develop his skills regularly through professional development outside of the school district jason cares deeply about the success of young children he understands the impact of their success on their future in the future in education and in life he communicates regularly and works closely with families to help support their success and create a more complete foundation for learning thank you kimberly is a nurse at the cherry middle school she's an exceptional nurse and valued member of the middle school leadership team kimberly consistently provides professional compassionate care to all the students and staff at cherry and has grown into the position of lead nurse  are mikael is a first grade teacher at the wynn brook elementary school she exemplifies the qualities that one would hope to see in a first grade teacher her enthusiasm warmth exceptional planning skills keen understanding of the curriculum content and general guidance and gentle guidance create a highly productive and joyful learning environment where her first graders flourish always maintaining a positive can do attitude she works tirelessly to ensure the success of each child in her care at the  so vicki is a highly skilled musician and music educator who taught for many years in the westborough public schools after taking some time away from the classroom with her young children we were fortunate to advocate her music teaching faculty in two thousand and thirteen when she began teaching at the burbank school two years later vicki moved into her current position teaching music at the daniel about their school where she enthusiastically leads for students in music making activities each day markley who cannot be with us but i'm going to quickly read his his celebration and win so nate brings a sense of wonder and learning to the classroom and to his colleagues he is passionate about not only teaching students english but also the benefits of being mine of being mindful on any given day you can walk into nate's class and observe him transitioning from a classic novel to an exercise on mindfulness nate has also been teacher leader in using and sharing with others how to use google drive and google classroom need nate has and continues to be an asset to the lewis is a reading teacher at the cherry middle school from the first time she came to this district lois has been known as a kind and generous colleague who is always looking to give credit to others she has a deep background in reading and reading intervention but she also genuinely loves children and books she combines these values in the work she does here at the chattery her enthusiasm for her students and her content is appreciated by a mcbride colleen is a second grade teacher at the wellington elementary school she joined our wellington team after finishing her graduate work her passion for children is evident each day and she shares her creativity with our school community including organizing some striking growth mindset bulletin boards as well as lessons she now we know who to call for bulletin board guidance she is enthusiastic and bubbly and her room always looks and smells beautiful a treat for all who enter she prioritizes building relationships in her room providing a safe and warm environment for all her students l teacher at the wellington elementary school michelle first came to belmont as a teacher in our elementary e s l summer camp it was clear right away that she was an outstanding educator who understood how to meet all students needs after joining our team she quickly became just as valuable to  philadelphia and illinois she serves as a leader within our school community for example initiating a monthly educationally focused literature discussion as a team member maggie is organized positive and brings a smile to everyone's face as a teacher she holds each student to stephen she couldn't be here ok priscilla is a special education teacher at the wynn brook priscilla's a special education teacher at the windbreak school who uses cutting edge instructional and assessment practices that reflect high expectations engage students and our individual eyes to accommodate diverse learning styles and needs she expertly scaffolds instruction and then methodically removes the scaffolds to move children toward independent priscilla nurtures a can do attitude and a growth mindset which serves her students incredibly well on our last but not least we have kimberly thompson who also is not able to be here with us kimberly is a seventh grade english teacher in the english language arts teacher at the tenor kim is an excellent model of critical thinking social consciousness and intellectual passion she tackles difficult issues head on with her students in a way that respects their devout developmental stages their interests and their backgrounds she has been a critical player in new curriculum efforts in the seventh grade she cares deeply about her students and their learning her colleagues are glad to have her on their we're stepping out of our cycle where we use it where we recognize for professional teacher status and we have one retiree to celebrate tonight and i'm going to ask donna peny from the business office to come and join us and susan  and this is an honor to be able to read this tonight for donna i grew up in belmont and went to high school with both of our daughters and i know the school system is really going to last year and you every thursday morning getting i should remember that the belmont school committee here buy records retirement in october two thousand and sixteen of donna peny executive secretary to the director of finance business administration for the belmont public schools donna graduated from newton high school lexington donovan left the workforce for nineteen years to stay at home and raise her family in one thousand nine hundred five donna began her career with the belmont public schools as a substitute secretary in june one nine hundred eighty nine she was hired by superintendent dr peter holland as a fiscal clerk in the business office in the next year she applied for and was promoted to the position of secretary to the assistant superintendent of business and finance by one nine hundred ninety donna had taken on it the additional responsibility of managing the district's regular education bussing program most districts have an entire transportation department to handle this function but for diana