there's always an opportunity for citizens to come and share any questions or concerns but it doesn't matter what even in the welcome folks to come and share some thoughts no adjustments to the agenda this evening so i will just start with  chairpersons report just have some items again i always scour the website to look for interesting items anyone who's interested can find tons of information on the school website so i picked a few things to know in the next week or so and this coming monday january sixteenth in observance of my day there's a community breakfast it's the twenty third annual such celebration in the belmont high school cafeteria and of particular note i saw that dorothy stoneman will be in attendance and she's a common high school graduate and also the founder of an organization a nonprofit called youth build so i looked into youth build a little bit and it seems like a tremendous organization that's has reach in the united states and around the world helping  economically disadvantaged to learn construction skills and build homes in their communities it just seems pretty tremendous so i thought that would be really exciting to meet her and hear her and what she has to say so that's monday and no school on th january eighteenth which is a wednesday there's a c pack parent information session and this will be held at the wellington and this particular meetings topic is an introduction two the rights and responsibilities under the individuals with disabilities  act and it will also cover individual lives he's the massachusetts special education law and no child left behind which i thought was interesting wondering the differences between s and the no child left behind pieces and the goal is to help parents learn how to be effect partners with the schools of it sounded very interesting as well more information on that again is available on our website also on the eighteenth is the singer ramma at the belmont high school auditorium and from what i understand there are performances by all of the choral ensembles at that event so that something will be a great great performance and the snow date is also listed as january twenty fifth then the next day january nineteenth is the middle school chamber music concert from seven to nine pm so it's a nice way to get you know some dreams of music if you didn't have the opportunity in december there's more to come in january and then let's see this was i thought great and i was telling my kids about it the belmont high school i will have a team competing in the eighth season of w g b h is high school quiz show so from what i gather belmont we want to sixteen teams out of more than one hundred across the state competing and extra fun is that family and friends can be part of the studio audience and there is a taping on january twenty second and anyone interested there's a link on the school high school school web page also you can go to high school quiz show dot org for more information they usually do pretty well yeah looks like a fierce competition look at the school and link to register for sitting in the studio audience is active live working i check to see if it was functioning in their space so it seems like  looking back and see oh a save the date so further down the road just always want to be mindful of the wonderful work that the foundation for bellman education doesn't support of the schools and families and educators here the annual dinner event that they have every year is scheduled for march eighteenth a couple months away and it's from six thirty to eleven pm more information will be forthcoming going to fact wants to mark their calendars that it's available for you to do and finally a thank you to the belmont media center yesterday susan burgess cox and i had an opportunity to record a podcast as part of their ongoing effort to provide information to community members about the different committees in the town so people can tune in at some point it's not available yet but they are speaking with people who represent the different committees in town so for more information i think it's terrific because i know as a resident it took me years to figure out how all the pieces fit together and up still learning so people are interested that will be available so special thank you to our partners at the bellman media center weekend the custodians have been working overtime this week to get the furniture put together the smart board the technologies has produced all the students will be touring the space on thursday and friday in the teachers will come in over the weekend unpack all their belongings and then we will start with students in the marjah was on tuesday after all we can like to thank gerry boyle the fire department the planning department all the different town agencies that help make sure that this has been done safely and all inspections ron in all the different aspects of this project it's only six classrooms but it has involved a lot of work in a lot of support by all the different folks who are all the different tone agencies in town and i think the teachers who are going to be working hard over the weekend and the custodians in general brian the custodian here the shinner it was just amazing and of course mike mcallister for organizing this work what would what class is a movie over there we have a combination of classes it's not just one group it's in there will be always monitor higher throughout the competition we have to finance a few about a month ago to support the train station in and out of the building for our students who may come late to school or get caught back up in the teacher and have schools of the six that had that kind of illness run through a couple of their classrooms so we've been watching the attendance this week our nursing director has been very vigilant on interacting with the nurses finding out how many cases are coming in what do they have are the symptoms to the parents have to keep the children at home a lot of hand washing will go a long way we had both of those buildings cleaned at a higher level over the weekend in will continue that after school every day tuesday we think that if folks do have the children feeling sick at home please keep them at home it seems to run a couple of days and then we think that we've got ahead of it and it's something that we want to make sure parents don't understand we didn't get a call to say is it rigid throughout all six schools and it's not just two schools and we think we have it covered i'm sure that's just the first burst of folks being sick and this early winter season we have the college to somewhere in the planning meetings with our educational facilitator frank locker we sent out an invitation to teachers across the whole system we had about twenty teachers and administrators in this room planning the meetings that we will have with the community and other educators to talk about what we think good teaching or learning looks like in a great seven through twelve school or in a through twelve school and one through twelve school and also talk a little bit about shaping the conversation for folks to help them focus on well what can this really look what is this really going to look like and begin that conversation with the community i know there's a lot of discussion out in the community about what a seven to twelve look like what is eight to twelve look like a nine to twelve and we've been really trying to focus the initial conversations and we will with the community around first of all what's good teaching and learning what's our vision of what we want to for the student because you want to focus on how do we want to engage our children but part of that conversation we have the spring will be also some of the around if we do have different configurations what are some of the careful separations we have for certain grades if we do have a larger grade groupings and what are the careful connections that we want to make to really further some great programming in curricular and teaching opportunities that we have so that will all be part of the conversation we'll have the community in with the educators and then come all together at the end to make recommendations to our own project manager and our design architect that is over on the high school building project site so tom a report out later on the meeting agenda items from the high school building project committee meetings but this is the bulk of the work that we're responsible for right now that we really want to make sure that we get those voices heard the next step is for us to have a meeting with ed walk with frank walker