this thursday february eighth at the general middle school and there's a concert at seven o'clock and february twelfth at the high school there's a spring concert at seven o'clock it's also the same similar concert is going to be on the twenty eighth as well at the high school feb fourteenth there's an art show at the middle school on february fifteenth the middle school symphonies and parent teacher chorus concert is at seven o'clock i just want to note that bunts very fortunate to have a community that strongly supports music in the arts and we appreciate all the teachers administrators community members and parents that's need to make concerts like this and events like this possible by march seventeenth the foundation of the belmont education is having their silver anniversary fundraiser the foundation's been in existence now for twenty five years and celebrating the twenty five years of making a difference here in the town of belmont with balclutha schools tickets for that event are available online it's again on march seventeenth from seven to ten thirty up on hill school on march twenty eighth at the butler school at seven o'clock the belmont special education parent advisory council is hosting a resource fair for families and the purpose of the fair is to allow community members to explore variety of options and resources that are available for students beyond those that are available at the school there are over twenty vendors that have agreed to participate in groups that provide occupational therapy physical therapy behavioral services speech therapy advocacy tutoring so there be event we have just some news to report at our last meeting that was held at the wellington school the school committee voted to have the gun one high school building project be a seven through twelve school that's a civic and decision on behalf of the t so we're thankful that that decision has been made as we move forward to support the building program but also support our schools k to twelve because it involves a lot of moving parts over the next three to four years to ensure that our configurations work and our new  schools work for our children so we look forward to that work over the next few years with our teachers and our community members i would like to let folks know that we've been having a lot of conversation about our after school programs at the elementary level and at the  met with the vendors of those programs and several occasions in a small group of parents and i met as well before the winter recess and i'm going to be asking the school committee policy committee to talk about some of the assumptions that we're making as we talk about the role of the school department in the school as it relates to afterschool programs because when we meet with our vendors and our providers we can let them know what the rumors are of our role in the work that they do with our children and also have clarity with some of the parents that may have concerns and maybe have them have some discussion about that as well so we look forward to the discussion of the policy committee and sharing some information with our parents with our others as well in addition to that  later what would that look like as a transitionary option before we go into a new configuration of seven through twelve that group has a first meeting of monday of next week to look at options and surely to our nine to twelve setting only had originally we looked at arcades twelve environment but we realized that we didn't want to disrupt all of our other five schools where the parents and children if we wanted to just look at the high school so we look forward to those options being explored by our teachers and administrat as well as discussing how that work will work into the school communities conversation and ultimately does any of these options are feasible over the next few years i wonder what are parents in our staff know that we are keeping an eye on the  flu we're not big brother but we know when you're out in weird country what can that data because we want to make sure that there's no bugs or flus or viruses running through our buildings i want to thank our nursing staff for keeping an eye on it and every day i get a list of how many students are out and how many are out to make sure that we don't have any illnesses that are brewing in our buildings that we may want to take further action on in there's a lot of good news around all of our athletic teams that finished up in the fall that are working  really hard to swallow but i have to say that the boys varsity swim and dive team win seven you know they won the middlesex league they had a shooting match last week and sometimes certain sports don't get elevated to that level of discussion of folks being able to attend the meet was actually during the school day so congratulations so that that hardworking group of boy swimmers into all of our athletes but they haven't won the league in a long time so i want to give all so congratulations to those students and i think you so an item that we skipped over the student representatives reports grandstand we do have students here to give us a report diversity week just last week and we couple of presentations a couple speakers come in talking on a variety of subjects and what would happen is our teachers are pulls out and go down to the auditorium and we were there you that focuses on traditional performance traditional pro performance and is based in boston and so there are three different opportunities at the orchestra students and highs at the high school we're able to experience so about a week ago there was an opportunity to go people that they were that they were there they said wow i was just so cool to see the kind of instruments they were using how together they were and on monday a concert master of hamlet haydn and another member of the orchestra there coming to bellow high school and they're