this was just another hat that she wore over the years if anyone needed an important job to be done thoroughly with great attention to detail while maintaining a positive working relationships donna had always been a reliable go to person this can be seen in her work with secretaries and other staff in the schools parents building committees town boards and other town departments on two separate occasions donna perform the director finance role for several months due to extended vacancies in the position during those periods she developed the annual operating budget calculated budget projections and performed a whole host of other minor managerial responsibilities all while continuing to do her own job in two thousand and seven donna also played a critical role in the implementation of the munis financial system that was adopted by the school department in the town the belmont school committee along with his friends and colleagues expresses its appreciation for to donna peony for her twenty seven years of faithful service and extends the best wishes for many years of continued happiness in your retirement dedication to her own family as well as her work it's amazing it when i come in on a sunday who's next to me donna p anyone you're here on labor day weekend who's here donna p d it's amazing so thank you very much for everything t back to the cafeteria have your picture taken and have many more refreshments you're invited to stay for the remainder of the school though we also understand if you so we had a number citizens present for this it looks like there are any now have concerns ok i don't think that there are any adjustments to the agenda the chairs report is that the chair is not here the secretary is here to be the chair just know that we had this wonderful professional status reception and it was great to see all the teachers who attain that status and it was also nice to recognize donna teenie who is going to retiring and it's done a lot of great work for them that's but i have prayed for so the super there's no student representative so that you can move to the superintendent's or for good evening just a few items the high school boosters organization has started a tradition of naming a student of the month student athlete of the month and so for september of the two thousand and sixteen seventeen school year the bush just nominated in a there will be a presentation on the minutemen information for the toll meeting that will take place next week on wednesday the nineteenth of october and they'll also be a league of women voters of events where you can get word from a show about the subject of the seventeenth which is next monday night which will be held here chinnery middle school in the auditorium at seven pm we will do a short presentation tonight and we'll be doing a presentation at both of those nights as well please mark your calendars the fifth annual foundation for don want education spelling bee will take place on saturday november fifth it will be here at the cherry which is a change of location with having the high school this is a great way for us students to take part in the spelling bee from every grade from kindergarten all the way up to middle school it's a great event please go on the website for the government public schools or the f b i to see how you can register your child's team we would like to thank the friends of the belmont public library who have invited our staff to go into the library to see if there's any books that they would like to have for their classrooms before they open it up to the public for the annual book sale we very much state the friends of the public library for giving that teach es access before the community we truly appreciate it and those books will go right to your children's classroom teachers in the next few weeks i will be on a certain p t o meetings i'll be at the butler on october twenty six get the date field put on the website it's on the website right now i'd like to let folks know that there is a follow up to a citizen speech comment and submission that we had at the last meeting sharon thomas presented the school committee with a letter of concerns about site councils sharon was in touch with assistant superintendent janice darrius as well as myself through e mail and through personal phone call we have resolved her issues and he answered her questions she was invited back tonight but more importantly made aware of all the different aspects of school psychologists and how they operate and she will be participating in the high school set consul as a nonmember but not elected official but has the right to be there she was very happy with that result and appreciative of the work that we did the work the principal richards did and actually went to the meeting today is actually the staff to do so just a follow up that when someone does come to citizen speak we like to make sure that the committee in the public knows that we did investigate their concerns and come to resolution when they are able to for our viewing base we do have a school committee meeting in october on the twenty fifth put it will be held in boston  group many members present that there is a strategic plan meeting of the recreation department that will take place on november second at six pm the rec department did do a strategic plan multi session throughout among two hundred seventy nine public schools receiving this honor along with fifty private schools and as one of only three schools recognize the state of massachusetts former butler principal now cherry middle school principal  to congratulate all of the staff when hearing of this news as their deserving group schools are nominated for the award by the state department of education and i recognize in one of two performance categories exemplary high performance of schools for we are of the work that mike has done more importantly the work that his staff have done the families at the butler are truly unique it's a unique school and we wanted to make sure that we brought in young as well because the the high expectation the high energy at the at the butler continues i was over there for i have to a professional day and the staff were equally is that it jives this year as they were last year and i can't imagine the great things that will do going forward so i want to say congratulations to mike who has been the principal of the butler seven years leading up to this award