to unpack the planning notes that we got from the educators and then start to notify folks how we can access the community meetings in the next series of meetings the ideal situation would be to have the last meeting with the community be meeting that we could then carry into the night in share with you the school committee members of building committee members or both so we could all be in touch with what the findings were from the folks that are talking about it and excited about it that day but we're trying to work out the timing of when we will be able to hire the o p m you know on a project manager and the design architect they might not be with us in belmont until maybe may or june and that's basically the fastest we can get them on board given the different steps we have to take with the m s p a during the hiring process for those two working groups so we're working out the planning will keep this group updated and i think that this will be a big discussion that the school committee will want to have a lot of good information on a lot of insight to so we can get ready to you know give our collective opinion on what we feel those configurations look like and what might be the best when moving forward i would pause everybody to say that we're only going to kind of get those recommendations and those thoughts on the table and then give those to the architect to have  drop some concepts far so this decision probably won't get made until the fall but this is the groundwork and the underpinnings of that conversation that will do right now from an educational perspective from a logistics perspective in an organizational perspective ok the snow that we had on saturday and sunday i know school is in session and i'm thankful for that but that does not mean that our custodians facilities folks in the d p w work really hard to open the buildings for the different events that we had and had it ready for monday morning so i always want to thank those folks that work probably twenty hour days between saturday into sunday and we can't thank them enough and they also had time to work the b y b a to that group where they will be meeting with me in between space task force meeting so i can get that teacher allowance of the work that we're doing and give them that data to be very comprehensive in our view of what we're doing is rea into that process so we had six members of the belmont public school staff meet with me on monday afternoon i gave them all the information that has been given out thus far to the space task force and to the school committee and they'll be a nice sounding board moving forward for this work  that we have in the district i want to congratulate the general middle school for their hard work in the american mathematics competition we have one hundred ninety students participating hundred five students earn double digits in their scoring fifty eight students scored better than fifty percent twenty students scored better than eighty percent and one student gabriel sue under perfect score so congratulations to our seven the creator and thank you to patty so yossi for entering  students into that rigorous work and those competitions go a long way and exciting students about math that's great stuff similarly at the high school is baker has three seniors who participated in the  z was shepherding those folks at thank you very much to mark as well fourth graders at the butler went to the tsongas industrial history center and lowell last month which is a great activity for them to take part in our history and learn about immigration to the us and we had a celebrity author at the wellington brian lies visited the wellington to read to a couple of grades of the world as well and lastly we have i don't think we have justice in december but the foundation for someone education announce the distribution of forty three thousand nine hundred sixty two dollars worth of learning excellent grants that were distributed to the staff  that totals over three million dollars of grants that they've been providing to the belmont public schools since one nine hundred ninety three it's amazing the different extensions of teacher learning that can take place with the foundation's help they are tire they are supportive they were forward thinking and they are the reason why we're able to do such great enrichment work in building block work with our students and it goes right to the teachers right in your classroom  there's a list that we will post on our website but i can't think the foundation nuff for all this support over the years and this money means a lot each year as a teacher as these grants range from two thousand dollars to five thousand dollars but to these teachers it feels like a million dollars into the students it does as well so thank you very much the foundation for each year they support us and put that date on your books for the event that comes up to sure that's the i m fundraiser and the next superintendents newsletter will go up by friday with all the different dates that are happening and all the events are going on throughout the public schools so thank you i would just add when i was doing some investigating for items for the chairpersons report the foundation for element of education's website lists opportunities for volunteering so people can contribute in different ways obviously some can contribute through times and some can contribute through financial donations i think everything is welcome so if people are interested in volunteer for different efforts there is a clear link that helps people learn how to get more involved to send all right so any questions or  ughts then moving into our major business since there is no unfinished business our first topic is the full day kindergarten i think and there's an exhibit in a unique position to leverage possibly going to a non paid full day kindergarten but i believe that there are some challenges with that even though the overall concept makes a lot of sense there was always a dollar value that you have to place on whether or not you can move forward in something like this so tony did some research this has been very well discussed in with the finance committee and folks in the fund is please feel free to join in in jim gamble with so the state counts kindergarten students who attend full day but pay tuition as half time students and therefore we only get half the state aid money for those can be gotten students so we want to look at what would be wow how much more aid would we receive if we didn't charge a fee thereby those students would be counted as full students would receive an increase in c t versus how much intuition dollars we would forgo by doing that so i contacted the  school finance office at d s e they performed the calculation for me which i appreciate that and what in the information's on the screen so what we would likely receive is an estimated additional funding you see the top three of the eight hundred thirty seven thousand five hundred sixty dollars the sum put in footnotes to to that some of these other figures that's based on f y seventeen our current year enrollment income in your state is levels if this is something that doma were to do in a future obviously be subject to that years in rome and what state aid was funded at that particularly if you look at the average expenses of the between those two funding sources on average we've charged era forty one thousand seven thirty three over the last three years to those funding sources the difference of about forty one hundred dollars it's essentially a break even proposition in fact the district were to move forward in eliminate full day kindergarten to wish and in the in the year one that we do that we would receive no tuition but the state it would not kick in until the following year we would have to absorb in this case about eight hundred forty one thousand dollars to be able to make that happen and so in a nutshell it's about breakeven but in the year when we would have to identify that kind of  level of funding to be able to support that initiative to move forward then years to in successive years the additional funding we would receive would basically offset the additional costs from not having the tuition so it's an interesting dynamic we can we can actually have the state pay these funds as opposed to our parents paying these funds but we need you know to put it in very layman's terms we need a rich uncle to come in and give us the year was able to give the schools that money for that one year knowing that the state it would go up the following year it would take care of itself we