take their seats please panel m us to answer and ask questions i want to thank belmont t v for being here and covering this i believe live in for rebroadcast at a later date the agenda tonight i want to do some introductions and talk about what i call norms before i do the introductions the norms we start all our meetings at minute man with some rules ground rules the first one is that this is a safe and respectful environment people can ask questions and people can listen to the answers to questions and we are here to learn and look to the future and the rest of our gender will resident but now resident of arlington and jeanne for a law who is a parent of a couple of alumni and they'll be able to answer some questions at the end they also have dean is going to have a presentation also we have george clement who's in the front row is our director of admissions george is going to talk about the career and technical high school of today i'm going to give you some overviews of just some facts and figures and then dean's to talk a little bit about his experience on the finance committee as arlington looked at some of the same questions that belmont has looked at it is looking at now and then we'll have plenty of time for questions and answers  moderate from this podium but as some people are presenting i'll step down to turn it over now to george hi my name is george comet i'm the director of admissions and assistant principal over at minot i've been teaching for the last twenty five years i started my career actually a little bit up north in massachusetts at the landmark school and then we had an opportunity to move around so i taught in public schools in the hampshire and florida and now i'm back here in massachusetts and that made it me if the last seven years in the thing that keeps me motivated to my personal mission and while i love my career is i love when i can play a hand in helping a kid achieve his dreams you go into or her dreams if you go into my office right now you see a series of quotes that i have up above on my walls one of them is from joseph campbell and he says follow your bliss and be not afraid the doors were open we didn't know that we're going to be one of those doors that is open this minute and i want to explain some of those benefits you before i watch into that one try to get to know the people here a little bit better see we have some common ground so just by a show of hands how many people here would agree that a school should produce good citizens give back to society how many of you will believe that a school should produce good citizens in an image possible ok how many people believe that by definition a high school graduate should be ready for college by definition a high school graduate should be ready for college how many people believe that every student has the right to a teacher that is competent and can only be competent character teachers for our kids absolutely how many people would agree that not all students are the same and students are different different strokes for different folks how many would agree that the two students in necessarily the same grade have another question i'm not going to ask anybody your age but how many people remember or have done this how many people have licked a postage stamp had th interesting conversation my eleven year old niece local georgia why would you do that that's gross and finally last question for you consider this that any student going into high school today was born after september eleventh and we think about that reading it if you would agree with this that the kids growing up today are growing up in a world that is very different from the world that you and i probably vision if you would agree with that it's a very different world now than it was last century ok all right so what i hope to do here in this presentation i want to talk a little bit about the twenty first century meet him model and i want to highlight some of the key benefits that i see that we offer that it so the best way to do this is to use this this graphic that you would see all around me of a high school we call this the choice the six describes our model to teach so we walk you through it if you want to consider what we say to kids who are interested in applying we want you to think of your life as this tree or your career as this tree so what do you need to have a healthy tree well it starts down here in the root system and it begins with passion what do you love to do what do you do well we have an entire exploratory program designed to help kids figure that out and discover that once we figure that out we build an entire educational program around the interests and passions of that child the other thing you need in your root system is hands on experiences it's not just reading things from a book it's actually going out and doing things as i tell kids is the difference between reading about hawaii and actually going out there to experience something magical happens when we provide a lot of hands on experience and that's th and some of your other senses you're using your pride so when you come to minuteman what happens is students are literally using more of their brains so if you have a student who at some point may have been struggling a little bit they find greatest success because now they're tapping into this resource if you're an advanced student and now you're adding this into the mix or you've just enhanced your critical thinking skills because you're again literally using more of your brain just a side benefit of our program we provide the most robust academic challenge that a student can stand and that we can provide we also down here at the roots give professional schools things like well how do you write a resume how do you answer a telephone in a civilized fashion what we say to kids is this over the next four years we're building up your truck when you graduate just like everybody else you will have a high school diploma however the value added minuteman is that you will also get professional licenses and saw if you did everything we asked you to do you're going to graduate you're going to have professional licenses and a high school diploma and right here at this level of branches these are are on lock right away when you graduate ok however if you want to add a year or two of technical training or junior college here are the types of jobs you could unlock that relate to what you've already learn you want to have a four year degree here are the types of jobs that relate to what you already work i've heard people say different points hoops i've heard people say things like well you know i didn't think be and they needed to go to cause of the others the whole point that's a twentieth century mindset and let me explain it to you this way anybody here bought or lease to a brand new car in the last year ok well we little plastic hockey puck i just need a hole that in my pocket in the car knows that i get it and then i hit the start button and it starts ok so what that means is if you are a student in our automotive program little extra training that makes sense learning is a life long process and that's what we try to impart to our in fact if you want to work at minimum then you had best help our children aspire to develop their full potential so this makes total sense and i'll give you some other examples we have students in our environmental science program when they graduate from high school not only will they have the form they will have two levels of fresh water management licenses they will have a  wastewater management license they will have osha forty hazardous waste operate a license in an ocean ten car was a pretty hefty credentials so one of our students right now when she put her name where she wants to go in history it's up here and she wants to be an environmental lawyer that's brilliant what a way to connect all the dots together we have kids in koan areas and yeah i love calling harry and but you know i want to be a nutritionist someday so that's why i'm going to pursue and continue my studies one of my favorite stories one of our graduates two years ago cosmetology again people think well that that girl she will only be painting nails and you know trimming hair the rest of her life behind the chair this girl's in college studying chemistry why chemistry because she fell in love with the chemistry of cosmetology she developed a very deep connection to the academics because of what she was learning in her career area in her dream is to go out one day create her own line of beauty products awesome what an awesome reality for them so what happens a lot and when i travel there when i've been in other schools what c frustrating as an educator is really for most of the time in a traditional setting we just get it right about here at the high school