everybody i'd like to welcome everybody to the where are we february seventh meeting two thousand and seventeen and calling this meeting to order at seven o three pm and we'll get up to the pledge of allegiance  so one of our items that's a standing item on our agenda is a period that's called citizens concerns and often we have very little in this time period and tonight we're fortunate enough to have people who have come s address some topics of concern and interest to the community so we are going to follow the procedure which is to provide approximately two minutes per speaker for a limited amount of time on our agenda and i have spoken to folks i think there's some orderly  perception that's been discussed and have a couple of different things so we're just accommodating as we can and to remind people please state your name and your address which we share so that we can have that in the public record and then i'm going to do my best to keep time  and the school committee does not respond or engage in a forum kind of this is the time when people can address concerns also want to mention just a slight deviation from typical protocol we usually do not have discussion or concerns addressing items on the agenda but because the presentation that's coming later in the agenda which is actually almost at the end of origin that we want to respect everyone's time and allow an opportunity for people to speak to the start school later presentation  will be giving so this way people have a chance to speak at the beginning of the meeting all right any questions or all right so we cannot we have a microphone here for people who wish to come up and speak and you can turn it over  to eight am and they won't do a five point spread from the floor of the grocery store but they have other at risk behaviors that show things like increased  wanted to say thank you so much to the school committee for considering a task force woods or this issue and i presented also a petition of support from f community letting you know how much we support you in looking into it so for within eight days we have more than three hundred signatures raring to go for you guys and  subjective information such as participation numbers and like to see them non athletic nonmusical positions would receive compensation which is reflected on their work or their students these changes were accepted by the superintendent dr i've been asked to give a two minute just a minute to think you should stick to late start i know you have all the scientific data so i'm just going to give you the data from my fourteen year old who misses the bus almost four days out of five it's a very stressful morning the good intentions are all there but what happens is not going to it happens is that i end up driving her and i end up in that traffic with you all in the film on center which is stressful for us the board because for obvious reasons so i think even though the intentions are there to get to the bus which actually comes to my corner the execution she just literally cannot move because her brain is not awake so i am petitioning on the thing keeping the stress level down and my mental reason is the whole reason i paid for the bus is oh she's just so that we could  lessen the burden of traffic but that doesn't seem to be the case in my household because i end up taking her almost four out of five days and i do it because i don't want her to to be penalized for being late and i think make sure i was getting off and i found this year i've been averaging six and a half hours sleep and as opposed to the eight to nine hours that are usually recommended by doctors and scientists find myself to be a longer productive and although i can be a lot more if i can do more of my time i can get my homework done faster that same day and pay attention more class and i feel as if  out invitations went out their website is actively displaying information for anyone who wishes to donate who wishes to attend who wishes to provide option items who wishes to think about purchasing auction items this year it is a cocktail party not dinner as it has been in years past so it's going to be fun and i knew from attending the board meeting last week people are working very very hard to make this a really wonderful event and so again just in recognizing the tremendous partnership that we enjoy with  people who work tirelessly for the county and also in the community who contribute both time energy and ideas and funds to the organization thank you to everybody and just trying to get a pitch so let me just remember the date is march twenty third march eighteenth two from seven to ten thirty at the belmont hole school march eighteenth two thousand and seventeen and then also just wanted to mention since you never found acting the stewards of the public school system in belmont massachusetts  that the confirmation hearing today for betsy device resulted in a tie breaking vote to confirm her to the secretary of education position and i just wanted to mention this for anyone who's interested in reading up and pursuing the implications for this decision there are organizations such as the network republican education and other ways that people can learn more to think about what the mean this means for education really large and then also attending to our meetings on camera or better yet in last year there was an issue with the vendor that we did separate from that vendor and we had the administration in the teachers visit several good leases in investigate and vet several companies to send our children down cold brook connecticut for a shorter stay but nonetheless a good science experience with their teachers overnight has been as has been done in the past so looking forward to that and we hope it goes well for the  and we also have a stereo committee it's made up of teachers so we can also present that information on alternative meetings to make sure that we are are communicating the goals and the current research that we're doing for our elementary issues that we have with rob moore that will come in on budget and we unpack roman thought a bit but we will be doing presentations at schools at the elementary schools for staff to just bring them up to date as well i want to let everybody in the public know that we promised that we would retest the faucets that were deemed to be not fit or have high levels of lead most of that testing all the testing has been done but the lab results are not back for all of the faucets we only have half of the results back so i did not want to communicate that fully into we had all the results there was a faucet at the white field house that we did turn off as a result of high levels there but we have not received all the results so when we do get that complete package we will e mail it out to the residents in the this will take place i need a high school at approximately ten o'clock we also want to have you catch the boys swim team at the north sectional action on sunday the twelfth and this will take place at mit so big stuff these competitions are great with the seasons are starting to come to that near and time where folks are going to be turning the play in art and we're very happy for all of our student athletes at the middle school in the high school we had a nice celebration of the state house for the butler as a blue ribbon school and for the burbank you know we have got to clifford here with us they had pictures taken with will browns berger and representative dave rogers it was a really nice morning to be recognized and have the schools recognize i believe that we were the only district to get a blue ribbon school in a combination school and we may have been only one of a few schools that had a few districts and two schools recognize except for the large additions i think boston had maybe two so it was really quite a recognition for the town in school system the belmont high school belmont turning club isn't clean in second place for out of fifty schools for the two thousand and sixteen boston making strides against breast cancer high school challenge so congratulations to those folks and we had a high school community service group of students working to help the homeless by holding a food drive to benefit y to y the harvard square a shelter run by harvard students for youths between eighteen and twenty four again great stuff for our community service folks we had for our visual performing arts a list of names that we will not read off tonight but will be on our website for the boston globe all scholastics which is a highly competitive wonderful so no unfinished business than our major business then begins with the votes to approve as to the oh i'm sorry i sept i'm sorry and left over the student representative thank you please we have a student representative report on the last time we are here on a social motional learning initiative to help teachers and students more aware of the amount of homework that teachers think they're giving them the american work that students are receiving and we've so far progressed we're in th to provide the teachers and we're still shooting for a may or june faculty meeting where we can present this information to teachers and this as well as a student shot where teachers from  about one teacher per partner and we'll follow