are at that point where we think this all makes sense we'd like to take that burden off the parents  but we know also that there are a lot of other big ticket items that our town is dealing with in terms of marginal classrooms fire department library d p w all competing for those big capital one time funding dollars so our goal was to put this on the table to make sure that we didn't know as a as a group that there are options for us to to be able to create a full day kindergarten that is not based on a fee that's funded totally by the state  and that would be a goal of us to have but we're also recognizing that the funding source may not be there in any one year right now but we wanted to put on the table with the war committee which we have done i mean at this table so the public knows that this is something that we're also thinking about yes so but regardless the grant is gone right the grant has disappeared so how much are we going to would we have to raise tuition to cover what we have lost in the grant  five thousand two years ago it got reduced to one twenty nine twenty six or twenty six that's what he's the numbers guy and we have had a balance in our full day care revolving account that we use this year to supplement that one twenty thousand dollars a year proxmire if we weren't so they can do godfrey as it stands now the tuition we receive and for we allow parents to make four quarterly installments the first one is do i join our first so typically in the spring there's an influx of tuition dollars that we receive so if if suppose hypothetically this were year that we were setting up that for next year was going to be the feeling we weren't going we would receive that influx in the spring and so we would end the that money in leverage that to shrink the gap between what we needed in that one year so i may have gladly let any of the finance folks talk about their their views on it as well i've probably been the most the state would take you know and have thousand dollars off of the taxpayers of belmont it's it's a no brainer i think the challenge that we're encountering now is relative to the priorities that we've discussed it doesn't make the cut it was we're sitting down with the other work in the town and we're trying to figure out how to extend the override phones and find ways does provide modulars to the elementary schools and everything else that is in the queue you know this is one where i don't know th e least from my perspective you know what i want to tell a table and say this is the highest priority relative everything else it is at the same time you just look at it and say well you know we should certainly be trying to find an opportunity to do this in the coming years because it just is such a beneficial financial proposition for the so this is a really stupid question but i mean how are we allowed to fund this one time thing i i mean it's not impossible but we talked about what what why were other towns able to come up with this kind of money in our set at one year's cost and we'll be able to move into the knowledge fees we we realize that most towns are sitting in a situation where they just asked for one point eight million dollars to start a school building project one point four million dollars for nothing i understand that this is not coming from the town this is coming from ten minutes from the community this is people go out classroom it was the foundation that you know sort of so it seems to me that it would be just the you know one of the there's lots of needs that the foundation addresses but  it seems like it might be if you can get my little bit potential to stream source you know i would think having been on there there giving board for a while it would be something that they'd be very interested in helping out with so one of the dilemmas that we're in is that we are preparing to start a carbon roman for full day kindergarten students next month will be releasing the cards to all the folks that have a coming or rising kindergartners we need to set the the rate which we'd like to leave the same for next year and if we want to embark on a fund raising campaign for this purpose i would absolutely entertain that as part of that process i would i would venture to say that point i'm always looking at one of the biggest priorities of our district and and right now that's this is working the way it is in there's a lot of other things that are almost getting ready not to work like space and in budget and teachers and adding and reducing class size etc so but i think that the foundation of the belmont savings or anybody would want to partner with the town and if you leverage some money might be a good idea to reach that goal but i don't know if we could do it for next fiscal year if that it's true that there are many other priorities some of the much further up the hierarchy in some ways but how many of those could be fixed by a one time fundraiser right or you know there aren't that many that could be appreciate you know we will not be charging you tuition but we would appreciate your donation whatever you could you know because this is a book i mean we've done that i've done this at other organizations where we sa we're not going to charge you for this event but a donation and you would be shocked we would raise sometimes so much more money by asking for a voluntary donation so you know these families that might have to i don't know what to ition is for kindergarten now when my kids w to the families so that there are many of those families will have kids who would would be in you know like just a an appeal in a letter saying you know we we've made this decision to not charge tuition will we are accepting donations to cover the one year so that i don't know i've seen that tactic that that strategy in fund raising before and and it works surprisingly well  competition with one coming yet they might be able to support it to you know for me a large amount so a combination can solve the problem but i just don't think that we'll be able to parents don't the fee is for this year so they can play and we can send out our roman registration packets and if we want to get creative in leverage different stakeholders to see if we can raise money from parents and or raise money or request funds from foundation or other sources that are very helpful to us along with the town and whatever remaining balance we have in our revolving account because it died off all those pieces could come together to make that happen was a part of the communication this morning and i think everyone supportive of that will be forward i guess the one consideration here is that there is one hundred fifty thousand dollars in the revolver you know that we would largely consume this year right so that's kind of one of fifty thousand dollars less of that goal of eight hundred if we delay but i mean delay may be the practical reality here think that's something we have to recognize but it does make that goal of raising eight hundred that much harder if we deplete that well i would just say that given our all of our discussions that we've had and it's much more realistic to think about it in delaying there been some great ideas tonight and things that we discussed before to i think is very realistic much more realistic is where i said to you that it's here it's on our radar it'll be on the radar of the war committee of the on the radar of the town to make people aware now which i think is good jim gamble was saying this morning about the town budget what was reported to the war committee you know their issues there and whether or not how funding is going to be used there and the town has a lot of other projects and things that need to be considered hard it seems like every year presents surprises and challenges and you know surprises meaning happy surprises as well as like unexpected challenges and so  in the year we're we're a focus on strategic planning is already part of the plan for the year pushed by the high school building project and so forth it seems like a nice opportunity to inform as many people as possible think about all of our possible partners who could help contribute and then be ready should the wind blow in a certain direction maybe we have fewer needs for student services  given year whether it's english learning special needs transportation whatever you know maybe there will be pockets that we cannot predict and i don't know it just seems a good time to think about where we could strategically be prepared to shift this is not my area but the folks who do know this better i think it would be nice if people were more