good evening everyone like to call our meeting to order at seven o eight pm on june twentieth because of seventeen our final school committee meeting of this academic year and we will start with the pledge of allegiance things so our first day of business as always on our agenda is citizens concerns and this is an opportunity for citizens in the viewing audience in the room to ask any questions or share any concerns during the time that we have allotted and we ask that if anyone does wish to share you just state your name and come up to the microphone and we've got a three minute limit so i'd like to also preface future conversation and our agenda typically what we do is we do not modulars and we anticipate some folks might have some questions or concerns so if there's something you'd like to address now please feel free to do so knowing that we will have discussion later on in the agenda and we will you know entertain questions once we've had an opportunity to provide information and update for a limited period of time at that point to the general so if anyone would like to share any concerns now we would welcome them to do s and all of this was submitted well before the boulder deadline has said by the principal in the email to parents during registration including on the parents night up all intent on march thirtieth we asked numerous people several times about the tuition recognizing that many places schools camps extracurricular activities are reduced rate for the second child every time we are asked we were told it was one hundred percent for the first child and fifty percent for each subsequent child last thursday i received notice that the first payment hold a candle burning in a public school was due in two weeks i noticed on the e mails that both children were billed at one hundred percent upon receiving the notice of pain and i called the district office business office and left a voice message asking each child was charged full tuition i asked where i can find this policy and she directed me to the bottom of the page on the district's website it was a page that looked familiar but different i put it in the internet archive and mounted this page did not exist a month ago and when i asked her when th was updated she indicated about three weeks prior which was the end of may i told her that i had asked a mental numerous times during the obligation process about the reduced to a certain cost for the second trial she indicated that the policy had changed i went into the policy review been given we were told the registration deadline at the second child would be fifty percent russian and then at the end of may after registration of those policy changed thank you into executive session and that will be for the purposes of reporting out the results of our contract negotiations settlements so anyone wishes to stick around after we exited we will indeed be entered to share that information this evening shares report happy to say how we've made it through a very busy busy year just again to share creatures and sincere thanks and gratitude to everyone who's participated in the various tasks and projects that we've worked on throughout the year and that includes folks out in the community who volunteer for committee work who come to meetings to share their thoughts and suggestions with us it has been a tremendous year with contingent upon the school committee vote tonight and the school committee vote that will have the fall session what we do tonight is we're voting to say that marty and his group can sign the application to go in front of the living board to have the  entertain discussion so moved i can say this is an important step so we'll look forward to seeing the process laid out seems an important step for us to start to bring our buildings into energy neutral positions and reduce our carbon impacts her vision one question i know well when the proposal was put in front of the finance committee there was some question about timing and there was a hope that we could make sure we got this done before the end of the year because that was a critical time limit for the are and we are short a couple of members this evening but we do have a one point you know if you're wondering why are never seen committee for approval annually the official calendar of the public public school shall include one hundred eighty eight instructional days five additional days for emergencies school closings as your cry by the law the calendar will set forth the days that the schools will be in session including holidays vacation periods in service days and parent conferences and that's that section is fairly consistent with what we have one of the major changes is for the start date when labor day occurs or before september third the starkey for students will be the wednesday after labor day when labor day occurs later than september third the start date for students will be the bands day before labor day or so and that's a change from moved to accept the new your discussion we've already had some brief discussion of a few different meetings but for anyone who has not been privy to those discussions really this is to help families and staff you know well in advance when the first day of i just this is a compromise for the policy subcommittee i was the one that wasn't necessarily in agreement with the proposal that we have a date on the calendar and that we limit the number of years that we would consider starting before labor day you know one of the considerations that we had in discussing starting school before labor day or not discussing school before labor day was giving people the opportunity to plan for the summer and play at three cation my opinion of that is that people i know from years of working of having a family sees no business for twenty years the most common time that people take vacation as last week in july the first two weeks in august so to me the last week in august is sort of a week that it's not necessarily common for people families to vacation there is the issue of people planning for that week because a lot of camps and we had