diploma but there is no you know this does not professional license is going on and on this sort of stuff we end up saying to kids is ok well you got to climb a tree but your tree kind of looks like this because you're lucky you're not on a branch anywhere you somehow got to scale all we have to the top get up there into college and the risk is for a lot of kids and we see it is that as a stock getting up there they have a weak root system it turns out that they're heavy on the academics they had some experiences whatever they were but they didn't necessarily have a magic read to them they never really talked about it discovered their passion and suddenly that the tree starts to fall it's partial of an explanation as to why if you look up now colleges you know talk about for your graduation rates anymore it's not surprising t year graduation rates in part because kids go there and then they realize somewhere along here i don't know what the hell i'm doing i know what i want to do i don't know what i want to be spending an awful lot of money even in a year or two to try to figure it out for our kids have already got vision in mind so that's our model let's talk about some of the benefits that you experience and say we have loved ones and pass accountability that's the highest you can achieve in the state that's with we have almost fifty percent of our students on who are receiving special education services that would scare most people doesn't bother us because as long as you are the right kind of student that is you are motivated dedicated goal oriented we can work with a lot with that i always get asked well ok so you can help kids who need special education services can you put a kidney i think you have put a kid in mit yes you have prepared brown yes we have to keep going yeah we can do that too if you have advanced skills we push one up we also offer sports and activities which is sometimes lightning for people to to know what we do that because it's just part of being a normal everyday kid this is the place where this is one of the other places where kids develop those in trouble and intrapersonal skills that they need to cope and compete in a complex world so we offer these these things to them no cuts no fees want the kids updated participate and have fun and experience that talk a little bit about community service and creating good citizens when you three quick examples we want to camp and school called girls and stem girls and step size science technology engineering and math so it's all girls who really love what they have done is they have put together a free camp free to sixth seventh or eighth graders for in district students ok and what our girls do is they work with the younger generation and they try to tell them hey if you're a girl you know what girls can like science in engineering and technology math too and they make it really cool they have won two awards from skills usa two gold medals in the last two years for mentoring and community service their role models are plumbers and electricians to be off and do a lot of work with habitat for humanity if we're looking for a local example is burbank elementary this is what the side of it once looked like however minutemen helped to get involved in the project to create the birth of a garden classroom so all of this was done by minuteman students and so what you get is a real win win and that's what we impart you know kids it's a win win these kids are learning to develop their technical skills while being in service of these t i'll give you a case study that i think is will be enlightening because it's a great story that not a lot of people i'm sure really know and that is this is after high as a belmont resident i asked to be here tonight but she said i of you know i have a lot of homework in college so i respect that if i'm very good we've trained you well this is the story of cut out when i was growing up in northern pakistan she did not know her father very well because her father was over here in the united states trying to secure citizenship after that was one of those kids one of those little girls that like to school so she would go to school however in northern pakistan the taliban sometimes runs wild and they were in a she was living in a time where the taliban was taking to kidnapping little girls went to school and holding them threats so she can tell you how yeah you know you eventually her neighbor did get it and at that point her uncle who was serving as caretaker said all right you know what we had to go to america now and so at the age of nine he ended up settling right here in belmont and there she was the only language she could speak was pashtun she went to belmont schools who did a fantastic job building up her english skills and then she transferred over to minot and her freshman year now why was she interested him in it because she wanted to go into health assisted why because in her experience the place where she felt the most uncomfortable with her leg which beriah was in the doctor's office so i had no idea what they were saying whenever i was an assassin that's ok i have no idea what they're saying you can imagine how the felt so she came to us and obviously when she came in we could see that she was several his below in reading  not a problem at that time i was working as a reading specialist so she took my reading class and built an appropriate schedule and over a year and a half time not just between what i did but if you looked at all the other teachers did and you consider in health assisting one of their projects software years they need to master three hundred met up the most common medical terms that's awkward for learning latin roots so within a year i have time i'm looking at the test data athan and they realize wow she's worked away all the way up to proficiency at that time scholastic corp create all kinds of educational materials for several years have been running  that would say at the time in any given day there are at least a million students using scholastic software in addition to forget about how many books that they have published so when i saw that her scores were going up and no well a month and a half later i received an e mail in a package that said congratulations she's a finalist and his which you now must do here is a form you must fill up you must get one other teacher to fill a letter of recommendation  this year they were offering something new they were going to try you could produce a three minute video in support of this candidate well one site alerted the minutemen community that after you had a chance to win some money and some books and all kinds of other swag here's what happened i filled out the form and we got twenty five letters of recommendation superintendent wrote a letter the principal wrote a letter every teacher every adult guidance counselor anybody that had contact with her wrote some kind of letter in support one of our paraprofessionals approached me and said george you know what on the weekends i have a side business we make videos and weddings so i could groom a camera i could help him produce that video if you want so he made that video too we said all of that stuff it should be no surprise that after him and did win that prize she got the money she booked she got the rest of the story doesn't stop there because by the time she graduated f professional licensure is included she was a certified nursing assistant she was a trained certified k g technician the mt license first aid c p r ten to make it even better we helped her in our guidance people helped her fill out her yaki scholarship she's now at emmanuel college for free oh wrap it up with this that's a great story and i hope it's not the last story of success that we hear from phelps i know that there's a lot of question well maybe we can find the same thing somewhere else take it from a guy who's worked  lot of different high schools what's happening in the people over at me demand it's a special situation what i talked about is it giving you an overview of the model we've talked about that talked about thank you thank you george i got sort of the boring part now i guess but i'll try to comb through it quickly and we can get to dean and to questions and answers there are a lot of perceptions about minuteman one of them is that our financial model needs work and other things that we can do better financially absolutely but one of the measures of a functioning financial model i think is our annual budget increases and if you look at ten years of budget increases for then for other folk ational technical schools and they give you a measure of how the models working that's about valley regional folk school over the last ten years their budget has increased twenty eight percent the show botak has gone up about forty nine