with me are the five remaining school committee members and as you all know we're here to appoint a number six to fill the remaining of tom's term how we're going to go for it i sent everybody a message but how we're going to go for it i thought first maybe we could do an introduction of everybody just to state their name and then each candidate will be given the opportunity to do an opening we'll ask a series of questions each candidate will do a closing the opening closing or one minute each the questions have two minutes to answer each question and then after that the committee members will each express their vote on each case on the candidate that they choose if we have a simple majority of five out of eight that would be that ok so anyone have any questions or anything before we go forward i think we should also know just for the public that they were not taking public comment while it's an open public meeting it's not considering my appointment to the school committee i mean my second year serving on the warrant committee and i just want to be clear that that's a position that i will give up if appointed to the school committee professionally i'm a senior fellow with the brennan center for justice in new york i have a research project focusing on courts and i also write about criminal justice reform so you would ask why my interest in the school committee one of the very big important charges of the school committee is the approval of the school budget which is approximately half of the town budget this is something where i feel that i can be really helpful i have a twenty three year background and budgeting and government financial management through previous work with the office of management and budget in washington d c also been on the warrant committee for two years and i think that i can help it's a minute  bring some valuable perspective to the committee i think many of you know i've lived in belmont for the past sixteen years i'm a parent i recently ran for school committee and and i'm grateful for that experience because i learned a lot about what's happening for a lot of parents and other residents throughout the town and i'm excited to bring what i learned through that experience to to the school committee just briefly i mean i've come from a perspective of a classroom teacher and i've served at the state level as a policy advisor to three different secretaries in four years for the state of massachusetts and also run a research think tank where i where i looked at a range of policy issues i am running because my passion is education and i am probably the greenest of all the candidates i'm just graduating with my bachelor's in early childhood studies but i graduated with the highest g p a my program and i want to bring all that hard work compassion to school committee my biggest thing is play in the early years i really like to see the you every good morning my name is sarah and the right man i'm honored to be here today i unlike most of you in this room i'm very new to belmont and so i do not have the historical knowledge the particular wisdom that comes with a long time in a town what i do bring is a set of fresh eyes informed by a life as an educator both in and outside of the classroom and that has led me to work in schools and with school districts  and capacities which have informed a deep understanding of the effects of the decisions school committees made both in the classroom for students for teachers in school cultures and also for the broader community and a fundamental understanding that the biggest piece of towns essentially is schools and consequently the financial realities and effects on town life and the cult broader cultural effects on town life in terms of how schools are run and how school systems me the greatest is that community engagement in the schools and how much of a priority it is for all of us who live in belmont to have outstanding public schools and how much we're willing to be engaged and committed in making happen so i see that at the wellington i also see that across the other schools and in belmont and i in terms of the challenge for me it seems like this exploding i mean it's a good problem to have i think it speaks volumes to the kind about the kind of schools that we have in belmont that we have this amazing enrollment growth and to me that is also our biggest challenge because it impacts really everything across the district and i think all of us are who are parents in the in the district are feeling it now and especially in terms of the impact in the classroom as well as aftercare programs and and just the challenges of teachers who have to juggle a lot of students in their classroom and adjust their teaching accordingly to make sure that all the students needs are met i'm just proud to live in such a town that's so for education aftercare has been a thing that's been in my years as well it's a personal experience even  trying to get and not open spots for every student it's very important as someone with children who are new to the schools here came from another individualized way it's mine mine it's not something i have encountered another school system and it's not something i've always encountered in other small independent schools so to me there is a strength there that i and cultural ramifications different  three with everything is from sad i think our schools have a three well deserved reputation i think that they serve most kids really really well and that continues to fuel as well one of our biggest problems which is the increasing enrollment we have families moving into town and i you know i wouldn't put a stop to that you know people should feel free to buy into belmont we have families moving into town every year who are bringing an average of one hundred additional kids to the system and it's something that we have to cope with it's something that we have to cope with without sacrificing quality and it's a challenge i think that's our biggest challenge and to me children are a future i think it's going to bring a plague and i think it's so important that they get enough time my son right now has two fifteen minute recesses and i know next year that's going to drop down to one fifteen minute recess and that concerns me as a parent of an active child i think that there needs to be more time for that free play and i think  they keep finding i mean it's so it's easy to be active in it because there's just so many articles for him t decisions affect human beings on the ground in schools and communities but i also think that what i personally bring this inability to both work collaboratively and to see the internal structures of different divisions in arguments and think creatively about how bridges can be  i think the most important thing of that that i bring to the table and let me just say this i am a parent i care about education but that said oh the most important thing i think that i bring to the table is you know that a background in public policy budgeting and government financial management this is a really big challenge for a school system and i feel that it's something that i can contribute to in a positive constructive way while keeping an eye on the ball which is preserve quality make sure that we're