good evening welcome to the foxboro school committee a regular meeting tonight january sixth seven o'clock the agenda is as follows for this evening seven o'clock visitors seven ten and group of minutes seven hundred eighteen teacher teaching and learning highlights how does professional development come alive seven thirty friday school assessment sort of occasion seven forty proposed twenty fourteen twenty fifteen at the chess program of studies seven fifteen seven fifty  finale the forty five other matters so we will begin with visitors are there any visitors that wish to be recognized ok seen on will move onto approval of minutes and we have the december twenty third regular meeting minutes i had one one change i don't know if anybody else has maybe i can get some feedback from the committee at the very end page three speak to the board of selectmen and then speak to the chairman and then have the chairman contact me that's as i remember ok i just thought maybe that would be good to have that kind of specific information and we'll obviously talk about it and to ask him to which he will pass on to the the chair the chair of this letter will contact you and i how i remember that sounds good the chair  i was a pro this morning michelle and i spoke about that so we'll be submitting within the next few weeks actually for the february round so if i may change the language is something like steve you've been asked for a new state of timelines for the liberal often get to see what happens after those professional development opportunities and these three have been working on a really interesting project so we thought we would ask them to come and explain to you what the professional development opportunity was the end how it has now impacted enough to attend a conference and cambridge called the national literacy is technology conference at the microsoft center which was a week long experience there allows us to work with teachers from our district other sex technology specialists administrators for a whole week long intensive course focusing on technological skills what the conference itself just on three major cornerstones online collaboration like  having students be able to communicate online use technology tools to communicate to improve their their education and also focused on online comprehension skills and how to appropriately access technology and to become the digital citizens and it also focused on content creation using new programs and allowing students to explore and to sort of show what they know using a variety of means so we  were really fortunate to go and again thank you and one of the nice things like i mentioned was we were able to collaborate with other just with other teachers from other districts but i think i think we found a really valuable experience release we were able to work together we're not in the same building  we often cross cows a peavy there's but don't get to communicate so it's a sort of took off on it and a lot of to communicate interschool and i think it's been a really positive experience and yeah let me down it was amazing it was probably the best professional development i think i've ever attended before it just blew my heart but what it entailed was we had to get together in a team and we three of us teamed up and we had to come up with a project that would use technology to really enhance the curriculum that we're already teaching so the three of us said we were going to focus on reading again german and how we were going to have our students again with that collaboration creation comprehension we were going to get them to talk to each other online through blogging and just sort of connect that bridge between these two schools and these two different grade levels so later on in the future they're going to the middle school they're going to be best buddies with these people that they pay we wouldn't say so are you going to focus was on reading and what we decided was we were going to create this book club and the book club was going to have them creating book reviews creating trailers like advertisements kind of videos and also discussing interviewing parks with their their bodies across town so we were experiencing all these different great tools to use and now we're bringing it back to our classroom and having our students the so what we did was we actually created a google web site and we called it book stash you know to sort of catch to kids attention things that are to roll into the mustaches now so that's acting as our house so we have a few things that we've been doing with the book with the book stash website all of the students are able to log onto the website we have a few tools that we have put on there like kid blog is why we also have a couple more tools that we're adding as we go that we'd like the students to use but mostly we just want them to be able to collaborate with each other so we are hoping to move on from here we  class and then mr gentile read the book to his class so that all of the students were familiar with the book and then we contacted the author and we were able to have a skype visit with the author to just try to keep over to the bar all and we all sort of got together and we got to meet this author mona kirby and she answered all the kids questions and it was just as amazing experience where it was like it was such a great kick off because it all the kids got together they get to know each other but then they were also have this amazing time where they got  that rode the railway and he sort of guarded the us mail on officially he decided he was going to do that himself so a lot of the kids wanted to know was the dog still alive of course not because it was in the two hundred  another book that with liked to have both classes read again it's a fantastic line books of morris last more and that is right here and there is a link for a short film that actually when the county award that was based off of this and it's a great book so we're trying to do a lot of common things with the classrooms just to get them you know into collaborating with each other and across town the in one of the teachers that runs the conference each year had asked us he's going to keep in contact with the teacher foxborough who's right we had a pretty good effort to do a she's a daddy and he wants to follow us and sort of have us keep in touch with them and communicate with them that way speaker but we've gotten nothing but positive feedback so we sent a team every single summer it was like summer camp it was as bad as our french and like like minded educators are getting together and just sharing ideas and it was just really positive well i will start by first congratulating the three elementary principals and they will introduce some of the their team members in a few minutes for being certified as ready schools which is a fantastic accomplishment is something that has been in the works for two years we as a recipient a full day kindergarten grant needed to pursue in order to have quality full day programs and accreditation programs and in it you i see the national association for young children is one of them and based on what the department of ed has learned over the number of years and that program they then put into effect two other programs that were considered alternatives because of being public schools and there were a school assessment was one of those so we took over the last two years as our early childhood committees in which we have principals teachers at assistance myself on that committee we looked at those two alternatives in addition to see studied those for a good year and then look to see which one was really the better fit for asked based on our needs and with the work of that committee after all of that time we decided that the ready school assessment really wouldn't the best and it is a program that allows us to really do a self study and it has eight different dimensions and those dimensions that it focuses on our our our leaders and leadership transition so students coming into our kindergarten it's teachers supports effective curricula engaging environments family school and community partnerships respecting diversity and assessing progress so we had over thirty different indicators to go along with those eight dimensions that we had to provide evidence for and we involve not only teachers paraprofessionals but community members and parents and this self study and we had to provide evidence for every single one of those things and then come to the second step which was to score ourselves on a consensus tool that is an online profile and the goal was to have a three point five in each of those dimensions which we did not reach in the beginning except for a couple of different ones in different schools and then we needed to go and do that work that before we could do any of that we had a training in all of this so really to back up the first step was high scope which is in michigan we had a trainer that flew out from michigan spent a full day with all of us to do the training then we after the training collected all the information and then she came back out to the site visit based on what we had we then i did a five areas where he did the work which they  talk about specifically and then had another site visit that and and so it's been a two year process lot of work and it's the leadership of the principals that have made it really happen so i'm going to turn it over to them so they can tell you their first hand experience so the first thing we just want to start off with is the teams themselves and as amy said we did have a committee in place and the make up of that committee included parents community represented representatives teachers assistant administrator so and it was a successful team so we wanted to keep that make up the composition similar for each of our r s a teams so many of the members of that team in transitioned onto each of the three are a say teams although we did have to recruit some to keep some balance on the team so i do we all do want to thank the team members who put in so much time during this process for parents we had margaret ballard kelly grinnell meg o'connor carrie sturdy michelle reardon andrew gentile and also the three of us wanted to think diana part danke a silly alice and mellow for supporting all three of the elementary teens and especially a need to for her guidance and support throughout the whole process through the process of amy touched on this a bit it originally began with a full day training for a trainer national trainer came out to work with all those members that michelle just mentioned because that was over a year ago our teams have expanded so not every member was able to take part in the full training but they were given a subsequent training not by the national trainer but by our local teams  after the four day training each team was asked to go through the booklets the hymn booklets and start scoring themselves and it was really a self assessment tool to identify where are strengths where our weaknesses and really we based on those eight elements that indicated after going through that self rating scale that was on a site visit and this was really just a confirmation visit of where they would look at things and say your numbers are either of your putting yourself a little too much or like a show you might be able to talk for yourself and your team needs to look little differently they also give us record nations of what you need to make the changes that's going to help make this process easier and that whole idea is really to improve your school so each of us had our own site visits with our own teams present they gave us some feedback great conversations michael going to a few more the details about the site visits after that became the real work of our committees which was the reflection of the ongoing meetings of saying what are the goals that we want to set forward for our teams and what really needs to take place to make sure that we have ready schools and with that idea of saying what we want the schools to look like for all of our children that naturally led into our focus on some improvement areas at that point one of the pieces that was quite a bit of work and it was i think a little surprising to at least me probably i think it surprised all three of us would be a bit more is the amount of evidence