percent over that same period of time in a man's budget has gone up seventeen point eight percent and when we look at what the assessments have been to member towns because we utilize a revenue plan to offset assessments those assessments of average about one point one percent increase per year over ten years when you look at the project five years out you can see the trend is for minimal budget increases to go on a downward trend and as we go to a smaller school in a more efficient new school we expect that will happen how if we've been responsive to our own rollman over the last few years not just ups and downs but moving towards a six hundred twenty eight students school what we've staffing reductions are the most difficult kinds of reductions to make in a school they're very painful and we've taken our hits i guess over the last three years as the way to say it to be responsive another perception is that minute mance new six hundred  twenty eight school will not fill we believe it will increase for a number of reasons first of all if we look at last year compared to this year under george george's leadership and a revamping of how we talk about minuteman and how we look for the right student how we talk to folks and parents we saw forty one percent increase from minuteman member town applications in one year now that's  translated to about a fifteen percent increase in the actual in roman as of last week so we see there's a gap there and we've got to work on that also in rome and it is increasing in virtually all of our member towns in the  minuteman district and in belmont you're struggling with some of those and roman increases yourselves as is arlington as is lexington and concord we surveyed all of our member district guidance counselors in the middle school and asked them what they felt about the trends in vocational technical education and i'm going to go to that when we asked our guidance counselors eighty one percent said perceptions were improving seventy six percent of our member town middle school guidance counselors said that parents were more willing to consider a high quality career in vocational technical education seventy one percent of the guidance counselors were talking about the students felt that the students themselves were more open to looking at minute man as an option when we asked them about the competitive advantage and did of occasional education provide a competitive advantage sixty two percent said yes it did even when students were on a college track and one hundred percent of them agreed that it was a great foundation for any college track when we look at our applications in enrollment class of two thousand and one thousand in the class of two thousand and twenty now these kids will be graduate in june of two thousand and twenty and we go into a new school in september of two thousand and twenty but they're still in gauge that involved in helping us design and in finalized the construction documents with that you can see a big drop in out of district applications and out of district in roman but one number down here there were one hundred forty applications that came from out of district that we had to deem ineligible because of the new regulation there is now in place in new regulation that requires those students who come from a community that have five or more vocational programs such as walth or bedford or somerville or cambridge or boston those students are not allowed to come and explore a program of their choice in the ninth grade even if their home school does not offer that program they are eligible to come to minutemen once they complete their exploratory and when you look at some of the exploratory programs that are offered in some of the other schools that i just mentioned some of them are only a few weeks long so we anticipate in my goal is that twenty five of these one hundred forty will be with us as sophomores but it's a new kind of communications challenge and it's a it's pretty discouraging to these families and also you got to imagine when those hundred forty kids are in the high school and they get imbedded in the high school the courage it takes to leave after freshman year is pretty significant so we're going to see and track how this works but when you look overall are in rome and from last year to this year is about the say there's a need to go up yes it does need to go up but it's about the same so we're meeting the challenge right now of this new regulation we're meeting the challenge of increasing in rome and from our towns the other reason we think minuteman will fill and be filled by the time it opens in fall of two thousand and twenty is when you look at the other new vocational schools that have been built over the last ten years obviously open yet but in these three schools here when they opened they were at enrollment or had a waiting list there have not been very many vocational technical schools built in the last decade but those that have been built in these schools struggled with enrollment for years and years prior to their new school and is it a new shiny school that does it of course that has some impact but what it really does is it creates an environment where the educational program plan matches the facility in our facility that there are programs we offer that were never imagined in the late sixty's and early seventy's when these schools were being built perception it's cheaper to be a nonmember well belmont save some money in the short run by being outside well if they're outside the district a day absolutely if the meeting votes to withdraw from the district that withdrawal would become effective july first two thousand and twenty a few months before the new school opens but belmont students would then be non members so we had to project for the m s p a what our budget would be in two thousand and twenty we also projected what the cost of out of district students would be if there were thirty nine students attending from belmont and we used thirty nine because right now we have eleven freshman in times fo that's forty four and we you know not ten percent off of that so it's very likely that this would be about the enrollment in four years from belmont because belmont students over the next three years will be members will be treated like members will be given the you know the emphasis on their application that we can give to member town students we cannot give nine member town students a leg up over member town students so in this analysis which has been looked at by a number of folks right now the per pupil assessment would be about thirty one thousand dollars in two thousand and twenty and if you were nonmember you're going to be paying tuition are going to be paying transportation will be a capital fee associated with the new building there is some outstanding debt that would still be on belmont would be on the hook for that was assessed before this building project and then special ed services average about forty five hundred dollars a student and if you figure about fifty percent of the students are on i p s that's another twenty two hundred and you're up around thirty one thousand so that concludes my bits about perceptions and facts i'll be able to answer more questions in a moment i want to turn over to dean carmen dean and they clap for george not for me and show most of our most of my opposition was in the period two thousand six hundred to want to start there so arlington for a long time was passionately against it and i mean the desk we don't want to be in the district we don't like the district and what we did we had very specific things we didn't like about the school to school was too big twelve hundred to student school there one hundred fifty kids in the school we had this very odd one town one vote structure so arlington has historically sent a third of the member expensive high school in the state it was only getting worse and then you were very frustrated with the gap between member nonmember tuition to two thousand and ten came along we had the feasibility study it went to all sixteen member towns in a camp to belmont it won everywhere else we had our hearing in arlington and we just voted it down at the finance committee and it was just simple now we're done and so what we found out of nowhere at the time i think we feel a lot like you that feel that we didn't think we'd be alone in opposing it we thought someone else would vote against it and then we found out we were the only town finance committee who was opposed to the building to the feasibility study so the town manager in arlington brian solve and dr mcclelland went up to the end this b a wanted to see us and we worked on a compromise with terms and conditions that minimum would have to meet before we would go forward with the building project and so we'll talk about