serving everybody well and you know i would be the the last one to want to be in the place where where my neighbor's kids who are in the school system you know are not doing well because i would certainly hear from it and certainly hear from it if not that well that then perhaps because i haven't been trimming the hedges or something spending too much time with the school committee but what i want i want our kids i want to kids to do well and and i think a focus on resources and budget is so  important so i think the most to me the most important perspective i bring is as a parent but i know many of us are parents here and so i think a unique perspective that i can bring is just a background  n my whole careers but in education but from multiple perspectives so i can bring a deep knowledge of a range of issues so a real general perspective of a range of educational policy issues where i've done research or know people who have done research or are running programs both in massachusetts which i focused on for the past twenty years but also connections nationally to initiatives and and funding opportunities and funders who have who who are starting innovative and potentially things that might that might connect with what we're already doing in belmont and also having worked in policy for the past d that i'm working with people bringing people in on the process along the way even though you may start from very different places and being persistent and i've experienced it simply as a resident in this town the relationship between the school committee and traffic committee the relationship between the school committee and building committees the relationship between the school committee and  small town where the driving engine of the town is primarily residential that seems all the more that we need to think across the ban on i think similarly questions around public recreation issues bike path public use space children and adults all are sort of salient issues that affect the culture of the community at large so in terms of how i think that is well spoken and and there is a need for collaboration across the various committees and they can elements of our town government i am knowledgeable of the fact that we do have an important collaboration between the school committee and the warrant committee and i think that's helpful and that you know we have a representative of the school committee who sits on the warren committee and we also have a lot of work that takes place between the education subcommittee of the warrant committee and the school committee and i think that's extraordinarily helpful i think i think as you've said that you know we can see greater collaboration across other town committees including the traffic advisory committee  including the c p c as we think about you know the possible relocation of of of playing fields associated with a new high school i think there's a need for greater collaboration with  the town again the various committees of the town looking at the longer term financial planning that we have to institute for the next three to five years so there's lots of opportunity for collaboration and it's very important have being relatively new to town politics i've been really impressed with your mental aberration that i've seen happening i mean this is a joint meeting there have there was just this week a joint meeting with high school building committee and i know there have been conversations with the police department along the way i mean i think there's just a spirit of collaboration in our town that i'm really impressed with and really eager to  perpetuate i do think that given that we are thinking about the high school building project and potentially override that we might think about ways of engaging other folks in the community and seniors would be among them  i agree with what you think about seniors and i'm concerned about that increase in taxes that's going down with the building of a new high school and what that means for the seniors in our town and for i mean i that economic diversity is you know it's getting less i'd like to see that maintain as much so i do a number of things and i'm prepared to cut back on some of them or eliminate some of them so i'll just give you an example i have a rotating co host of the news program the belmont journal on on the belmont media center i will give that off to the point of the school committee although honestly but honestly i can see ways in which the school committee might work with the belmont media center to put more programming in front of the public that sheds light on you know just some of the decision making that takes place on the school committee some of the important issues that we're facing in the schools to increase public knowledge that's just one area where we're all obviously i'll step off the the warrant committee and my research project with the brennan center is winding down so so i'm prepared to adjust well i currently work part time so and i've actually just reduced my hours little bit more to make my own so i and i'm also i have a in addition to being part time i have a very flexible schedule so i and i was planning on running for town meeting next year with my newly found free time and then this came and i was like well there's really nothing more important  flexible in terms of how i schedule that as long as i schedule that time so i have time i mean i think like we're all we're all busy people but i'm not in a i'm not in one of those places where i am schools as a former teacher as a policy advisor as a nonprofit leader and as a parent and to me there's no more important work that we all can be doing and when it comes to the substance of the work i bring a deep tricky conversations and i have years of experience in an appreciation for how policy gets made and the patience that is required to get good policy implemented  and i've learned the importance of communicating clearly and often and being extraordinarily hard to offend and disagreeing without being disagreeable and so i ask as the town of degrees and as such i know i'm behind my constituents but with that i bring so much flexibility and i really just want to work with people and work hard for something i truly believe and there's nothing more important than our children there's nothing more important than our children's future and it's i'd really love to be involved in the committee that helps to make that or one of the things that we haven't discussed here is the looming reconfiguration renovation and rebuilding of the part where various parts of the school system i'm just sort of close with a couple of thoughts and and one of them because we're working with the school system that has increasing diversity over time you know just in the past five to ten years the amount of diversity in our town to have as as as really spiraled we have fifteen percent of of fifteen percent of our residents are asian american another ten percent are other nonwhite and and this is this is growing and we need just to pay a lot of attention to you know how we work with kids to ensure that you know they're accepting of each other and prepared to deal well with each other going forward by my own for amalie is somewhat diverse my wife is asian american