informed and knew that i should an opportunity presented itself we have a nice plan in place in addition to fundraising and said requests and determining what we're able to fund going forward well for requests for positions of addition to know on salary requests so that's what's occurring right now one of the next major milestones  that will be presenting to the school committee on february seventh the actual budget presentation in the following week new information since this time i was put together the following week on the thirteenth of committee we are in this process so that the next big meetings will be we our next finance being will be on january twenty fourth we will preview the the full budget document and the presentation rough draft we might want to schedule for the finance folks maybe the next tuesday and instead of skipping instead of following the school reschedule maybe have a january thirty one meeting if that if that's needed to get feedback from you to give you feedback to take to receive your feedback and incorporate those attitude changes to the document and then when we meet on the seventh of february in the morning we're going to present the full presentation to the school committee more committee and school committee i want to thank the principals in the directors for their work the one to one meetings for the zero based budgeting meetings are long and informative and i actually enjoy the because you really get to know what's going on in revenues as part of how the revenues committed the expenses go just a little higher reaches so that account we're hoping to tap one point five million out of that three million dollars count to supplement the f y eighteen budget without those funds the budget estimates have because our goal is not that you can take all that money out of the three million and solve our eighteen problem but every dollar we spend in eighteen is one less dollar we have to spend the one nine hundred so which will be trying to take a two year view of the budget process this year wrist going to be discussion i believe at the different meetings about how we best use free cash and in the us the stabilization fund my recommendation and i work with the town is only try to use half of that stabilization fund to plug the hole this year and have the same amount of money ready for fiscal nineteen to plug that same hole that way we avoid that cliff as long as we can that funding cliff and we are we going to find the gap of the seven hundred thirty or so thousand dollars that we have in addition to that we talked to the finance committee today about some of the work that we're able to do with our out of district tuitions as you know our our budget through the override was able to fund the out of district a higher level seven percent each year and our circuit breaker funding from the state came in in addition to that as it does each year and we find ourselves with a balance in that account that we can go to to take more remote out of the circuit breaker to relieve the pressure on the general budget if you remember correctly what we will we are requesting this override funding we said if we didn't spend special education money and special education students would put it aside we were lucky enough t to put it aside and it will help us next year so we are going to drawdown that account and put it towards out of the ship placements for the following year and relieve the pressure on the general budget so that will be the school's contribution to trying to reduce that seven hundred thirty thousand dollars down to a zero number the town is also doing some expenses or cutting some expenses on their side to the same amount as ours so we're sharing this burden to try to get that to that point  the revenue estimates are not in yet so we don't have an exact number of how we're going to get that seven thirty but we do have an agreement that that's the structure and format that we're going to take i think this will be an active discussion of the meeting of the thirteenth to present our budget and our goal is to do what we say and say what we do we got an override very thankfully for an amount of money that will fund the town for three years we're trying to stretch it to four years we agreed to hire ten f t s and you know one five will hire five again and yet three we also said to the community that if we did have money that was in excess for the special education because that was one of our big budget pressures that we would put aside only uses for that purpose and that's what we're doing next year so we feel very fortunate to be in that position i want to thank ken cramer and tony for really watching those dollars and as much as some things fell the wrong way the last couple years we had to go to town for seven hundred fifty thousand dollars a lot of the things fell the right way that we're now able to access about one hundred seventy thousand dollars and put it back into the the funding process for our budget for next year so i think that this is a very good story to be able to reach that third year of the you of the override money intact and have actually a plant stretch that money into the fourth year so that's the big picture conversation will provide you all seven hundred some odd lines of the budget in a few weeks and we'll have a slide presentation that outlines the the budget that we're putting forth  advance and we knew in rome it was growing every year that was the major pressure but we're averaging over one hundred students a year net the district and we see our forecasting to increase each year so the money that we received through the over i thankfully has really been able to pick our head up and put it above water but the water level keeps going up with more students to come in so we recognise that there are a lot of needs that we have that we're not able to meet but we're really going to try to take care of the class size issue at the elementary level truly important for us to to keep that sacred and get it below that twenty six twenty five number for teachers in our state and also provide some extra space to be able to put those teachers in and have those classes to reduce costs so we're prioritizing class size at all levels and we're also providing the fact that we have mean that it supports that we have to put in place special education attention so all those elements will come out when we have the presentation if you in the seventh of february any questions about the who is our new principal of the cherry middle school as you know in the school committee we have a content calendar every year that we put things in place in august when the chair of the superintendent meet last year we focused a lot on directors and had folks like justin o'brien and jim davis dead mcdevitt we've had all different folks come in this year we're going to focus on principals so mike is the first of the principal series  d this is mike's chance to articulate what's going on at the generally how the start happened and put a name to the face for the community members who might not know mike from his time with butler was where he was for eight years prior to coming to the  chadri he still has not stopped living down the blue ribbon of war that he wanted to but there will have to mention that again the big award session in the trip to d c all great things at butler in past eight years and now all great things happening at the away from from school because i guess most i just want to say thanks for having me i know that having sat in your seat i don't always look forward to a principal presentation but i know as a principal i'm really excited and it's a great opportunity so thank you for giving me a few minutes i'll try to respect your time behind but so long as you're ok with it so just a real brief you know if you go back to two thousand and ten and we had a roman of twelve hundred five if you go back to when i started here as a teacher we had about a thousand maybe a little bit more eleven hundred so just in my years i've seen that increase and the question is you know as it's gone up one hundred fifty four students we're currently thirteen fifty nine i think that's actually not true at thirteen fifteen minutes of october first so we're a little bit higher than that as hundred fifty four students are going up but eight percent increase over the original twelve or five more or less the same f t e you know where a little bit higher and some a little bit lower and so on but it certainly hasn't been an eight percent increase in the fees what has happened so one of the impact of thin is that you've also got eight percent below