those so that the why is arlington change position as well as i'll go through in the next few slides after we laid out the terms that we felt we needed to reform the district we said we're not moving we're not approving a bill that we're not supporting it to all these terms and that our view of it in arlington is that the terms of got there and we've reached a point where governments of the district moving forward will work to the big one i'm just going to go through them sort of our analysis of the situation the really big one is the change in voting as i said it was a one town one vote system didn't matter if you sent a third of the kids it didn't matter if you sent two kids you got the same go well under the regional agreement that we all passed i actually think arlington in belmont passed at the same night in february that has gone away if you remember in your new regional agreement we have proportional voting and so what i did as i said let's look at the towns that are currently in the district and let's show what what voting would look like and so if you think about it that's the voting on the school committee level so it's go back to analysis of two thirds to pass the vote before you need eleven out of sixteen taps so if you were belmont you like them and you didn't like the budget you  to find yourself in five other communities to vote against it now wonder weighted voting how do we reject a budget well what convinces arlington or belmont convinces lexington the lancaster we're defeating the budget pretty you're defeating the budget pretty quickly and that to us was a big big thing because it leads to fiscal control because the people that are paying the money get a vote in line with the with the spending we also like the size of the school it's a much smaller building it's fifty percent smaller than the current building but i know there were it's there was a group of towns that one of four hundred fifty but we sort of accepted under the m s b a study process that six hundred students was going to be the minimum and the challenge of course is we could build a foreigner fifty students school but you're doing it without m s b it reimbursement and it's as we all know when you build schools and i know you guys are going to the belmont high project great now course spaces are core spaces so it's not as if one hundred forty five million dollars minuteman school would be you know twenty five percent smaller if it was a foreigner fifty students will you still need a gym you still need a cafeteria and still need all the core spaces and so we were comfortable with the six hundred twenty eight student number not because it was a minute and number but because it was an m s p a number ninety five inside corridor in arlington we've actually put back in all junior high back into service going back in two thousand and eighteen to alleviate some of our birds in belmont you put six modules at the middle school and so when you look at the enrollment crisis brooklyn brookline and wellesley felt at first they just they're crushed with kids right and then following that is lexington arlington belmont and now the challenge be in new enough a new job right in which many kids in school right now and you know you those going right back up because the projections if you look at the enrollment crisis inside of ninety five is the next dominoes to fall are going to be new york are going to cambridge some and possibly medford waltham now the interesting thing about medford waltham is and arlington is forty five thousand residents waltham at one hundred thousand we have more kids in our public schools than that so if you start thinking about the next domino to fall it's probably walther and it could be medford and so you run into this arlington we want to send kids to your school oh no no no we had forty two hundred kids now into public schools in the year two thousand we have fifty five hundred kids today and we're going to top out at sixty five hundred we couldn't afford we couldn't take and the easy to provide vocational education so just because it minimum withdraws from the distant withdraws from the district just because we don't have a choice to go anywhere doesn't mean vocational education stops it is the state that makes you build programs in house where they make you find accommodation so then there's the expectation we do have an expectation in arlington that the school is going to reach pasadena we've looked at the historic trends of vocational schools and we also look you know we also look around at the other towns and we start to say it's going to be a nice place to go to school and so we're very concerned if we had a very small school that arlington would be outside and have no and be in a crisis and we're also conscious of the fact that when the state put forty five million dollars into a building they have skin in the game so i hear a lot of people say to me well minutemen might fail i mean it won't get rolled the state's just going to let it crumble so i say ok so your thesis statement to me that's usually not like it is after putting fifty million dollars in the school the treasurer treasurer goldberg and governor baker just going to let it collapse there i mean if anything to work to do what they can to prop it up and they're also in a lot of other concerns that we're aware of so we talk about the regional vocational schools but a lot of the internal vocational schools  new yes and so there is a concern there i think with some of the programs that some of them might say hey look it's going to be too costly it's going to be too difficult to keep these programs and house maybe we can join minuteman and with a better regional agreement with better voting belmont to prepare so we were moving along in the in the in the late fall last in two thousand fifteen early winter and we thought we had the regional agreement sort of nailed down and then the representative from belmont said no no we want to change and the changes we want written into the regional agreement that not million member towns can not pay less than member tops unless the school committee a person that was what we always call in arlington the belmont amendment that we had at the last second put it in agreed  on the finance committee and go from there so these are our views of that and then we sort of look at and we say ok if you're a city a town with an approval good program and you're sending kids talk to minuteman sort of a one off that you're for overflow in your school member towns to say they shouldn't be subject to an agreement that they signed on to and so when i look at the six towns that have already left the district when we get to two thousand a team with this could be our first shot at it they're going to tough time and some of those county look you know we have way in the voting we have control of the district we can put spending control controls and we can work on bringing in new members we can do a host of other things as if as people know it became very public recently the numbers are going to be the same capital charge there's no way out you can't just in arlington we just can't pay last because we're not running and the last thing i think it was very important for us is being a member allowed us to pass a debt exclusion for prop two and a half so for the third life of the thirty year life of the bonding we're not going to see volatility within the operating budget and so what i mean by that is right now our own kid has their set number of kids that we set now that number could go up that number could go down and what we don't want to be in a situation of is that the number goes to the number starts to creep up and we have a large percentage of school we have to pay more of the capital charge which is a possibility because our in rome and probably like you guys it's very heavy the elementary schools right with three hundred kids per grade are like an eye for a kid kid for  kids per grade at the autism middle and the elementary about five hundred kids per color our concern is our kids our membership goes up the cost of building goes up and as a as a member we exempted it outside the limits of prop two and a half which allows us to put on the level we had to go to the law we're very happy with that we did voting i mean that let you reform the district it's no longer one town one vote it's proportional based on how much you're spending and it give the larger towns enough enough say in the ma and four years to belmont high and so i spent a lot of time over the years listening to this discussion and i have to say whether you stay in the district or not is your decision ok but  one thing that bothered me about this discussion is what i view at times as sort of an anti vocational rhetoric in the reason i'm pointing that out and i'll say this to anyone ok hundred