working with the orchestra for two hours to teach you about rock style of music that we're going to be playing at our upcoming concert that i think was mentioned on february twelfth and so it's we've we've taken trips like this pretty routinely over the past couple of decades anyway every car every two years will alternate so one year of course will go the next year  orchestra so this year for example the high school marching band and jazz ensemble are heading to to disney to disney world to perform and do a parade in a performance there or february break so that's the band a trip this year and so next year will be of course here is given to us from world cultural tours which is the tour company that we have used almost exclusively for our music travel over the last again couple of decades just because they've been so great to work with and so reliable  change depending on when the performance venues are available but the courses will perform at least two times over the course of the trip and have the opportunity hear some music and of course visit museums and there's one potential trip out to the ring of kerry which i believe is i believe is what it's called the ring of kerry which is like the mountainous region of ireland so it should be a really outstanding trip the cost is high as all these trips  and twenty nine hundred dollars and that includes airfare hotel bus transportation breakfast every day dinner most days all admissions to museums performance venues will have a tour a tour guide professional tour guide with us the entire trip so the way these trips work is we take a coach bus to logan airport there's a representative from world cultural tours that meets us there gets us all checked in sends us off on the plane when we land at our destination there is someone there on site to meet us and also be our tour guide for the entire duration of the trip so it's it's a really great way for school groups i feel like to take kids out to see parts of the world together i think that's a big piece of this is that you know a lot were we were fortunate to live in a community where a lot of kids travel and they take family trips abroad and things like that but there is something different and special about doing it with sixty of your music friends and going off and performing together  and feeling like professional musicians on the road a little bit in your uniforms and music and all that stuff so yeah we're looking forward to each we're trying our best to keep costs down to allow as many families to participate as possible that is difficult given the high cost of airfare and things like that there are fund raising opportunities that will cultural tours can and can guide us through that may provide an opportunity for  students to raise some of the funds although i will say you know when the cost of the trip is twenty seven hundred dollars that's a lot of fund raising that a family has to do to to make a sizeable dent in it so for our part really what we're trying to do is give families as much notice as possible about the trip so that they can start to talk away some a little bit of cash here and there so if we give them at least a year's warning that we're going to take this trip that it takes some of the sting out of the cost and hopefully allows many kids to participate so that's why our co payment wanted to come to school committee now in february typically these trips the deadline for bringing them to school committee is may for international trips for the following school year even further in advance so don't be surprised if we come to you later this year with a two thousand and twenty trip for a band in order because we i do feel like if you can give a family a year and a half or two years to put one hundred dollars away in a savings account or for a kid to save the the the last trip we took abroad to was to spain and there were some really great opportunities for those students to one of the performances was in a conservatory actually to the performances were in a conservatory so we heard other there about college age music students performing spanish band music actually believe it or not there's a really rich tradition of band music in spain and then the tour company does a really nice job of first all they've got to find a restaurant that can host eighty high school kids right so they'll find a place that can host that number of people and also have some live music for the kids to hear so there's a lot of music making a lot of music hearing it's not just music though it's museums and art work and architecture and and really taking everything that that the that the location has to offer so next on the agenda is a community education  t and assess the feasibility you have expanding community education options for the future and very very cold marshall samuel's who stayed here just as she contacted me last spring to offer her considerable expertise providing those education and enrichment off options we do need a full time director of community education ultimately we believe that community education can be self sustaining but we'll need initial funding to hire him direct or to do the work to make after a meeting with her and hearing all the possibilities and gratefully accepted her offer to guide us where we can be in the steering committee in addition to the community education program i don't education time when we reconvene steering committee restart steering committee members from these various organisations and the community at large to get really a wide range of perspectives on the current program in his teacher possibility so i added in this slide which isn't in your hand up was on the table but it is in your school committee report that you have these are the members who worked with us many of them are here today elizabeth  back to the process just for a minute so we met for our first meeting up in june of twenty seventeen and during that