with your permission is take a look at the findings of the four reports that are in to the extent the time allows us and to have conversations questions about each in turn ok the first we've got four of the eight modeling groups let me explain again modeling groups were assembled last late last summer they involve members of the school committee members of the administrative staff and teaching staff members of the community and our topics of their exploring an attempt to define what the long term trends in each of these topical areas are and then to predict what the financial implications of those trends are hence the work of those groups feeds into the work of the education side of this financial taskforce and while the primary concern obviously here is long range financial stability and projection  i wanted to start with what i think is the mound ational document that and that is the instructional modeling and innovation report because from the school but apartment's point of view it's all about into ruction it's all about students and their engagement with teachers over content that is that is the core of an educational institution the instructional modeling group did not come up with any kind of financial projections but the all sorts of implications i believe in the report about long term financial needs that will sustain support not only the consistent high quality of instruction that the months come to  well known for but also innovation change that is productive and effective if i may i think what what's most useful is for us to turn to the very last page of the instructional report which is if you will an executive summary of the findings i do want to put this in the context we just received this week our official state indicator of per pupil expenditure  belmont that average per pupil expenditure for belmont is twelve thousand six hundred fifty nine dollars so for each student it costs twelve thousand six hundred fifty nine dollars during the course of fiscal  n to educate the child is an average and an average is an average doesn't represent any individual student it also is a distortion because it doesn't include the discretionary funds that come to the district it doesn't include fees paid for special activities or things like that the actual privilege expenditure is higher than the twelve thousand six hundred fifty nine but that's at least one benchmark ok because it's a financial expert did you mean to look at the actual summary in instruction one of the things that we want to do is to continue planning for projects that are aligned with our goal of universe alexis this is in a strategic goal universal access to technology including the one to one i pod i pad program at belmont high school where in the twenty first century one of our academic obligations is to teach students how to use  certainly financial implications to the use of technology we've been partnering with film on education association we've been partnering with an independent and generous donor who is also supported a lot of our professional development  there is i think and illusion that use of information technology is going to save a lot of money in the long run because that we won't have to buy textbooks but you do have to buy subscription to series you have to buy department that there is a necessary cost saving as we move into the use of information technology in our instruction we need to investigate the creation and delivery of a digital citizenship program for the secondary level that is  adept at the use of the media against his will we need to instruct them in the conscientious use we need to increase ways to identify and mobile computing devices at all levels but we also have to sequence the implementation of hardware we have to advocate for staff trained in the use of technology there's a cost training and we need to implement your plan to install and replace the smart boards that are instrumental teaching devices at this point  what i also want to do to point to that isn't in this summary is that as a school department in the commonwealth of massachusetts we are aligning the overall curriculum with the national core standards and this  how disappointed and upset she is with the core standards because she's concerned that her grandchild is not meeting them and their dad way too difficult and i said it's interesting because in massachusetts there is a political conversation saying that we are watering down our standards because of the core standards i don't think either character or a caricature is accurate i think the core standards are are valid they're legitimate and they're based upon in fact the massachusetts standards but aligning the curriculum for those standards also has financial implications because we do have to have materials that match you've heard us talk over the last couple years about the the new math series of interviews that we believe  with core standards and he said was just describing this morning how different it is from the math that we may have learned because it's not just simply teaching the al gore thems about maddox is trying to teach mathematical thinking which is  that desperately needed if we're going to be headed even the twenty first century much of the summary here has to do with the use of technology but in the text itself there is discussion of the core curriculum in the way it's in which we need to be ensuring that our students are aligned with them with those expectations i think it's probably most profitable profitable probably is as i introduce these these reports and i don't know that you necessarily had a chance to read through the b s because i know that they were sent to you electronically but this is a hard copy if there are comments or questions that you want to raise now or if you would prefer for me to proceed through the other two of the three reports and then talk about them as a whole the mind of a court the report is final the work is not right because it's part of our own unfolding strategic planning implementation there is a continual review of seven critical of core instructional areas proposals made for materials that have to be purchased and that indeed is that it through the school committee subcommittee on curriculum instruction if there's any new it adoption of a series comes back to the full committee so you it's a continuing work in progress it's an annual review of one particular area of the four instruction fact we just finished last year the physical education health components of the suspend that cycle review but we're now back on track so it's an ongoing review process and then we try to to respond to and to implement innovative practices when possible one expert economists to incorporated instruction in the classroom i'm very proud to say that the economics team that it's formed out of belmont high school is nationally competitive in that we set them to take a look at is the report from the enrollment modeling group