student for a day just just to see what it's like to be a student and we're currently shooting for that to be in around april so we're really excited for that and yet will keep you updated good evening i'm ready to dance and i'm a senior in high school and i just want to give some general updates that what's been going on at the high school about three weeks ago we had midterms and the school was nice enough to host a stress free brunch for us  relax and enjoy some food in between their classes additionally about two weeks ago we had our first ever homecoming game and dance was a huge success over two hundred seventy five tickets were sold and students were able to attend the girls basketball game on friday night and enjoy the dance the following evening some upcoming events is the school musical will be the first week in april and many students are participating that it should be a gre students to communicate with each other and also teachers to communicate with students they can be just something about a document or a text that you're sharing but it can also be more of a blog layer or a conversation going on line able to check student learning really quickly have the effective leader partner in class or the end of the calls and this is something that you do when we're really now important to teachers because it is something that is more sustainable and easier to do we know this is good practice because it helps  opportunities with the kinds of projects that they're developing for students in their classroom so what we're going to share now this is an example from one of the english courses at the high school students have they read the book great expectations and they're talking about how the environment shapes a person's character and confrontation or the idea that you know what environment did you have this sort of confrontation or mind changing kind of experience and then did your values change as a result it was so this about my favorite book at some untouchable pinnacle of perfection it was more important to think deeply about the problems that i had largely ignoring and maybe that's the best way for me to give back now i don't need to love the drugs but talk to other people about it idea is what we're finding is that this tool allows teachers to really push students and teaching in a new direction at the same time that it's allowing some of this is the practices that we know to be good practices to be easier and more sustainable for teachers so they're doing them more regularly and frequently in the classroom some of those practices that we're talking about that these are we know are good for teachers we know are good for students have to do a differentiated instruction it's something that's complicated to try and have your legs that meet the needs of every single student at the same time but with this increase in technology it's something that we're able to do more easily on you know a good example of that is an electronic textbook we have that in some of your classes at this point you can highlight in your textbook you can go to the internet look something up in your textbook even look at the locality where you could have something read to you this kind of differentiation is important for students and it's something that when it's easy to do with the technology teachers are doing it more and more often oh we're students has really helped our teachers what teachers are reporting is that they can give students back in real time they can help them use or during the writing process it real time and they can also shift the dynamic of their classroom in real time especially  some of the science teachers we're talking about how when their students get curious about some other action activity urging a projection of what they're talking about that you say i am pro life and push something right up to the whole class in that x will moment and the class has a much more sort of organic ding the planning type of curriculum development came up some teachers reported that technology is not always a match for their curriculum also didn't mention that if they had someone in order to help them look  overcoming these barriers is also expressed an additional strategies for encouraging students to stay on task and they could also be related with the technology match it's more than just searching for something that  improve the program instruction from an expert in the field about how use this in their content here is and then we also had some small group team training where again we got some support from a technology specialist and we were able to do some practice and look at student work as a group to try to look and thank you at this i mean it sounds like great things are happening in the classroom and i enjoyed seeing the students work and it just made me wonder a little bit because you're coming at this from the perspective mostly of teachers and teaching in the classroom and i'm curious if part of this ongoing sort of study of how technology is going is have have you or do you plan to get input from students to see how they're feel i mean most kids love devices so i expect that they're all very excited that they have i've had but it would be especially i think interesting to sort of here just because going from if to ninth grade that would be the big change you know once they get to be seniors they're very used to having their i pads but sort of you know what kids are finding you mentioned organization is easier because they can pull back notes but just curious sort of how kids feel about learning with devices and also if you've come across kids you know there are so many different types of learners and some people really need pen and paper and so i just just bring up sort of this curiosity about looking at it from you know the students perspective and hearing about about that which is you know something i'm curious to hear about and learn about want to recognize that teachers are very thoughtful about the student experience and really so when we look at this we really look at the i pad as a tool when you talk about teachers using a small two times a week or not it really is a teacher using this whether it's appropriate for that particular type of lesson and also offering differentiated opportunities for students you know just speak for myself personally but i also probably for a lot of other teachers i come into class every day and i've got my class work posted i will classroom and i also have to a question about the digital citizenship class and i'm wondering if there's been any i know it's been rolling out you know evolving over the last year and a half or so and i'm wondering if there's been any input about change the fact when you first started to get this year because a lot of the class time takes place right outside my office and i kind of sat in the back of one session and he kind of so i'd like to thank steve and devin dan this is probably a year five of this work year of planning and then instituting it over the four years so it is i think it's a great year to take stock now that every student in the actively engaged in teaching can engage in appropriate use of the tool which is the i pad and it's really exciting to see what the next level of learning and teaching and learning can bring us in and to no doing the foundation for them what the u k should that started this initiative four years ago under the leadership of of these three folks and tom kinks in the former superintendent and the f b i he has been nothing but supportive of not only  purchasing the device over time that we have slowly taken on but supporting professional development supporting grants that provide teachers and other types of support and using i pads in technology they've been unbelievable and they're event coming up in a couple of weeks is just timely when you have something like this coming from the community that this makes a difference every single day for every single high school's high school student and staff member in trying to push education and teaching a little differently so thank you very very wonderful year all of our core values at the burbank school love learning respect and well being so that just gives you some information about the birthing pool this is a first grade class that raises a lot of money for students we currently have three hundred seventy three may not seem like a large amount but it's many implications forty six new students and obviously we had students more students  students students five zero for plan special needs students with an increase we added as a fourth to second grade so we have three classrooms per grade level but our second grade has four classrooms and we added that this year impacts also are the general budget increase in the use of paper toner stables general supplies all of those things the common areas so at the  have we have a gym and a cafeteria and of course having more students more classes use the cafeteria means that we have more students coming in and out having to divide those times and this year was the first time we had to take second grade really divided it ha the second graders eat together or recess together other pieces the computer lab the what was the computer lab was moved into the library and that room became a classroom so that's had some impact which