a discussion about that and before that week i just know from talking to other families in other towns and experiencing it with family members that there's a lot of benefit to starting before labor day there are towns what we did discuss with the policy subcommittee was to have a just a general policy without a specific date in it and so our school committee and future school committees could make a decision and maybe the issue with planning for families would be when that decision is made by the school committee so you could include that in a policy versus because most towns do not have that i've looked at and did research a specific date there are towns like west and we talked about that that have a date in their policy but the a m a s b and other anything that you'd like your i think that's accurate i recall you talking about all those things and i think from a practical standpoint it was helpful to have that date in there so people could plan quite far out and not be you know i know for instance waiting on that final vote for the end of schools a little bit anxiety provoking so it seemed as we discussed it seemed better to have the date as a way to  provide that one start date and and if changes were needed then a discussion beyond that could could come up rather than having a discussion each year about when the dust started it would be i'm in favor of the policy i was not directly involved in the policy subcommittee but i guess one thing that we for there's been the commonality every time we've talked about this is a desire parents to have more and more visibility so soon as they can as to what the calendar remind me and maybe  and what prevents us from voting the calendar the first week we're back in september is there something that you are waiting to see before we kind of put that out there or could be relatively quickly in the but this policy sort of precludes us from having a discussion every year about when school would start correct when school started  restrict issue doing is having those other discussions about the different types of days over the counter what is one hundred eighty days will click through of the year we know the day what is going to be at a certain date so folks complete accordingly how they count the rules over the course of the year is a year pressures if anyone planning really far ahead it's not till september twenty twenty that labor day the seventh so school would start for children on september second so the first labor day occurs later than september third the start date for students will be in the wednesday before labor day next year in some women every work to be done this year are to have this last we need to talk about what were the initial findings and what the primitives would be for a group to get together next year  next year in the future tom the community should really should be reminded that last year we had six buses and we had had six buses for a very long time this year we have seven buses are romans has been going up and our conversation about should we change our high school times earlier or later it can receive this becomes a kid income to see kid twelve conversations that right if we believe the changing times of high school students is a priority that we would need to have an open conversation  t all of our stuff times and after discussing this at length we know that we have heard few options when it comes to if we don't want to include our katie folks we only want to focus on the high school that would be something that would be a limited conversation have limited options after a conversation with the engineer on thursday night of last week she was coming around to the fact that we did what we discussed earlier is that you know a few years we're going to have a configuration of schools that could be different and that configuration could be well known to to our community by the by this time next year so we should really maybe think about starting to talk about start time so we know that you're sure you sleep because that's right around the corner and it may seem like a better time because that that school could be a seven through twelve school with eight to twelve school or need her nine to twelve school all those factors could impact the ability for the town to provide transportation or not so for example if we ever said it was like to go to start times at the high school earlier and not provide transportation to our high school students is only one hundred forty seven they take the bus out of almost thirteen hundred students that would be a pretty harsh reality for some folks explored the creative options that could tradition us from where we are now in bridge to where we could be with configurations to have that dialogue and to create a task force with members from our p t a and parents in a ministers in the school committee members to talk about how we could transition between now and the configuration time and is there anything that we could do to be if you start times later in this in between time for school students but i was shooters here and i feel like i'm speaking for her withou there is a move in the state in the country to move start times later for high school students i think that we should get a group of folks together to talk about that piece of talk about the research which i think is pretty well established talk about what the community wants to go earlier later or stay the same and then talk about any creative ideas that could have a civil tip that changed between now and when we've put a new building that involved just the high school so that was the request of injury or press which in our communications in the last  week and i assume are a change of heart was because she didn't want to disrupt the k population of teachers and families and students when this this new configuration of our high school may look like in a few years is right around the corner so what are the report out is that we can do the buses if we have that we have a limited creative options just to do the high school differently but we can explore those and we can do so with the