and this will be obviously an ongoing piece of work that falls to both school com page three the first full paragraph and let me just read it for the fifteen year period from school year one thousand nine hundred ninety nine through the current school year two thousand thirteen fourteen the official kindergarten through grade twelve in rome and in belmont has grown by five hundred ninety nine students from three thousand five hundred thirty seven to four thousand one hundred forty six a total enrollment growth of sixteen point here holland was in the last us office way too long and everything was stable as all does fall during the most recent eight school years the official k to twelve in roman has gone by five hundred fifty three students a cumulative growth rate of fifteen point four percent during this span there was only one year of declining enrollment the average annual in roman growth is one point nine percent thus the average annual rate of growth exceeded the preceding five year seven year rate of growth of one point three percent the two thousand and thirteen roman projections from the new english school development council indicate a continued growth of over three hundred students during the next five years to school year two thousand eight hundred two thousand nineteen with an additional projected growth of three hundred seventy students for the following five years that's a projected growth and over the next decade of six hundred seventy students ten percent more than ten percent however these projections do not take into account major developments such as a cushion square project or potential uplands development over the next decade belmont might well quire more than six hundred used certainly it's essential to note that projections for the out years  reliable for the variety of reasons that as dick notes of the preface of course what i want to point out is that if we go back to that that average per pupil expenditure of twelve thousand five hundred dollars and  mean because it is our class sizes are increasing when actually you know we don't add in we haven't really the first structural cost it's just that it's a it's a it's a slippery figure because you already have infrastructure in place right that's my point of professional professionals dealing with those students the overall increase in per pupil expenditure from fiscal twelve to fiscal thirteen about one hundred fifty dollars really you know that's the impact for new school was something that facility issue right there really what's the operational impact of the probability based on fifteen years of his we may well have in the next decade six hundred new students that's that's what we really need to get at least the implication of this twelve thousand times six hundred but i think there's some number there that we need to think about the it that the implication is that facing here is if that growth projection is accurate and we thirty three that we're expecting for pushing square and the normal growth we've also tried to do some summarizing of reasons people are moving into belmont none of which are surprising to me that the reasons people declare their moving about money are the pretty audiences people who are or have right children in the school system and therefore i'm moving here because of the school system the implications long term are of course that you're going to have increasing class sizes if you don't increase classrooms in order to increase classrooms you have to hire professional staff them and you have to have capital assets to make the classrooms real short term does that mean that we go to our  module unit at the back of the high school probably you look at rental or rent for purchase of other mobile units that would go behind the butler the burbank probably would but do you build a new into oh yeah it'll be one of one of the things that the i mean if we sit here as we assume with the six hundred with numbers right now is no reason to believe it's not that means we can increase each school by whatever percentage that would would fall into or we could take a new look at the way we put kids in the various schools for example we would suggest at one point that maybe we should think about middle school up like that you could you could back out you could go back to three three years of high school back to three years of the middle school build one of the entry school and you take care of the six kids i mean the six hundred kids possibility of the other issues plus gives you all the flexibility you of as the biz that is the bumpus very to you you want to go you've got six which is the first breakthrough another first grader but there's another financial implication of that kind of model is of course that you have reasons why it won't work but it's something that the i think that in the scope of what we're trying to do here we ought to be taking a step back saying ok let's break all the models let's come up with a bill one that addresses our immediate problems  them that the cherry if that's my biggest concern for next year i'm not as concerned with elementary classrooms of twenty five or twenty six as parents are there are many parents who are you know we want to abide by the guidelines set by the school  that you're talking about itself will not handle that that is you really do have to have more classrooms if you're going to have three hundred more students presumably two thirds of those are elementary all of this is not solve this is simply pointing the truth the the trend you can expect in belmont for there to be competition for housing because there are school aged parents who want their children  absolutely if there were a level one district in the educational system here is a great reputation so i think we we are magnet we are a magnet and the only community that has a am on another committee at the at the middle school and we were talking about this issue of the percentage of houses that have children in the school district and that the the number that was thrown around there was thirty thousand and twelve that was the school system in belmont was a tear to system until two thousand and twelve because of the middle school primarily so do you do you think that there's been an impact on immigration and for lack of a about using the tear one issue too extensively because that the line between the two is very very thin if anything you could say there's no there's no causal relationship we've had a marked increase of immigration that time we've moved from level two to one you could say well it's because of those high powered asian students moving in that's a caricature that just doesn't wash ultimately i think from here i was i'd be very careful about making any kind of statement about is the reason we've moved from level two to level one is the professional emphasis on mathematical reasoning and and that fact mannix kraken of a better school because that was what was holding us back and we've