i'll talk a little bit more about burbank was built in one thousand thirty and it was built as a walking school and even up until probably the early seventy's children even went home for lunch and they came back and so it was very much a neighborhood school this year is the first year that we've had a bus head burbank so it's a been a new a new world for a bank with a bus i know it  and just more impact on the nurse the guidance counselor the school psychologist all of those pieces and then as i said mentioned before because the computer lab was its own separate space and now it's part of the library it impacts when the library can be utilized for this particular story time for kindergarten first grade students which is a class every week that they have we were doing standardized testing track that's t n t tracked my progress for access testing which is the testing and then this spring we'll be doing and cast testing initiatives so things that are happening at the burbank school our school improvement plan really has three pieces to it the open circle program is the final year that implementation it's been a five year implementation of the circle open circle provides a social emotional learning program for for elementary schools they serve as many many schools throughout metro west through the commonwealth use open circle it delivers interactive in person professional development for all school staff and open circle really focuses on helping children manage their emotions understanding what other people are feeling become better at relationships and problem solving and that's really the the major focuses for us at the elementary level are really helping children advocate their own emotions and the interpersonal workings that they have with with other people in their school and in the classroom so  a little bit of open circle we've been implementing it over the past five years we started with kindergarden classes and now we're finalized with our fourth grade teachers being trained teachers spend time at the stone center wellesley college  receiving professional development we have a wonderful coach who comes in from moments are born in the sally dunning she coaches the teachers she does lessons they have served her she observes the teachers she meets with me so we get a really great  fourth grade we continue to talk about these pieces every year so we focus on beginning to get there managing our selves strengthening relationships and how to sort problems all the really important things not only for elementary twice a week in open circle in their classroom with their teacher at last anywhere from maybe fifteen to thirty minutes those are the standard times that they are involved in circle there may be other times where issues come up in the classroom and they have an open circle to discuss something that might have happened at recess or that might be going on and it's just a taste for that and then there's a problem solving pieces and what i put in there was how to sort of problems that teachers action tool for teachers might might look at and say are my students doing this do i need to go back and revisit some of these things there's tools for it for lots of different things with it it's really open circle this is just one of so you know teachers at the school  and you know find that this degree decrease bullying behavior physical aggression and improves problem solving and cooperation and really improves their teaching practice and i have to say that as a suspended implemented there are less times that things escalate to my office where problems could be you know solved and it and i don't get away among students rather than raising to a level that they're saying things that are really inappropriate or they're questions and these are the things that they told me one thing i'm going to speaking of i learned about bullies standers and bystanders so what role do you play in different scenarios i share my date my ideas into other people's ideas which is really important get even connect back with that high school student that we heard from listening to other people's ideas i learned that if i get mad at somebody i should see if i should use concreting to calm down that something that you know is really important first step  one thing i've learned is not to exclude people from games one thing i learned from open circle serving it will use next year is expressing how i feel and think of think of everyone else to think of other people so another you should have another piece that we're working on it other schools are working on too is having an s t l steering committee the specific focus for our committee this year is really bent to work on taking what was an established all school assembly the habits of success assemblies at burbank have been in place for a long time and it's been great it's been helpful i think our shift a little bit has been to take the open circle curriculum and figure out how can we translate all of that to more than of a whole schools where you are sharing the same language you're learning different there are different things in the classroom how can we make sure that we're addressing it as a whole entire school and coming together it really sends the message to the students that this is important to everybody this is something an expectation and so we've been working on changing those habits of success in some ways to creating a more of an all school assembly each grade level is responsible for throughout the year the planning of the assembly and that's been a shift to where we were teachers are now really a part of the assemblies in creating them rather than one staff member one member sort of implementing them and sharing them so it's these are our community school meetings we have three so far we have one coming up it always has a piece of literature the topic is the major topics that run through open circle the beginning together managing ourselves  strengthening relationships problem solving and how to sort problems and like i said a piece of literature goes in there and you can see the different grade levels are responsible for planning these meetings and on december fifteenth it we have three hundred  seventy five students doing a minute of mindfulness which was done everyone was quiet everyone was meditating and that may not seem like a big deal but three hundred seventy five getting ready for the fourth graders really taking time to be quiet and to think about their thinking investigating different structural practices to improve the reading workshop math workshop and to really take instruction from being teacher led to having it be more small group interactive with teachers and we really find that when teachers interacting or children are interacting in groups there's more engagement there's more formative assessment that can happen for the teacher so again last year a lot of research observations article interview video research focus this year has shifts shifted a bit to implementation focusing really on now that we've learned about small group instruction taking an approach which is called lessons study and a lesson studies a form of professional development that we're using them to prove the teaching uncovering new ideas and methods so for instance a group of teachers third grade teachers will get together and figure out ok we're going to do a small group lesson during our meeting workshop our daily five what we call  five and we're going to create this lesson together that we're going to go in your teacher and you're going to go ahead and do the lesson we're going to watch there we're going to meet after and we're going to talk about how it went what is it was that went well what  are things we want to do different what do we think about that how will that impact what i'm doing how can i change what i'm doing and let's try it again and let's see with the changes how that went so it's a really structured approach to instruction to taking it really down challenges not last year but the year before and it's the rose this was the rose feinberg twenty year geography challenge and roles came up she was the principal of burbank for ten years and she came up from  to burbank is the one school they experience directly you could make it so it's great to hear about stuff like this and i have a piece of nephew who one day will enjoy the birthday and it's always nice to read their newsletters and see everything that's going on and see how when we started looking at s t l as a district some of these programs were already in place and underway tricia had already started to open circle and some of the other schools were second step and as we started working with rachael kohn or consultant what's important is you have a curriculum right and that no one curriculum does all of the things that surrounding the curriculum are so some of the things that that trisha was talking about that you have school wide practices like here the assemblies and you have classroom practices so it's it's integrating the whole culture and that in elementary school in particular having some specific lessons that then teach these whether it's second step or open circle it was important to us to honor the work that had been done prior to saying this is a district initiative knowing that any of the programs that