that we needed to gather during the training they were very clear about stating that it doesn't count unless you have documentation so each one of us filled eight binders i want to say there were one thousand pages in these binders of just evidence to document the things that we do here in our schools and when i say we i don't mean the three of us it's all of our schools and all our sports staff whether it's central office to our bus drivers of what happens over what do we do to prepare ourselves for our children to make the best school possible again after all this work of the committee we then have to re evaluate go through these eight binders again looking at each one of these indicators and then score ourselves again again looking for that magic number of a three point five that you mentioned before that's a threshold of we have to be above a three point five on a four point scale to reach the ready school criteria following that as a confirmation is again so another site visit where they walk around they review our volunteers and again like a caucus site there's a process but that's a little bit about the process itself it's really about giving us a vehicle in a manner in which our team works together and talking was many years ago so on a personal level i felt that when i'm cast came along as a high school graduation requirement degree that i had the most impact as kindergarten and it's sort of borne out because everything's been pushed and we have to get the students ready earlier and earlier in this in this process really i think off three schools and everybody who was a part of it really helped us improve you know and it started with the site visits they stablish the baseline at each of our respective schools a representative from the reddy school assessment company came out they did an in depth interviews with us they did a tour of each building they looked everywhere from you know the amount of student work up on the walls and the purpose behind that to you know was is the school physically safe you know coats and also what we found as principals and i think as teachers each team member you know obviously focus on student learning you know what was the impact but curriculum and making sure and as peter alluded to it just wasn't answering we had to provide the documentation which for some of it was you know readily available it really required us to dig and reflect upon what we're doing and i think each school we grew as a result of that so the first visit really was just the baseline of coming around visiting talking with each of the committee members at our respective schools interviewing us we filled out questionnaires that we gave back to them after they left they gave us about that we could to later they sent to amy need to be our respective schools a little assessment of what they found  was going well and also what here is we need to grow so in conjunction with the assessments that we did of the different indicators in their feedback we then developed action plans at our respective schools and continuing a year long process we found additional data we found where we wanted to grow we looked at other schools we reached out to preschools not just at the barrel but actually private preschools as well you know so that piece of a really caused us to expand past some horizons that we might not have otherwise done you know some takeaways for each of the schools and it's nice because as a district we grew stronger we increased the communication with the preschools i would say we actually created a new form for our incoming kindergarten students that we have the existing preschool teachers complete so our kindergarten teachers have a wealth more of information now than they used to have before about what the child can and can't do when they're coming to us also what came of this but we've we thought about  our students who speak a second language at home and we realize that you know we needed to improve some of our efforts very quickly you know listening to some of the feedback that we have almost overnight it seemed we had the capability on our school websites in across the district to translate to different languages and we also realized when we were sending home some notices to students as well that we wanted to have the home you know in their native language we also as i mentioned earlier talked about the the student work and it really caused reflection about trying to find that right balance of what's being displayed what's motivating to a child yet that sensory input and output that it's not too distracting to the lesson and to the environment so you know in another piece of the stew it just was in kindergarten this actually required us to look all  through fourth grade as well and they went into all the different classrooms through all the grade levels they went to special education they want to see how we were inclusive in the feedback that we got you know in the post conversations that we had you know for all three schools in the district as a whole was outstanding you know i think as i said at the beginning i truly feel that we're stronger because of this it really had us you know reflect in put some things in place of it might have otherwise think a lot of you and not a lot of collaboration and teamwork that went into that we were going to bring on the binders and dump they don't want any more after they did my evaluation of the man i have a question how long is the certification good for and they actually decided that they're going to recommend a future since that visit we're now trying everything over to the same color now because that was the approver urgent and now over these next three years as we add new documentation take things out the changes will be on color and that way it's easy to when what goes on between when you become certified and then you last for the three years is there a process in between that you'll be getting ready for the next certification like i know it took two years i'm thinking about like i work at a hospital we have the joint commission and there are things that you to do before you get accredited by that agency and i'm just wondering if it's similar education well a couple of different things one will continually reflect on the areas that we've made changes to how those are working and if we need to make more the other part is because it is a requirement of the full day kindergarten grant which is what funded these different trainings and bringing in the trainer from michigan for that we have to report out in the grant annually what have we done and what are we continuing to look at reflect on and then what are our this was a great experience because i think and that's why i wanted to make it its own agenda i don't not only because i just value the hard work that all these people did in the teens but we often hear about high school credit ation having outside agencies or companies coming in and you know have standards and have you evaluate yourself against the standards in the having outsiders come in and evaluate your standards and i don't think really the public realizes that we do this at other levels and that this this process of looking at standards for all of our systems and what are we doing and how we going you know how do we think we measure up and what advice do independent evaluators have for us does a one of a level so that's why we wanted to come to the committee and inform you but we're really just going to so many things to go on that we don't have an opportunity to talk about and this is one thing that they did as a team that really really had some high impact for our schools that we believe will have lasting effects on h know it's interesting to me because i think of our community schools are such an asset to our town and yet this is to me an example of our focus on continual improvement right so it's terrific really great and then you and your very first page where it talks about the changes and it says new courses for fourteen and fifteen and it mentions the a p studio art in the engineering course there technically my brand new courses our a p studio art is the portfolio course that has been an ongoing course that we've had through reflection over the past two years the art department really wanted to step this up for students to be able to submit a portfolio for judgment and it's quite quite a lengthy descriptor that is there so that our students again have an opportunity given one more opportunity for students for advanced placement in the engineering we're very excited about this is a  brand new curriculum really that we are looking at and that we are planning and implementing and what's different about this particular curriculum which i believe you also received a copy of the program is that it does give the students an opportunity to look at the various different types of engineering and to get a taste of each of those the other really lovely piece of this is that this particular program is also on the track toward becoming an a p program as well so we lucked out in the fact that this program is a tried and true program that is currently being implemented in various places in the united states and again it is already looking to meet the a p requirements so you know we're hoping it's almost that two for one in many instances so the write ups that you have here are both here so again more of a of a effort i thank you i didn't notice that earlier today when i was rereading again then within our music department we're always trying to expand if we can the offerings that we can give to our students and t courses that really took off last year with students coming back and saying we would love to take like more report to a bit more the guitar class so this is a guitar to class which is a continuation of guitar one and then the music technology courses well  so two more elective offerings for our students and also two we're very very pleased that our t v and video production classes are also classes that students are asking for more of so again jim callaghan god bless him he is willing to take that on and so we are looking to make it in fancy been in both the t v and the video production with the two courses that are listed there we have a couple course title changes so there's also listed on the next page that our r c bad is going to become graphic design one and two same courses just a different title really what's right now for the here and now by the teachers who are doing the end of our math department again the engineering as we mentioned will become the engineering and in the music department our jazz choir c p will become vocal jazz workshop c p so just  change in what they feel is just more political and made for what is happening within those courses so those are the new courses for the exciting course  interesting the rumors yes and the engineering to the guitar music technology that's a fast growing field you know these are really in you're making your own music you are and it was so fabulous last doing it yes mr piper had invited us in a few of us with them to understand who were available to go in and to listen to the student groups and they had a project whereby they needed to compose a song and it was really  more of a senior focus because they needed to compose a song about graduation moving on and the students could go out into the building they could ask for guest singers they were mixing their own music they were putting it together it was fabulous they asked us to vote on it every single one of the songs got a number one vote from all of us and we couldn't decide they were just it was wonderful and that was one of those classes and i took a look at the diverse kids that were in there some of those were kids that have never probably done a thing with music since they you know maybe took an instrument the middle school and here they were back into really something that i think is so important to really be an well rounded individuals and that having that appreciation of the arts and i'm here is one example of they have been able to happen now we have the new music technology la heard yes you have more kids coming up with even more experience and the guitar class was unbelievable too as i was sitting in there i thought oh my goodness you know as i'm watching again who's there some of you some of those students had some experience and some of those