taken the child in general and as a result you know we meet a lot of people who come into the community and there's no question that the schools are the reason they come in but i wanted to say that i bought my house from an individual purchased their house the house in eighty's i think and so the first year my property taxes were x and then the next year my property taxes were x plus fifteen percent so from from that standpoint in my mind you know from a budgetary standpoint there may in fact be funds that john fail in the the superintendent designate is going to be in the new super tennis adduction program one of the expectations of that program is that he will be engaged in strategic long term planning to deal with these issues i'm telling you nothing new when i say that the schools have taken on in the for the last a generation perhaps of the last fifty years increasing responsibility for the social and emotional education of children as well schools to do usually without the financial wherewithal to incorporate those items the latest invention is of course now we have to fingerprint all new employees at our of the last report is from the information information technology study group and i think it's important simply to recognize that we are in a maintenance mode right now not necessarily as progressive as we would like to be there are the long term needs of replacing the current service for example that's of the that's in our series of budget projections but if you go to the summary page you have a look at the summary again there for more reports to come ok some of the technology i know you said it's a beginning but really people have the sense that if we move towards a more sort of innovative technology faced delivery of education to save a tremendous amount of hossam you get a lot and clearly i'm not an expert in this area but is there a possibility to deliver services in a different way over time through technology  class sizes may go up and the need for additional sort of live classroom teachers as they're different innovative or would that possibility to hold for us a way of delivering the ability is one that we really are interested in in trying to play with we're doing some innovation right now on that with our a p french and our french five classroom these are two different chords of students who are really combined in one class and we're trying to use  the flipped classroom model instructional modeling to serve two different students who are really meeting supposedly the same time there are all sorts of dynamics that come to play not least of which is in fact union contracts and union there's a great fear i think of part of the art of organized fashion is that reliance upon information technology is going to make their jobs obsolete i don't see that but there's still that fear out there and there's a resistance it some of the innovations going on that's all going to be worked through with with negotiations i don't see huge what cash flow coming in get to legislative authority as well different kinds of scheduling patterns so that student may not actually be physically in the school for the six hours that the students are six down for hours and students currently in the school but that now at both the high school and well i mean i you know it makes sense to me my i mean my two children one it's twenty and one six constantly on mine they're constantly on their computer on their i phone even when they're watching t v or talking with you and i mean just seems to me that kids today often like us and you know for the older or the crowd i suppose the delivery of education through technology i think you said it yourself  at its extreme it can be an isolating almost exclusive kind of instructional model one on one tutoring which may not be the healthiest kind of educational system to be in so how do you integrate the the value of information technology with the dynamic of social intercourse and i understand that i mean yes it is going to be that that's how they're going to learn but there are aspects of what we deliver from an education perspective can be done in that way and it doesn't allow kids to sort of educate themselves at their own pace perhaps you know from a technology perspective to go back in and really read things because of that nature especially one of the cases that that is most compelling we've learned that  pad has tremendous value with a major portion of our special education population and there are there is a substantial cost savings because we've been able to keep those students active in did their classrooms rather than having to put them  their kids you know whatever whatever age they may be you know just constantly constantly online anything they're learning from that they're looking at different things and if directed in the right way towards you know educational activities on educational tool in the twenty first century absolutely agree with you get into one of the things to that that you mentioned and it's always been sort of my it is whenever we talk about some of these innovative changes the impact a strategy for dealing with the union outside of specific one on one situations because i mean you know polaroid used to just ring used to just all these companies used to exist they don't exist anymore because of technology and if we could develop even independent of the school system a strategy of mediation if you will between the schools and the unions to say hey look you know ok in this particular case it's going to cost you but we're willing to give up in the syria this theory of assyria are we willing to change teachers to do this to try and get over this stuff because it's i mean virtually it's a it's a it's an incredible obstacle to to to make a progress france if that's one of the reasons why for example speaking at a good clip but for example charter schools that don't have to deal with those issues i can try these in track with that i mean first of all we've got a new union and a new union leadership and i think we've got a a do climate of operations with this organization at this point we're trying to pursue and continue to interest based bargaining for example in a go she should i have a monthly meeting with the the union president or the inner president part of his board the whole implementation but let's face the reality of the fight a public gets a phone call we send an ambulance you don't those up there it could be some kid in your street gets up there this is a public safety issue i'm just looking for angles i hear what he of that's why and i'm going to say a probably the fifth this is why this committee is going to stay together through june of two fifteen there is a lot of revenue ideas that we need to g yes the committee is working is going to start working with what the capital budget committee put together which is a document to try to prioritize using certain criteria the outstanding capital projects as we do that we're going