superintendent phailin is enjoying some graduation activities with his own family so we wish them very well and we'll begin our meeting calling to order seven o two with the pledge of allegiance so we have on our agenda as we always do an opportunity for citizens to share any concerns or questions that they might like to share this or anyone with us today who has like to share any comments or concerns terrific there are no adjustments to the agenda as of now as far as the chairpersons report there are a lot of different activities on our public schools website i will not be listing them all because every time i list a few i feel like the viewing public might start to please over but i do try from time to time to mention the various activities but i would urge everybody to please go to the website either the schools individually or to our general website on the left hand margin are all sorts of things that people can mark their calendars to enjoy many musical offerings one act plays at the high school lots to do and didn't want to mention if people had not planned ahead that monday is labor day excuse me not labor day memorial day memorial day so there are no school not be in session that day there are some memorial day festivities in town if people want to attend those but just wanted to remind folks and also next week there is an early release day on wednesday the thirty first so people can adjust their calendars and then the only other thing that i wanted to mention at our last meeting we had a wonderful showing from the community people who are interested in the topic of modular classrooms and there have been many conversations many meetings to discuss the site and the different possibilities for the modulars and so there is on our website currently the public schools website a link if people want to look at materials it's very clearly visible on the front page of our website and you know if you just click on that link it brings you to a whole bunch of different items and to bring people up to speed we had our meeting on the ninth or superintendent fail and walked us through a lovely presentation and fielded many questions from the public so that was terrific we are in the midst of the office in the midst of compiling a frequently asked questions kind of document so it's being processed now that includes information that was received from the public in a ten and set those meetings people filled out sheets that were available at the meeting and then any e mails that were directed to the superintendent or others have been read with great interest and care as well and so those have been thoughtfully compiled and that information will be available soon to the public and it will that be posted on the website as well have to rethink so if anyone has any information that will be available there and then the plan there is still are still ongoing conversations with m m a as far as i'm aware and so we will be receiving information from superintendent failon either at the next meeting which is june sixth or at the very latest june twentieth and what will happen is the superintendent will make a recommendation to this body and will be able to discuss and ask questions etc there will be no formal vote by the school committee we will be able to you know represent the constituents in belmont and ask questions and carry forth any comments or concerns that the public has and then accept the recommendation of the superintendent or suggest other action but hopefully that will be we were doing so much work in advance of this conversation that if there are any remaining questions there should be easily answered at that time any questions or comments that we we have next on our agenda the student representative report we have a couple of students here and we want right them up to our corner microphone schools quickly approaching and next week we got the student led when i place there coming up and really before to those and in terms of student government we've been working on different things  james will tell you about that yeah so as i told you guys a bit about before the suits that this year has been working on a survey which was looking at the amount of students who are receiving and we're looking at ways that teachers can make their homework students more effective because we all know homework is very very important for learning and every day student life but maybe we can make a little more time efficient so students have time to do the many other things that they do so we've collect this data and recently mr richards approached us because there is this other teacher group that is working on some social moshe learning stuff like we are and he approached us and asked if we could be willing to do a joint presentation will be able to kind of broaden our message and also add more validity to it because when we want to be speaking with our team with teachers speaking to other teachers they can give them good advice and we hope it'll make our message more coherent  we're right now we're planning on having the student panel at that meeting so i have a couple students that teachers can ask questions to about life as a student of high school and with their thoughts on the homework situation  we'll have them organize themselves into departments and will give them some will documents with with statistics which are some students student feedback for each department so the science department will get science specific feedback for that sort of thing but they'll also get averages for all the departments will be able to compare themselves to the norm so which we think will be really helpful but we're also going to have an open discussion with teachers and how them draw a bunch of the conclusions too  and just have had that discussion with teachers so they feel like they're a part of the process because they're really important and we certainly don't want to feel like they're being attacked because teachers are great right now and we don't want to change th i hope we can receive some sort of summary or something because it's been this like chapter chapter chaffed period like we're on the cliff hanger fred in all honesty would be great to see or hear something about that thank you  ceremony and this is a very nice recognition of teachers for their years of service in belmont from ten years fifteen years twenty years twenty five thirty i'm not sure there's a thirty