time we did to try to get to know each other a little bit in the various programs that are offered as i said here in town to learn more about what the internal  ohio and also determined to determine the scope of the external market analysis throughout the late spring and summer marsh and some of the drinking members conducted interviews collecting data about these programs in peer community and then we reconvene on october fourth the steering committee we met and reviewed to to discuss in analyzing finance we developed some initial ideas of conclusions and what we thought it was the direction we wanted to bring with with all the directors some of which are under the school the school department some of which are under recreation we asked that at the end of it all the detail information about that is available at the end of that survey we took that information and i really did the other communities to see how they compare with don't know how all of the communities have a full time director they have they all have at larger they all have pretty extensive marketing campaigns i think you've probably seen these around town the i got served on this actually by picking these things out around town so this is the kind of brochure they have the pretty flashy and they are distributed you can pick them up in almost any business in town so they do they distribute these brochures heavily in belmont i should say and surrounding towns they have facebook pages some of them have twitter accounts they all spend quite a bit of time marketing to not only within their community but to other communities all these programs  charter self sustaining some of them contribute a fairly significant songs back to the schools heartland looks into it's around one hundred fifty thousand dollars that goes back to reimburse for overhead of using the buildings another of the questions is closer biggest challenge and we are not alone in the biggest challenge is face how they everybody's got credit schools especially these suburbs that are closer to boston and they all so what do we do then and belmont to make this to duplicate what's happened to the town's well you have to look at what we don't have which is a full time director we have kelly right now gets paid a stipend of thirty five hundred dollars to do this as i think some people in the on the committee said this is sort of a big sell mentality is the way we're running this right now so it's pretty hard to put together a curriculum with any two hundred courses which they have another town's with a someone who's getting paid a stipend in a group of steering committee members who are doing this in their spare time it's this is a business and you just can't write it with volunteers we have to invest in marketing i show national organizations on community education say that you cannot do this online you just can't get the most specially if you're going to enter the market lane like we would be doing you have to be able to spend something on hard copy and you have to distribute it you have to send it to all your residents and you have to distribute it to other communities we have to explain the expertise we have the women a lot of faculty here i could tell you one thing i asked all of these communities is do you have any trouble recruiting faculty and they said never they said there are people coming in the door every day volunteer in their service and i think we're in a better position than one of the other towns because we have so many people who work at near we have a lot of other entities in town that are in town or nearby that we can collaborate with just in our community meetings we had a couple of those kinds of work in the stations and it was wonderful because they were very and we need to think right now we're focused except for a couple of college prep s a t prep classes everything we're doing in belmont is focused on adults but there is a demand from all for all ages and stages that we're not needing right now spring so that brings us back to where we started which is you know we we we think that there is a demand we think there is a market that people would  report and answer any questions you might have and then consider our next step so i was sort of interested to see that for other communities you know their chief moneymaker are going to have the afterschool program some of them are some of the some of them are so how would this fit in with the the big discussion that we've been having about afterschool basin after school programs would this be something that you know some students might want to do once a week say they can take a course rather than going to the basic core another after school thing or what so in my work with the vendors that provide our after school care we identified very quickly that there are different communities who do after school care differently one option for that is that the school system actually runs the after school here and there staffed by school boys who are just after school poised on full time teacher sometimes teachers or teacher assistants to volunteer not volunteer to take part and get paid to work those programs and they're run by i don't want public school staff that way brings more consistency maybe higher quality programming in one burbank at school program we would be increasing our employee base by a significant number and so we would have to weigh how we would introduce that into the dish if we chose to go down that option but we did talk about that option with our with our vendors and they do know that that's something that on the horizon potentially was being discussed which would quite frankly put all of those folks out of business the individual groups that we have now so that that has been a discussion having districts to do it that way and there is to about what we can do for jobs ok and and also when you think that just purely aiming at adults you would be able to make