students that had absolutely no experience on a guitar and to see what was happening that way it was just it does it just blows you away when you see what these kids are doing so what i love you so much credit for is the things that are really inventing student learning and addressing the interest in becoming popular you not just saying oh i'm good glad that we're offering them you're looking to then offer the advanced next level morse that they continue continue to interest i give you so much credit for that for not just saying good enough so are we dropping courses to allow these know that that's amazing is right and we have to say you know there may be some elective that will go lower number or there may be some electives that maybe don't run in a given year we have to take a look at them if you continue but we also have some electives that we know that are just so overcrowded because there are teachers who just say yes yes yes and we've got you know thirty thirty to thirty five kids in a classroom because they have a love of whatever that happens to be but this also now opens up maybe for some of those other students to say wow i can take part two because part two there so you know it's going to be the whole given taken that balance and we evaluate every year in the department heads through the building leadership we take a look at the electives and say what do we need to keep in do we need to retire something or put it on hold for a i think in actually looked it up and it said vote to adopt but we usually use that word and i looked up like what does it really say in the policy guidelines and said vote with john changes the curriculum programs but i think adopt approve or two thousand and fourteen to two thousand and fifteen and with appreciation too and i'm noticing that through all of these courses there are either intense or areas of twenty first century skills that are needed and you know that's something i have a liking stu's so i appreciate that in the curriculum development that you've presented here so my emotion on one of the conversations that has been had and i brought it up i know very early on one of our school committee meetings in conversation and that's the fact that we were looking at twenty two credits for graduation which when you look at the number of credits that a student has available to them over the course of four years they could fail almost two years worth of courses and that just is not acceptable in anybody's book and we know that in the majority of our students do that the majority of our students are passing and passing with flying colors all of the classes that they are participating and but that is one piece of it the other piece of it is that the requirements now at the bare minimum for our state schools have moved math from a three year requirement for college and career ready ness that portion of it as well to a four year requirement that for years four years now a significant majority ninety plus ish into a very small minority of students that are not taking four years of math so this is not  a huge really hurt for anybody or anything that's unusual because our students are already taking these classes but we really felt that it was important for us to also raise the number of credits that a student is expected to have and to receive  as they graduate so the one changes the math had been three it is now four and as a result that brings it up to the twenty three credits and again phasing in so we would begin with a class of twenty sevent not a state mandate over the number of credits at a local man day what the state is now in you can probably never articulate this better than i but to attend a rally for your state school university college  c if there is that increase in it if there's not an increase in the p e then it would be the six point five right then that would remain the same so right now we're just looking at that increase in the twenty three and then that other portion will be depending upon budget what you folks about so we'll let the six point five stand for now and yes just make sure we get in there just kind of for printing purposes for us we wanted to make sure it was there for you folks are saying i would do just say another word or two similar to how you just did about the four years of math about the twenty three credits for graduation i think what you said earlier is that's more in line with what is of what other schools are doing or what higher education is expecting us how do how do we i want to put them some going to context for it both of those to be honest with you when we looked at the courses that we require here most of our students graduate with twenty six or twenty seven credits and when we were saying that they only needed twenty two to graduate and they were the can i take off my senior year no no it's not it's just that was i mean i so we just thought that since the state was kind of up in the ante with the requirements to get into college it was a good time for us to as to have it as well as you  system you know the state university system puts out what their minimum criteria is what they're looking at for students what they consider students to have or what is necessary to be college ready and so it is the four years of of english which is a state mandate anyway then we have the math the four credits from a half our science or three years of science three years for social studies of which we have to take the u s again that's a mandate by state it's not a university suggestion we also have the minimum minimum of two years of a world language and i try to emphasize that with students all the time you need to have three if not four full years of of language but we're still at the two because that's again the universities are saying man the p t a requirement again we'll be talking about that there's some law on them and the health use of it and then our electives are what would round out the rest of it so the university system has shifted in his change somewhat in the past couple of years as far as what they are asking for is minimal requirement said laurie please can you look up and let's take a look at our our graduates how many students are lacking in another math course and i were numbers were less than ten percent higher seniors don't take a more here now you know it's most of them we encourage them to take the we didn't require we are aged now we're going to require ok so the wording on our part is changed a little bit but most of our students took the recommendation to act the fourth year and therefore your fourth year of math could be anything you could be that student that's taking that a p course now in the engineering even though it might be coming out of the math department that wouldn't be counted as a math so they gave us one of those for the purpose of what i was thinking you know these are not one of the ones that we often account for pretty much everything out as you know the  action is traditionally this is the meeting where we continue the discussion from the presentation initial presentation in december where the committee has any questions or any areas for bill in full or for me that you would like to have the answer tonight or to put on the list to get back to me to be where you are as a committee for the next meeting this is the time flag of the other area after you heard the parliamentary presentation that you'd like us to gather more information i'll get back to you one that's our first and can get worse it's up to you open it up to the committee you have a specific questions about the budget but i think for reminders for ourselves and also for anyone who didn't see our last discussion i think we characterize it or i characterize as kind of a no a budget i know stephen i think is representative of the budget committee had enough to spend some time prior with their being with bill just by way of recollection i think the budget request was pretty normal if there is such a thing i didn't think there was a having that really jumped at us last meeting so i you know i personally don't have additional concern or question i'm i'm ready to move to the p t a discussion but i don't know about my colleagues  that comes right after the budget update of the bill provided so sorry that's in the river so these this is what we've been doing the past many years is that we create a list of prioritize items that we're also thinking about that are not present i just keep budget so that you understand what it is with thinking about it just testing at the ministry of level and also so that you can consider it you may have different priorities so the things that we have talked about is the mystery of team working together to develop that short list of other things that we want to be transparent about the future needs of the district in those four things address goals and objectives in those to achieve the strategic plan and our two thousand and thirteen fourteen to circles that we share and those four things are the and the third elementary math specialist so that we could have one elementary math specialist each building so if you remember several years ago we went many years with one person travelling among three buildings now we have two people traveling across three buildings and yes we would like to at some point in your future get to one mass specialist at each building so that they can serve the needs of the students who need who are ready for more advanced math cheaper especially with the new cap national common core standards of math we've also disk at this table is the ministry in the district a third technology integration specialists that's in our new tech plan that we discussed in the fall so that we would eventually have one technology specialist working on the implementation of instructional technology in the classroom to result in a better delivery of the curriculum one for the three elementary schools to share which we believe is fine we have that now and our second position that we have in the budget now would serve middle and high school and eventually we would like one at the middle school and one at the high school because as you can imagine those are two big schools and to be nice to have one person station to the school to work with teachers on the incorporation of technology into each of their curriculums and their point we have been talking about stem and career in business growth so we would like to see in the end when i say near future in the next few years an additional point five business education teacher at foxborough high school to accommodate the growing demand for business electives we do as we discussed at the summer meeting we do believe that there that there is in addition to the engineering course that the other  expansion and handsome if you will of what we do at the high school that we are going to be able to accomplish in a cost neutral fashion is to take somebody instead of teaching him a specific course to teach financial literacy electives so that we have more kids who are able to enroll in that elective so that's that's something we can do for september but that doesn't mean we're expanding the business electives in any way or being able to offer more than one section of some such as business law or accounting or things that that students would really want to take in the future more students than currently are able to take them they take them now we have one our business education department is one teacher so we'd like it to be one point five and eventually we'd like to see more support through working with students and families at risk with the addition of a part time and social worker at fox well high school we try to have one and there are a lot of more needs now and we would like to eventually see that we have prioritized those in the order in which we're interested in them that we believe is the next biggest priority of the next area that would provide the most impact for students you know i think is really interesting though the elementary math specialist you know just coming off of us just approving this you know the increase in the and my math that that's going to be the school is now requiring so how we going to support our students to maybe take that extra year of math when maybe they might not have and certainly starting at the elementary is where we heard just from earlier the you can do garden teachers that