five year this time but it's quite a wonderful  tradition in the schools through the school department and also the belmont education association and really a lovely event tomorrow afternoon next week and in your packets i share with you a copy of the professional team brochure and an invitation i hope you will be able to join us for some or all of the afternoon from twelve thirty to three this is when all of the teachers and administrators who are part of professional learning teams working on the things that they have found  this year and sharing what they've learned with their colleagues there is there are four sessions starting at twelve thirty five and going until two forty five and then a brief closing at the end and in fact one of the professional learning teams and one group that i think this student government group spoke with is a group that that looked at home and high school teachers looking at homework and they read a book called rethinking homework and and when they submitted the our our work on social motional learning because they are the ones experiencing the schools and their voices very very important so that's exciting between now open for the end this week you also have the moral day celebrations in the schools as you remember veterans day we go to three of the schools and memorial day we go to the other three schools and the schools put on a lovely program talking about the meaning of memorial day and the younger grades singing songs and join us and it's really just a really touching and wonderful time with them so that will be this friday and as you said monday is a day off so please your children are yours that day and we will look forward to seeing them back on tuesday and then between now and the next time we meet will have had graduation on sunday june fourth very beautiful event for the students graduating and their families and friends and that's from three to five on busy and then at our next meeting on june sixth is another really wonderful evening when we recognize and celebrate those who are retiring from the school system and starts be a little section at six am and reading and infusing or teaching social emotional learning through literature and really developing a nice catalog of books that that align with the curriculum that is taught in the elementary schools whether it's second half it at butler when broken homes and or open circle at burbank and if the messages around friendship and when you have a disagreement with your friends well there are many books you could use in your read aloud and bring out those those examples as well so that's what they've been working in elementary school in the secondary schools middle school and high school they've been focusing on classroom practices at those levels we don't have a curriculum that we teach per se  we model and give students opportunities to practice their social emotional learning skills and competencies in everything that they do at the middle school for example this year they've really focused  all hands on deck on saying hello to every student as they come through the door and everyone is in the hallway so that by the time a student gets to his or her locker they've been greeted by four or five adults and all of the faculty meetings at the middle school this year have been dedicated to this work on social motion learning and they came up with a really unique structure that they repeat at every faculty meeting and that is that they they need an anchor groups so it's a fairly large back a few here  one hundred will make it smaller by having everyone in small groups and every group is led by one of the members of the steering committee and they have a topic they focus this year on collaboration building  community relationship building and so they bring parts of activities and research and information and strategies that they can use in their classrooms to each of these small small groups in their meetings and then at the end of each meeting of the teachers in the group commit to try and one thing so when they come back at the next meeting then they share well how did that go at the middle school one of the district's steering committee members at our last meeting which was the last meeting of the year commented that at the beginning of the year when they were planning these meetings it just felt so daunting that they were at have every faculty meeting and when she looked back on the year she was just so proud of what they had accomplished and that really you know once they had developed the tampa template in the system that they took a lot of pride in the work that they did and i think that the teachers really benefit from it at the high school they've focused again on building adult culture in classroom practices connecting with disconnected students working with anxious students and building the adult  culture the district steering committee is a subset of all of the schools during committees so their members who are on the district team are also members of their school team we have been doing a lot of work this spring looking at the climate survey data which i'm going to talk mostly about in this presentation and using that to inform the work that will do this summer we will do our third round of summer institutes working with our consultant rachel p building on what has been going on up to this point one of the other things that was new this year in addition to the climate surveys was that we had a workshop that was open to all staff not just the staff on the steering committees and that was last fall it was the workshop workshop on achievement gap and social motion learning and the overlap of of how those two intersect and it was really wonderful wonderful workshop we opened the registration and it was full within a day  d very well received and we're hoping to offer something like that again next year for staff and and the other thing that was new this past year in addition to the institute's continuing to build our knowledge about social motion learning rachel led us in a one day workshop on adult facilitation skills so it's one thing to know things that you want to make sure your faculties learn but if you don't know how to present it in a way that is most beneficial to adult learners th our work with the steering committee has been on measuring the impact of climate surveys are a well researched tool for measuring the impact of social