it self sustaining yes and lexington which is one of the most successful programs they do have thinks and do programs with they have a five weeks of the program and they're they're one of the most successful in the want they're the one i mentioned that would be able to return some so i was just a big concern that you were is in order to even consider well what might it look like in melbourne we need a full time person to do that so that how do we how do we go and see what that findings are not that we would go start a program to get the actually a very successful four week summer program run by kitty kelley and pete atsic he was a member of the steering committee so there is potential for there and there is potential for lots of partnerships and there is potential in terms library if i don't sort of know where to go for all of these things we need to be great if we can do one stop shop you can have under one umbrella all of those different opportunities that are that exist as well so so but that's the kind of being dead you know we can we can hire a full time director ideally someone who works in one of those really successful programs now as an assistant to those all of those things that come in and build up our program and i believe some of the people that you  with and then hire that you know get get someone to come in and help us think about these things that it's not for lack of wanting to do it that all of the folks who've been part of this where i shall now it's not that people have wanted to do it but within all of the other things that people do are given the fact that it that for right now the director is a state that did decision and not a full time job with limited options and limited space and limited marketing limited funding cetera and it should be noted that peter at our library in june our parking lot department offer great stuff for our children in our parents for non school age children at the library during the day the the pool in the in the in the field house and summer programming for judith park and rec and in just coordinating that would be a huge gift to the community for all of us to be coordinated but then actually having nice sense of collaboration on this committee some people had not even met each other before and there was a real excitement about working together and i can tell you that from talking to people all the towns that isn't true in other towns so it's an advantage we have having talented people who run interesting programs who really want to collaborate so as only those first of all thank you for all the work is great to see somebody posing gauge to revitalize the we we have seen wonderful things through the volunteers to do this work and if it's not to get to that level that we're talking about and that we're hoping for i really feel that you know we need to see if we can find funding and not live in that town or school budget is that possible i don't know but with our i think that's the next step so that we need to go in and and when i asked mar something you could help lead and she said yes i said ok let's go let's go to school committee and bring this idea we might come back to you and say if we can make it work there is no part of the end of the rainbow that  say that arlington lexington have very successful programs they got those programs by taking people from the brooklyn program which is almost more just in this day they were system you have to excuse me if i start cough and i have a bad cold but i have been working with kelly over the last couple years and our meetings are very are very energetic i think there's definitely a need in our community and a desire we had a movie date recently that went very well we had on one of the chinese restaurants donated their food we had the cinema donate their time to the community is very eager to work with us i think now his on a lot of different committees knows a lot of people and if we're looking to hire somebody she would be the perfect person to get started on this if she's interested in doing that and i know we're going to volunteer more time to work with her to make this happen and i think we can thank y affected by other partnerships that we have been told so is the is the group looking for the school committees approval to act on behalf of the this party to seek funding for funding partners or public  possibly as to who would share the whether this would be shared or whether he can speak to that a little bit is that what so we didn't get to the to the point either participating one way or the other for now what we're asking can work together but at this point in time it's just if we want to you right now that's february for looking for well what can we do that could be in place for next fall now is really the time to think about well how c hit some of them could bring those groups together to not only begin new programming but actually take advantage of an access all the collaborative programming that we have to advertise market in create opportunities for our community so that person would be in charge of connecting with all the existing folks starting in seeing what kelly does already at a level that's full time and hopefully seeing the revenue come in from those programming opportunities that could then ultimately justify the pay of that  well just sort of want so so a lot of those are really great questions and the first first step is is or even grant funding available to do this but asking for it and for going to go out and be asking folks and seeking this funding we want to make e would you say i'd share that these are all budget neutral additions to the part of the studies and we appreciate the hard work this proposal was done early at one of our school committee meetings prior to a  big that had to do with the new building project so i don't think we gave proper attention to list baker our science director our o s u dorrian our visual performing