were here and they're talking about that in terms of the certification program so i would like to have a discussion about this  math specialist and how you know whether this is the right year to do it i think if it's not this year then i think it's next year because we need to prepare our students who are going to be taking four years of math and i think you know while there's a great number that are doing it right now this is a requirement this is something that we're going to make sure that we can support them and you know i think we have learned that the more we sure them up when they're younger right they will be able to achieve i think maybe be helpful because we've had lots of discussions about this what's our next priority i think would be helpful here because we actually even though they totally unrelated we did sort of position it our discussions ailment us specialist against the teacher at the high school and so that is what we decided to put forward and i think might be helpful for you to hear from them about why why that became the position it's in the budget and why this is on the priority list although it's nothing's written in stone so i think this is this was a tough one for us and we had several discussions about it so i think maybe that might  you education books the regulation that our students should be taking physical education every year it is not specified how or what means that's going to take place or what that's going to look like but it  certainly there and we know that that's a push as far as wellness impi is concerned so with that in taking a look at what we're currently doing and certainly the wellness program as we have it now with the p in the health is extraordinary we're so fortunate to have that back i believe in and to be able to maintain at least at their one point when students are going from they are really the software here to the junior senior year of maintaining their piece of that physical well being we're always thinking the academics but we're really educating the whole child in many ways and again instilling those good pieces of what they really need to be healthy and to be healthy in mind and body so for us it was really have this helped our skin here who's yea headers so for all of us it was really you know we can keep talking about this and talking about this but it's really there and it's really a necessity and something that we really do need to put into place and so we you know we took a look at it so john if you want to do something else you want you know to be yes we looked at the schedule and we could add eleven the trials are quiet for one semester the kids would have it three times a cycle for half a year and we'd be able to build upon the concepts that they were teaching them at the younger level signs in tenth grade we teach them we introduce them to a variety of life time activities every third class they have a fitness focus they reach to work out concepts in different ways that they can stay physically fit and active so if we had them in the eleventh in child child grade we could continue that as well as build upon it in operation electives to them that could be more specific to things that they're interested in like they could take a group exercise elective they could take up basketball activism if that's something they're interested in personal training where they learn to build their own workout plans and use a fitness and are trying real hard yoga yet yoga colliding all of those things that they can use to be active for the rest of their lives and all the research now is showing that the more exercise you get during the day the more ready your brain is for learning so it's going to benefit throughout the school day being more active and being in better shape than they are now and if you look around you can see as the kids are stop having faith that in the eleventh and twelfth grade you can see some of their body types changing and you can see the effects right away from going from having it three times a cycle to not having it at all especially the who are not involved in activities or after athletics so it is actually a state requirement that we require four years and doesn't say it's been a full year but that the students take physical education for their four years of high school we know that we never made it available to students so another we just talked about the really school assessment coming in we're going to elementary schools so the state does commit in reviews a district every five to six years and sure enough right on time this may didn't offer other than as an elective in eleven and twelve so the remedy was that we have to track what activities the students are involved in that involve movement in wellness in grades eleven and twelve on the individual basis so they can belong to a gym to why they could be in sport they could use the fitness center after school they could have membership somewhere they could do in a drear all for example or you know that type of activity so that's sort of how we meet the intent of the requirement without actually meeting the requirement so our coordinator for the review is coming on this may and a distiller requirement and we still offer it so at some point we this is something that we have to address so we decided  time felt right to now that we can't any longer say we're just not trying to address that so this is an area that an outside agency or department of education is saying we are required to do and we need to at least show that we've considered making progress in that year so are you saying that this tracking our students to ensure that they are complete that they do something meets that requirement now right now that is the remedy that they'll accept if you don't require four years do yes yes i'm i'm pro math specialist i will i won't i won't lie but i think there's something very important about today's health  and physical fitness teacher and that is that this is at our father's oldsmobile right that the adaptive activities required for special needs students are a whole new body of knowledge are they not for you i think i'm correct there and this is you know an important activity an important function in the school department i think i was talking to someone and we were talking about that the different types of like say special education or see or special abilities or special needs for students with limited abilities that are physical wellness department helps with and i thought maybe it would be good if we can here to talk about and highlight some of those things to get out to the public that it's not just you know the smaller children's activities running around playing  kickball but there's also more advanced things going on for the students that have special needs well i think i think when we spoke anyway i'm going to have that as a teacher one highlight actually the other great that our teacher superheroes who does the adaptive p e to come and explain what that is and how those services delivered at the high school level i think one thing that this will accomplish for us as you know is talking about is that they have so much more services to students in  know you all the credit because it's not one ball and twenty five students it's not welfare you know everybody has to shoot around it's the really do have choice and they work as their wellness teachers work in teams i see you know running with as were students while others are in the gym i mean they actually are able to have some flexibility during their classes but what this would do for us is to offer some things for students who might not approach physical education in the in the traditional sense or feel comfortable about it in the traditional sense so if they want to go in a small group psych class to work on if they want to go in the fitness center or they just want to go on a machine or if they want to take a small group yoga or any of those things that we would with the addition of another staff member we'd have much more flexibility because as you remember yourself in high school we weren't all comfortable with the same things i certainly didn't play high school sport i wasn't as comfortable even being in a big gym so i don't know if you want to speak to that disability or whatever y e like what it's like because i don't do all the same workouts they're going to think i'm weak they're going to think i'm not you know not like that so that's like so having the other like there's like i would actually would i feel like help a lot of people who are there a lot of people here do have say they want to work out but they don't have time they do want to do like they want to go it isn't because of the all these other classes but they don't have time for it or they just can't find the class for it was like i feel like with this with it being here it would be so much easier and it would i feel like a lot of people would get involved and  well you be required to i mean this is this isn't this is a little i think we need to frame this what it is i mean because i'm hearing when you're saying it does sound great but this is going to need this regulation so yes you know you're not going to you know it's zoom and it's you know fits into your schedule you're going to have to take that i mean you know you're you're going to be in the class with other athletes you're going to be in the class with people that don't necessarily want flexibility for choice within even right period right so there might be three teachers dealable in that period and they'd mix and match the students assigned to those classes so that other words even now they're not assigned to a certain skin for example another one scientist immediately they're assigned to that period and then they mix and match the students based on what they want to do dishes or what what's best for their next level of fitness my essay so this if we just go ahead require it then they're going to have to be in the class of everybody else doing the same activity which we know won't work because we have lots of different types of students and reading us a level right interests and and and preferences and if we so i don't i wouldn't be interested in requiring it with the out without the other additional staff member so that we can deliver more options  forty percent of the entire song base actually has an organized team score which still leaves a large group that's not sixty percent that are getting the other thing that with you know when we were redoing the you know through your support  of pushing forward even in the girls locker room we built an entire area to satisfy what was being brought up as far as people not being comfortable tentatively in the weight room we gave them in their own area that they can actually build out over time here and  able to have those classes in and more confined close comfort you know zone within the girls locker room area and i think that you know we're trying to build all these opportunities but really we don't have the staffing so we're not using that girls now which would allow us to have three choices of activities for the kids to be somebody doing something outdoors somebody already has done and somebody doing a smaller group that's marked are you looking for us to accept this this evening no  our next thing that we really need to meet students needs and this time we did have two things that were neck and neck but this is what came out from the ministry as a little bit ahead of you and just to let you know i know sometimes mr you know say that you know we don't always and others of you as well that we're not always saying everything that we do and we need to continue to to say and i will say that the staff has gone as so many of our teachers do but has really gone above and beyond when we have had students in need and we do have students who are not comfortable in classes they've created another section and ginnell was a little bit more flexible the schedule although she needs every ounce of that time has taken students under w for separate classes or to be able to work with these students on a regular basis so that they can meet their requirements so we got these kinds of things that are happening going on quite a bit we in a we also have another staff member who at times is doing yoga with our students and again because students who are uncomfortable in a regular p t class or they have