since we've been in this room together our last meeting was held in boston or hosted there in a different setting we had the pleasure of meeting with i'd say well over forty parents and students who participate in the mco program and i was delighted to learn that this is the fiftieth anniversary of the medical program the fiftieth anniversary anniversary for belmont will be in a couple years at least twenty twenty but i think diane welsh your speech was amazing toward the end when she was giving her updates and i found it very interesting and inspirational a big thank you to her for all of that work and i thank you to all the families that came to that meeting and i wanted to share some news about the library book sale werman another thank you the president of the friends of the don public library shared information about the number of books that teachers from the community received and what they do every year is they offer an opportunity for teachers to come before the public sale opens and so it was a record breaking turnout all six schools were represented in the teachers who attended and took books so some quick statistics the total i will share first was over one thousand four hundred books so that's amazing burbank one teacher attended and took forty one books but there are three teachers attended for a total of one hundred twenty eight books wellington fifteen teachers participated with five hundred fifty going to books when brooks three teachers came in and took one hundred nine books to students  middle school teachers for a total of two hundred fifty seven books and the high school six teachers participated for a total of three hundred seventeen books so the grand total one thousand four hundred and three books which is really astonishing so comes from contributions from the community as well as books that stuff that's tremendous to me and i just thought gail deserves a round of thanks as well as everyone who participates in the friends of the belmont public library so a sincere thank you and to the teachers for taking the time to go and get books that will benefit the students in the schools the only other item of business i wanted to know with the website is chock full of information about upcoming events concerts fan groups and choral groups but i wanted to just point out some of the four beliefs that are listed on our public schools website and some resources for families every meeting that we have here is a school committee on our shoulders we have not only our strategic plan but also the mission statement vision statement and for beliefs so i just wanted to reiterate a couple of the core beliefs for the purposes of the viewing public to remind us of some of them one of them everyone deserves to learn in a safe and supportive learning environment in which all members of the school community demonstrate respect for each other and a second one public education is the primary means society has for safeguarding democracy and achieving social justice so i found myself looking for some tenets that bind us here as a community in the school system and just felt like it was important at this time when there are lots of differing feelings swirling around to remind us of our commitment to the the feasibility study agreement with the time of the morning so a very fortunate to be ending on margin of one to work in moving into march of two with our high school building project they will be giving us permission and give us some professional development on hiring an owner a project manager and a design architect so we look forward to that work with the with the building capacity that will also involve some community involvement through the winter months leading into the spring so we're very excited to see that process move forward from one modular to the next the other space issue that we have is the modules at the cherry school are almost ready for us to enter we in conversations with principal mike the calloused are we think that that will take place in early december even meeting on monday to talk about all the infrastructure being in place for emergency communications fire alarms excedrin to make sure they're all in place and that students can enter and leave safely between the main building in the modulus so we will  be looking for that meeting on monday i do believe that principal mcallister hopes to have an open house for parents i know has already had teachers back there to do the spaces and talk about the routines of getting students in and out of the the space so we look forward to that space being available to our little school students and staff we had a great veterans day celebration on friday to echo some of what chairperson furie had mentioned last week was a very difficult week i think across the country while people tried for the town in that community to see different ages of people in different groups of people getting together and you know placing value in that so it was a nice way to end the week we always keep good news about the high school athletics but our chinnery cheaters participated in this state wide cross country meet and did very very well want to give them some credit that we had a newsletter with some names and some pictures of those student athletes and on high school booster athletes of the month were updates for folks to be able to access that run from nov sixteenth all the way to december thirteenth lots of our dishes lots of library nights and feel we nights etc so please keep an eye out for your newsletter coming up tomorrow now the i guess the bottom line for us why sixteen is that we ended the deal with a positive balance just over twenty two hundred dollars which is good news that money's reverted back to the town as a matter of course just the highlights for that  budget and salary and a number of different accounts were a little bit under budget infringes well we were over budget and on salary enough why sixteen right way and we have a positive balance and circuit breaker that's carried over to f y seventeen in the amount of approximately three hundred twenty four thousand dollars and those of funds that we sort of where you can be wrong can spend the year it's received every  roll and spent in the next successive year but not after that so these are funds that we've already designated to be spent for specific expenses in f y seventeen so that that's another good news story that i want to report was you know it's sort of for once got that so i'm looking at the general fund this is for f y seventeen this is the first quarter of the fiscal year which is july august and september this is as of september thirtieth and  positive year in the balance and if you look at the staffing lines among the teacher lines for elementary middle and high school we have the similar phenomenon that occurs basically every year where there is some attrition in