sixty eight kids graduated from my high school class in the class of ninety five out of belmont high i was one sixty seven ok and if you don't think that's reality go to the treasurer's office or go to the upper school middle school secretary's office and ask them how their son dean did in high school and they will say oh my god you know their head will go down and any of you who know me are like yeah you're a disaster ok i didn't belong at belmont high i shouldn't have and they're ok and it wasn't until and i sort of got passed through because in the ninety's when you had the kid who was dyslexic and had h d and had two rats and that's when i cough and i sit in that chair nonstop you just declared them lazy or stupid and you move them through the school district ok into i have to say the one thing that kills me and then i hear people will turn around and say well yeah but you know these kids shouldn't go to college well to sort of carve out the story after i graduated with my point eight g p s a lot of belmont high school and got counseling and therapy and all sorts of things like that i finally pulled my life together and went to northeastern university where they said you know don't study foreign languages and we custard academic program i graduated from northeastern with on earth with degree in accounting i'm a licensed c at my company and i need something in place right so to imply that a kid with a learning disability which is fifty percent of the minuteman kids are being poorly served by going to college i just want to cry like i sit there and  to myself it's fine if you don't want to support the school it's fine if you don't want to pay the cost but please don't guaranteed all over these kids in make these comments about them that go that when your kid who comes out of the middle school and you're not doing well and you suddenly go don't get get get trapped in this sort of anti vocational education rhetoric with those kids don't deserve a future because those kids deserve a future like yeah those kids deserve a future like i had but they don't deserve to get through the system and have to figure it out when they're eighteen years old so thank you dean i really appreciate your sharing with us so now is the time for question and answers there are copies of the presentation over there if people need their memories jogged about a particular question scuse me but if you have a question please come up to the microphone and if you'd say your name and and i'll either try to answer or last one of the panelists  wondering if my student would be able to access vocational education that has a special ed component like minuteman does and i don't know if there is an option like that on a financial side our per pupil assessment the costs of special ed are embedded in that for the member towns if you looked and had to go out of district for a vocational technical program for a special ed student those out as district to wish and rates are very high i don't know if this would be an appropriate comparison but at minuteman the lab collaborative of which belmont is a member operates a career directions program there and that that yes that's a great question because there's a lot of different ok i'm sorry the question was and i'll paraphrase the question and correct me if i'm wrong but what's the obligation of the town to provide access to vocational technical education in under chapter seventy four regulations under the admissions criteria it's up to the student in the family and their application the student in the family can make an application to any vocational program they want because belmont is currently a member of minuteman those programs that minuteman offers there's a sort of a clear pathway into minuteman for belmont students if a student from belmont wanted to go to essex aggie or norfolk aggie they would make that application and then the town if the student was accepted the superintendent would need to sign eight out of district to wish and form by april first of each year and then the town would have to pay for the tuition transportation and special ed services so at this point in time and it may change in the future it's up to the family where they want to go so it was not a member of minutemen they could certainly apply to minuteman as a nonmember their application would get second class status as all nonmembers would but they could apply to multiple vocational schools in the year i know the superintendent failon has talked about looking into negotiating agreements with several vocational schools in the area i think that has yet to be done but you could have a scenario where you have let's say thirty nine s students going to five or six different vocational schools and the transportation talk for a minute man the harvard vote tech as they want it only choice and she said it worked great that's where all our students want to go but she said we had one kid wanted to go to norfolk egg it was spending sixty thousand a year in transportation sixty thousand years that's what i've heard also didn't offer environmental science and robotics so for a nonmember town my son wants to do plumbing he's king going to minuteman delmas just going to have to put him on a bus there years ok so that's my one question about transportation  some interesting facts on chronicle about thirty five percent of dyslexics don't graduate high school fifty percent of them are in juvenile detention sixty percent of adolescents and drug and alcohol rehab program really am grateful to the staff and george's model that he described where we really try to take care of the whole child beginning to nurturing them out just very proud you precinct for a neighbor and i were talking the other day about if delma was not a member of the district but sent students to minuteman how the students would to students be treated the same as the other students or that would they be at some disadvantage no no once a student is accepted there in the family we don't put little dots on their hats if they're from one town or another we they're all the same they have access to everything just like a member town student would ok so one of the questions that came up let's say a class was oversubscribed do member town skit get the tiebreaker or is it oh and them are if there is a and we have this problem now in some program areas environmental technology biotechnology  some years plumbing some years electrical there are more students that want that program than we have space for because our spaces is defined by the state we cannot exceed a certain student teacher ratio  so in that case what we go back to is their scores during their exploratory period so they explore seven different program areas and we would rank students if we needed to based upon their performance during the exploratory period and we do not differentiate that performance based on member or nonmember status at this time thank i think i have a some i'm david webster precinct four and i think i have a summer line of question because you said you used the term second class status and then you said you don't but that's on their heads so let's start with an in the application phase and then in when once you're in the school are there i and you went through the perceptions and thank you very much all of you for coming out for the presentation tonight i had heard that if there was a particularly popular program that the preference would go to the member schools and that would fill up first and then the nominee wolf that's right on the is that true on the admission sign are admissions policy currently doesn't differentiate between member towns and non member towns as we've looked towards the future and expect to have more applications and we have slots for overall we've been discussing whether or not we should have some sort of a extra point if there are a member versus a nonmember but currently that's not in our admissions policy it's so you have the discretion to set that as a school admissions policy is approved by the school committee and then it's sent to the department of ed and they have to get final approval but there are admissions policies out there now in other vocational schools that have experienced waiting lists for many years that favor member town applicants but in some schools they don't even accept a member nonmember applications now ok so that can cut both ways for us in belmont that you know because there's no guarantee being a member town that you have a preference over a nonmember town the same one if we vote to be out of the membership right now that wouldn't hurt us but your policy may change and i would expect it would need to change as we got into an just to add to that from from arlington to perspective and dr klein's heard this a lot is it's i know it's arlington's position i know it's a cover