par for actually more than that eight percent or five of forty eight percent more practice of origin so once your school population goes up all those suburbs go up as well and i think i have an interesting perspective because i i was here is a teacher that i left and then i came to i left in two thousand and nine and i came back in two thousand and sixteen and a bunch of things that changed in the most noticeable change is really the structure of the way teams are organized when i typed sixth grade i was a language arts or studies teacher made fifty kids amazing i shared one math and science teacher so i rolled back in here and suddenly sixth graders on a four person team they had one hundred one hundred plus students and that old fifth grade model that was a single classroom was now the old sixth grade model so i walked back in sort of like i don't generate no problem and that was a really big change some of the other changes there was there was this huge staff built in the room and suddenly there was a class at the in the back of that and i think if you've ever seen that classless mason an amazing job of it but it was definitely not designed as a classroom so the way we use space is change because that increase before i never i never heard of a traveling teacher and now i get david gibbs our as he goes from jim to hell from the third floor down to the second floor back to the first floor back to the gym and he's one of many traveling teachers and we're asking teachers to sort of say here's a study hall in your room this this time someone else going to cover there's a reading class in their room you can be in the room or there's going to be other kids in a class going and i don't ever remember that at the lunch room is it is a big change or just simply out of seats in there in some in some lunches with fifth graders sharing lockers we have so so all those things have changed the foreign language program is changed things like that so it's not that it's not that we just sort of add one hundred fifty four more students increase by eight percent keep moving along it's we that we really did change a lot of the structures of the school day one of things i think that it's worth noting that didn't change is the attention we give to students and that's that's really what the amazing things but it's also a thing that worries me just totally up front with you of i've been through on the word sustainable around a lot and it's really resonating with people that really capturing because one of the things that  teachers can't do is to say we've been doing this for ten years we've been doing this i've been given this type of feedback for this writing project or we've been doing this this trial this debate and everyone gets x number of rolls or x number of minutes to speak how do we keep doing that when our caseload goes up by twenty five and so one of the things i think we're starting to ask is like i don't know can you do we have to do things differently or and that's really hard for teachers because teachers know what works best they know what works best and they remember it in a smaller class they're trying to replicate that so i can throw the word sustainability around but really i think maybe the word britain point is there a place where it's just we're going to have to just add staff or there's a place where it's just too many kids to do this type of project that we used and you don't see that many of the increase the one percent two percent over the years but when you start getting the percentage of hundred students one hundred fifty four students with more to come i think that we're all looking at that three hundred ninety number that second grade very then when we complete it we cross it out and it's been it's been great to be able to cross things out in an eternal records for john comes in the summertime he starts doing it and then he starts seeing things like be ticked off the list and sometimes i'll be t communication and there's a feeling i think prior to my coming here that communication was a little bit tricky it was either inconsistent or it was not quite the refutation or it was too long or too short whatever it was so the question we asked is how do we ensure everyone has the information they need when they needed second one is consistency we have these three are respectful response all ready to learn but then the question is like how are they actually asked what does it look like in the cafeteria what does it look like in the hall it was looked like in the bathroom it was look like in the classroom and then this amazing thing happened in september and i would be here you see kids sort of walking doing what they needed to do and then the bell ringing then they start cutting down the hallways and it will what what do you do and then you go the schools oh you're like no schools no no you're in school right now and there was clearly this message of like well that's the that's for some of it but that's not for all of it and so we've been trying to talk about consistency how do we get consistent expectations for not only every place not only every day but every person and the third one is just how do  to be a school of almost fourteen hundred students how do you get a smaller experience so one of the things in it and this is why i didn't do her entire presentation on a rival dismissal and always does that real sexy stuff but it's really important so actually paid attention to that so we put those up and i walked i watched a kid walk out like maybe the second in school and he like turned and he looked at me and i was at the other side of the hallway and he's clearly about to go if they're well and he just turned around to walk to the other way and to me it was an indication of like once we labeled it i think they got it so i was walking with a student the other day and i was taken him from the office back to class and i walked into the stairwell and he said to me once you can walk in and he still like one that you can do is princip but it was a great sign that they were you know it wasn't real controversial but they just needed to know what the organization was and i think for a fifth grader it's really important thing never see any greater in that in that story there's a huge difference physically we also implemented hall pass which again are real exciting but it's amazing how it changes the accountability piece and about how we've been able to reinforce to kids that we have to know where you're going and you have to have to know that you have permission to walk around the harvest it has reduced the number of kids in the hallways that that's been just in force it's that there is an accountability and there's an expectation it's not just one person it's all those people we talked about different arrival times and days and then we add more to monitor so there's more people greeting kids and then  increased presence in the hallway in sixth grade for example when you walk down the hallway you will see i think i think we can't be that it seven different people say good morning to you before you get your first terrible which really is a massive difference from i think that even when i taught you the way it was massive lights coming down you know who the stress the entire time anyone is watch kids be in line and you watch kids me run for too long terrible things happen my son sort of famously said to me one day so i was in line and then pushing starts happening and i was one and the bye and you know green lines are first so we walk in with a walk in there is a sign there they know it's that they're going to line up first they get through it and it just gets them through like quicker and says about move people we also have used our supervision which is really  for kids are just fine sensory wise that are really overwhelming place in the guidance counselor's around here and it's a great opportunity for kids out smaller groups for kids to connect to have counseling lunches things like that and then we started to improve our recycling before i came here there was a scheduling p l c so i walked in with this great document all the things people wanted in their schedule so talk about like a lead in you want to suppress well it's like seventy percent of people think this is a great idea and i'm like yes we'll do that together during common times to work on their curriculums we defined a meeting schedule we used to have a half to schedule that ran eight through d one day and the next half day eat through which is like final paper but the reality is it's a week later or potentially two weeks later so we revamp the schedule so that they run