motional learning if we were further along in the process you might and some districts do try and measure the students acquisition of skills and competencies at this point in our work i don't think that w right approach for us our educators are still learning themselves so to be able to say this student has done this or not whether it's a checklist or some other measure it's really an observational tool that you would use there's there's no  objective way to measure this and aside from that it's also very time consuming so we decided when we when we thought about well how do we how do we measure how we're doing it how do we measure you know what's what's going on what do we need to change and we said well let's do a quick survey so we wanted to answer these questions is our school environment conducive to social emotional learning is there evidence that the s c l skills and principles are being demonstrated in the environment and what is the theory and so in our schools for students educators and parents and guardians and really the big goal of this work is to use the data as a tool to determine broad ten trends and patterns patterns of successes and patterns of barry's improvement so and explain a little bit about the tools that that we used and then what we learned with some bright spots and some areas for improvement so first the development of the surveys so we started out looking at the federal tool the federal government came out in march of twenty sixteen with a with a climate survey tool and it looked promising at first and steve mazola our director technology helped me get it onto our server so that i could look at it and it had been in some of the literature it seemed as if you would be able to edit the tool but in fact you so you either use it as is or you don't and there were things missing from that tool that we thought were important to include didn't really have much on the instructional environment it didn't have a single question about stress  and it had a lot of questions that we also thought were were not valid for belmont like questions about guns and knives so we decided that we were we were going to use the tool as it is and we kept looking and we looked at all of the sources that you see up here and in the end decided that no tool was perfect so we created our own we took primarily questions from the united states and survey the climate survey  integrations i really have to give a lot of things to rachel palmer who has the expertise to know what are the questions we need to ask to find out what we want to find out  d she would compile options for me and we spent hours going through them and figuring out you know well is this is this here or do we need to say it there and just really probably did six drafts all along to come up with the surveys that we came up with by december we had the questions over the december vacation and my wonderful professional assistant colleen sullivan typed it all into survey monkey and then i spent time in january waiting all of the answers so that they would be weighted averages to be able to look at that as well as percentages of disagree agree that cetera we actually we have a district survey monkey account that a lot of people use but we didn't want i didn't want to put them on that account because a lot of people use it and it was very important that these that the surveys themselves and the survey responses be confidential so i purchased in another survey monkey account that's exclusively for this and i'm the only one who has access to it really was a lot of time and effort to create the tools but i believe it's an investment of time that's well worth it our plan is to give these surveys probably annually for the next couple of years and maybe taper off to every other year but we want to see you know what we've learned this year and how does it play out as we continue to try things and to respond to what we learn so so that was the creation i didn't count the number of hours i spent on it but it was a lot these are the same survey first students faculty parents like who the target good question so the next few slides after i go over the category questions i'll talk a little bit about the three different surveys but the surveys there are some parallels questions that our rigs are in all three surveys and sometimes that the two surveys three subcategories cultural and linguistic competence relationships school participation the next category was safety emotional safety physical safety bullying and cyberbullying substance abuse and that was only for the student survey and then emergency ready ready missing management things like lock downs and what to do in those situations and then the last category was environment instructional environment mental health and discipline  of as in when you do something wrong and it is from and the last questions on each of the surveys where identifying questions and i'll explain what those were as we show you each of the surveys so the parent guardian climate survey was the one we released and administered first it was pushed out to parents and guardians in each of the schools january thirtieth and it was open until february tenth there were six separate surveys for this because it was important to us that a parent would answer if a parent had a student in an elementary school and the middle school that parent received two different surveys and the surveys were specific to the school so each principal received the results for their school only and then i took the results from each of the six schools and put them together on a spreadsheet so i went through all the surveys and entered the data into a spreadsheet to come up with district information  parent guardian survey was the shortest one it had thirty seven questions to identifying questions for the elementary secondary the middle and high school parents had two additional questions and identifying questions  one thing that we learned from the data of the parent guardian survey is that we need to do a better job of pushing it out to the parents and guardians the response rate was not what we hoped it would be i think that was do do a number of factors one is that asian system to push it out so the email didn't look like it came from a person it looked like it came from a computer so it might end up in people spam folders and even though we send out all of the principals put in their newsletter