arts director for being really creative with  the courses that they're offering listening to the teachers listening to what students want and in creating courses that reflect that their desire to learn different things expand their departments other horses that have happened in the past from our social studies department director ted mcdevitt so we've had a history of each year each department as part for budget neutral creative options for us students so we take all particularly least two maybe three embrace sort of elements of technology in stem which is i know something that you know we've talked about wanting to try to promote more and more in the curriculum and i know it's hard when we can't necessarily hire the incremental for innovative space in our new school they ask why you are already doing these types of programs so part of this process a few years ago was introducing coding and now we're introducing robotics we have now to school robotics club we're now doing three d art in it and giving students different opportunities but we're asking for the spaces it's nice to be able to say that we've already piloted in you know have programs in place that we would like to experience when it comes to having this is another agenda item that well we're not asking you to vote tonight we're asking you to vote in our separate twenty committee meeting this calendar follows the new start date policy  with labor day on september third the start date is the wednesday after labor day everything else that's on the calendar follows the patterns that we have in the current your calendar in terms of release days and time meaning with one exception we have for the past couple of years had an early release day for professional development for  and on the back of the calendar and which holidays i did actually meet with the belmont religious council couple of weeks ago and i have shared this with them and asked if they had any other input or feedback and we our teachers and staff to know so if a student says i'm going to be out observe a particular holiday and the teacher has a list to understand a little bit more about what the student is talking about and as with any principals actually because they wanted to get their input before i went to go see the religious council and they said that they have not had any negative feedback perhaps one or two examples with the belmont religious council on several occasions at night to feed back on this and is to share what goes on in the schools and also share this calendar and in the work that we do in specially as relates to how we're trying to be respectful since i i don't come very often to give an update on h r since a lot of h r is something you can't really update people on i thought i'd just take a quick made to give you here a couple of quick highlights before i get to those two main events that superintendent beilin just referenced the first thing close we're very excited to welcome her artemis to us who has worked as the h r assistant for ten years is moving over to support a super assistant superintendent darrius as her assistant retired so we're happy for artemis with her change and we're happy consuelo so say hello when you come in and introduce yourselves we're always working on well and wellness initiatives and trying to think of things that we can do and we do have right now we have a trainer who comes in once a week and does an exercise class sort of a boot camp style trip class with the staff after school on wednesdays that's kind of exciting we're looking to do more of that we're just coming up on our on our as you know we were wrapping up collective bargaining which has been a long process and we're coming up on what will be our busy time of hiring which will start off we i'm part of a group called the grader this is the longest name of an organization ever but it's the greater boston school human resource network it's a group of about fifteen h r director is that i was invited to join when i first came to belmont and the purpose well we meet once a month and sort of go over the highlights of what's going on in h r in everybody's districts our main focus the originating focus of this group was to increase the diversity of the staff  in our districts and so we do host at once year a diversity job fair specifically marketed to and organize for teachers of color and this year for the first time actually we've been asked to host in belmont so i'm very excited we're hosting that on march seventeenth at the wellington elementary school i think it fits really well with our strategic plan and all of the things we're working on this year this is something we've been working on i think we've been in conversations and sort of working on this the whole time i've been here but we're excited to host the diversity fair this year and so looking forward to that we have we market this to the organization or markets this to all of the historically back black colleges all the programs in the area so amazingly we get quite a few people coming from out of state and we have made a few hires out of this diversity fair over the years so we'll be looking for more more of that this year and that's early in the hiring season which is good  we've had the really strong advantage to be able to hire early which has been really great but there's a district and very beneficial that when you can go out with your firm budget and you can start hiring by mid april into june you really are  hiring kind of the a lot of the stronger educators right and so i've been really fortunate and as an h r person to be able to do that and certainly as the district so hopefully the budget will work itself out that will be able to continue to do that  then one of the big activities for the spring is we are as you know conducting two principal searches and i'm going to pass out to you i didn't put this in your packets because it really is is very much in