other issues of whatever it might be so these are all areas that we're also looking at the same we've got means that we know that we have that our students have and it is those four years it's so important we want to have our students really making those good choices now and really instilling in themselves that pattern you know what is it twenty days or twenty five or thirty in the becomes a real killer pattern in your life and it becomes a habit rather than just something that's you know yes i'm going to do my new year's resolution and that's now what the sixth or seventh of january so what are we starting so there's just those aspects that we think are so important but it is i mean it is for students it's another piece that they have to take on because it is a requirement if you'd so voted in that direction and it is an expense because we are looking for another person to come on  looking at how the scheduling would work and what it would look like in addition to offering a required semester for eleventh and twelfth grade i was also able to fit into the schedule in am yoga session for students with uncomfortable or putting more anxiety on their plate than there are to have we also would be able to offer we have to get approval for still but to offer a before school section of physics as well so one of my staff members would come in from say six thirty seven fifteen and the kids could feel their peer choir meant before their date and start if they wanted to have a free period to take another elective or another a p course or kind of keep their schedule that's a really creative part of the solution because that w we talked about our students for example who like to double or triple up on music courses and not make themselves unavailable during the day so that they they could do something like that if they really want to take three for example and one of our questions was is this going to impact the electives choices but it won't because students in junior and senior have a directed study so half the year they would still have the directed study and the other half the year they would have problems it would all turn out right yeah they would have  not that was a really good question that was couple people asked us early on is would this negatively impact the elective program that we were growing in no the answer is no it would not remove from the house and the other questions i the elementary is this now probably time to test some other questions about the elementary math how many grades does that serve is that from can to garden through fourth yes but they don't they're not able to serve the kindergarten quite so much so once we get one in each school they would be able to work have i would say is usual competing priorities and right if going to work on that content idea of continuous improvement sometimes it's really difficult to take something at one level into something totally different at another level and be able to put them on the same scale it's just difficult they're they're both go all the equipment all the weights and everything and after school mostly most of the football players use it but it's open from two to five and it's just basically everyone like it's open to anyone  can work how teachers are down there sometimes and we hear there's an intern program also where a lot of students join in the teach really personal fitness you learn how to manage the equipment and when to use them and learn how to like kind of give someone a goals for their well that well the center and how can we improve what both sides do to kind of move it forward a little bit more it was a a little bit different when we had one staff member always there you know it from the y m c a side that also works for us during the day it was a little more consistent sometimes what we do seen lately is different y m c a staff member people are in there and little bit more of a rotation so i don't think the relationship with the students or the consistent programming is easy to female usage and she's been doing a great job with many staff members and giving a whole workout play and so whether they're actually using the the center at a regular basis is not always able to be done with afterschool help of that kind of thing but that certainly came out of all great right well thank you thank you for joining me for i leave the mike just a little plug again this is abrams i'm taking your limelight here but i think a greer will be speaking tomorrow night at six thirty here at the high school so we'd like to put a plug in for everybody who's out there l phone system coming forward one of that was intimate point out one of the issues that we we push for last year kind of late in the process but it got the funny and it was the wireless infrastructure here at the high school the  what happened very favorably for us is when we did that the company we chose to do with the hot spots and so basically ran a special right at the time we did it and it was buy one get four type of a scenario so we were able to pick up enough of the units to basically give us equipment enough to do the not only the high school on the full saturation that we wanted but also to do they have the hotspots where the seventh and eighth grade of the year her so we've actually just finished installing something eighth grade o christmas break here and some testing going on right now but obviously the next one is to finish stock the middle school side of it we think with the money we have in the the equipment we've bought so far that in the f wife fifteen c i p budget we only need about forty thousand to complete that building and that would really put us in good stead with the the two largest of our buildings and the two that we would be using most of the wireless options relative to what students carry and also what we would provide internally obviously in the next steps after that would be to kind of push further down into the elementary levels but we're still having to look at how we're going to design that system and how that will be used on one level you know will be on a classroom saturation are or will be more you know certain areas that we would actually live in not that way our traditional stuff there we're placing and we're going to go through at least one more year with this on the the main equipment that we buy now is you know we go through a rotation of r r p c's basically a five year life on them and so we've been very successful over the last five years to have a plan in which we can replace one fifth of our hardware software  servers end up in there and some switches that type here just just p c s so that's the one hundred sixty seven hundred sixty thousand some fifty one of the things we now need to do though if we're going to move forward with this wireless environment is really to increase basically our throughput data throughout the system and right now we don't you you know we're not even one get to the desktop requirement and we're we're starting to buy all of our switches that will get us to that speed but to have that really even work appropriately we now have to go to a ten gig system behind it which moves the data across our fiber with fortune as a town that we own our own fiber network so we really have a capability up there but we have to build the in for sure if you're to anyone you know right now we're looking at work the best our best guess with our outside consulting firm is about one hundred twenty five thousand a year for four years to get that fully up to where  issue when you really get into this that wireless you know dominic what it is is really the fact that the more data we're pushing across networks and the more video streaming in the more you know interactive type of learning that we do on a regular basis the more that that requires you know more robust network system and otherwise you end up with the issues of down time or very slow responses which don't really work well with your presentation mode within a classroom and if you've got you know twenty classrooms doing different presentations at the same time you know you're really pulling the system down so that's you know while we can't do it all at once we realize that we are stead was to basically get from the classrooms and work our way backwards now shape across the entire district school buses as you all know we basically do usually about two of the larger seventy seven passenger buses and about every other year we're into one of the twenty two  to twenty eight passenger buses which have wheelchairs or not depending on what the needs are for the year so we have two buses in on this one we're in a standard rotation on copiers we do you know as much as we all like to think to be paperless we generate quite a bit of paper and you know at this point we've been going more and more towards networking almost everything we do we're trying to get away from the small individual printers as best we can but even that's tough within a classroom for teachers teaching then and there not walking down the hall to get this is really a positive thing students are doing projects on the computer and then to print out what they're working on whether it's a draft right and you can print it to a copier down the hall and then wait for a break and leave the kids alone right now to get their work and then it's bypassed so it's mostly for producing the work that the kids are doing in the classroom but what we have been successful with all the copiers all of our copiers now are basically scanners fax copier devices so that we're basically the one of the things that resists the kind of plenary at this point that i want to kind of push it out is one of the big issues that hasn't really been addressed in years we've been pretty successful last year we did some work in the music department you know we try to keep up in most  we have really done anything in the tech at the shop department area in a number of years and a lot of the equipment is very old and we do have a lot of kids that are taking those courses and so it's what we're what we'd like to propose for the c got all of the appropriate safety devices shut off of that but also there is something that just needs to be replaced so we're going to try to build a little bit of a budget on that and obviously will be over twenty five thousand so that's what we seem to be requirement but we'd like to floated out there this year because we that but again safety standards have changed and even what they do within the shops now has changed as far as you know the type of programs that they're trying to do to gel teach children and the you know things that they can accomplish in the timeframe in which a class happy you know the more sophisticated equipment get up and do things a little bit faster and to the kids have access to that if they get out in the real world and uses so it's you want to have some kind of a bill go to it while they're here as you all know the t mean the girls school statement of interest was not approved in the last round which came out last february and the final decision it was made by the must be this last december so obviously we're back in round two and it opens up this friday and we haven't told somewhere in march to submit our thing obviously we have most of ours done but we're going to try to tweak it make it more attractive early in the meeting we were talking about about that and what is if this round what's expected timeline on this round so same thing so it's the fall yes same thing is last year so it's february march the mission and fall determination greater obviously what we'll do with the c h p the exact same thing we did last year we're not asking for the funding of the two hundred seventy five thousand we're putting it on their radar if the state were to approve it we would be coming back to the town during the school  year to try to keep this thing moving forward but the you know it's kind of crazy to lock up the money to you know for a fact that you actually have it but you know we've been in the past when we've done these type of projects you know i mean on their radar up front they do have some abilities with free cash and other things too to be able make some of these moves down the road on resources so we do we do request that they vote to approve it but not with the funding source attached immediately ok that's good thanks for that clarification ok