generally the staff that we hired to back fill those positions in general follower on their respective salary scales and so there's a little bit of the savings in addition in any given year there's some number of staff that go on a leave in a number of cases those leaves are unpaid so there's a savings there as well if you if you look at the individual kind of subcategories between elementary middle and high school teacher salaries you see some of those amounts are positive and some are negative and in addition to that there's a ministry of salary line and that's negative that that has to be considered in the context of all the salary line items that people get the support salary line on this a positive amount what  does it all mean that kind of the story behind that is and a number of instances based on the moment needs and developing needs of students some of the building principals have identified some slight adjustments to the staffing models for the buildings this occurred developing over the summer in some cases closed when the school was opening and in a number of cases it was the solution of the building principal to reduce some of the support staff salary the hours for some of the support staff to then free up some dollars to hire some additional or in some cases increase the hours of some professional staff again that was the recommended staffing model of the building principal rather administrative that was suggesting that and so operationally it made sense and then we move forward with that in some cases the way that that shakes out operationally is is reported here on these lines that in some cases that reflects our intent for administrative speed to be able to respond to spend their its respective budgets hopefully without having to freeze them so that they can operate normally administer their programs in areas fringe expenses salary and on salary we're actually projecting to break even at this time based on the information that's known as of the end of september and especially transportation also projected to break even because of a report out of the committee before the process by which the bills are aggregated and sent to the other districts so we participate in a collaborative special education transportation initiative through the lab collaborative where there's a cost saving clearinghouse and then when they were seized by the district so right now a great project in the break even their territories of special education so that the good news as of the end of september is that we're projecting a year in balance of approximately forty seven thousand dollars what i'd like to talk about the fact that while this is one quarter through the for school year this is really one month of the school year and it's it's really premature to the kind of kind of chickens before they hatch so to speak it really represents just two teacher pay roles at this point and so what we'll do is kind of a q one point five sort of an informal analysis of where we are really as of this point time come mid november which is really midway between the first and second quarters we've got a little bit more data under our belt sort of speak at this point and then we'll be able to do some additional focus on salaries as that's the bulk of the budget will ford focus on special education even of this kind of informal if you want to have to look at salaries special education the report out to the entire community is necessary as well the accounts for which we feel like the revenue coming in over cordwood course of the year is not necessarily aligned with the costs in that revolving jail as well there's at least a few that it sounds like over the course of the year you guys want to the way things were operating over time based on recent demands if you look at expenses close revenues expenses have exceeded revenues in f y sixteen and some of the previous years in most cases there was a beginning just look at that find out what's happening why expenses in the short run are exceeding revenues and what does that mean for the operation and it's a killer program is there a way to reduce expenses is is it necessary to increase fees or some other revenue or we will just have to look at that it's too early to say exactly what will we do it or mediate that but that is something that we're looking at and can you just talk a little bit that we can sustain the program this year without any change to operations without having to increase any fees or change how we deliver services or any change through to what the students and parents would see in the classroom and that's another just as a follow up we've met twice with the finance committee on the subject of full day kindergarten one of the next steps for the coming years because the grid will not be present to share and there's no signs of it coming back at all so we've kind about mind about three different options that we're going to explore in a we talked about it this morning and one of the options that will explore initially is what does raising the fees mean and what does it look like if we have to have our own fees pay for full day kindergarten without the support of the revolv contra with a little support of the revolving can we do have funds in that revolving account that we can either supplement that fee with or just keep it still and in use it as a supplement as we go forward so that's one option and tony will be providing that either at the eleven twenty nine meeting or at the twelve thirteen finance meeting the other option that sometimes of doing that we did unpack a little bit of one of our meetings and we will explore further we don't know if it's doable this year or in the in the close future but some towns are actually trying to get one time funds from their town to be able to pay the difference between having the fee charged and not having the fee charged basically that town  allocates a point five f t e of are they a student of the student to your role becomes so we get the time to belmont gets money from the state for every child one point no child from first grade and twelfth grade but they only get half of the funding for the killing got books because we charge for kindergarten to me don't if you don't charge but you have to wait he had to have that happen so you can almost see like a bridge will eat a one time amount of around eight hundred thousand dollars to then bridge the gap  services so then in the following fiscal year those have taken a guide students will be deemed full time students and then the amount of money from the state will kick in at that level so we're trying to do a cost benefit analysis of just how much money will get back in the future and is that worthwhile fine with the fact is there actually an eight hundred thousand dollar sum of money that the town could be able to provide to bridge the gap so i called it a bridge loan