of member towns position that if this school were to become oversubscribed that the arlington represents a school committee will be pushing like all hat for a tiered system and are pretty clear if you have a tiered system that we've said before is which start with the member towns and we'd get them admitted first and then what we what we assume is going to happen over time is we're going to have these what i would almost call we've called would go second and then whatever's left would be a lottery in the nonmember towns because i think our view of the thing is you know we're sending a third of the kids and paying money we're not going to have one of our kids rejected from the school simply because a nonmember town wants to send five kids off and when a student is accepted in the minute man is accepted in a particular program or in the minuteman school and then you know some selection process it's a really good question and the bell months and nonmember you need to be mindful of this you when a student makes an application they put three programs down in order of their preference so they do apply for programs but admissions policies across the commonwealth require that all students shall explore other programs not just the ones that they selected and we used to have an exploratory program where the kids explored all nineteen we found we've adjusted that now where the kids explore seven of their program well they become like that then how can you fill up by program because you don't know what program to get kids come in for we do buy them well over one choice you fill up the sand idea how can you fill up cosmetology if it would be the following year where that would really have an impact because ok in the middle of their ninth grade they select their final program they're in there as freshman so during that time we know who's applying for the following year and what the preference lists are so we can project where there may be over subscriptions ok but it sounds like a black and white with some leeway and it's not black and white but i would say ninety percent of the kids who apply get their first choice and then they get on a waiting list and probably by the time their sophomore is there's probably there's less than half a dozen that are in their first choice right now ok but the take home for our vote is what you both said which is right now there's no preference but that could very well change this far a then i think dean was emphasizing in fact that it would change ok all right so last time was they just didn't answer that they think it's sort of an important point in all of this is when i say it's arlington's view and we've talked about it that we would put the preferential system  and i think the question you have to ask is so yes it will can arlington get through oh well if you were a member town why would you exclude your children from the school so it's i don't think it's one of these things i say it's arlington's positions among members that you would exclude wouldn't exclude your own kids an example i would give you  if you had just you know it's like a school choice program i mean if if you exclude school choice in belmont if we have school choice in arlington and you run into a system where that program would squeeze your own kids out you make a decision so i say it's arlington's position but it's most likely every other member town ok hi my name's wayne with a cinnamon district five i think you might have answered the question i have but my son he'd be he'd be of age to go to minuteman in two thousand and twenty would be if we pull out that would be the last year  that we'd be a member town so he'd be going through deciding which vocation he'd want to do what he pick at that point and and pick it as a student from a member town or would  be the year after if your son was an eighth grader yeah in the two thousand and one thousand two thousand and twenty school year when he would be treated as a member town student he would make an application as an eighth grader in two minute men and we would treat those applications the same we had this discussion with the superintendent of wayland just recently because he asked the same thing you know in my because they're leaving  of this year so they have eighth grade applications and now and we have decided that we're going to treat students as members students until they're not and then and what that means for me is not only will he be able to come as a freshman the billing will be different for the town but the experience for the student is going to be unobstructed they would have preference they would  also not be excluded based upon that status we've had a montra you know around this whole process we've been through we're not going to let students suffer because of the yes that's part of the that's part of the process for in district towns is in the fall actually started out in october where i go out i usually take a handful of students with me we set up a forty five minute presentation or so to the kids were shown the video we talk about that career tree that i talked about with you and the kids talk about their experience and cherry is there we are we are going to china and we hope that that keeps up the challenges for if you go out  for one road so you're here tonight to convince us not to leave minuteman correct i'm here to provide facts around the ok the withdrawal or the remaining in the district ok six towns a they are leaving that's a good question we did have presentations in those towns i was allowed to speak at their town meetings there were lots of meetings leading up to the vote which i was involved in there were side meetings i would call them of selectmen from all of those communities for a number of months more than a year actually and i would say the reason that they're leaving is because they the majority of them that are leaving sent so few students on an annual basis that they felt comfortable at that time this was prior to the school building project being approved as well they felt that they would rather pay the extra of being outside of the district and being in the district and being subjected to a portion of the capital formula which they found from an optical point of view on a per pupil basis was not defensible in their towns for instance a town like weston would have to pay sixty five thousand dollars a student if they only sent one or two students well one watertown join or you talk all they may now there certainly is some incentives built into the regulations that they would have to pay a capital fee that would average what the members pay that's an incentive if the school as we expect becomes over and rolled there students would lose access there's also built into the regional agreement an incentive for three years for new members where they would gradually ramp up their capital contribution to full membership over four years there's also some changes in watertown so they may consider it kevin and i have met with them several times over the last few years and they've always said ad first thing they said was well depending where i was at or eddie eddie give me a new regional agreement that i'll talk to you we're not going to send all these kids and only have one vote we heard arlington complaining all these years and the next thing was any when you get your new building pass come and see us again so we put a lot of things in place over the last few years and you know we're hopeful  have some substantive discussions with us about that ok well thank you mike nerd town meeting member been a town meeting member for a number of years now and at every time annual town meeting we spend an inordinate amount of time talking about minute man compared to the effect on the budget and what's always discussed is the difference in tuition between member towns and nonmember tollens and talk about it every year and i think there's always been a perception that that's been a political thing that the sense sets the nonmember tuition low as a political calculation last time we were in this building together senator brown's burger was speaking and he said it's not a political thing it's an economic thing that dessie sets the nonmember to which i'm for minuteman or i don't do they set it for and same for every school ok that is set for economic reasons not political reasons and that the commissioner is trying to balance and make sure that enrollment is where it needs to be across all the vocational schools and i want to give you an opportunity to respond to that statement by senator rou were here but you were not allowed to speak and i was wondering what you thought of that statement senator runs burger senator brown's worker made a lot of statements that evening that were concerning to me  but in regards to that specific statement around the commissioner's