and the and again tony has been very active over at the pearl trying to obviously maintain it as best we can while we move forward here we did do for east this mall to make sure we'd have you know some security within the minimising the leaks at least on that side he's done a lot of ventilation work replacing motors and things of that nature but the issue isn't the state has to grahams they have a program which they call the kind of it's an expensive repair program which is for windows roofs and boiler systems which this building would qualify very easily for the problem is if you go forward with that then you don't get to do the rest of the work and we don't leave had the right one that needs to really be just like the high school here where you go kind of you know room by room and do everything in one shot and by doing the other program we do about sixty percent of what really needs to be done we also believe that the the barrel needs the two additional full size so i still think the right move is to continue moving forward on the pros who has a full renovation expansion program you know like we did the high school here and you know hopefully they'll be a little more success of this year's as i said you know i thought last year that it was a very slim chance we would get it because of the number of people in the queue i think our chance to get a little bit better because now so you know sixty or so more came off the list and we're now in the list for a year so hopefully if we kind of you know look at our plans and the fact that we have continued to maintain because they give you kind of points for that they see that we are still doing work on this boat trying to preserve it hopefully that will you know where there's enough points to to get on the list this year so those are the the big things for f fifteen as you see basically this deal that we have with randy and the downside is we will provide a five year c a p plan so we try to project out the best we can and other features nets where you'll see the you know the girl school  doing the heating system does not prevent us from doing bigger expansion on that building down the road and i believe that one could have a very short payback because basically between what the state will give us on a reimbursement of about forty nine percent what the utility companies have shown already if they're willing to give us is about twenty to twenty five percent of the town end up having to put up about twenty five percent to totally redo the heating systems into buildings that are pretty old pieces of town i'm not very efficient so he said you know again this is this is kind of a time you need that you have to play here to figure out how the state will allow you to get through the process but the borough is our number one so i'm not putting anything else out there that's going to kind of you know give them an option not to give us the parole first so we bore fruit to with the utility production projections that you just yes going to have down the road yeah well overall our utilities are running much better although this year we got it kohler quicker so we actually were much higher on our therms in october november from the gas point of view but our electricity has continued to drop down so that's actually made up for the what the gas usage meant so right now we're still in that even even with the higher demand in heating time so  you know i'm i'm very comfortable that everything we've done from an energy point of view whether it's the heating plants or the lighting plants have really borne fruit forces far as keeping our cost down town is also done x and job one to go sheeting rates have to be honest with you the last one we just finished off on was an electrical one and it will take us out another three years after this coming year at even better rates that we have today so that should help us you know pretty pretty much here and we really do run our buildings more and more i mean these buildings are especially the turn you heard is probably the highest use this high school is number two but i'll tell you elementary zur you know between p t o s and everything else that are running programs they're asked they're using what a bit  really helpful i mean i think there are there are a lot of surprises from year to year in terms of our requests in terms of our replacement process for computers school buses copiers and certainly the elementary  actually the one i wanted to ask a question about could we entertain the possibility of doing more faster on the networks which i mean as as you have it drawn out it's four years to get that project done right which  wireless world is an eternity we go up significantly in our c i p next year projected because of the barrel feasibility with that moving out of this year is it physically conceivable to move some of that for your projection some more of it into this year and i guess what would be the return you know instructional what would be the the benefit might well obviously the biggest benefit is you know this year will be the first year with having effect ability to have everybody have a wireless device working with his high school by the end of the year the middle school be at that same level teachers are going to start to come up pretty quick with the integration specialist especially pushing the issues of what they have capability wise with our systems the to the teachers are actually very you know good at all the sudden started to find a lot of this the resources that are out there and that's where having the ten get back will really be good for us because as they go out and grab those resources and try to to you know bring them in a less you're doing it in advance of storing a server and then running it that doesn't obviously an interactive environment when you're doing that so i think you'll see the demand on the backbone pretty quick here the way we would do it is we could build out obviously it would build up high school first and back go back to the system because you don't have to do the entire network in one shot to attend gig you can kind of build it from the get the core out but one of the things that  we actually are we just had a discussion on the other day and that's why again this is a draft is that right now the core is at the town hall obviously town hall as a building is questionable as to what's going to happen to it down the road and the only other place that the fiber was run to be to have the capability at the core was the eico so one of the things i'm going to actually ask randi to do is whether or not we can get enough might put together to rerun the corp to the high school here to the data room that we're building and then we can start with the high school and push backwards so it's unfortunate the c i p budget is a limited budget level on the town side and it really we haven't got any indication yet that's why there's really a draft from from randy as to what will be available on the c h p said yes so if there were you know another seventy five thousand that they could make available in this year we definitely would take it to make this move faster but without any direction from randy at this point i'm not sure what if it's six hundred thousand five hundred thousand and you know what it is at this point so i guess that b my personal request would be as a committee we consider can we get the stun faster and i would rationalize that it's moves our annual c i p projection from the sure to next year since the borough feasibility was moved out but if we can't you know i understand see ips a limited pot but i think there's some real instructional benefit to accelerate our wireless plan if we come in there good and it covers a lot of people i mean you need a fat pipe to begin with today's pipe is going to be a drinking straw in five years right and we haven't even got a shopping list yet from the tech ed team we're going to be plugging things into that this is the these copy machines which really aren't copy is anymore they're you know off it's just the machines are going to be doing chatter so we really do need the the infrastructure to be dropped off and that was actually we we put that money into the townsite budget we funded basically health insurances rather than run it through school budgets we knew was very limited budget back then time wise but as you can see with most of the other grants we we were in that one point two million dollars range now we're down to one point one million dollars and it's continuing to erode every single year so it's it's not something that we have to very very cautious of you know depend on it but you know obviously we're using every penny of it as we move forward here but we're also being very conscious of the fact that it's not going to stay constant and stuff we are growing fortunately the state has has kind of made up some of the differences each year and what we receive off the cherry sheet but it's you know without that we would really kind of some issues i don't know if i'm reading it wrong but i was actually pleased or surprised i guess it hasn't eroded more protecting as much as we can in a lot of this i mean if you actually if you look back it was the five years before this it was on a growing trend yeah yeah we're kind of doing this now going on the other side and really with the federal specially you can see it kind of wrote it down for you so you see which ones were federal grants versus which ones are state grants and the federal ones really are the ones that you know every years it's a question whether or not they're going to be out there to what level which is why about five six five five to six years ago i think the biggest shocker was two of the two or three the federal grants were lost completely so there were other title grants in here two d title four and they all just disappeared so i think that's that's always our fear is that we don't want to be we want to be reliant upon the grants because that helps  local budget but you know to be so over reliant on them that if something were to happen to one of them like we've seen happen before that we just stopped functioning in that area so it's always a  revolving account so i think just a precursor to this one most you know this already but each revolving account has specific requirements on what you can use it for how you can use it and so you know as an example the transportation obviously the same things you see that we do offset there towards fuel costs because obviously we're transporting him using our fuel to do that building rental is probably one of the ones that we have the highest level of options but as you can see over the last two years you guys have given us the authority to spend sixty two thousand on the track we affectively funded the track replacement ourselves but we got twenty five hundred from the town side for sixty five thousand and sixty two thousand five hundred came from our site and we  totally redone the track at the at the urn this last fall so that's up and running for next spring we are using twenty five thousand of the this account towards the security camera systems that we're working on and the turf field project you seventy five thousand so we've used the last year or two years basically hundred sixty two thousand dollars of this money and we've really dropped down what i'm going to be really looking for is probably another fifty thousand of that to be used towards the back feels this year so that we can get it all done and have the entire field complex complete in one shot here and that would bring us down to the lowest that that's been in years but again we continue to read the building so we will build it back up you know and probably just not be able to use it for much of anything else next year but i think we've kind of done everything we know to put money back in to get these facilities up to the way they should be and we have a lot of usage even that track it's used constantly by the public i don't care when you go by there's always somebody you know walking or using which is fine that's what it was designed for the the tuition revolving accounts pre k kindergarten basically we've pulling those down and using more more and to offset whether it's a district a wish and or electric cost within the district so you can see that the pre k will have gone from five hundred twenty six down to three hundred