longer view of whatever we find out whatever we find out in the spring of next year meaning which configuration is chosen by the building committee of the community in the school committee that will help inform what kind of bridging you want to do if any to discuss how we would open a new school do you know what help we've had these discussions were to help to start two of our elementary schools at timex and the other two which is schools time why right now we have three schools that start the same time and one that starts different so do we in i would say district of decides is usually a ten or eleven bus district because we're a small geographic district we kind of are allowed to have a few less buses because we can get to places quicker  start to the school within a certain time period so you have that constraint of you know trying to fill the buses to almost capacity or has he and having that timeframe be such that students are riding on a bus for a long period of time  informal approach to looking at the bus the tradition issue first because we knew that that's usually the stumbling block that a lot of folks we put our at the end so i think being honest and having a dialogue up front is important we know that it's part of the middlesex we all the school be in the same year the same window of time before schedule differently but every district is in a little bit of a different spot in terms of their ability capacity to start later if they chose to in belmont i believe does an anyone can opt into to getting bussing service correct their certain population if you're certain distance you would qualify for free by saying but anyone has it available to them for a cost is that correct yes the water is that students that live more than two miles from this school k to five k to six will get bussing for free the state law says anybody after that doesn't need to have busing by law so a lot of school systems because of the finances or start is about sixty five to seventy thousand dollars per bus in the payments that we get only offset the overall cost of our transportation by maybe half or sixty percent so even by charging folks it doesn't make up the full effect but that's just that that's the that's the way in which a lot of school systems are able to balance interest petition cost that you have to provide by state law up to grade six and you can offset the cost by charging folks who are within that timeframe within that distance or who go to middle school high school grades seven through twelve if i could have one think that this my my comment is not about the context in which your question wasn't an important question there are some areas of town that we do not offer bus service in the case of either grade seven to twelve at any this at certain distances or even creates kids six less than two miles there are some areas of time that we do not offer bussing service because we just don't have enough resources to provide enough buses to service actually everyone in town  some areas of town that we don't often transportation for certainly there will be i guess unpacking is part of this committee discussion or some group discussion in the fall but it's interesting news to me have the flexibility to determine what level of bussing we want to provide at the high school level there's no there is no mandated law practice so there is a degree of freedom now so i think we just barely do that it can be very disruptive to a certain group of one traffic outcome in a better city outcome so there's this balance between you know wanting to provide more bus transportation for all those good reasons and the financial challenge it takes to do so and then the time constraints when you can have school start has  really said that so this is why the start time conversation gets pretty complex pretty quick because there's a lot of different variables to go here but that is one option that we consider the public do you want your opinion on our having high school transportation how would percentage of our bus riders may be very close to the school that their beings can be sent to get some sort of wondering where they fall you know if they're half a mile from their school or mile or if we're looking at things that way we might be a you know so unless you have to cross the beach street to meet you may live in that neighborhood where buses and offer because you literally live very close to school and that would encourage you to walk and we don't have the capacity to offer one more stop and i'm sure tony gets  i'm always hopeful to reduce certainly maybe part of the conversation will be looking for some of the partners we might have at the state mass deity say for this call to you so some of their programming to incentivize students to do those carpooling and  one of those meetings we used all that feedback that we got in written form back from the folks that we here at the meetings that we had and the e mails that we guarded in the in the forms that we had to come up with what was you know the  big picture shifts that we felt people believe strongly about so those two things that we're talking about tonight is we're of the where would we go where would i recommend that be to the school committee that the marshall classrooms go down and then we the marginal company and there may be able to facilitate that they're not sure that's a unique customized design but they're looking into whether they can do that and i think the public community who made that recommendation should know that we explored it it has potential but we just have to lot that will it will enhance the parking lot that we already have and we would reduce some of the space in the back we heard very loud and clear from the community that given that this could be a temporary situation that the urban community did not want the parking on the front that we would all wait and see whether it was necessary or not and that the has been so the parking lot on the side could help teachers the volume of new teachers and new parents that would be coming every day to the school and then  using the street behind the