through short months and it's a really it's a big thing for consistency especially if you have a child absent that that wednesday then they wouldn't have that lesson for if with a specialist that's it for two  weeks we reduce the amount of transitions kids are doing up and down the stairs we have a medical extended homeroom which is sort of a precursor to an advisory but every wednesday we have a twelve minute actually a fourteen minute home and it's all hours of opportunity for kind of community building in games and getting to know you activities and connecting with an adult and then we have a passing time it used to be that when the bell ended you're you know when that period and your next period began so immediately you were late and there is no consistency with when you walk through the hallway so if you are always late you're always rather or if you're always late someone is always given you are tired of being late or if your clock was different in my cock you might have a little bit of a different title so i let my kids out you'd be saying they're lazy so once we had  consistent passing time which isn't long it's three minutes we also had teachers no one when they could be in the hallway and it was just a small indicator and we were in there in the hallway of all these great social and learning things happening good morning great to see it how's it go rather than let's go you're late you either get sort of welcoming language or hurting language and i would tell you that i think there's been a dramatic increase in her the language and the dramatic increase in welcoming a really pretty simple we do a snap poll in every monday and we do a to provide just more time working with teachers after school and all those are just kind of communication scheduling tweaks that are made it really possible very very pleased with our discipline it was used to be that there is a feeling you know when i was a teacher here that you had sort of  first child to the office and then something would happen but then they would just be back in your class and it was unclear of did you talk to them to meet with you or what happened what was the consequence and so we created a intake process the summer and it allows us to serve get the teachers take get the students take track whether we communicate with parents and also gives us options for sort of retributive justice which is sort of the traditional you know you did this  to close that out yet the scenes great it seems like it worked and the feedback overwhelming for us or for teachers is that they feel quickly informed but it's also pretty meaningful we've been tracking our discipline data and we're getting fewer and fewer office referrals as the years go on and that's really the goal the goal is so that you give kids meaningful consequences not just you know sort of the old like you know there's a chart there and somewhere like how do we get kids in a meaningful way  that the meetings used to be it's hard to get with one hundred thirty people in one room it's hard to have a really intimate conversation so what we did this year is week we focused every one of our fact communes on one aspect of social national learning we've been doing a lot of getting to know you sort of activities and then we take an audit every every month so so this this picture was it was on student management habits newsman's their own emotions and we do two things we take it off of what we already do and then from there every teacher makes a promise self they're going to try one new thing this month and the following month they come back and sort of did it work that one thing you promised didn't work that novel and what we're doing is we're collecting we're calling it the tool box but a tool box of best practices around social motion learning so at the end of the year we're going to write out some of these best practices and we entered september and we talk about the six layers of social motion learning you know if it is someone saying i'm having a hard time getting kids to self manage or i'm getting too emotional regulate their emotions we can go in this too say these are six tragedies five strategies ten strategies my colleagues have done in their class and this is how it works so i think that that's a big thing the other thing we did is we meet for ten minutes and then we split into small groups so there was actually a group of ten rather than a on twenty and it's just really positive feedback on that but people are getting to know each other and they're getting to feel more connected oxer classes have been a big one and i'm happy to say that on tuesday of next week after the martin luther king holiday we will be entering class where we started classes they're moving is happening this week i had a neighborhood meeting in august wasn't you know of the quite friendly welcome to the neighborhood moment but i thought i was going to have a gigantic capably and from there we did a little bit of door to door campaigning we talked every neighbor everybody neighbor we gave them updates on the march we sent the letters and i think that that helped make them feel that we were a part of the neighborhood that we value the input here a lot of ordering a lot of orientations and training happening this  week and then the new tenants who don't know this i'm a vision announces but the teachers who are going out to the mobs are going to get a little surprise breakfast on tuesday when they begin from their colleagues who are back in the buildings is a very nice of all thing to do they say even though you're a little bit away from torts goes in the room and john was in your room are we focusing on the same things and we took our lead from that model lesson format that was already in place in every morning in the world we gather from seven to seven twenty five every morning and we have some announcements and some substitute work but a college school sort of fell through so we've been investigating thirteen total sites now we have a very thorough criteria and that we're about to decide on a field trip school site for the grade five ecology chip so we'll continue this year and so that's everything we've done so far the first six months and this is like a little preview of coming attractions you know a lot of things to want to get done so no one of those would have been interesting enough to do more than the thirty five seconds i did but i think humidity i would agree with torrance that you know we have really done a lot and i think it is made a real difference and i think people are feeling like out it's a place to serve organization and it's a place it's good becoming a place of community which is no small feat when you get fourteen hundred but mostly it's a place where before that with that increase in students we're also seeing an increase in file for and i've seen a bigger than eight percent increase in five force it's really dramatically increasing so we've been talking about what are the reasons for fighting force and we've been trying to communicate with the elementary level like there should be some consistency with so for example i know coming out but there there was a five before that came from third from fourth or fifth grade and that's that wasn't consistent with all the other schools and that's not necessarily like an achievement they had one but that was just sort of what our philosophy is when i got to the middle school i realize that every elementary school was maybe seeing it differently but then i went to look at the high school and what their numbers were and i think that five or four years they just required a little bit more of like a look into one of the reasons for five a force where are they also defining how do they carry on from one school to another in one year to another so it's been a conversation that like i'll give you another example is that special ed teachers were sometimes in the process of creating five of force and if we understand the difference they should be nowhere near a regular instructors defined in five fours it gets a little bit messy so we're just trying to clarify that whole thing it's a conversation i think because the numbers are so high everyone has this interesting getting involved in that  feels this these efforts toward creating small experiences in a big school and it really feels like it's moving in a great direction so i share the thanks i act on it and i just i think it's tremendous i mean it's no small feat  work in the building in all of the different capacities and i'm coming from the school where there was only three hundred fifty four kids and he knew not only every student