are out there are going to provide things in the that there are other things that get added to and supplement to it to make to to to make  experience for students that really does create that that those learning opportunities that they know they need we need they need and my experience as a classroom teacher was with  who are really focusing on building small learning communities within the classroom or using the workshop model not only for readers workshop or for math for trough and other opportunities to get students to small groups to access to learning and to have the small groups there is a great call it i think it engages students at a high level her achievement is recognized at the state level for the accommodation of the burbank right and as a parent and as an educator there's no better place to have a child go to school in the burbs it's just a great place to go to school so thank you very much for being here thank you for your leadership so we're going through every page of th this document usually is made up of the full seven hundred or so lines that make up the belmont public schools budget attached to that is that executive summary that is probably about maybe fifteen to twenty pages long the tony has some balls with the highlights that represent what this budget represents from seven fiscal seventeen moving into fiscal eighteen and we usually like to have on top a powerpoint presentation which is what you'll see tonight as the abstract as tony calls it so depending on your level of interest in the budget you have three ways to access it if you want to just see the highlights you can look at the power point if you order to  to further you can read the executive summary and if you literally want to see every single line of the budget which we actually go through with every person responsible for the airlines of the budget in december you can actually see that so i first and foremost want to thank tony who are is our director of finance for assembling this in carrying this work it starts in september so we get to school and start talking about how great this year is going to be tony starts talking about oh my gosh what's especially the directors and the principals to get those zero base budget meetings in place and then update the financing maybe every other week as we do the tuesday mornings that we have school committee so before i go put through the powerpoint  this is the draft version that we wanted to present tonight we will then make this public document this document public after we present tonight and into next week this is the draft one because there will be maybe modifications of potential changes to the substance of the budget itself or the executive report there were suggestions as late as this morning it finance and we incorporated some of those in may need to take a couple of days to corporate those changes for our meeting with the board so this went from twelve slides to thirty one thirty eight and so in some of this information is information that we've been talking about especially the pause in the middle for a roman we did out of roman slides that were a different view of next to districts that surround us districts that we like to compare ourselves to and actually any other district and there's only six in the whole state that are actually level one so tony did a little research so what will start at a given that highly so the first page of the book of the process if you notice we have three parts to the presentation using f y seventeen to inform f y eighteen those slides will be in blue with blue headers recognize recognition of the enrollment class strongly for a budget for the town but where do we sit as really in relation to the other towns around us so tony did some research and use the d e s the numbers that's the department of elementary and secondary learning they actually teach the numbers for every district unfortunately their body year and a half and they only go back to fiscal fifteen they don't have the fiscal sixteen numbers yet but that is the apples to apples comparison of what each town spends on the different functions that they have in their school departments so we tony got together a list of schools that are comparable districts that we would historically compare ourselves to also level one districts again which there are we are only one of six little one k to twelve districts in neighboring communities that we also compare ourselves to so they are on the screen i won't read every single one and you'll see them in a different form that first would like to say out loud the government has consistently spent less on a per people expenditure basis than the state average and the average of this cohort of districts that belmont ranks twenty fifth and twenty sixth in for people spending among the twenty eight cohort districts that we're about to show this is the first half of the list of the folks that make up the surrounding towns in the comparable districts and the districts that are level one starting with cambridge right next door that spends twenty six thousand dollars per pupil it would be the number one district that is surrounding us school districts two through fourteen make up towns like waltham spends more corkey carlow west to dover bedford harker brookline lexington this is the for the most with the district with the highest per pupil at the top of the second page the districts with the lowest per pupil expenditures on the bottom as you can see from the second page that we so that would represent a difference we don't have that data from the state so we did not not want to show the stated to prove our point but we are very clear and explicit that that override amount of funding that we received in benefit by would shift this potentially but would also be divided by the hundred students that we've gained every year that that's part of this formula it's the amount of money in the aggregate divided by how many students we serve so we continue to be a district that  know all the way on the right hand side for fiscal fifteen the state was spending on average fourteen thousand nine hundred twenty dumb or it was spending thirteen thousand and twenty nine dollars the number under d that represents the average dollar amount per child that the state spends on average more than belmont and the percentage represents the number below that is the percentage difference between those two numbers if we look at the cold war folks around us that we compare ourselves to those twenty eight communities not just the state average the separation is even greater in two thousand and fifteen all the way to the right cold war of folks that we just discussed those twenty eight school districts on average spend seventeen thousand three hundred sixty four dollars per student and we spent thirteen thousand and twenty nine dollars a student which makes up about four thousand three hundred thirty six dollars difference  about a thirty three percent difference between what we spend per child versus what those districts spend and if you go back to that list there are very like communities there small enough like a sharon or a westwood or her the neighboring us like arlington in lexington in in cambridge these are towns that we have compare ourselves to in the past when we look at that data differently you can see just framing this line is the trading of our common public schools so after several discussions about for people expenditure in general in our budget in general the finance committee intoning i thought it might be a nice idea just to frame that just stop there for a minute and and think about with the outcomes that we are providing our students in our communities and being funded at a very low level makes our teachers even more so important in that engagement what works every day in the belmont schools with them so we receive so i want to using up white seventeen to inform eighteen the district as you know benefited greatly by over thousand and fifteen we added ten f t e s which are a full time equivalencies or teachers in fiscal sixteen we added five in fiscal seventeen which is the year that we're in we also added costs in revenue for special education out of district tuition we were able to not freeze the teaching supply accounts of our coordinators and our principals and directors which was huge because that had been done for many years leading up to the fiscal sixteen year in basically our fiscal sixteen year became the new baseline after we got that infusion of funding we really had to wait and see how that year went to see how the new funding would work in the current organization  schools in f y sixteen and seventeen we believe the budgets were well managed in seventeen our operations are on track to meet existing needs in increasing romit in class size and space are becoming pressure points as they had been escalating which we believe will go as high as forty seven zero five in october of one thousand this is the same data in table form that shows that we have been averaging about one hundred students a year for the last five years that actual the numbers for each year's increases provided for you on that table but the average is one hundred one per year where we look at our elementary class sizes you see the sheet in the way that you can best read this is that