my child considers himself asian american and i think we do a pretty good job in the schools and i just would like to sort of eye on this moving ball of increasing diversity and then the last thing that i'd like to finish with this that you know everybody everybody sitting here at this table you know deserves a great deal of esteem and respect and in fact so do you because everyone here is essentially a volunteer and it's the community spirit and sense of of volunteerism that really drives governance in this town and so no matter what you decide you know i know you're grappling with a lot and i just have your highest through i have the highest respect for you and and i hope you'll consider me but but again i have the highest respect for you because you're all you're all doing really important work mike thank you so let me just come up i think everyone for their interest in serving on the school committee i think in some respects they probably spend more time serving than maybe the board we get paid resonates with me is a lot of the comments that mike mentioned about the budget issues i think we are facing and it's a good problem to have i think it's great that we have young families move into town increasing the role meant but it's clearly putting a strain on the school system and something we've been experiencing for the past several years so i think i think we do need individual deep budgetary experience make you sort of the work committee for the last couple of years and i think you bring that knowledge to the table as well because we are going to be faced with you know an operating deficit at some point in time here in the future i think we need that skill set in the school committee so i support my skin's i think it's a very important year that we have right now we have the bomb on high school project is going to miscreate shortly the election for the debt exclusion for the high schools this fall so i think it's a very tough time of any year to have a high learning curve because we really have a lot of very important stuff that has to get done right now so i think and someone is works with other boards and committees you may have gathered that from the question that i asked that that's of great concern because there have been times in the past when that's committees and boards have not worked as well together and that is not the case now we want to make sure that that continues i think the finance expertise on the school committee i think that is a slide if we were just looking plain at resumes and skill sets and not the people behind them i think that if the finance role is one that's actually since you're a preacher and time computer have left the school committee there's sort of a void in that hardcore number crunching sort of stuff not that the other skills are important but that's also an important skill because i think of my correctly said the budgets are huge huge part of the the job it's a tough call honestly i mean i know joe and joe ran she was vetted by the voters it was a close election so it's a you know there's that on it on the other end and you two are new but bringing fresh eyes to a situation i found has actually been helpful we've seen that with a new town a minister coming from another town and coming up with ideas and asking why are you doing it this way why are you doing it that way and not really having a good answer for all those questions as it is forced us to kind of look at things in a different way so i do appreciate the outsider viewpoint is something that also might be  helpful however if we could take all of you i might take all of you whoever of you who don't get chosen i would certainly urge you to please the summer when we do our points to various boards and committees in town which are all volunteers this town is basically run by volunteers please look online there's a there's a committee for absolutely every subject you could think of please you to you know put in your application for one get on one get your feet wet and maybe moving forward then build up some experience to get to this level but i would concur with my others and go with mr crowley so i will i will concur with a lot of what's been said i thank everybody for putting your name in the hat for coming  out in volunteering to serve in this capacity i actually think the appointment process is not a bad one to do every now and then because i do think it brings a number of folks who might not otherwise being gauged in the standard election process meaningful way this is a tough call for me as well and i think there's a lot a lot of contributions that can be made i think i can see like a lot of folks jill's nonprofit backgrounds and financial and sort of management experience in the nonprofit world as well i think the other thing that was compelling for me is i do think it takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there and run and put your name on the ballot and sort of do that  do that tough take on the tough but tough task and i thought throughout the process that joe did a very nice job connecting with the community and i think the vote while she came in third it was you know a gap of only about one hundred seventy votes and so i agree with everything that has been said that we have a group of candidates that each bring a very different perspective i agree to that the background in education is great and very valuable serving on the school committee that's what we're dealing with this school department and i do though give a lot of credit as tom said to people who put themselves out there for and for the election and that really speaks a lot to me and i got to know joe a lot during the election process and i was the one of the other candidates again i think it's as tom said to the appointment process brings a lot of people i was also part of an appointment so where there was a much broader group of people and it does bring out you know an amazing group of citizens and i would encourage anyone who is here today to become involved as adam said lots of different things going on in belmont  even just coming to meetings and participating and sharing your voice that's what we always are excited about having people come and share their opinions that's what we're here to do is represent the community i think by two has a strong background working with well and b i did some work with only when i worked for the federal government and that's you know essentially what a lot of what the finance subcommittee a lot of that work is analysis and  know to bring some financial background in education background and so i'm going to brief my viewpoint is determined by thinking about our current configurations and so forth like because you have a position on the work committee where you're already in engagement are engaged with the school committee in some extent i'm appreciate the fact that that jill got out and ran and i think that that's an important consideration and i've talked with her a number of times before i got to know her i think she would do a only candidate left that was there anyone with an objection to the same we could each committee should vote for and we voting together you know we can each committee can but so do we have a motion by the school committee to appoint