school and increase in some of the access here and shop pro tools without those options with the principal we have a list of things that we would like to try as we move through the is if they get the modulus the watches would go here this would all be repaved and there'd be a different configuration of parking that we think if we can increase the parking spots by reshaping it refurbishing this space right here that would mean repainting from here all the way over and that we could create more spaces for cars the parents of the staff here we do believe that the e o would be about the same amount of parking that's home front but the access to the front of the school be different because you still be accessing the school from the site and having to walk then to the marshals so we're happy to say that we are the feedback of our community at the burbank we are making other hands because that we think are due to the school anyways if anybody's been back to the playground at the back of the burbank that was already on the list to be improved several years ago before my arrival at the park holes in the pavement being turned up it will be in there looking at it a third as part of the playground that would be afforded as well as the cost  complex demographics of the buckler are successful with a small school that we've been good for us to know out of prospective that should not change that's from educational standpoint the school work to a small school the students over time on it should be clear that this is something that will start in two thousand eighteen that the do matter when they leave and they will be priced out with the exact number for the fall for that very very minor comment but just in terms of thinking about the financial piece of it i do recall last year when we were making the allocation for the cherry there was some residual value associated with a purchased  i would just say that i agree with the recommendation and just looking at the reflection of the data it just me makes sense for you to go to the burbank there's they're closer there's a covered walkway all of that to me makes a lot more sense than there seems to be more issues at the butler that would still be there and there would be a bigger impact i think on the community and at the butler given the population that's there and size of the school now works for the community that is the the one brooke is a fourth street school even if you had to space it would work would you really want to make your probably your school that's the ideal size for strength into a bigger school to or are you worried about like as big in the butler you know after talking to the community should you talk him in there are very good reasons why folks would want this to happen at this school at the butler side of the break side and i wish it was one of those things where seen over the last five to seven years and we have projected with two different independent folks looking at our other to continue to get even higher and so we're waiting class size for our children which should go down t around twenty three to twenty two as opposed to twenty five thousand twenty six's and put the time in the position at least temporarily while we decided for the high school say to have good learning conditions for all schools in better working conditions and better class sizes for all of our students and so in the end this is a i think that i believe it is a good decision for the town in the short term a position is us for a long term class size important and  or would we do it all in one big we we would add the teachers but we would not be having classes that were probably full to the max right because we remember now we have we're adding the fourth grade to the one book this year we're adding a first rate to the bottom of the issues of the bottom will have an extra grade one extra grade three texture we're not going to move those students a part of the rest are going to have to be aaa through that school to be burbank has a kindergarten slated for next year but they also have an extra grade three so we'll we'll shift those that i know that there are some i could talk to staff who actually worked out the schools have kids at the burbank and thought that the butler was a good choice given her experience and all the elementary schools working with the students and as a burbank parent you would think that she would not be in favor of this but thought that the butler given her experience with that idea or burbank ye butler one one more common question is this divide between town land and school land that often comes up and and being safe routes person i always think i want my kid to go to the closest school  stransky being a very good school like wellington and so i understand that barrier of needing immediate space if you were to have to do in addition and i bring this up because i think we may be in that situation it's not really clear that our high school project would necessarily alleviate the elementary schools and maybe it would be only be for a short period of time and we know we have a lot of students coming in in that region  so i do wonder what the it would be nice to get a little more clarity on that divide between town land and school and what the barriers are to using them because certainly students aren't not going on the field during the school day for recess there's not that practical divide and maybe there's over so i guess i want to and i know green spaces at a premium certainly on the butler end of town where there's very little of it so i can imagine an addition going on when brooke at some point before butler or burbank were to become a four or five strand school but if that's the big barrier  why and how could that be medicated i guess maybe not a question answer right now but having some more information there would be handy for the at one of our government high school building committee meetings  in fact we do not have a seven through twelve or the eight to twelve who looked so what is the ability for the district to add on to any of the schools that they have to re to re assign grades