as you know please check your spam folder it looks like this there is a good chance that you know i know the quantity of e mail that i get in my home email so that you know maybe that wasn't the best way to approach it so we had four hundred sixty responses to the survey the two identifying questions one was i self identify as black or african american solely or partly in the other was i self identify as part of a minority culture or religion that minority culture  religion question was also on the students or many and it didn't really deal with the results different from the aggregate so we decided we the next time we do that that the survey will figure out a different identifying question because it's really  didn't give us any information that was useful and as far as the black or african american we had very very very few responses to that which says to me we need to build the relationship in the trust because we are asking people to answer questions that they have to share you know honest information that may not be easy to share so that's work for us to continue doing there's still some information that we learned from the surveys but again it wasn't as much as i was hoping for  there is room to grow in that area in terms of situation of the survey the student climate survey you can see we had many responses to that one thousand one hundred eighty five because we had captive audiences we did it in class and in the high school we did it in science and social studies classes for students in grades nine and eleven and i'm very grateful for the teach to the teachers who took away the class time to have this to have them do it they could do it on their i pads and at the middle school they did it in grade five and grade seven and it was done in grade five classrooms or in study halls and kudos to mike mcallister and his team who helped figure out this huge master schedule to make it all work and made sure that the carts of i pads were in the right place at the right time and charged so the kids could do the surveys it was really extraordinary that kids had seventy three questions and five identifying questions their questions the first one was what is your grade in school five seven nine or eleven how many years have you attended the belmont public schools under three or over three interesting results on the on that the students who had been here for fewer years on some of the responses about their experience in the schools actually were better more positive than the students who've been here longer and my theory on that as well maybe where they came from was a little bit less conducive in terms of its climate or maybe they just hadn't been around long enough to feel like things were not going as well as they wanted but not not remarkably different self identify as male and female was another question identify as black or african american only or partly was another question and that did some very important data and self identify as part of a new minority culture or religion and again that did not really give us information much different than than the a the we had some feedback also on these identifying questions and actually from the parents we had some feedback asking if there are a way to identify as the parent an african american or black student and and we take that feedback and we'll consider for next year the other feedback was around offering students and parents the opportunity to  identify as transgender or gay or lesbian and that's important feedback for us to that we'll consider for next year in indiana frank questions as we were waiting what identifying questions to ask  wanted data that we thought would help us but we were also cautious about preserving anonymity and when we get to the staff to tell you why we didn't have any of these kinds of questions on there again we're asking people to share  information that might be take some courage to share and we didn't want them to feel like in any way things that they were shared we're going to be able to pinpoint back to that to a particular person you may wonder why we surveyed middle and high school students and not elementary students will there's not any research to support the benefits of serving elementary students it's really not age appropriate and we feel that we can learn the impact of r k twelve s e l for it by measuring the serie of our middle high school students we hope to see improvement in the student results over time especially as our elementary students who currently are receiving a more comprehensive social motional learning framework that when they reach middle school and then high school that will see the benefits of that but the cab to that is if you have a really robust elementary structure in place and those students leave elementary school with their skills well established they won't practice them in the new environment of the middle school or high school if the new environment doesn't support it so it's really important that we continue to build the structures in the school wide in classroom practices at the middle and high school so that with all the skills that we teach them through open circle and second step and all of the practices that are put in place by elementary teachers that when they get to the middle and high school they see that those practices continue to be modeled by the adults and expected of the children and with lots of opportunity to continue practicing and growing because we know that middle and high school students have not finished the work of developing as human beings and in fact adults are still working on it too mike related services like special education or reading specialists all of all of those educators took this survey we had two hundred thirty nine responses just as a point of comparison there are three hundred thirty five unit a staff give or take so that's a pretty good response rate we did offer them an opportunity to to take some time from a meeting to be able to do the survey and i know that many many folks to accept on that  offer the only identifying question for the staff was what school do you work so as one survey the same survey sent out to all staff and then what schools work in as i said earlier we did not want to ask identifying questions that would make it easy to narrow down who the person was who was responding for those we do have quite a number of educators who work in multiple schools