at the kindergarten level which is the first column of the left if you go across we only have one class in the entire but one public schools that is within the range that the school committee puts forward for class size expectations because a garden which is eighteen to twenty two the other fourteen are beyond the class size ranges which means ninety three percent of our classes do not meet that standard in kindergarten in first grade we are in good shape we have  all of our classes weeding that standard in second grade we have not we have nine classes not meeting that standard out of seventeen which is only fifty three percent same in our  where we have a class of that fifteen making that mark so fifty three percent of our classes do not meet that standard in fourth grade one of our classes does not meet that standard overall forty two percent of our elementary cautions are not meet the school  for class size range income increases by one hundred students a year which poses many challenges to our elementary class size over the over fifteen classrooms have been added to the footprint of the belmont public schools just in two years to support class size twelve module classrooms have been put in place six at the high school and six just put in place at the middle school and the space task force that is in place is reviewing module space for elementary  just another working class size and this is a hard chart to read but you can actually use the top table as the forecast for what you know it will look like over the next six years at the elementary level in fifteen sixteen which is  two three sixty five in grade three three fifty every four years we know as you can see as those grades grow into the next year they get added to by students moving in in our community gardens remain high and they get added to over time so what i've done is highlighted in bright yellow any class that is over three hundred eighty it would have highlighted suddenly also in the last year with any classes over three hundred  sixty those a very big classes meaning cohorts for our grades of students and i would say just ten years ago the district was averaging about two hundred sixty or seventy students per grade and now we averaging as you can see three hundred forty ranging to almost four hundred students per grade so this isn't new new some might be new news for some new folks but this is the struggle that we've been working our way through  this is the work that the space task force because taking on in the work indirectly that the building the bomb what high school building committee is taking on as well this is the major focus of the bubble in public schools as we said person in the chart below it which would probably be better represented this was part of our form that we showed to the space task force it basically just goes down and says on the left it called if we have so many students per grade how the teacher says it takes to have adequate class size and i don't want to get it here it's not going to work so basically if you had three hundred fifty students in a grave you know a standard class a number of teachers fifty across all the elementary schools five of wellington which is a task in and of itself but for apples to apples will do we have a class of almost four hundred students in grade three next year if we loved it fifteen teachers would have twenty seven students in every single class so we've added two teachers to that creed already moving forward would like to see class sizes that are more lined with the ranges that we would like so we have one teacher to every grade one k one one one two one three hundred one teacher which would be the plus one call this corresponds this this class size the average would cars point to some of the numbers that you are seeing in total grade size across the district so we have a class of three hundred sixty degree if we had sixteen teachers across the district to talk third grade then we could say that we might get that average of twenty three which would be great for their grade students that we see coming in every group and we can see that this is a challenge right now students keep in mind thirteen hundred ninety one students we feel overcrowded and we already put the models in place so we're going to receive another focus two hundred hundred needy students pretty much in line with what they think the tower will experience in the next ten years or so so the question becomes what are you doing about it how we're approaching this work and what has happened already last year  we were accepted into the massachusetts school building authority building program where we were we were put in application for a high school and that was accepted when we got accepted we asked them if they would be kind enough to explore different options that would provide us relieve not only the high school number of the middle school in the elementary level because we knew given what we just experienced in the previous lives that we had a roommate issues in every grade level they were open to that which was great so the eligibility period with the checkbox in front of it they are a lot of the provide all that information we told them that we would like to explore three different models a seven through twelve model and a through twelve one on one hundred four model they said that was ok we'll get into that in a moment and then they also said next it would be to hire a team an architect in on a project manager we're currently doing that those interviews will take place next week and when those two folks are hired which will be in june of the school year so as we stated i want high school building committee has three options ahead of it that we need to explore each option can solve potter all of us patient roman problems in the space task force is looking into our elementary issue t twelve and seven through twelve nine through twelve would be a school that would look like it has now in terms of how we can figure out grades eight through twelve could be anything from an eight nine school built connected to a ten through twelve school or school and you move over you say that how the elementary challenges we have the answer is no that box is not checked doesn't help i'm going to school options the answer is no that boxes and check if you go down to eight to twelve solution does that solve our elementary problem know the boxes and check but yes it does solve our five to seven issue that we have here the cherry if in fact in the next year or so the town decides to go with a seven to twelve model that from a space perspective would solve our elementary space issues and would solve our middle school issues as well so in red we have space issues still to be resolved by the town if not represented in the projects so this is a budget presentation and when the finance committee asked me to go into an moment i think i will too far because this is a lot of information and we want to make sure people understand it because not only does it affect our operational budget year in year out it's also the we have hired an education facilitator who has already met twice with the staff that will be planning meetings with janice doris and i with the community as well that will have in the spring they'll talk about best teaching and learning in visions of teaching and learning but also talk about the careful separations that you might need to have in a seven through twelve environment and it careful connections that you might want to have in a seven to twelve environment i think some folks are going to want to hear how the students will be organized first to set their selves at ease that my seventh grader will be how they view interacting with the twelfth grader so we make those careful separations we can have those conversations put folks at ease and then we can talk about the educational value of having some rooms and some spaces combine that some folks might be able to share or use depending on the more that's all going to be explored and that's actually going to be the exciting work that we can begin to plan for good teaching learning can look like in the belmont schools with it how a new facility efforts obviously the board of selectmen will be involved because they sign these documents when they make recommendations to the embers b a the belmont high school building committee which is the red circle will also be part of this process and one one circuit i don't have on there is the  here they have to actually approve the option that we move forward so that's all the big work that's going on as it relates to the moment in space and size so lots of things going on at each level what are we doing in the operating budget quick quick highlights five positions for the f y eighteen budget that are part of our financial task of putting three to elementary classrooms to deal with our class size putting an elementary m teacher in an elementary school because we have high class sizes we want to make sure now that instruction is being supported for us students who are using another position that we will split with point six of a going to the high school in point four  going to the middle school and we are adding another regular red bus so we will have now gone from six buses two years ago to seven this year to eight next year because