thousand at the end of this year the reason it got up to five hundred twenty six was that there was a two hundred five thousand dollars payment that came in it was what it was to f y eleven there are a funding that went in there and before that it was not b each member district plus if share it went into that so you know we only bring in about one hundred twenty seven thousand a year and as you can see in most typical years we're spending about two hundred fifty so we are pulling that down i would say that if we bring it down to about two hundred thousand that's your desk on your cushion there to make sure you can run your program the way i kind of projected this last year and you bought into it last year but you know obviously it's open every year is that in the tuition accounts in the circuit breaker specially as long as we can carry twenty years worth of requirement then we safeguarded ourselves from you know a potential budget issue it would give us one more year to resolve something if we had to move forward circuit breaker specially because is your only relief valve when it comes to any kind of an extraordinary spec cost so if we had someone move in to morrow that we're not budgeting for and it ends up being in our state the two hundred sixteen thousand dollars placement this is the only place i go i can't go back to the town and say this is what i need i have a lease a valve here to be able to cover that cost move forward so that is not one you want to run down but as you can see i'm trying to manage that right to that one year expense we spent about four hundred seventy five thousand circuit breaker account the last couple years we've been very successful in our charge and getting every cent back from the state because that's a lag basically what we spend this year we'll get certified at the end of the year and we get that funding next year pretty well how we manage that so i think that those three accounts that we've pulled down but we're we're going to hold to the one year level extended day again where we're getting that pretty hard with the other expenses throughout the district  of this year we'll be down to about twenty five thousand dollars but again it's really covering electric cost for the district we've spent twenty five thousand camera system out of there we spent twenty seven thousand recently for the generator system that's going over to taylor again all things they benefit from as well so it works out well but we're using these resources and pulling them down something that that you know has had had the advisory committee and  you know town looking at before so i think we're doing exactly what they've asked as it were pulling down to a reasonable level adult that obviously we fluctuate that's basically years program cost so we have that right now and summer school is about the same as you  that little bit too as far as the ending balance but we try to keep to what would a one year program cost would be going forward and then there's if you want to get accounting and things of that nature but they're very l do or do we know or is there a crystal ball that lets us know dead make break point and we try to take over why these brands but we also have to do it at the same time something we know or no one would say but a lot of them are entitlement grants so we're not as worried about those but i would say the one that we talk about the most is we don't know what's happening with it is the two way which is the improving educator quality which we're now appropriately we're spending a lot of dollars on and the professional development piece and it had to be teased out to the number of educators how much money the number administrators so i was so thankful that that was moved to professional development as it should be in that federal service and how we using the screen for whom what kinds of professional vilna what areas as technology this is that that we did not because there was a question are you using for teacher salary and i was thankful as well at the same reaction for you stars asking for a small increase in the high school for professional development we present in december and what you'd see is we've not gone up in the district wide professional development line which is minuscule because we now have this but you would see us going up in a fairly serious way on the district wide professional development because most of the things that he's trying to accomplish that systemic is now coming from that grant so well i think that is i think are because from what i think is interesting is again our teaching and learning highlight tonight was about a successful development and how that money is being put to use by having our professional teachers go out you saw an example of what they're doing with their professional development how it is coming back into the classroom to the students when you see it all the time so i think it's it's so critical to keep keep the momentum going in terms of academic achievement difference here and you know other than that our expenses are pretty much in the you know in check the changes in the expense side really have to do with movements of money from the expense side up to the salary site so as you can see in the lower section there the school to career we moved thousand dollars from a expense line up to the salary line for the position change and obviously the position cost us a little bit more because we went to five days instead of four days so the salary line you know had a little bit of a hit there but obviously had enough cushion to handle it yes but department temporary staff we actually are ahead of the town on this we have moved every one of our positions there most of which were ten ninety nine in the past now are all  classified under w two employees so we don't really have an issue but the the federal government is really coming down hard now on that particular line and i think the townsite you know is happy to see that we're already ahead of that  want everybody to be too well if there's only certain ones that can be ten ninety nine and really most of the staff that we have are under our control if they're under your control then they're technically supposed to be don't need to employ so we already had made that move  that's about twenty thousand that moved out of expense line up to a salary line and then we have a question about that what does that mean temporary snapple when we moved the high school college counselor in he was an expense he wasn't his he w quite come for properly at the end of the year so we actually had took a seventeen thousand dollars hit on the one of the grant sides here from our expense side so we're you know we had to make up that difference obviously cover that account so i think overall our expenses are basically in line at this point and it's really the differential is coming out of our salary counts when you consider the fact that we have a number of positions that change even the devotee working on replacing people up until logged over november this  year so you end up with a lot of fluctuations where you might have somebody on a long term sub even though you get ready to hire the final person there is a differential so for every one of those that happens you'll end up with a few dollars here and there that you move forward so and also don't forget we were in  last year so there was a few dollars that was left over from what we were holding that much that also would end up into this this bucket here so at this point the year on a on a you know close to thirty million dollars budget to have a thousand dollars i'm i'm really not  we've looked at this with our union leadership actually who are meeting this afternoon and they were supposed to let me know if you're voting was ok with it some assuming no news was good news and we've met with our history team we've gone over this so the only change really came from our cheaters if you look at november prior to this the elementary conferences were the week before thanksgiving so one thousand nine hundred twenty one timeframe and middle and high school had a conference on monday and tuesday and that seems to really really well so our teachers asked if we could try all of the conferences on monday and tuesday of thanksgiving week which would really allow all k through twelve classes to stay in full swing the week of the seventeenth of the twenty first and then have the half days on the two days before thanksgiving which is a short week anyway and use those days for all the key twelve conferences so we talked a little bit about the pros and cons of the pros being there is more consistent struct the whole week the other in terms of families and parents we consider the pros and cons to be that if you have many children you might not be able to squeeze them all in but for most people they make special arrangements with certain teachers anyway the teachers will meet with you at another time and then we thought it might it might help parents in some ways in that if you're taking off work to accomplish your child's parent conferences rather than taking have to be for another half day for your secondary student you could get them  one day or on one half day because they do stagger them and some go into the evenings and some into five so we thought that might not be a bad thing for parents and the other thing was that in the old schedule you'd have elementary students dismissed early the week before but not year old children who might be able to be home caring for the younger siblings going for now they'd all be home so we actually thought there were more pros to it it was proposed by our teachers and as a minister of team thought it was worth a try ok so we would like to suggest that we hold all of our key through twelve conferences on monday and tuesday the twenty fourth and twenty fifth and then we'll evaluate it try to free your safe work see how people felt about it and and see how we do other than that you'll see everything looking very traditional as we have the calendar in foxborough which is that all of the staff comes back for three days at the end of august prior to labor day students start on the tuesday following labor day which next year would be september two and then our professional our other two professional development days during the year would be the friday before the long weekend in october on this day weekend and only in presidential election years do we move it to the election day november to accommodate the electoral numbers and our second day would be is typically near the end of term two are about to meet your mark in january which you see that we normally might have it the week before like we do this year but i can i bring up one question first i think this looks fine i didn't come here with this notion but it occurs to me as you took us through your comments about the teacher conferences i know my own experience of the herne and i think that of many parents is so rushed it's like speed dating yeah and i think i'm sure we've weighed this before but just remind me if we wanted a third early release day to allow more more time what with how would impact our schedule for conferences you mean well that would have to be negotiated through our contract negotiations so there'd be a union consideration certainly you know yes and in terms of our school calendar it w time i mean just because perry you know it's really hard to be that's the only thing i'm a little concerned about is that if a parent has to say they have three children they're going from elementary to middle to high school it might be a little then makes a little bit easier but you have to vote on it so i think the the next meeting would be fine if you want to think about it that i don't really have a problem with that i'll marinate on it and i like the speeding dating comment not that the quality of the interaction is bad i don't mean that's like a gastric there knowing the job sometimes but the quality of interaction is good but it's so damn fast sometimes i just don't i don't even know why i'm with sometimes for one teacher and other goods if we're running around the hall and i have to run and i'm not a natural athlete as many of you may disagree but i think at some of the schools are you know there are i mean the middle school is large  schools are so nav to navigate your way from one end of the building to the other takes some