and so i asked them to please respond to the survey with one school in and then if they wanted to do it a second time that they certainly could and to contact me you know i would send them another link and then they could do about the other school and i did have some teachers take me up on that offer as well it was important to have them just like the parents to not mix their experience of multiple schools and to want to get as pure a sample of data as we could let's see so we did ask them to share information on their experiences in our schools and they did  we are really grateful for the information that was shared there were many questions in fact where some of the questions where they shared their experience on difficult issues there were some people who answered in a way that let us know that everything isn't a great experience for every person and when i put out the survey instructions in fact when i told everyone about the surveys back in january and then when i sent out the instructions with the link i said we promise to maintain your anonymity that your answers are confidential they are answers are going to be used to learn and improve the climate here in the schools and we want people to feel  confident that that will be carried out and that we will use the information and they will honor the courageous answers that they gave us in some case difficult answers that they gave us by taking what they what they shared with us and learning from it and making changes that will hopefully the next time we ask those questions have no one to say that that that negative experience is their experience so the the raw data for each school has been reviewed by the principal and the school's s c l steering committee they have spent many hours going through it and figuring out what to prioritize what what is the what are the trends and patterns that they find both in terms of what's going well and what needs to be worked on and then using that to determine their next steps for as a school the surveys are really a first step at collecting data because often you  get some responses that make you think i wonder why people said that and so then you might spend some time either at a focus group or a faculty meeting and not asking people to identify what they said but saying ok so what would imagine you over here answered this way and you over here answer this way what would make someone want to answer that way what do you think might make someone want to ask that way and what do you think we could do to change how people feel so that kind of digging a little bit deeper to get at  how to solve it because it's not one person's opinion about how to move forward but as many people as possible sort of thinking about it and problem solving together the district level raw data has been shared with the district steering committee and is the first step we  informed our planning for it from the summer institute which i'll talk a bit more about and that and we will continue using the data to consider what other supports we need to give the district steering committee is role is really one that of support to the school steering committees so as those members from the school steering committee has come to the district team they come bringing questions concerns as well as things that they are proud of so that they can get support from their colleagues and from me and from rachel and then go back to the schools and continue to feed the work that way so what did we learn we'll start with the bright spots we learned that parents and guardians feel welcome at the schools and students corroborated that their families feel confident visiting the school so there's an example where there are parallel questions on both the students or in the parent survey and the responses matched parents report that their student feels like he or she belongs at the school they also believe that staff really care about their child and that overall the school is a friendly place although this feeling decreases somewhat at our to larger schools which is not educators also report feeling like they belong at their school they believe that their school inspires them to do their very best at their job and that they're growing as a professional these are all things that are great and wonderful to hear  they report that they get along well the staff gets along well and that they demonstrate trust and confidence in each other those are all things that would make for a positive workplace and if the adults in the buildings feel good about being there and feel inspired to do their best then that will definitely have a positive impact on the students students and staff report knowing what to do in an emergency or a dangerous situation and staff so another example of corroborating parallel questions staff have confidence that they're in ministers know what to do in in a challenging  dangerous situation they also report they the students are report feeling safe at school and most students are optimistic about their future now a strong sense of purpose and optimism about the future is a key component of resilience something we talked about in the parent presentation this year and although i see most students are optimistic about the future and i put that as a bright spot it's not every student for high school students it's seventy five percent of students feel optimistic about their future twenty five percent of students who don't that's a lot of students at the middle school it's eighty two percent so while of the number eighty two sounds like a pretty good number it still means that  eighteen percent who don't and that's a that's a concern so from there we'll segue into arkansas things we need to work on so while near nearly all educators report that they care about students here's an example of parallel questions that don't corroborate the that all educators nearly all educators almost one hundred percent report that they care about students not just their academic work on the parallel question on the student survey some students disagree this is more at the high school and the middle school so at the middle school eighty eight percent of students agree that their teachers care about them not just their grades at the high school only sixty two percent agree that their teachers care about them not th lot of work on this and he he's demonstrated this time again and he will then go and talk to the