actions not being political i disagree with that respectfully disagree with that i was in the room with the commissioner and the other superintendents as that were part of the solved collaborative when they made the case to him around the exorbitant tuition rates that he was charging and that they were  complaining vigorously and these were some very large communities summerville while for them medford boston joined the group and it was soon after that that the commissioner began reducing the rate from one hundred  fifty percent of foundation to one hundred twenty five percent of foundation so i think the evidence is clear that it was political and if you're a superintendent in a community fighting for your budget money equals politics so i don't see how they could be separated from one another from a superintendent's point of view than do you given so we have the belmont amendment but if you look a little little bit below that belmont amendment doesn't have any teeth because it's subject to state regulation so if the if the commissioner says i don't care what your regional agreement says this is the mission of the the tuition for nonmember towns that you have no recourse at that point is that correct well we don't set the tuition for non member towns he does what that what the agreement is confusing about i think is that it assumes that we would try to create a tuition rate greater than what the commissioner set that i know we he would not allow and we've never proposed that we have when i first came to minuteman there were discounted rates for nonmembers because they would send a certain number of students per year and as those ran out i didn't renew them  o i'm not sure the way nonresident to wish and rates are set is based upon the expenditures of the school the previous year when you look at the nonresident rate and how many schools it's impacting now years ago is only minuteman and keefe tech and maybe one other now there's about sixteen of the twenty eight regional vocational schools that have a depressed or suppressed nonresident tuition rate that's going to well up to calm a political problem for the commissioner and there may be some more superintendents in my position across the state that will be advocating for a review of how that tuition is set and i think that's in the very near future ok then lastly senator brown's burger stated that given the fact that you know the belmont amendment may result in higher nonmember town tuitions and then layering on the capital charge on top of that will depress enrollment from the water to towns and the weal who just will refuse to pay those fees and therefore there will be economic pressure on the minuteman district to reduce the capital charge below one hundred percent of the the per pupil allocation so that you can fill the school that is that's what senator brown's berger was indicating and i want to give you a chance to respond i want to dissipate that being an issue if it is an issue we'll deal with it we if the commissioner and the regulatory regulations are in place we don't have the authority to supersede those regulations or sidestep them if neither does watertown watertown can't say i'm we're not sending our kids to you anymore because as i said earlier the process for kids applying to vocational schools it's the student and their families choice of where they apply so if that's if watertown's going to have an issue at that point they're going to have an issue with the board of education thank you a member again it's a great question john currently the regional agreement if if if belmont votes to withdraw there on a track to withdraw there's a three year  period of time that that withdrawal becomes effective if at some point during that time town meeting votes to reconsider that vote or a new vote is taken there's not some there's not real clarity in the regional agreement about the process for that but i would imagine that it would have to be approved by the sitting school committee school which  but i thought you were saying that during the let me let me try to say like this if you vote to leave the tester right you have your you continue to be a member and you go to the you go to the next july so first you out and seventeen then for three years you if you want to come back in you can't you community of the newtown procedure there's no moment where you can after you've been a lot out that you can say oh it's that we walk back can't you say it's not i heard someone to me it's a three year grace period not something they can rethink and in a month even apparently you know the other thing i wanted to comment on was to contrast the difference between the presentation that the assistant superintendent the principal principal w may raise you get a raise or at about the program it the minute man and what it does and who the kids are and the success of various things and the rest of what we've been talking about almost all the rest of the time what to has talked about almost entirely over the years which is finance finance and power power i think that's a terrible shame and i think one way we can do something about it is to start and maybe tonight we can begin it a little bit to organize a group of belmont citizens school people in support of been a man so that we can present th case as you have tonight but not make you trek in and the whole staff as well to do what we could do for ourselves and talk even more about the the substance of education rather than its cost we have five minutes left so this will this is a quick there's another question get in line please judy finds precinct five i'm looking for a really clear statement of who has the authority to set the capital cost component not member tuitions under the new agreement seems like i've gotten squishy answers in various things i've read so there's a regular there's a regulation regarding that the department of it is released its formula in the department of education will be computing that for two classifications of communities class a community like belmont would be what you have no vocational technical programming class b would be a town like waltham which has five or more we have in to subpoenaed that the class a capital fee would be around eighty four hundred dollars the class b would be seventy five percent of that that's in the they want to know going into the future will the nonmember charges be comparable to the member charges and this is a follow up to mark wagner he was talking about the same issue the question i have is do you as the superintendent and the committee follow the policy of trying to achieve that going into the future to achieve a comparability between nonmember and member operating costs we have no policy that compels us to work towards that goal your sense as a superintendent my sense is in the short term that it would be comparable and the sure in the very short term like i mentioned earlier the operating costs for a member are slightly higher than a nonmember but as we move into the new building a more efficient structure to reduce transportation bill some reduction in staffing that our operating per pupil assessment would be less than what the tuition is but you have to remember that the tuition rate follows the expenditures of the school itself so in other words if you looked at in a show but tax tuition rate it's down around fifteen thousand dollars ours is around sixteen thousand four hundred so our tuition rate would start to go down and so they would tend to membership in the district and this relates to the passage of a debt exclusion which i believe i linked to did you but i don't understand fully what this means by saying being a member of a lot arlington to pass a debt exclusion which will protect against volatility in a moment if our membership increases we do not need to cut out the parts of the operating budget to fund the project and being a nonmember with growing in rome and could lead to cuts in service and showing pragmatical the fact that if belmont does keep its membership and does go for a debt exclusion you're indicating that there are certain benefits flowing from that and i'd like to have a cryer for cation on that short so we spent a lot of time looking at this in arlington and if just try to put it into real numbers let's say the capital charges eight thousand dollars per student let's say you sent one hundred thousand we sent letter we sent one hundred students right so that's about eight hundred thousand dollars per year right now so then let's say let's say in five years we sent one hundred fifty students well now the operating cost for the same building is one point two million dollars so we passed exclusion so what happens the way the mechanics work on regional vocational schools clear memory it's this is it's not like a like the belmont i project where you