time and i think that might be part of the reason why you know i i totally see your perspective but on the other side want to remind parents that in the middle school they teach at least fifty children in five and six and if you're in a house system you teach one hundred two hundred twenty five and at the high school you teach one hundred over that one hundred twenty move on and so to expect lengthy conferences with all of those parents is unrealistic so for the intent is to have a quick conference and if all is well fine but if you need to make another appointment at a time when you can get more in depth about any concern then you do and i know our faculty very even for that so it is designed to be a quick touch base and one of the things we were hoping about this year was with the advent of an open house at the high school where you have a little bit more of a meet and greet then you already know the person then when you come back for conferences hopefully that can be expedited a little bit more so they are working on things that sort of increase that interaction but i don't think to your point while it's a good idea i don't think a third have today is going to allow you to have quality conferences with one hundred  have higher expectations of more details from teachers but i'm not proposing i think what i'm wondering marinating is would have been a little more sane for the teachers in the parent if we just spread it out so i'm not saying go from a five minute to a twenty minute and show us work i'm saying a five minute to an eight minute that runs a little smoother that gives you a little bit more time and i guess i what i would question is would there be incremental benefit from parents having a little more substantial more thoughtful conversation or more you know going to be more data but just so i mean why don't why don't we marinate and we can calendar is a separate issue from how the conference is run because quite honestly we go should we can't change the way conferences are run at this table so i think that's a longer discussion that was quite valuable for the future but i think that one of the things for example to try to not quite answer it but try to get to a point one of things we discussed is on the hern is now using the what's the name of the use of the parent scheduler to go online and sketch your child's conferences so we actually discussed if we could get all schools using the same schedule or then when you go online you you would be able to more or less control the times rather than the old days where i one could go home with you know a slip that they i was going to work i remember those days too and then the running back and forth so that's used to be working really well the her and so we've talked about too at the end of the high school so if we can maybe if we're going to go to this type of two days to get everybody using that at least it would seem a little bit more organized and the parent would he be able to control how they feel the schedule is going to work for them but i think from our experience that tool worked quite well ok i think what happens though in it seems the same subject areas are reared it's usually math the conversation that the teacher wants to have and wants to spend is longer than the allocated time so what you see is and please share your just discussed which is how families are going to be able to negotiate two different schools with two different timings because i will tell you just going on to the high school this year you go on and everybody else has gone on so if you think you're going to get you know successive appointments you won't and so you know now you're go also going to be not only trying to negotiate one school but now another school and i just really do now we do now middle and high school  day or one day and then the next day you could pick one from anita i don't know i don't want to be worth a try but i would say if you want to wait and vote on this that's fine because i really contractually need to hear from the association today and i did i didn't sooner we act the sooner they say i think it is not going to make a difference i think it's not going to make a difference i think we should vote on this the next time it'll give parents at home who would be there you know watch this is evening if they have concerns to contact us and if not that i didn't know for people but i do think the tradeoff between having the five have to days in a row and then the thanksgiving break with your darling children i think it you might get a lot of positive feedback about having monday into the guess it's going to be a couple of very busy days especially for parents who have children in all three schools and we do have a lot of parents who do and i respect that but i also my personal experience has been that the teachers are very flexible i know my son sixth grade teachers actually offered morning conference's throughout the month of november i went in and met with them from seven thirty to seven forty five so they gave me fifteen minutes and i know i wasn't the only one there were other parents who were able to meet with them in which we exist so i think our teachers are very flexible i do think the seventh and eighth grade conferences just i know they're two separate topics but i agree with bruce it is a little actiq it would be nice to have you know maybe eight minutes instead of five but i understand that's something that's a conversation for you know the next contract negotiation i do agree with what it's worth but i i wouldn't mind waiting another couple of weeks if it's not and so i did not hear anything back ok so i don't have any new information to present but i know steve had told me he had gone to meeting so well as as many folks may know the board of selectmen actually a surrounding community agreement without any input from the schools i was at the meeting i respect the board of selectmen and all the work that they have to do but there was something noted by the town attorney recognized or agreed to what was called specific references to school and roman costs and i don't have a problem with that being rejected but i do have a problem with is that that wasn't this board's recommendation that was the racy no committees recommendation with citizen input and i think that we should exhaust every option in these unchartered unprecedented rules and regulations with the mass gaming commission in our own town we're all volunteers and see if we can get back into some kind of negotiation or at least have some conversation or input and i would recommend that we continue digging into this or someone digs into it by directionally like we don't wait for a call we make a call or make calls or something and i have copies of the agreement folks want to have it but it was described in the paper by one selectman as being nebulous and i couldn't agree more i don't think this has anything to do with the schools in here that helps us at all should we need it so i would recommend this board continue looking into options to talk more about this and get in alignment and in proper communication with the town even if it's the trains left the station and we missed it but ok so you had made copies for oh i have  right it may not forward yes that's correct i'm afraid i'm not going to stop beating the story until i get an answer from you or to select men or the town lawyer or something we were not at the table for these negotiations and when one item was brought carpets before the negotiation when you can play what do you mean when when the when the race you know committee recommended that there be a possible ten students coming into the town it was said in this meeting that we could absorb  and i guess i just i don't see a need for it that you do i understand where you're coming from but in last we have a huge influx of people into this town fundraising you know we have capacity right in and pay high rents is just to send their kids to school we're building twenty forty units beverly right now on community way and and that's good that's increasing doing isn't part of this part of this that i believe was that they're going to offer the jobs to people in foxborough anyway now that that they're that doesn't have to do with the school systems my concerns are about the influx of students and the public safety aspects and if there's one individual boy girl man woman or child that's affected by the scope of this board's authority it's even so much as splashed by a puddle i'm going to be mad as a lion and we've had no say at these negotiations not zero and that's only my point so if we want to put it down as a group with consensus that's fine but i don't see why what i don't know what options there are if the board wants to move forward this with these negotiations the board and see if we want to enter into them and if we can again there's no presidents or very few presidents for any of these types of community agreements it's a totally new frontier in massachusetts for legal and committees and boards and machination and everything else mass gaming commission i was at the miss gaming commission four weeks ago over in point and it was like four or five people from foxborough one only one voice to i don't see a need for us to stir up a can of worms i don't think we're going to be affected to the ex i don't i was structurally disagree i know you do strongly i think steve i think you've been a good champion for this on behalf of the committee i don't i don't have any issue with our having to scott's to a few times now and i think it is a little curious that surprise as well having said that i think i don't know that i would personally vote for going back into negotiation but i don't know that i feel strongly against it either so i keep learning and listening thinking i think though parliamentary wise i think if you want to move us beyond here i think you know we need to bring a motion to the table at some point and then either vote it or not i think the fact we've had a lack of that voting and if you'd like to get a just to be clear it wasn't a separate item but it was identified in the agenda so now i'm bringing it up to bring back that i have more information because i didn't receive any so what are you suggesting i don't think anyone here feels compelled to make a motion  that i'm hearing i think though that if you want to talk with the chair outside of this public meeting and there are cheer and talk about whether there is interest and in some kind of bring some kind of motion to the table you have every right to do that i don't i'll bring a motion to the table then that we that we consider going back to the board of selectmen and finding out what options this board has to communicate or negotiate and a dent him or ask even so far if it's possible that the board of selectmen can reconsider their vote and reopen the negotiation ok maybe an option it may not be but i would i would motion that the board consider it and we can vote on this whether or not we want to pursue any further action on the surrounding community agreement already signed by the foxboro board of selectmen with what it will they call them the organization called  f s f gaming and i motion if that's the motion do we want to pursue it further as a board so i think you should be clear and i think we should see if there's a second i mean came to speak for you know nothing so steve your first the first thing i heard you say was you'd like to propose a motion that someone from the from our group go back to the board of selectmen to see if there are any options and then the second the appropriate people and then the second from a with mass gaming law and then the second time you were at it you said i think we should motion to pursue so i think we need to be clear on what is your motion but i think we need to see if there's a second and if there isn't if we need to vote and if there isn't then i think it dies i and i know that that would be how you want to do you want to like to make a motion for a designee of this committee to contact the board of selectmen to find out information about  motion ok i would second that motion we definitely have a real reserves and not the least we can do is take right because we're just receiving this this evening and i always think it's very important to have information you know ahead of time before we make decisions about