every parent i think and so i showed up here i was like i don't know anyone you know fortune they had a little bit of it but what i realized it wasn't just about me knowing everyone it was about everyone knowing their kids and some other kids in the hallway or even just saying good morning it's great to see you you know i this one teacher that walks in when kids walk and she says thanks for showing up so let it happen today and like that  does something whether or not they say thank you lisa for showing up or whether they just say so i do think that there's that piece of how do we create so in the summertime i blasted out of my opening letter to the teachers had nothing to do with sort of first is school  of thing it was an article about teachers that have determined that they were just going to spend time in the hallway and what what s c l difference it made and it was like i said to them this is the one thing i'm asking for the only thing i'm going to ask you for this year and i think that some  used to be the hallways are a little bit of the wild west and that's not just last year that's like a few that's going back to when i was here in so ho always work really owned it's like that kid's going to run through i don't really know him i'm going to start yelling we're going to close my door and i was going to do my thing and w everyone in the hallway all the time you getting that face time i now know that child's name that's out now feels an accountability to me and they're less likely to sort of tear through the hallways down the wrong stairwell or whatever it is so i think all those little things came of the that's one of these we tried to say is that it's a shared space always or shared space that we don't own and they don't that we own them together and it's a prime opportunity for social motion learning it's not just the place we have to go to the other thing we did is i gave a little passage from a student's perspective about how scary the hallways were this is a student in belmont but it was a student who wrote this pretty compelling essay about like i show up late to school i showed late to class because i don't want to be in the hallway whenever the us is there and when teachers start to read things like that like or i try to just get the kid in the hallway at a hallway as fast as possible i try to put my head down once they understood that like this isn't just like a messy hallway it's scary for some good then i think they started want to go in that space so i'm glad to hear that that's happening but that  they do set the climate and they do set the tone for a safe learning environment for all students to be and will by an adult and i did walk through that sixth grade hallway and saw all those teachers of today i watch we were dire in technology student every student on the hallway to greet everybody that usually is they came in by the to their class today something he does every day every period there's just a lot of good relationship building going on in such a large school  and then when suits feel part of them obviously everything else goes great from there so i think that they'd like for those that great start to his work and generally we do have a lot of work here to support the teachers with smaller second grade sixteen to twenty five third grade we have a class of course of the twenty six and a class between twenty and twenty five please keep in mind that that grade for twenty is a small classroom at one of our schools and can't get any higher than that in that great to sixteen class that makes up that range is also a class that's not big enough to fit in more than sixteen so the ranges are actually impacted by this wall of class rooms that we are using school has a very large role i know we have four grades but we still averaging about three hundred forty students from three which is a significant amount of it we will be getting getting higher when we look at the guidelines in the averages again in the scheduling conflicts or the way that the schools in the schedules organized you'll see a little bit of that of both a middle school in the high school sixty five seventy five students program studies which will talk about some of the offerings that they are hoping down for them so these class sizes in some areas and markets are concerned and again some of these ranges in these lower class sizes are a function of the schedule the some rebel or high classes with less than fifteen students a seven percent but as we move down that chart we can see that fourteen to twenty seven percent we have about thirty over thirty percent of our students at our classes ha you know you need four to five additional f t s each year just to stay at this level that i think we all feel is higher than we want to so as it gets more into the common knowledge and i don't have a particular solution but i'm positions were going to do for ours goal was to with the middle school high school reduce class size and take students out of unproductive environments like the hallway or study hall put them in front of a certified teacher to get something good in the f t s we used in that way but also along the way we had to do things like add guidance counselors at the little school at special education yellow for those with it services in we're really seeing that now that our elementary numbers are starting to rise that that that class size is getting concerning as well so we did what we said we do we're trying to reduce class size we can add features of of a student's day that they could have a teacher in front of them sort of a study hall but when you i believe that just those twenty positions are just taking us right up to where we had hoped to be three years ago when the roman was three hundred students even less we started the over i would throw over three hundred students less than we are right now so we are building this plane as we're flying here so to speak and we're fixing challenges in addressing challenges as we grow but that the district is going to need if you should have continued support if in rome it continues to go higher and we're going to have to live within a financial parameter to do that and that's kind of where we are in fiscal eighteen nineteen where we're trying to say thank you we'll get to the that year for mark with everybody we have and want to keep everybody we have but i think that when we look into the year five of that which would be fiscal twenty  with the funds that we using as one time funds to make eight hundred one thousand work i think that's where we're going to see some challenges and and i think continuing to educate the community and remind the community that these funds are not only needed to make concerns and they are salary based needs but even non sorry needs and i think we talked about this last time that my example is calling foley is our language director and all of her world language classes have more students and so she had twenty five spanish one books now she needs twenty eight spanish one books she has you know twenty eight in french one she used to have twenty five so those three books here four books the air she spent almost a quarter of her budget just on added textbooks for new students who came in so she didn't get anything new there was no textbook adoption so those small incremental expenses were not sorry lines of very apparent to our directors and our principals and then the big ones  bit so those are the goals working on i think that's what mike said very eloquently is that they're trying to take this initial work that he's doing to get the bells and whistles and get kids in safely create that climate and that could culture for safe learning but then the next level is going to be a little hard to get to how do we adequately staff and adequately support the middle school was the exam able to have thirteen hundred twenty nine students which eventually will be fourteen hundred two years that second grade class alone when they reach fifth grade will need to hire two more fifth grade teachers to get another team just to keep class size of twenty four if we don't hire those two teachers class sizes be it twenty eight or twenty nine so we know right now fifth grade book those poor second grade students alike labeled now as the big the big class forever the biggest cohort in the more history but we are tracking the needs of the will have and will have to put in place for them as they go along so  we'll continue to work with the town of the community and in the people to stable work it reduce those class size and i really really resonate in the meeting with the teachers the other day that