some of the things that we have with some of our our agencies that work with it with our own children here there are going to be some big in season we are talking about how can we maximize that so when we do talk to the public about the schools needing additional funds they someone of the community could say well are they really maximizing like that look at that pool look at that field house look at those gyms look at that space and and so part of what we're doing is is doing our due diligence to explore those issues because i think it's a legitimate question that that people are asking are we as a town department or the public schools  maximizing all of our revenue opportunities in even though it start our world to be revenue generating folks as schools of the risk potential there that whether we do that in conjunction with a consolidated facilities department or with our with our own staff or with our own organisation we don't know if there is any upside to that or a great capacity for that kind of change or additional revenue but i don't think that our fees that we charge folks to use space has been looked at  recently and i think it's a good time to entertain it given the shortfalls that we have experienced in the needs that we have in not wanting to have any stone not turned over in terms of trying to maximize the benefit of all these the school to and the only thing i would add is we are putting together the calendar looking in january fifteen we've been meeting every other week sort of in conjunction with the school committee meetings but i think we're entering that phase where it might be a little more frequent and even as we were thinking about the queue to update coming out in the meetings at least for january but they'll all be posted and certainly everything will be on line and if any of the other nine finance up committee members of the school didn't want to come of course you are welcome as well next on the list is the policy subcommittee there's thing and last in this segment is the financial task force which i know there is a meeting coming up on friday eight to ten in the notice that went out said to reserve a little bit of extra time that it could go a little longer closer to ten but i suspect some of the modeling projections will be discussed so we will have more to discuss when we get come together again the beginning of january but i think that was sort of wrapping to some type of conclusion and they're heading in that  through probably till january and what is real valued at one star sells at the seven o'clock struck time is working out but it's really lovely on the mid december to be ending at eight so i think this is so far so good is there anything else