students and say ok i'll talk to the teachers and say well what do you do to demonstrate that you care about students because similarly one hundred percent of teachers say they care about students and i believe they all  and the teachers will say well i i correct papers and turn them back quickly i prepare beautiful lessons and i engage in lessons and and the students when asked when presented with that will say well that's just their job that doesn't mean they care so there's a mismatch in something that is important for us to know so how do we make sure that students know that we care about them not just their grades another concern and along those same lines is that seventy to seventy five percent of students believe a teacher would notice if they were absent or in a slump so that's a lot of students who think the teacher would notice but that leaves twenty five to thirty percent of students who think their teacher wouldn't notice if they were a that percentage represents one hundred fifty students it's a lot of students who think their teacher wouldn't notice in their absence so that's another area we need to work on making sure that all students are known even in our bigger schools and especially in our bigger schools  adolescence in anonymity are not a good combination they need to be known and we need to know them and then a third of our middle school students and nearly half of our high school students are afraid to try something if they think they might fail that something you know growth mindset has been something we've talked about at this table and many teachers have worked on and continue to work on but it's something that we need  to continue to work on this citizenship was worse for girls than for boys more girls are afraid to try something they think they might fail this something we share at the parent presentation because this is something we need to partner with parents on as well that  we need to to it's not something we do well as a society so it's not unique to schools but it is very important that that students as they develop and grow understand that  mistake is a is an event not a definition of who you are and that how we learn and grow from them is important the other important thing that i share with you in the april twenty fifth press presentation about the achievement gap for african american black students on almost every measure they reported more negative experiences than in the aggregate so a greater sense of connection is an important for us making our large schools smaller communities making sure that all students are no couple more here as i mentioned there were questions about substance abuse on the student survey very good positive results from the middle school students not trying smoking cigarettes drinking drugs those risky damaging risky behaviors or worse for the girls some students and staff report levels of stress that affect their sleep and cause physical problems so this is both students and staff  they they they and correlation to that on the staff side a third of the staff feel like they have to hide their challenges from their colleagues and their supervisors so that's that's an adult culture and a student culture that we need to work on i think one of the important takeaways for us as we look at that data is that you know kids and adults in belmont not all but some have a stressful standard of perfectionism self defeating in the long run and it's not healthy in the short long run when you have that mindset you take fewer risks you feel the stress more you're more outcome focused instead of effort focused and it's not that's not a healthy it's not a healthy way to do to live so we need to work on that we need to work on growth mindset we didn't school lesson at the high school interestingly one of the answer options on all of the surveys was not a pleasurable and the instructions clarified that not a political is what you could choose if the answer did if the question didn't apply to you or if you didn't have any knowledge that the answer so there was a very high number of and eighty's at the middle school on the question of cyber bullying like things that go on on social media and that would i in from that that the individuals responding are not aware of it it hasn't affected them personally and maybe they're not even aware of it going on which is not to say it doesn't go on but it's reassuring that there wasn't a high agreed to that about that happening and the high school you see more of an uptick in that but it was and it didn't come across as something that of the highest concern  one thing that that i think lindsay mentioned when we presented to you in april about our african american black students is that one of the assets that they bring to as part of their qualities they bring to the school is that they actually do stand up for each other as a community more than others other students rip report that they don't respond or when to bullying or it's stand up to bullying where is are african american black students do is that a reflection of having to do that because others don't probably but it's still where the thing to note and something that we can help  we can use and learn from as we try and improve the experience over students so we're going to focus on that another reason for not sharing all of the data is that frankly it's pretty sobering i've spent hours and hours and hours going through it there are some there are some good things no question about it but there's a lot that's that's that's not where it needs to be and we could just make a huge list of all of the problems and push it out to all of the educators and then everyone would fold their tent and go home it would just be wall and use it as we hope to do as a tool to learn from and to improve the climate in all of our schools it's important work it's going to take a long time but we're tenacious and we're going forward so for the elementary focus areas for a seventeen eighteen starting with their summer work will be how to build a stronger adult culture on adult culture and that builds on the sense of trust that the teachers share with each other and and then addresses the fear that that and the stress that causes people to want to hide when they don't know how to do something hide their challenges the elementary  schools really started in a different place then the middle and high schools they had already been