again we are growing by hundreds from here we have to get them to school plan this is a little bit repetitive we're addressing transportation adding the five teachers that were afforded to was in the financial task force and we're actually holding to the fact that our directors are getting their supply funds to fund their classrooms again for actually see in the executive summary that each initiative actually has the strategic plan objective in number next to it so you can see that actually that the funds are allocated directly to our strategic plan that right now is focusing on social motional learning that you've heard several times tonight and i work on the achievement gap as well as continuing support our teachers with the materials they need for instruction balancing our moments in class sizes and making the process were fis we were doing online registration for students and families as well additional information as we align ourselves with a strategic plan supporting district where technology needs for the end of the testing student classroom use i think you heard from steve over tonight how the reallocating i pads next year to the middle school we are piloting other devices at the elementary school we are looking to provide different experiences for students and we have increased in romans as well  r financial highlights the total budget from for f y eighteen will be fifty three million one hundred thirty six thousand seven hundred thirty five dollars which is an increase of three million ten thousand one hundred fifty two dollars which is six percent over fiscal seventeen going into fiscal eighteen f y this includes all the positions we have currently plus the five we mentioned this includes a nine percent increase in our insurance premiums over the seven fiscal seventeen rate special in special education contract services and transportation will be budgeted seven percent over the fiscal seventeen mark which often is budgeted in our financial taskforce special education tuition's will only be budgeted three point five percent at this point in time and we will be using circuit breaker funds as to provide support for that budget line i want to stop there there is a discussion amongst war committee and the school committee finance that because we have a revolving hound with circuit breaker funding available in it that we may want to provide more of circuit breaker funding in the less general budget funding and i think we're going to ask folks to report on that when we get to the finance committee update instead of stopping the presentation now that's ok with the finance folks because that subject is something that i think is an ongoing is a breakout of how much goes to each function that we provide and the belmont public schools in any school department half of which is teacher salaries moving into special education intuitions fringe benefits  regular education transportation you can see how that makes up the fifty million dollars for next year so tell us somethin's we are using five f t e from the physical plan health insurance as mentioned the task force model as mentioned for our seven percent increases for some special education lines and we are reduced to reduce the out of district tuition line from seven to three point five which is when we talk about  from adding staff and nonprofessional staff to support services for folks just to maintain the level of instructional materials we need and out interest or teach in all our pressures on the budget the health insurance this year is another pressure on the budget so student enrollment maintaining instructional supplies and materials maintaining appropriate staffing levels are obvious parts you want to break out power for your fiscal plan  for reducing the amount of students who were not schedule again all within the same framework and in year three were looking to add four elementary teachers to directly impact class size two in rome an adequate for special educator of the middle school and that would see city point six of a teacher at the high school and we will not be adding technology staff instructional to specialist and technology in a c l staff person because we feel like we need to address moment india three so we're we're again trying to present as transparent to the public this is what we said we would buy this is how it went over the course of three years as it relates to special education we've also promised the public that if we had any extra funding and special education that we would put in the count and hold it because we knew that was of all the line we have done that that balance is something that will be discussed by the work committee because we are also committed as a group to see if we could extend this override money into a year for a year or five in the best interest of our school community in our town last slide not bad for sixty minutes right this is only have time to read through the executive report there was a good amount of the for the i think it's helpful folks understand if they don't have time to go through the submitted lines but the executive report does provide another level of detail that will be helpful as soon as we feel that we not surprising but those who don't i can just say that the other night when you gave your presentation at the wynn burke and it was just about enrollment and space and all that there was a lot of discussion after you left about wow this is you know when somebody said they i said no no we are going to have hundreds of students you know every year so we as a town and so it's very good sort of to hear the people you know absorbing all this and understanding number because years ago that was something that we talked about a minute i think you know maybe it's gotten kind of lost in the shuffle of n roll meant and everything else but i mean obviously those two go together because if we're not increasing very low but that can't that's not always going to work and so you know there's got to be a breaking point where that per pupil expenditure is is just not going to be enough school building project and the romans in the space task force and i'll be going to every elementary school in the next two weeks to meet with the staff because we really want to ensure the staff stay in tune to that information and that was added with the guidance from the steering committee which is a teacher part of the space task force  we are at this critical juncture without a building the don't want high school buildings within the space taskforce where everything started to come to a head so we have a lot more to share right now and i think being as explicit in communicated as we can on the next you know three to five months about what in rome with means and what space options we have and what the underpinnings of the democratic demographic and roman folks are telling us is this is really an important time for all those things to really start to come out to the public and we look forward to being open and transparent in giving that information out and you know going to every school at the elementary level in next two weeks and going to your meetings last week and talking about it here again today and getting the word out  important for the for the community a quick comment special thanks to tony and john for all the work that they've done to prepare for the budget over the last four or five months and it was a particular arduous process and there's a lot of consumer based budgeting our conversations a lot of cooperation with other two hundred three students said that they got less than six hours a night sleep and they were driving now if that is correct then there is no way that these students can possibly be driving safely  medical association and numerous local and state organizations so there is an absolutely solid mental consensus that one we have a problem and two starting school later actually that is not the case numerous studies have shown that in school starts later kids sleep longer but they go to bed at about the same time they fall asleep at about the same time and it all goes back to that  they'll go to sleep when they start eating breakfast which is going to be you know eleven o'clock on the night and these studies form the bedrock of medical consensus ok this was not true there would be absolutely no point responsibility to ensure that our kids practice really good sleep hygiene that's extremely important but it's not enough is just not enough because even with perfect sleep hygiene if kids get into bed kids f rhythms probably affects people up to about the age of twenty five but i'm actually focusing on the other hand because i'm wondering we're we're we're talking and it seems most towns who are discussing this are talking about high school but twelve year olds are in middle school so i think in belmont we start middle school quite young so i think that probably most of the younger kids are not affected by this and by the time they leave they certainly are focused on the high school simply because it starts much earlier and the students are older and so the problem is that much more acute but maybe she can give that to you at some point but yes there are schools in massachusetts the only duxbury has done it and i believe sharon has done it and many other towns are looking into it yes  so it's