draft form just so you can pass those down speak of an idea when we do you know some of you have been part of these searches in the past when we search for a principle we put together a screening committee that's that represents various constituencies so there will be the  will will put forward one or two people usually two people for the committee will have somebody from the parent community issue from the p t o we have usually another principal on the committee a director i sit on the committee  screening that's the group that does the screening and goes through all the people who've applied do all there were first rounds of interviews sometimes a second round of interviews and then recommend the job of the screening committee is to recommend finalists for the for the superintendent's consideration usually it's you know two sometimes three but usually two finalists will come through when we get to that so we go through the screening committee goes to the superintendent when it gets to the superintendent there's various points where everybody has an opportunity to meet them there's a day where the person comes in the district it's a very intense day if you're the person being the in or doing the interviewing you meet with the staff of the building that the you know for this in this case the wellington elementary school for example so you meet with the staff right after school then you come up to central office and meet with leadership council the assistant superintendent the superintendent and then have a little break and then in the evening we invite the parent community and i think uniquely we we have a feedback form is the same feedback form we use for all of those groups i do it in different colored paper so we can tell which group is giving which set of feedback and we really do i think superintendent filling in the test we really do i read them all that in you read them all and really go through the feedback from each group  so it's a pretty i think a pretty it's a transparent process it's a very inclusive process i think everybody's voice gets heard who wants to be heard if they make themselves known there's definitely opportunities to make yourself known your voice heard compare it's a pretty comparable process i think most districts run it's similar process maybe not every district has a not for the parents to come out i'm not sure about that but i think most districts around the pretty similar process you know it's a you want the principal to to when you hire a principal you want the community feel like they had some input at least that they were able to have that person come in front of them and hear more about them so i think it's a pretty similar i think the timeline were  similar it depends on when you know somebodies going to leave if somebody is retiring you know in september you might start that search a little sooner but i think really january february is a pretty good time frame if we we really hope to wrap these up and be able to announce a finalist for the wellington before the april break and for the high school just after the break assuming all goes as planned you know you go the it says this question but it was something that was a question to be in these people these principals would start on what date so the press will start on july first as when they start their their contractual year and just so then they have some time to get into the district and get acclimated and all of that before school in september so we're looking for in july one start date and as far as the principal goes in terms of the budget we know we have to hire a principal we don't know if we have enough money in the budget to hire more teachers for x building but we know we have to hire a principal so that we'll move on now was the market like right now in this area firing principals is that a particular take market or you know we've had we've had a good response to in the past or in the recent past when we've gone out for principal searches certainly certainly when we went out in the middle school search was our last one i think we had a pretty good response we had a pretty good pool so i'm looking forward to i mean i mean we're we're a very strong district we're a high performing district we're close to the city which is a draw for some people but we're easy access to route two and one twenty eight so we're kind of a nice or a nice location for a lot of people i think the combination of just where we're located in proximity to the city and getting out of the city and also just that we're a strong district we have a strong support a school committee we've got a strong foundation for common education supports the district if if i was somebody looking for a principalship and i poked around on the bum of public schools website i would see a lot of really positive things happening so i think that's a real big draw for people so i don't i don't i don't expect to have any concerns about a deeper pool you know it's a bit interesting in the world of education unlike you know the rest of the world in terms of hiring it's a very public process and you have to if you want to experience princip they have to tell their district that they're looking so that always ties a little bit of throws a little bit of a wrench into it but i think for the most part we're pretty strong districts i do have colleagues at work over  harvard so i invited as i have every year to interview would go through walk interviews with all the graduates from the harvard school of ed administrate of program we have had some of those insurance here in our school so i will be there next thursday so i will use that opportunity not only to size up some of the candidates and go through the barke interview process but also make some notes of folks that might be high flyers and i actually received an e mail today in high quality candidates it's not just advertising anymore it's reaching out to diversity