doing this social emotional learning work before we made it a district initiative many of the schools that are the started the different prickle of that they use some of the classroom practices that are new to middle and high school teacher is where just standard practice for elementary teachers and of course the elementary classroom is one contained classroom one teacher with sometimes more than we want in an elementary room right now but still fewer than one hundred twenty five that a high school teacher might have so that they're really if you look at the three levels the elementary level is the most advanced in terms of that comprehensive social emotional learning framework that supports the classroom practices the school y practices the infusion into the content in this case in the literature but they need to keep working on it and they think that will be our focus for them for the summer and for next year at the middle and high school the stronger adult culture is also an important part and what we anticipate for the summer institute is running in the past we've had two days for elementary and two days for secondary our goal this year is to have one day for everybody on building a stronger adult culture and then one day for elementary classroom practices and infusion into the literature and in the middle and high school in addition to the adult culture a day on increasing the focus on community relationship building with middle and high school students and reducing the stress for students and staff and that's what through this the same the same areas of school why practices classroom practices and curriculum infusion you'll see if you look in the professional brochure that a lot of these things in addition to being tackled as a faculty are things that teachers have taken on as part of their their professional learning team goal this year so there are lots of places where there is this learning and this doing is happening and we are looking forward to continuing the work next year it in conjunction with launching more broadly the achievement g work and bringing that to walls jack as well and they really do go hand in hand i mean the social motional learning is kind of the umbrella that speaks to all of the work that we're doing and the work this particular focus on  how do we support our african american black students so that their experience is similarly positive as their as their peers will be a big focus for us for next year and i'm happy to answer any questions you have you say it's a tremendous amount of fork and i just it's so exciting to you know see and learn and i don't know i feel heartened that our community is united in the effort and i know it's slow going it's not something that can change your overnight and i just sound sort of corny but i just think it's really a lovely commitment you know from the ground up to help improve the climate for everyone from students to families to staff so thank you for helping to lead the effort and to collaborate with rachel and everyone sta took a million notices right and of course by doing it slowly and with many people involved the hope is that it is long lasting and and here long after the people who are here now are do as folks may recall we had a meeting of weeks past where the school committee you have was fortunate to have a presentation by tony talking about the budget and of f y e team as well as a quarter three update and we did have a vote to approve the budget at that time and since then now we're going to we've been working our simultaneously we've been working on a special education reserve fund of working that through our legal counsel for the town and the various governing bodies and so we now have today a discussion for an amended f y eighteen budget because we are able to  before the town a town meeting which is coming up in a week and a half ish of the request to set up this special education reserve fund which will provide opportunities for the department with our special  turned over to thank you general fund amount was fifty two million nine hundred sixty nine thousand four hundred eighty four dollars that's the town meeting portion of what we're seeing for an f one thousand budget in addition to that there are grants or rewarding accounts in some other accounts totaling just over seven million dollars for a total so of all in budget sixty million three thousand four hundred fourteen dollars that was the budget that was presented and voted on prove that the able to enter school community me the budgets a night is exactly the same dollar amount there's no change in any of the act not only in the aggregate it's the same there are no changes within line items so of old laverty a little bit more about that so that as  cheer the kid is new legislation for a special education reserve fund this is the full text that not going to read it here is to just for informational purposes i expect it will post the slide said online anyone wanting to read the detail summary it's a fund that can be established by vote of the school committee which will be asking the school to me to consider taking that the tonight in also by a vote of town meeting which is that year and the kid will be doing that in the next week or two  tell me that this fund the purpose of this one is to me is to pay for extraordinary special education out of district in transportation costs and that this next bullet in the law to change the font color this is very important cap is in the neighborhood of a lot of million dollars the language also says that the account can be opened up as an interest bearing account that if there's any interest there and it becomes part of the fund so how is this new special education reserve fund different from the special education stabilization fund that already exists and that's so the existing special special education stabilization fund requires a two thirds vote of tommy to release the funds and those votes are generally held in the they are usually june town meeting and as a result of having a vote in in may or june that means if we reckon if we identify a special the reason for that is if we identify the deficit early in the year we will know we we we should we should not presume that town meeting will necessarily vote to approve or draw from us a stabilization fund later in the  so as a result that means presently speaking the purchases of materials and supplies