it is there is a big difference between twenty three and twenty six  thank you thank you and i think even though it's not as late as it was last year we are into january already so i i would lean towards  option where we stick with the current policy as as it is now which is to start next year on the first wednesday in september which is what has been our policy but i would add to that that we immediately have the policy subcommittee some language that allows for flexibility based on when labor day starts and we something along the lines of if it's five thirty then we start the first tuesday after labor day if it's but that just because i know people are making summer plans already  d we do have a policy that's been a long time policy in belmont to start on that wednesday so that would be my recommendation i don't know that we're ready to promotion but that  even though i think it's a late it's late to start school so in terms of getting discussion i think it would be perfectly fine and logical if you were prepared to make a motion if there were a second then we can have some discussion and vote on it so sure i make a motion that for the twenty seventeen eighteen school year  we remain true to this the policy that the schools have in place and start school on the first wednesday in september i don't have the date in my head right now but that is the what is what is  that is our current policy and i don't know if i would attach a caveat to that motion that we then move forward with creating a new policy on school start date but and i understand the reasoning in doing that and sticking with it something that the calendar something we vote on every year people are starting to make plans but one of part of the conversation we had and what people have been commenting on is shortening the summer if we go earlier in august and then we're going you know there's summer on both sides and to me august is a time where the kids are rested and ready to start and ready to go versus you know they get out earlier in june that's when they are done with school and right now w the calendar forward in june but start leader in september you know i i understand the caviar of having the policy committee consider that sir review it but if think that we're back to having this conversation again about the calendar and and we've started it now and i've still feel like we had a discussion last year about starting before we had again and i'm still feeling as though a lot of towns are moving towards that because of other factors and seeing the benefits of it so you know frankly right now to just stick with what we i'm sorry second that the motion because partly because i agree with what you say i think that is the polls subcommittee goes back to think about the polls in the coming years my personal preference is to have a structure where we say that the fourth or the fifth but it's flexible so that we can manage both sides of the summer and then it's never too early never too late i think that's a good compromise that would probably help us have a consistent policy over the years where parents can look and if they want to know three years from now when the school starts they can know i'm supportive of that your concerns and i actually agree with you but i think even though we do vote on the calendar every year many families we've heard have already made plans  they've already made plans so i think it would be a mistake to change the start date this for this year as much as i am in favor of doing it's one of those things a bit like funding policy that is you know in some cases before in some cases after and really sort of walk that balance because and to your point i do think we are seeing more and more evidence that there is value in starting before labor day in certain discussion and so then we've got the motion to vote a yes vote would be to vote for draft number one which would include a start date of september sixth which is consistent with our existing policy and charging the  policy committee to look into perhaps revising existing policy to allow for flexibility however you wish to do it i'm just bungling the motion but a vote yes would mean voting for draft one and then our next order of business the final order of may just us is a vote on the acceptance of donation documents and suggested motion included in that  the music department needed to do all the great things that they do with art i want to staff they stepped up and your new thirty five thousand dollars check and deposit it into the schools gift account last week right before the end of the county year i believe ardo was i was very you know he was very happy to hear this news he that was unexpected to him and i believe his parent group would like to see if they can leverage that and raise some money amongst themselves to see if they c to that balance to buy the the highest quality piano to keep on that stage which i believe will be here for another hundred years so it will be nice to bring in a new school or a new order touring with a brand new piano that is used daily and nightly all year around wonderful music program so when speaking with the an honest donor if i can have their name become public soon i will bring that back to the table and but we did send them a nice letter as well thanking them for their generous donations are and what a great community be belmont savings all the different groups that provide support and then there are individuals that actually come in and do things like this all the time so i'm very very fortunate from are we able to move one yes motion that triggers off three all right so i'll just read it so this is a motion to accept donations moved that in accord with massachusetts general laws chapter twenty four section fifty three the drama school committee gratefully accept a gift from irene and lawrence verner in the amount of fifty dollars move that in accord with matching massachusetts general laws chapter forty four section fifty three a the belmont school committee gratefully accept a gift from looters environmental incorporated in the amount of one hundred moved that in accord with massachusetts general laws chapter forty four section fifty three a the belmont school committee gratefully accept a gift from an anonymous donor in the amount of thirty five thousand dollars for the purchase of a piano for a common high school or a second last meeting we had the topics range from budget predictions and so forth to thinking about ways that the census could best be utilized for planning purposes in the town and the schools as well so i guess  everyone who receives that census you know paperwork please please please fill it out and return it because it's really useful information belmont high school building committee yes the building committee met last week  community has been you know a fantastic addition you know that said i think both the process and kind of the curve facility here has remaining issues that had some challenges during the process and a lot of good discussion ensued around learning and we have a subcommittee that will be evaluating each of the lenders who are responding there so that process is underway and we also have a good discussion about the communication plan figuring out how we dial up the communication in the new year something that i think is much needed as we go into this portion of the process that will involve more and more community deal our next meeting is thursday at the wynn brook at seven forty five we also added the steering committee to the space task force that they meet separately reza sounding board we're focusing on the elementary level obviously with this work and what space we need to add for next year and beginning to discuss if in fact we need marginals for the eighteen thousand nine hundred school year which is one school year away but if we do need space module space for the elementary level which we believe we may very well need that kind of space we're really going to have to make some decisions for fiscal seventeen because we'll need some money to advance to do that planning in that procurement i have a couple of charts to give out to the group on thursday right community path update andrea has kindly volunteered to serve as the liaison from the school committee to that group thank you very much for that and i believe we're having against so we have have reached out to geoffrey wheeler from the planning department to speak at our meeting one of our upcoming meetings we haven't gotten a commitment from a date for him as of yet there was also dialogue about the community path being a discussion from some of th