in any of the schools that we have there any additional space that the town could look into to see it could be available those are the big questions that we want to ask because when someone says well what's going to happen if you don't have certain things well you're going to want to be able to say that there are options or there are a limited options where there are very few options and and so we may want to as a school community aside from our work or from the building to be put maybe maybe sharing resources to a certain extent investigate that so one of my goals for the fall of two thousand and thirteen will be for the school be to engage with the firm to explore all aspects of space in the town i think people would say would be great just to have another elementary school and that and bring in the firm to cover assess all of our schools and their capacity for adding on or not in any space in the town that could be potentially utilizing where you know there are competing interests in our capital world in belmont i look at the cars that are presented here and there's almost a five hundred thousand dollars difference we need to be done a letter that's been sent in here and what can be done very bank i think they're going to be a lot of questions that come up in terms of why are we spending all this extra money to put them at burbank when the town has many things i need to spend money on a lot of financial constraints right now and i think it as a parent when i have to act on it starts to feel i'm very nice yes we asked can we sell it feels it feels like you know you're being given stuff that's great but we wouldn't necessarily ask for it in this way at this time we were being told they were having modular is in the end of july hundred more students coming in a done better for the town in terms of the cost that's going on so i just ask that you prepare for that discussion because i'm sure i mean i don't mean to you this i'm sure that's going to  having one year of experience that are enjoying my doll that she will do a great job with the restroom school but i hope that in all these conversations that happen in the public the parents and their concerns about why us when the growth does not happen in the urban districts your mind the bus in my skin's and from elsewhere why us why is this happening to us it becomes a feeling of us versus them and it's become very noticeable in the  sharing some of the things i'm hearing so i hope that there can be some really sensitive message and it goes out to the parent community and i also hope that we really compare well time meaning because i'm actually afraid if you will find out that in m for two hours to hear the feedback and they went back to work a playground with an engineer or with the architect and we took that feedback and that that added funding really goes to the restructure that school that they could thank you very much for providing such information it's truly a pleasure to get to review and respond to the work and at the same time i recognize it to be sitting in your  categories here for assessment and include developing proficient and exemplary and we've had conversation in previous meetings and i'm sure others have had similar conversations when you have a category on a rubric such as exemplary i'm sometimes it feels like that's a reach that no one legalized if warranted and so i'm happy to say that in terms of the overall assessment of superintendent family and felt between the profession and exemplary range leading more into the exemplary range and into each of the categories the goals here the first one is effective strategic planning and this was a unanimous exemplary assessment by the school committee there were thoughtful wonderful comments and lest people think that this is something that's you know for any other reason than just to name it because it really is a hard year and we're entering multiple things swirling at once and trying to get a handle on it and then you've got superintendent tailenders like at the core of all of these effort so the time commitment alone is just commendable and quite admirable and i can just go on and on my attitudes so not some comments superintended family models the commitment to thoughtful planning and  implementation that he hopes to inspire and others will be self accountable for the work that he planned years in advance to day to day moment to moment situations he ground his planning efforts in teaching and learning always focused on what would be in the best interests interest of students academic and social emotional development superintendent feel one has exceptional leadership skills that continue to drive the district with plans to address and moment in space challenges as we've just seen for example superintendent failon has been able to take information to do just in terms of further development spirit always striving to sell to areas represent opportunities for further development first while superintendent feelings verbal presentation skills and ability to command a real party exception his written communication strategies content and execution are at times less effective there are opportunities because it was straight across all levels to improve its written e mail written and e mail communication with parents and the community and then a second opportunity is for superintendent failing to delegate for their strategic responsibilities to his team and colleagues at times projects are prioritized due to limited bandwidth of the superintendent and could possibly be pushed to other members of superintendent failing may be present in any school classroom field house office or outdoors engaging with students counter staff being physically present and engaged parallels the work that superintendent famine executes intellectually in and out of the department offices he consistently reflects on the work of the district with respect to belmont goals as well as state and federal initiatives it is evident that superintendent feynman makes student learning his top objective and the core motivation for all the work that he does the