we're not you know sort of alone in looking into it not to the pioneering studies were done in minnesota and they transitioned several years ago and to a lot before yes i mean within many of the towns are looking into it or have looked into it and last spring winter spring and here remember the month there was a big  forum held at noon or high school and there was a panel and there was presentations from duxbury i think sharon  and natick and they were talking about both the logistics of how it worked and also sort of lessons learned in the process i believe that natick spent a couple of years studying it and felt that it was obvious to all that this should happen and and i don't know what process belmont would go through but natick i believe put it to a town wide and it was voted down and they're the message that they came to this forum with very very clearly was we went through a process that we thought was really careful in it and it clearly wasn't careful enough and and their message was please learn from us and and so i i just strongly suggest that we really stay in very close touch with towns that either have tried and had a hard time getting this to go through or newton was thinking that they were going to have this happen either this year or next year and now it's not they've been stalled i don't know the exact details of why but i think we all believe in the science i mean we all believe in science here actually and and i know having watched three kids go through high school that they never got enough sleep ever and i think that whole the the the homework i'm having the students confront the teachers in the high school with how much a work they have and i mean it's all of of a piece i just think yeah i think we need to do this wisely and and learn from other towns process's and not because i think it could do more damage if we actually try to do it and it's not successful i certainly agree with absolutely everything you say there is an organization start school international which has huge resources because they have a you know a nationwide organization devoted to this and we should certainly use them as well i think one thing that is very very clear is that you have to have engaged with on from the whole community that's huge it's incredibly important that we get input from every all sections of the community and also you know that we educate people that we explain why we want to do this because you know a lot of people you know past experience from start school  later people are quite hostile to the idea you know it's going to take me longer to get to work the traffic is going to be worse and then you say yes but you know this is diabetes and the depression and the suicide rates the traffic accidents and they say oh ok i'll  ten minutes later longer to get to work done you know so so you have to have community involvement we have to learn from some districts that have had problems but i think to the point now is that i would urge  started so i am very supportive of this i do believe the science is clear and is supported fairly often says you know a lot of what we have to be thinking about is you know what's best for kids and i think it's pretty clear that this is the right thing to do  right i suggest then we absorb it and digest it and synthesize thing i mention presented this evening you know writ large i guess you know and all and then come back at our next meeting and continue the conversation and discussion with the next step or thinking about how to best execute community the middle six weeks superintendents was to do it together because i think all the educators feel like this is a good idea in general but it's hard to gather a community up and do it so we thought if we had a collective amount of communities that border each other that it might be a  they've actually kind of shifted to another initiative that it trying to do together and put this on the on the left side of the burner but actually willing to meet with teachers and meet with community and form a task force  solicit feedback and kind of go through that process like we do with our curriculum reviews in our other initiatives where we gather data we gather information we presented with a wide breadth of folks who have that feedback so people can set a timeline and know what it means to move start times if a it's a good idea which i think people generally do be what it would mean and what would it look like and in some districts that means start times have to change just for the high school in some districts that means that correspondingly times have to change for middle and elementary school because everybody relies on common things like transportation and things like that so village just ticks conversation is one piece the science in the u nderstanding of why it's important is a piece i think people feel very confident about once they hear it and understand it and then working that through the district and getting some common feedback and some common understanding and i'm thankful that people understand that we're right now doing that at the elementary level for space we're right now doing that for the middle school if a space were right now doing that for the building program we're working our budget through so there are some big organizational changes that  that new facility and we can start to sort of figure it out so sometimes these challenges become opportunities or we can take advantage of i i guess they only asked that we are thoughtful about timeline and maybe leave it up to the space task force i mean the  start time task force or whatever title we give the group to kind of come up with what time do they need to gather the resources go the research because presentation and sort of timeline so that that would be so but i i have studied this in the past and i understand the academic calendar and we had comments from citizens as well thinking about other organizations we've got the starts well later in a zation perhaps there is the health for a man escaping my brain in the moment the existing bodies who could public schools is trying to mistreat or we've been trying to push for the budget through the lens of trying to make fiscal eighteen work in conjunction with trying to make fiscal nineteen work as well that we can have those funds support the town budget which includes a school budget and keep everybody that we have moved to services forward the better off we are period before we have to go back and ask for more money or reduce our expenses through different measures go into the process there were early in the fall we talked about what were the projections for revenue state funding free cash  for what were the expenses needed for the schools and for the town we came up with a preliminary suggestions during that time we realised that the budget was about two point two million dollars short for fiscal eighteen if we were just using the straight revenue that we are receiving through our tax base and through state aid and that we might need to lean into the stabilization fund that was set up to expand the the money moving forward remember now in each fiscal year of the override we have put money aside no savings account and hopes to pull it out some day to extend it so the next year would have been a year that we're going to have to uphold potentially some money out of that account when revenue came in a little better in we were trying to control our costs a little bit we reduce that number down to maybe one point five that we could the schools would be able to use circuit breaker funding instead of general budget money to give about one hundred sixty seven thousand dollars back to extend that override money moving forward and were there any other places that we could do that throughout the town because our circuit breaker funding again and we can go into  have to give a short circuit breaker one o one to the public for a special needs students especially those who are service outside the district which make up about one hundred three students the state provides support to every city in town year and that money is dedicated by the state to one big pool in the districts break it up and use it or given it across all three hundred sixty communities so we get that money back and because we've had a lot of students out of the last few years that that circuit breaker funding has gone up the last couple years and now we have a revolving account instead of being minus every year which remember my first year here we had to scratch and go back to the town and ask for seven hundred fifty because we were sure we actually have indexed our general budget to the point where we're getting appropriate funding and then the circuit breaker state funding has incrementally going up as well we have a revolving account that has some money that we can use just in case we have any extra students for that some folks believe that that number is too high and would like that number to go into the general stabilization fund to support maybe a year for a year five of the your own money we certainly agreed when david gill asked us to provide some money to that end and we dedicated we could have had seven percent of the general budget we only took three and a half and we gave one hundred sixty seven thousand back to that to that effort  some folks