fears having the more in your in your buildings and making those connections at the local colleges so so we'll be reaching at all those options to try to attract and the brightest to  the right and we do look and you know we're looking at lots of different sort of job boards now that they're used to be some are looking at all kinds of ways to to promote the positions as well to draw in the most candidates and you know the diversity fair  every year i talked to a number of people at that diversity fair who are looking for administrative positions so we'll definitely be looking at that when we go to that fair and there's some other things we go to as well  posted if you think about if you were a candidate looking for a job and you were looking at our site you would see all of the stuff about the building projects so i think that we will attract people who are interested in that sort of work of a new school in a new configuration and i think you know people self select these to these pools they don't just randomly apply some people randomly if i have something for the most part people are going to look at this and poke around a little bit and say gee this looks like you know someone's going to be really drawn to this and very excited about that that project and where they may or may not fit into it so i think that will be a piece that will and a good candidate is going to look at them i should say this any good can and it's going to look at the website and figure some things out about us yeah appreciate that and i think they appreciate being able to offer feedback on those forms and like i said we do we really value those it's those feedback forms and really that people take the time to stay in fill those out and you know if i put plug into the viewing audience is when we have these dates announced and there is the principle search if you can come out for both of the dates is awesome because then you see both of the finalists as opposed to only one and so i'd like to thank mary for being here in one of the important pieces to talk to the viewing audience that if you know are willing to parent you might not know that as well into position open so we want to make sure all of our parents know that we have two principal ships that are looking to be filled and i will probably cover this in a future meeting but the projection currently as we start to get to the end of q two is that we will very likely be in deficit projected deficit of two hundred thousand dollars for the year as a result of increase in interest paid increases in special education our district tuitions predominately so i think will be an opportunity to discuss sort of how we want to address that and what underway and we're working to get aligned with the town in terms of the broader one bill not one budget and will be hitting a number of relatively tight timeframes in the coming weeks to make sure that we are slotted into the  point four or the bow tie as it's being named that we may want to change that name we are in the next phase of finishing up some of the questions that we have had on our initial submission of the the p d p and we're getting ready in two to weeks put forward the next submission in this phase of work every tuesday the leadership group of the belmont high school building committee meets for about two to three hours so we know today we're still talking about parking was still talking about loops in and out of the school we're still talking about fields in the orientation of our fields and making sure that the parking doesn't take away that space and so there's really a lot of dialogue about that next phase of work that we will go through and part of the next phase of work that i want this part of think about as that decision within the seven to twelve school at seven three nine or seven through eight is on one side of this  building i am very open to say that the conversations that we've had in the visioning work that we've done in the temperature of the ship consuls that seven through nine is a lot of that we feel would really se children the best as it relates to teaming in small environments for that age group of students and who they are as learners in a ten to twelve more department based model that should actually it's a valid one highs open campus model and how they pre educational but it's actually important for the timing of how they're going to continue the work of designing the buildings on the inside we had a meeting last thursday night at the wellington school and we stated or i stated at that meeting departments on the upper school side how do we want to organize our teams in the lower school side we are there are great chances for adjacencies for partnerships between you know things like art or robotics and sciences and different is to connect with each other so the layout of the building is really going to be very directly impacted by the feedback we get from teachers so we're hoping to have an email ready to go out to staff tomorrow they were meeting with leadership council on thursday around those issues we hope to be able solicit feedback from teachers through principals meetings through department meetings through maybe steering committees that we can get folks to serve on maybe surveys and google doc information so can get the right questions that we think that the architects want to find out information on and begin to have that conversation with us staff that will be a window of time between now and probably the end of march or early  into may where that that feedback loop will be continually opened to give that advice in feedback to our designers when we think about it in the end our teachers use the rooms every day our teachers are the ones who would like to make the partnerships and know what they think would be the best for how the school should be organized in the inside out and so that this is where i think the teacher feedback will be as and