to start interviewing the department heads who are more heads that are connected to those capital projects so tomorrow we're going to meet with the police chief and the d p w had to get an update voted to put a date exclusion on the ballot for april first for the underwood pool because the underwood pool committee has finished their work in terms of completing their design and to basically  petition the board to put on the ballot so that was one of the capital projects that was as part of the many that were listed that now will have the opportunity for the voters to weigh in or that they choose to support the funding for a replacement  in addition to that the alleged lation that was filed in shepherded through the legislature by representative rogers and center brownsburg with regard to the incinerator site has been approved now that is one step of the process  which is basically the legislation to direct the division of capital asset management maintenance at the state level to meet with the town of belmont to basically review the incineration parcel and to evaluate what the  market value of that is the legislation does have a component which is important that an offset to that appraised value would be the cost of our remediation efforts with regard to the ash component of the incinerator site so that process we've reached out to the camp to start that process moving it will be a many month process in terms of the negotiations and data gathering with regard to the appraised value however that is good news because that hopefully will  allow us to have a piece of a puzzle in place with regard to a parcel that may allow us to deal with recreation public works and other municipal uses on a long term permanent basis so i think that's good news because that is moving forward again where we started to have the conversations with our engineers with regard to in terms of the post closure uses in the capital to make sure that we have some factual information about what can and cannot go there so that we're not going to pass it really don't have any potential for an engineering solution so when we're moving on down that path as the chair said we're meeting with the departments  line up other departments to do present asians to the capital subgroup to basically update cost estimates into basically as we get better information or is things now of it been evolved to sort of fine tune what we've done is as i mentioned last time we sent out a summary to our department heads now that they finish their budget a lot of that information they can call from the budget presentations about frankly at the department the level what what statutory requirements are they were mandated to perform so we get a good sense of you know again we all have departments in town but again there are things that we're charged to do whether it's based on federal state or local regulations or mandates that we need to perform as a town and so where cataloguing that and that's going out to the departments also asking departments to tell us where they think terms of service deliver they need to be in five years what things are coming down the horizon that that we need to start planning for in addition to that the survey asked departments to sort of tell us things that they wish they could provide in terms of services to the residents and things that we currently don't provide and what those things might be sold out that will then be the the foundation and we've reached out again the subgroup are talking about rather than trying to meet with every one of the many  comparable communities we've picked out a couple and we've reached out to those how managers to basically set up times to go out meet with them to sort of talk about what things that they are doing that we may want to consider do in terms of service delivery in like some  goes to communities or arlington and when just say ok so that's where we are that and then on the modeling group basically now that the where where are starting to comply data as i said we have a rough template that will now find to me even more and as my vision for group d whether we realize it or not is clearly to look at that we can always talk about what a core service is what are we statutorily required to provide what are the citizens want is what do you differently today tomorrow or in the future and then what is the department of public works or public safety departments look like five years from now that we need to consider i think the schools have done a very good jobs who are looking to the future i mean if you look at roman studies look technology i think we do that to some extent in the town apartments but not as much as perhaps we should i mean other other opportunities to the liver services differently i don't know the answer to that you know we continue to come back to that question having said the word to me for years as well as you do in now you guys ask the same questions all the time so we do this in a different way we out source can be regionalized can we consolidate i think the question is what does the department look like five to ten years from now and what services should we think about the need to provide what services that we currently provide to perhaps one of high value but we incur significant cost on that's a real difficult thing to do it's not easy but  that was my vision for this working group i don't know whether we're going to get there in the short period time that we have i think it's the same as the revenue working group floyd that this this group d in some form or fashion will continue because i think we always need to add to the challenge ourselves  both on the general come inside and only on the school department side in terms of how we deliver services what we can do differently future so that we thought it would be helpful to wrap the meeting and we can do some housekeeping things  we have these completed we've completed at least the preliminary twenty fifteen budget that's been presentations we had a joint meeting with the school committee and we can remember the power point that was presented to mark we dock to keep the can for if you talk about the school budget just as a general overview the budget that was submitted to the board is like which has been forward to the war committee is ninety four point nine million dollars which is an increase of three million eighty seven thousand dollars or three point four percent the school budget is forty six point two million which is an increase of one point eight million for four point one percent capital budget is two point five million which is a small increase of fifty three thousand or two point two percent and the town budgets in fixed costs are increasing by one point two million or two point seven  upon some changes in income taxes and other kinds of taxing changes and we did not use his proposal because we were quite sure that the house and the senate were going to go along with some of his proposals the