for the classroom in other operational areas in the school department are either put on hold or just not made at all one of the real benefits of this new special education reserve fund is that as i alluded to in the previous life that requires the vote of the school committee and a vote of the board of selectmen to release funds and that the benefit of that is that those votes can be done early enough in the year  prevent a budget freeze funding funding permitting and that early approval of the reserve find means that we can freeze or uses to hold the classroom harmless that we don't have to freeze classroom materials and supplies and we can and that board has also has the authority to say got the matter to consider for a vote anytime during the year so knowing having the ability to know without funds will be available early in the year freezes up from having from us provided guidance to district one in cities and towns are creating the special education reserve fund what's the fun as a stablished the school committee may include a separate line item in there into a budget request to appropriate money into that stabilization fund and that's the reason for bringing this amended budget now that will be adding a line and then i'll get to that more a moment districts may consider other fact is when establishing the fund such as a potential maximum balance in the fund which we're not recommending that per se because there's already a statutory cap in the fund of two percent of school spending and a district produce guidance may also consider a limit on of the amount that can be expended within a particular fiscal year and again the recommendation is not to vote a limit on that because that that necessarily that amount can be limited necessarily by a vote in any given year by the school committee and to a by the board of selectme so what we would need to do what would be asking the school committee tonight is that it's a vote to add a particular line him a specific line and for a special education reserve fund to the budget which would now change our draft to budget to a halfway eight hundred draft three budget that line item and we're not recommending that any particular funding be identified at this point no one tell me he has not approved this fund so don't be premature for the for the school to me in my opinion to allocate any funds to that and in addition the only funding source that's known to be available at this time would be the school the bank its own general fund budget and so it would be really really a zero sum gain to the school departments allocate funds from want to count to another account and the just to vote to establish this account and at this time i assume is we're not asking town meeting to provide any funding in that case so on the next couple pages i've actually got the gear sixty some odd line items that are in the special education budget and i'm not going to go through the time the are just the second the purpose of this is is that literally just kind of a screen for the see this show you what the special education budget will be like having added this new stabilization plan so it's what will be the special education portion of the school budget which will be out of the draft the budget again difficult to tell but you can see all of the accounts have a particular in the second of their columns the or the object they actually have a numerical accounts officer will develop accountable for that so in summary of gov summarized here a little bit clearer to see the special education budget and kind of by category and just again we're adding that or  is recommending in requesting that the school committee vote to establish the special education reserve fund in accordance with master origin of the forty section thirteen and also to amend its vote of the f y eighteen budget any fifth two thousand and seventeen by approving the draft three budget of this is the exact same numbers as in the draft to budget fifty two million nine hundred sixty one thousand four hundred eighty four dollars and a total budget which also includes into supported state and federal grants and revolving trees totaling sixty million three thousand four hundred fourteen dollars and that the f one eighteen draft three budget includes a new item for a special education reserve fund funded at zero dollars as week or so and if the special education reserve fund is approved for stablish mn by town meeting at some point after that the town the school committee and the school department will need to identify funding for this account including ok so then if there is no discussion or no questions we have two votes so the first four would be to establish a special education so i'm asking for a motion to establish a special education reserve fund in accordance with mass general law chapter great ok so with that vote then our subsequent vote will be to amend the school committee's vote of the f y eighteen budget by approving the f a eighteen draft three general fund budget that includes a new line item for a special education reserve all right so then we transition into the portion of our meeting that includes the subcommittee and liaison updates as needed so finance subcommittee met this morning we  thank you i warrant committee has been meeting every wednesday for a while to review articles will be needed thank you and tomorrow evening here at seven thirty to discuss any budget articles and so budget related articles feasibility study is to bring on board a design architect who will help us evaluate the three different configurations seven to twelve lead to twelve million to twelve and that selection should be completed by july and the right so i'm back on this is a word choice piece this is writing for viewers at home and under three major business owners about the trips the sentence that says the committee was seeing a proposal for the disney only other thing i had on the next page one hundred three point three in the paragraph that begins at the burbank school center that starts principal trisha clifford i would just suggest adding it was noted that i guess the third to last paragraph that starts mr walker touched on the findings from the community meaning the next census larger buildings review more favorably given the general sensitivity around the topic i'm not sure that fully ac next meeting will be on june sixth and then and we just need a motion to