are saying whoa that balance is still pretty high when you're going to use it for tony has outlined in detail in five scenarios if you will actually spend that money down in fiscal one thousand nine hundred twenty on the special education services that we provide we promised the town that if we did have any extra revenue in that department we put it in a box and hold it we did that's a circuit breaker income and we promise the time they would spend it on those expenses that result from special education which we have a three year plan to do so where does a discussion amongst the town folks and the war committee should we have that money sit in circuit breaker funding in the schools should it sit in the stabilization as more that we have stability in our function as a school system and as a town and all the different purposes it serves so we're at that point where the schools feel finally like we're not going back and asking to have extra money given to us that in the  ir that we have our own ability to leverage these these funds towards the highest variable lineup budget which is our district but we're very very much understanding of the partnering that we need to do at the time because we're benefiting by their support that then maybe some funds that we could put back in the stabilization fund to extend the override so this is a good new story for the time that we have free cash or we have stabilization fund and we have potential circuit breaker funds where certain line items are have revolving accounts that can help the town who forward nine kloof the schools with the town it's a much better place than we were four years ago when we were all looking to find out how we're going to fund the schools that time but it only lasts if we spend it wisely which i think we have if we save where we can in project those savings to be spent in and organize in predictable fashion years moving forward which i think both david hill enjoy and feeling totally involved in trying to do on behalf of the town and schools budget so to me it's a matter of where this money sids and how we can collectively use it as a town over the next three years or if it's a school or home where we can selectively use it to take care of our work here in the schools which if we take care of our we're not asking for the time for money to us it's one big bucket of money that we're trying to allocate responsibly  and basically whether or not we decide that the funds that we dedicated the hundred sixty seventy so crease to be to demonstrate that would be transparent trying to support a bigger budget or that we are transparent talking about right now and i've talked about  it's definitely a conversation that i get is in big picture if you put the ones back it's a good picture we're we're able to plan and use these funds and further the over of funding it's just how do we want to do that and how do we want to work with the work with the time on that from having to come and do a vote on releasing funds from the stabilization fund so really you know for the taxpayers having tech because it would have to be a special town meeting where the schools would have the administration have more ability especially tuitions are going to exceed what has been budgeted there's this sort of well what are we going to do how are we going to handle it and you know different steps that have to be taken in the near term to potentially cut general expenses  can't save these dollars for five years if we get x amount dollars we can spend it in this fiscal year our it has to be spent the next fiscal year and it has spent for that purpose so this is targeted money by the state that can't be used to buy other things the only question becomes do we not ask the town for as much money for that one light on him that they have been helping us with so they can put that money in the stabilization car and quite frankly there's a there's a large part of us that really wants to work with the town to do that i mean this is we sit with david every year we work these things out and so there's another part of us that wants to just make sure that we have that flexibility to be able to respond to midyear issues that come up in this one line item of artificial students that there have been cases where folks who've come to the community in october that have required us to pay tuition is that would that would be where we could then go and say well we can we can handle that we're going to go to the are over the next couple of years that will get spend down as needed relatively quickly and depending on which projection one looks at you know there may be something left after three years and maybe nothing that after three years it will be reasonable assumptions but you know there is a way that we have been responsible in how we've been expanding it and that again circuit breaker is always money that you get reimbursed for for what happened the year prior so the numbers finally have increased the point where are we shifted into  larger amount for a circuit breaker a couple years in a row but so that to tom's point and almost all of us in areas where we would presently spend that money down in depleted to just about one hundred thousand dollars in fiscal twenty which is just three years so that that won't stay here that has to be expended in one year and it would be all would be expended in the projections that we have again with certain assumptions and we would like to create a situation where we always have about a five hundred thousand dollars balance in the account like that for all those cases that we've experienced over time in the last ten to fifteen years where certain things have happened if we had to go back to the town testimony so that is a practice that's happening in school districts across the state that most districts have a circuit breaker revolving account that always carries a balance of about you know five hundred to eight hundred thousand dollars for those extraordinary cases that come in so that we finally got to the what i would call the  norm and nine hundred thousand dollars or to cigar size is not the norm it's probably in the higher side but five hundred thousand dollars would be what i would consider a great protection against anything happening  year that we could solve ourselves without having to go all the so i was just going to say that it seems to me that with even though you know where a small relatively small district and that's a high amount of money we're also growing at a rate that is probably higher than a lot of other towns and so i would expect that with all these hundreds of extra students we could very easily be faced with more you know special ed costs that we don't know about but then and need to give and what our expenses are and how those they change and the students coming in and their needs and their level of funding that they need to be completely different so you know having that can cover a lot more than the very high expense students it could also cover other special education costs and more for the rest of the budget available so we don't have to do it we did three years ago and make drastic cuts to other other areas to make up for special education that have to go to the town for more joy if you have good information about other school districts and has historically been very volatile so the thought that there would be anywhere between two a five and ten percent volatility in any one year is not unreasonable in this life and you know when you do the math around that you know you get pretty quickly to you know four hundred eight hundred maybe more reasonable reserves given the year to sort of kill so seems like a big numbers but when you start putting in context with much larger numbers you know it doesn't it doesn't necessarily see late yesterday we talked about the school calendar and policy changes that would be considered to be presented for you know their future yeah maybe next meeting applied there is a subcommittee of the belmont high school building committee that will be the interview team and that of the a couple of weeks worth of meetings and interviews and a process that we will they have been fully utilized i think we've got every nickel lot of each of those pianos and this is a direct response to the anonymous donation that we received that we voted in that our show was able to use that money and leverage e opportunity to buy a pin of the company that will take them and dismantle it at the same times who wanted to make sure that we were timely and decommissioning these two former assets and current  for the only thing that i would in the the changes to the music proposal i think i think we should just make it clear that it says the proposal suggested getting instructions for strings in grade four and then grade five and then it just said currently all grade five students but i think what it doesn't say is that and i'm pretty sure we discussed it but i didn't take notes that stay but that that currently students begin strings and third grade so it just doesn't indicate exactly what the changes you know i mean that's the only and maybe you don't need to but i thought the conversation might want to reflect what they've actual change is in this i just think grade five choosing that is there a motion to approve the minutes as amended