student learning results at least as measured by various suggested measures are very strong year after year superintendent failing partners very effectively with assistant superintendent darrius to ensure belmont has the most talented and effective educators and the innovative curriculum to support their work with respect to observation and feedback with one of the standards it is unclear if the if he has conducted and announced his it's just schools that perhaps this is what is considered the learning walk suggests a player if there of those learning walks listed there is some imbalance across schools most just most receiving two visits generally having three but they're having one some explanation would be helpful to better understand the school the number of meetings that superintendent family coordinates and participates in is extremely high and this particular year presenting new opportunities for even more meetings than would typically occur in one two or more years due to the coinciding of several projects and  initiatives demonstrates practices and protocols that are designed to move the work forward and keep folks in gauged reflective and committed to high quality work superintendent fame and continues to foster the high standards of teaching and learning that have always been part of the belmont public school system superintendent payment is positive and receptive to the thoughts and opinions of others and has worked effectively in meetings with teachers staff and other parties to ensure all are heard and move in a positive direction superintendent feelings of openness and commitment to lead is evident in every interaction and reflected back in the many presentations that the school committee has been able to review since there are more and more and more comments go on and on and i think from g m in full transparency i'm the only one that has seen all fix sets of comments but the area for improvement rested largely on the amount of work that you're carrying  who has been paying attention to our various meetings over the course of this year you've witnessed the care that goes into all of these many presentations and for those of you who are new to tuning in please visit our website and look at the archives are going to the media continue to be impressed with john's capacity to listen he really does listen to suggestions and actively seeks out input from all sections of the community for example at the school committee meeting in boston and a development c c s p a c c back meeting he spent a long time talking to parents and listening to their concerns in addition i mean president john's dedication he has had a very busy year with building projects space issues contract negotiations and he has gone the extra mile to attend meetings and ensure this process is continued to run smoothly and on schedule i'll just comment that in addition to my thinking you do great work i've always heard from parents in the community how impressed they are with you speaking with the work that you do and how engaged you are with everyone  also chime in a lot of a lot of the feedback has already been overtly been said but some are to feel i think you do a great job also trying to work across the many different constituencies that you have and that we have as a as a school  town and finding ways to partner with other members of the town in the community to kind of work through whatever challenges that we might have around the sort of you know one budget window my process as well as just the various interests that that emerge balance i think you do a great job i mean somebody i think the town is very very lucky to have you and i hope we can continue to have the support of the town for for years to come i should say but i feel so privileged it's like an apprenticeship learning so much so thank you very much personally all right so then the process will be that once i'm going to submit this to everyone at this point but realize along the way that it's more process taking it slower and doing it more carefully and getting lots of been put in thinking about it deeply as they get to that sort of the in the we've nitty gritty that then gets more complicated and they'd rather go slow and really think it through or even piloting so it's probably a year from now that they'll come back to us and to the subcommittee and then probably to the full school committee with the presentation of what they hope to pilot for the year explained to us is really providing the space in the structure and some protocols to facilitate the conversation manage her and she described her voice as one of the voices considering the changes that it's not it's really the teachers working together to come up with actually went to other districts meetings to watch them proceed so we could kind of figure out the strategy to ensure that the quality firms that we felt should be on that interview list were actually on it and the other three that the tow prioritizes wanted to work with were three of the four that will be had to be so it was a successful work on the stage i would i would liken them to the kind of sound panels that would be set up behind an intramural performing group to help with the acoustics hear the cherry they have a set that sort of original to the scrap metal that will be or take them off our hands presumably no cost in any event the even if there would be a nominal fee we would request them recommend that the us be declared surplus so that we can just dispose of them and free up the space in an ever growing school in terms of popul to clear a surplus of their son some of the books are at the middle school sort of the high school and you can see from the e mail that the has been replaced with new or updated versions of better aligned with the state curriculum standards and they cannot be sold back to the publisher or donated to a charity due to a copyright laws and and some of the information they can be recycled for their paper content at no cost to the district so we are requesting and recommending that both of these sets of assets be declared a surplus or could this was