bond where belmont bond for the building minuteman bonds for their own building and then they assess to capital charge until we fall following the rules of regional vocational allocations as we put the eight hundred thousand let's say in year one would go on top of the tax rate like a prop two like the top of prop two and a half if it went up to one point two million it still stays on top of the tax levy doesn't get doesn't go into the operating budget it's over it that's contrast to let's say the operating costs because if the operating cost is just used easy numbers because i can't figure them out  five hundred thousand and then the two are just the number of kids goes up fifty percent so now your tuition is seven is it goes up fifty percent to seven hundred fifty thousand because it's in the operating budget you're adding two hundred fifty thousand for operating you have to take that under of somewhere your prop two and half override only gives you two and a half percent probably not going to cover the two fifty so now you have to either cut somewhere else or you have to have it on operating off or out and so that's kind of the advantage we have right now of being able  member to put it out for a proper two and a half that exclusion because it's not an operating exclusion the debt exclusion is a small funny aside doc i told our bench this dr cullen of the six member towns that voted to leave one of them had a debt exclusion on the ballot joy present for a clarification if you would with the advantage to a member on and on number i heard earlier years so that there was no difference in application once they are admitted right now will the state regulation requires that we accept member towns before we accept nonmember town student applicants but once they accepted we treat them the same ok i get i didn't hear that i heard that they were tested and treated tested and treated equally but i didn't hear that entrance and i want to make sure that some full sized otherwise why would you be a member correct if you can't get into the club without a membership fee acad why no why would you join and a three year hiatus could you explain that i did i heard somebody ask about it and you said if you if we vote way why why is there are three out of the way the rete regional agreement is written it was anticipated there in the discussions of the regional agreement that if a town were to leave to leave all in one year would cause too much pain to the rest of the towns trying to pick up the last assessments of that town so it was a reasonable trajectory out to give the town's time to recover from that when the example was arlington in less happier times when arlington was trying to get out we were thinking well if our anything gets out that's a third of the revenue that if that happens in one year it could be devastating to the remaining towns in regards to an increase in their assessments the following year so it was a humane way for a town to leave and give proper notice it was you who remain wary to minuteman yes and to the remaining members districts so in other words if they dropped out and took their purse with them it would be devastating to all the remaining students crime and towns crime but it's also humane for the children right and the reason one arlington agreed to it is if you're a freshman it made it right now ok but like dr khan said we shouldn't punish the children for the actions of the adults you should be able even if belmont said hey we're going somewhere else we're going to shush and you got into shushing freshman i mean a man now should be able to finish their education they shouldn't be ripped out from all their friends and shushing so when we are linked perspective what we liked about the three years was if we wanted to leave it would let existing freshmen continue to be educated with their coworkers because it's not three years immediately it's three years from july what the following july one but i heard earlier that if the student was in the they don't count in this political quagmire that they would get the education and not be punished leave and they want to go to aa now the regional folks will they want to start a whole program in their own school what the three year window does that allows existing kids to stay and then you can start the new kids in another guest and that's what it was partly designed well what happens if a student let's say this vote takes place and it's a negative from our perspective and to stone a student joins next year he's goes to here she goes two years and then the regional agreement although the town becomes a cut off if you will he gets the he or she gets the same treatment as was stated but the finances would be different correct the discussion was taken place here before we went to the polls right after we left here there were some state changes which could have altered the vote had they been done thirty days all on ninety days before we got into those discussions they weren't allowed to be discussed here because they didn't take place what do you must know what they are but what do you expect in the next two or three years you allude to the fact that maybe there's going to be changes all along the line and that's information we need to know when we go before tom meeting auto meeting needs to know all what your anticipation of changes so that we can make a former informa i think the future and i'm not sure if i'm answering your question appropriately but the changes that i see coming are really the changes i talked about earlier in terms of in rome and increases leveraging different aspects of the new regional agreement that would interest towns and joining minuteman that currently are nonmembers i think those are some of the changes i i can foresee and talk about with confidence  i know that a career in technical education is valued highly by this governor we've been the recipient of a lot of grant funds we see more grant application funds coming just this past week so i think career technical education general is on on a trajectory of use that word a lot but it's on a trajectory of respect that it has never had in my career thank you and a final question come on and off to look at the demographics in and the various elements of that so we started looking at the potential to go to another school we want to regionals and we can find one then we went to the town today in which program when you look at their demographic trending and you start to say ok well let's say range has fifteen hundred kids in it if you just look at their elementary schools in the cohort size coming in it's going to go back up to two thousand kids and so the question then becomes from an arlington perspective is when cambridge rindge and latin especially not even the whole like the latin side when it came or dreams were to reach capacity would they continue to allow arlington students in and our calculation on this was no they wouldn't ok so we could run into this sort of evan flop over over twenty thirty years where his school enrollment goes up right get you you you're pushed out and you have to go elsewhere that it might go down and maybe you could get back  that that cost benefit analysis just is the calculation wasn't worth the risk it wasn't worth the risk of putting arlington children into a system where they couldn't get quality vocational education into we never even got to the second phase of it of saying is the academic programming in this school on par with minute man it's not when they have the same opportunities they wouldn't right now and where do you go from there and then one other point i would make is that they want them medford and i strike a deal while their hands and all our location the kids to walk there they still don't have all the programming so we still have to find another and joe it's interesting if you have the desi website they actually list all of the regional vocational schools and they list all of the int and what we did it was actually kind of cool thing is take one minute and offers then take all those other ones offer and show how you pull a pact work together to obtain the scene vocational education just for mileage perspective it's a or demanded that one question one follow up which adamantly opposed to in a public forum so i won't get to do what i want to do a town meeting unless i get creative and i try to so all sadia tonight i just didn't know sussman as we sat here thought came to me that we spent five million dollars on this one poll it's open three months a year that's twenty five years of the give and give and no inflation and i didn't factor that and shame on me all of paying for those minuteman issues that the town has brought of two thousand dollars it's a simple mathematical issue and and again we seem to swim all want to swim and sport more than we want