so working with the design team at the meeting in china today was how do we how do we generate that work plan from the design side and what do they need us to provide them in terms of opportunity for feedback from the educator side and we know teachers are very busy during the day so we're trying to offer a differentiated approach to get involved grades versus lower is not just you know like how you design interior spaces but the relative sizes of the upper and the lower i mean if you decided for example to go for seventh and eighth  is doesn't that at some point limited flexibility in that regard ten twenty thirty years down the line so the way that the designers are talking about it right now is that  first of all that the split will be flat the split will be by floors as well so they'll be parts of the building that that will be team based or organized in a way that will will be up and down floors and on one side of the building or not in the design architect has been asked to make those those sections of each of the building of each section of the building to be as flexible as possible so what would happen if in ten years or twenty years we wanted to go to a house model right we want to have a nice pretty house or a going to be able to provide a design that what they call neighborhoods will be flexible and new so if we are department based high school at this point in time in ten years or fifteen years we want to make a team or a lot about the high school and this could be flexibility in doing so if in fact our role that we continually higher and higher we couldn't fit all the students that maybe ninth grade could be moved over into the high school side in those classrooms could be shifted so we are creating flexible space to can you know hopefully be used well over the course of the fifty years of the building and that's kind of how they're looking at but the right now we have to start with what we want now what we think is best two three service and then they'll do provide that flexibility as if we said ok we think we want seven three nine over here and ten to come over here we still might decide within that there so maybe seven eight is one model of team and maybe nine is a slightly different model so there's  and so on behalf of our teachers we know that there's a lot of nervousness a little bit of ngs heidi a little bit of need for clarity from a fourth grade teacher what does that mean if i'm a seventh and eighth grade teacher if i'm a  if i'm an eleventh you know if i'm a teacher at the high school and i teach two freshman math classes and maybe three upper level classes or an a p class what does that mean for me we really want to it might be oh we describe that a certain decisions that we have to make now that we will work through between now and june to support the design of the school but we have two or three years to work out these other models these other decisions that are good for kids that we have to kind of support our teachers through after the feedback on  and get to that point to that that will be our plan is how do we organize that work so we can give ourselves permission to focus on certain things now and then actually give ourselves two years to prepare for what that model looks like and then w professional develop needs to follow that model because we are looking at innovative spaces that we want to provide for teachers who want collaboration that teachers have been asking for so we're going to create spaces for that what interdisciplinary options are teachers have already voiced that they would like to take part in how do we organize that part of the building and give them around doing that work that doesn't happen because people like to try it you have to actually support that it is there's a lot of work to do between now and when that school opens as a lot of decisions to be made some of those decisions we made by all the feedback given by the professionals some of those decisions will be made by the leadership council or by the superintendent in by the building committee or by the school committee it depends on what that question is or what those systems in zero net energy and as ian ian communication i mean there are a lot of different pieces to this work that a lot of folks are working hard on so the community i think is to a great job of getting the work done  current up to date systems that the technology department uses now most of the equipment is in the range of six to ten years old which is kind of on the all the side terms of technology devices it was anything that needed to have been replaced on this item on the sofa in the arms it needed to have been replaced on this list have been replaced over time so this isn't that we've got a few pages of items and we're just waiting to buy new ones but we can't because we have to really all of us don't like that go to a certain function we put them towards that function of the state to get the car we are thankful to mr robert mahoney of the month savings bank who donated funds for a doubling of the education program which as part of how those book funded each year we're thankful to leaders environmental who provides funds each year to support the call more public schools were thankful to mr and mrs lawrence for who provided support  in january to develop more public schools and thankful to the wellington p t o but also made a donation for chrome books for the bubble of public schools so we have written thank you notes for the school department and something to each one of these donors or their families favor you don't have any personal items and business items the approval of minutes we have seven minutes and i was hopeful people looked ahead of time meant forward people want to go through the individual you need time to look at them or i think i would maybe just add that several several several committee members expressed opinions right shoes today transportation space