when someone called me on it because we didn't we don't plan on paying it back we haven't really unpacked too much is because we have an amount of money in the revolving account do we continue to charge a little bit more to build up that revolving account to create our own some sum of money to act as that filler of that void to you know to move that forward in this into being about with whether or not we have it that's appropriate to balance that work on the backs of the people who are going to connect our so there's a lot of questions about whether that option is feasible from the perspective of whether we believe that that's the right thing to do or not so tony will be reporting on what we'll do next year and then we're going to get the cost benefit analysis of the asking the town for the sum of money if it  ahead and then return and there are two positions there are a couple of different community committees that exist that have participation by community members who act as we use on students so we have two positions that are up for appointments and the reappointment there is the information technology advisory committee and then the belmont media center so jim barrett's are forever forgive me i'm not sure the correct pronunciation has been serving as early is on to the  tech committee and is happy to continue in that role so he could not be present today but has expressed his interest in returning to service in that capacity and his work with steve mazola for several years and has been doing a thank you i win something thinking about it tonight when i was coming home from work and realized that when i got on the school committee i was following in scott's shoes i was replacing his seat when he had to step down and wasn't going to run again so i'm sort of interesting that i'm going to be sort of replacing his seat at the belmont media center you know they're very large shoes to fill and i just want to say at the outset  so i'm very excited yet still have a connection to the school committee i'm still pretty passionate about the work that our school does and i do i was when i was in college the first time around  i had a summer job teaching video on the paths which in those days were about half the size of this table and when i went to art school i was really a video major so i'm really  twice to come and talk i do know that i think i think there's been a great relationship between the media center and the school department there's only been enhanced over the last couple of years and i think that people each year to get district school committee one is in effect and structure teacher planning goal one of the student learning goals and if there is a professional practice school so as you walk down the draft my strategic planning goal which is the bulk of the work that will be taking on as a district this year is essentially working on the challenges of space through our space taskforce and the building high school committee work that we're doing with belmont high school additionally with that from a strategic ones we're going to use the feedback that we're getting throughout our community events and teacher events and student events about what we want to see in our high school and in our school system and what's important to us to inform usher teacher claims as well so in some businesses they would call this a three for this is a three for go where we're working on three separate things but we're rowing one boat in a certain direction that can really do the work and one time so we're we're glad to be able to concentrate on the biggest challenge we have which is space and the increasing enrollment excited that we have the opportunity to work with the a must be a making that to be part of this work and we had our first meeting with the space task force two point zero last week and we have our second one coming up we'll be talking about one of the alternative space challenges that we have in addition to or that accompany our high school project and how do we want to address them alongside of our building high school project but all the while we're going to be talking about teaching and learning when we get into the schematic design and feasibility study phase of the high school we want to use that that dialogue and that those conversations to be able to inform what we want to see in our schools moving forward so that's the goal that i think that we we spend the most time on this school year there are some key actions and benchmarks that follow most of which are milestone some of which are in the middle of the summer and early in the fall as i mentioned earlier it slowly begins to put this work in the hands of the hired professionals which are the on a project manager in the architect in conjunction with our team of building one high school building committee folks so and again  talking about the timelines that we have for the space task force the doing the work around our challenges that come to us within high in rome and some of the benchmarks will be the documents necessary in the deliverables the edges be a meetings that we have with the space task force and executive what that would like to provide the school we need by spring for the end of the school year as it relates to the challenges that we have in addition to our high school work and coordinated feedback from our strategic planning folks that we work with we will have an educator education facilitator that will work with us and the teachers in the community to bring out that information for a building project so that's that is the bulk of the district's work to shift from an organizational and leadership perspective  the student learning goal i think a lot of administrators try to figure out how do i impact student learning correctly or incorrectly in my reflection over the last few weeks i felt that the best way for me to impact student is to conduct my learning walks in the school buildings with our building principals focus on the goals meetings that we have similar to how i'm presenting my goals to you tonight i meet with all the social apps of little the principals who present tonight happens in each stage of our school system in a very similar fashion so i felt like i needed to do a better job personally and professionally and giving feedback to the principals and being in the buildings war and providing feedback  in how they interact in the classrooms and how they promote student learning especially around the s t l work that we're doing in the achievement where work that we're taking on and also how they conduct meetings and how they still take their work as building principals  school in the past two years they used my new superintendent induction program as that source for that goal those are two very well spent years of having a mentor that was provided to me by the use of the tenets organization which is funded