governor submitted as mike when we said a more traditional budget so that we basically feel confident that the money that was included in his budget proposal to the legislature of the five fifty six is a solid number and hopefully as the legislation legislative bodies deliberate on their budget proposals that number will go up in addition to that we had a revision to our minute man assessment of about one hundred forty six thousand dollars dollars so basically we had projected having assessment of about nine hundred thousand dollars the actual susmita the time was nine forty nine and that primarily is a factor a couple phase where dot were red thirty students that are now at minimum which is a slight decrease but also their role in terms of member districts has gone up so as our percentage of the total is smaller so basically that has an impact on our assessment so during the budget development process over the last several weeks we have a couple changes  initial starting point which is increased aid from the governor budget of about five hundred fifty six and a reduction in a projected fixed cost for minuteman that saved us one hundred forty six thousand dollars that seven hundred thousand dollar change basic who is allocated to the school budget and basically it will i will say that both the budgets on the town and school sorry imbalance and fortunately we had or a change in the fixed cost the ability to balance our budgets would have been much much more difficult so all of the superintendent since i did that is about as briefly as i could possibly do to talk about maybe the school budget for  anticipated again free cash is generated our savings account free cash balances are generated or increases the free cash generated when your revenues exceed what you budgeted and you are under what you budget in terms of expenditures so a couple recreation fees and generally tax fees so we had an excise and motor vehicle excise in addition to that we were on the town side we had i would say an unusual year where we had a lot of vacancies so basically there was some salary savings that would generate so between the combination of the two basically we were at five point eight the previous year so we're up to six point zero but again i think the end is as free cash is now it's not free it's a savings account and basically if you don't replace what you use in any given year basically you slowly but surely reduce your savings account it's no different than your personal savings account where you take money out to go on to whatever to buy something or do whatever and you can continually to do that year in iraq as long as you basically don't deplete your savings account to zero because then you can't continue to spend from your savings account so it's the same kind of concept which is you want to be in a position both from the ra d standpoint that you basically are demonstrating that you're replacing your free cash that you're not getting to the point where you can't use that as a revenue source to balance your budget so and i know that the war communion and how going is working with her to basically provide a five year analysis of the free cash and what some of the sources have been in a global way to basically share that with the war community get it varies from year to year because some years it may be more vacancies in which is a paid in you have some salary savings some cases you have some one time revenues where you know for example a couple years ago you had the country club who killed pulled a fairly big building permit which was a windfall to the building permit fee there was one year basically back a couple years ago that the ambulance fees were budgeted at about three hundred thousand dollars and we brought in a couple hundred thousand dollars more than that so basically there's some one time items that occur frankly the other piece of the puzzle is that the treasurer has done a good job collect outstanding property taxes which has helped our free cash position as well as work with motor vehicle excise receipts for folks who have been paid to basically generate those unpaid bills to basically add to our revenues over budget so liability and that calculated amount is two hundred sixty thousand to fifty leaves us with a little bit over four million bucks we need to we talked about having a free cash policy or guidelines more free cash they know what to do with it there are other communities that spend account completely but they have a stabilization fund which is something you know we might want to consider at some point in time as well having a step fund that we can fund we did a step stabilization fund for a special education and we haven't been able to it so we're within the range of where the divisional look of services suggests we need to be you know we're not at the low end of the range where more clearly at the higher res so we need to i think year in year out to have some sidelines as it relates to the use in you was a sugar free cash but for dave it's absolutely correct i mean it's not they always recommend you should not use free cash to fund ongoing operations because it may not be there next year ye one other factor is one of the few towns that has a reserve policy  free i'm sorry ten percent reserve policy so most towns don't have it soon so they can add fur to a free cash policy between three and five percent so what ever the final sat at this table as a member of the board and using one time funds in creating a clip for the following year is not the wisest go though but it's going to be we clearly have need on the operational side and never ending in endless list of needs on the capital would just make a comment is usually given that we're on television on the capital budget amount people hear two point five million and they say well that's really good you know when you're complaining about but i just want to very quickly break that out of the two point five million one point two goes to roads and we love roads that's good we have two hundred thousand dollars extra that's recommended that goes to sidewalk that's fine we love sidewalks joe we have about two hundred fifty in bonding past four fire vehicles and now the track so right off the top all of that is spoken for that leaves us with seven hundred fifty seven hundred eighty thousand dollars thank you in change  was five point eight million in requests so the two point five needs to be broken down for what that really means in real dollars to spend on new stuff that people are asking for station and so the larger building project as well so from a capital infrastructure perspective we're pretty tough shape i think as well you know we're getting slammed for not doing enough say that they can buy a pool we would love to have done yeah ok right so and again this is it was great to be able to run out of the what he was were great but it was helpful to be able to jump off a preliminary budget with additional resources from