by m e s s the massachusetts association of school superintendents and school committees as well as each district i am participating in year three of that program but i felt like it wasn't enough work toward being part of my goal setting so i use the work that we are doing with our leadership council and that we have been doing and setting our leader plan up for me to hear which is our strategic plan three which is the two thousand and sixteen seventeen year prioritizing organizing network and providing spotlights and accountability work plans for each person on that team to be able to report out today appears to not only inform our peers in that group but also to be held accountable to the work that we're doing together as we work through the school year and carry through the initiatives that are involved in national teacher plan so that's the work of our professional practice called running those meetings and ensuring that they're effective and if they're a good use of our time and they move the work for incorporate changes in an e imagine that will be or will that be the input that we need to help drive the educational plan for the m s b high school process without seeing it somewhere we're going to have to put forward because the educational vision for the high school  is that that's specifically the document that would support that or is the it will be both the document that we used to submit to the embassy p a to provide what we want in the does that become if the benchmarks here are actually kind of a deliverable does that actually come to the will that should just be listed here or is it could be a deliverable on the bottom i have outcomes in process i think that that might be untrue that will probably be more in the in the next school year because if we how those three options that we're providing the community decide on what will those look like so the first communication that we will have with folks is what do we want of the seven to twelve school what do you want an eight to twelve school what we want the nine to twelve when will that look like how it will be organized so people can make an informed decision about what options when the auction is decided the deeper dive into what do you want that school to look like and what do we want teaching learning to look like in that building that will be the deeper conversation i think that will add a lot more meat on the vote of that strategic planning process that we have so it might not be a deliverable for the fist into the school year that we're in but it's work that we're doing that will inform the work i don't think the ultimate draft of the should teacher plan will be ready by the end of the school year because the process itself will carry through the fall of next year ok let me think about that a little bit maybe because we almost seem to me like if it's now if we don't have it together by the end of this year i do wonder whether or not it will be able to form the process in the way that they were going to get because of i think a look at that and then the other one that i just thought i would toss out there in terms of key actions school start times you know in the movie school start times up is something that i think has been talked about relatively frequently and i think there's a general interest among the committee to do that is that something that we need to start doing some actual planning this year in order to be able to implement in the future and that something that kind of bubbles up to be big enough that should be a key action for the under this strategic planning section i think if you focus on more than a few things you're going to lose focus of what you want to focus on generally i think that that goes a big enough goal to give you information about where we are at the start times and i think in tears an interest in this is well we signed on with the middlesex league superintendents to get a period of time where we investigate and try to have start times consistent across all of our schools  that are not the exact same because every district has room challenges that would be september of eighteen start was the ultimate goal i am going to a start time conference on december ninth with the enriches the high school principal we actually invited in had two teachers signed up but they were not a space and we had to ask two of those folks not to come if we can switch off and have a teacher the goal of the group is to say out loud that everybody i think knows the science behind this and i think we have values the reasons start time of eighteen i'm not sure i will go to the card until the night of december and i also believe that when you're when we're under construction for a high school i don't want to make a start time  amended that we had to put in place we don't know what the configuration of the construction is going to be for how we even organize the high schools yeah day to day operations because we don't know what that will look like yet and what i mean by that is we could have resignation with models next to it we could be knocking down a school building next to it so all that will impact on just six of how you start school when you start to i believe that we should start schools later than we do our job and i think that that is something that we address in the world this committee actually laurie graham was a part of that while this committee broke up into four groups jim davis myself and did richards are the late start time group that will report back to the wall this committee as part of that work this was so that that's the vehicle that we're using for that  eight fifteen or eight thirty or eight forty five you know it's not that critical right we could know the words we can move to the latest dark dark times in the fall of at two twenty eighteen as clive you know with the other with the other school districts without worrying too much about the fact that a couple of years later we're going we might have to finesse it ok we might have to move things by five minutes or ten minutes that's not such a big deal the big deal is finding the way to do the big reorganization so that the entire school times move i think it very very important firstly that we do try to stay on track for twenty eight because if belmont doesn't then that's a big disincentive for all the rest of the districts within the within the middlesex league and this agreement within the star school aged movement this agreement is being held up as the way to do especially not since we know that it's not to make a big difference anyway and finally i do strongly suggest that this be moved up to a level of of more importance it's as you know as  says think is important have it somewhere in this i mean i appreciate that you're planning you know the building is a huge thing but i think it needs to be somewhere in these goals it needs to to come up