this is mike's work that was his building that was the staff that he hired that was the work he did with students and parents so it's truly his to to take credit for along with the staff and and think danielle for being here as well as the next person to leave the bottle school and we have to say that you don't want to celebrate too hard when you get good news nor get too down when you get bad news but for this district for the butler school to be recognized it's such a high level it's such a unique opportunity for the school and we want to make sure that you recognize this group gets and so might you have rewards for us you know i mean i'm happy to take credit for it if you want to give it to me but really it's a it's a teacher work you know that i think what it i think i said to someone before all it's doing all this work does is recognize what i've recognized for a long time that there's a lot of amazing teaching and learning happening over there the father and and i'm glad that these teachers get the recognition i think a lot of teachers d existed and and they probably deserve for the last twenty years before i was there so congratulations to them i think it's a great deal for that community it's a big deal for that little community of just small schools such a diverse little school and i just the vision be really proud because it's the it's  different times and had a chance to experience the great work that was going on there and prior to that in it as i noted in the first page of the memo did a lot of the work  great opportunity when they met in august having thought about it first in june and done some planning over the summer to really come together in august and and pull the pieces together and finalize the plans for their for their staff and each school in effect though those that work w be on going to the principals will dedicate time during this affect the needs throughout the year and i think it's important in this is something that rachel our consultant is talk to us about that it's not a one and done it's a it's an ongoing journey we're on a path of learning and developing this framework and although it may take longer to do it the way that we're doing it in terms of how we can be the teacher is learn first and then share with our colleagues believe that it is the best path because it will be we're building the capacity from within and really making it a sustainable effort so the wonderful members of our school steering committees are attached to the back of this memo so you can see it goes on for a couple of pages fairly small print because there are a lot of really wonderful teachers to resist work and in addition to the school steering committees our district steering committee which is a subset of all of those of those school committees met for the well would be that the district forward as they did last year there are many returning members and also some new macs a great opportunity to get together and really start the work again and and really i think very exciting to be in year when you work of the teachers who are on the steering committees and also on the district steering committee we will be granting one belmont credit which goes toward salaries always feel for teachers who are on their school steering  are booked on the school and the district will be two credits and that's really recognizes not only the work of actually coming to meetings but all of the work that happens in between meetings and all of the planning of the professional development for their colleagues back in their schools as shared with you in your school committee packets a copy of the magazine that we were able to purchase again this year and it's really wonderful that an organization that produces such a high quality magazine now for the second year in a row has  that is very supportive of our work culture relationships first and that's of the net all of the steering committee members have received and this year expanding our s c r work to also encompasses the work that of our other leadership team all of the members in leadership council will participate in the same workshop and this is helping to understand more deeply what is it what is the experience of students particularly african american black students who attend our schools or students of other groups that are not dominant culture what does it feel like to be in our schools and what can what are we doing or not doing that we need to do to create a safe and supportive environment that optimizes their ability to  k so that that is described on the second page of the memo and we had a very when we put out the registration sign up with one very quickly very excited to have twenty three teacher is starting that on october twentieth so that's next week and then as we did last year we're planning some parent presentations that will be happening dates still to be determined there is still a lot that goes on in trying to time it so that it will be a good moment that they'll be to presentations one for elementary parents and one for middle and high school parents both to share the work that we're doing and also help provide parents with some tools and strategies that they can use at home  and finally that the last big piece of work that weare working on this year or developing this fall is how do we begin to measure the climate in the schools as data to collect around our work on the s t l we are looking at a number of instruments primarily surveys that will be for staff teachers and staff to fill out as well as more than likely our upper middle school and high school students as well to get some information about law how are they feeling from their perspective are routing for id it measures related to climate because really what we're trying to do around here s c l work is create a climate that supports the social emotional learning of all of our children so that's one way that will measure and i wanted to also make sure that we didn't conclude this little presentation without saying thank you to the foundation for about one indication whose financial support has been huge last year as well as this year last year they awarded us a twenty seven thousand dollars and this year thirty eight thousand dollars that pays for all of our work with the consultant  well as materials to support the learning like books and magazines and and that includes all of the summer institutes that rachel led last summer as well as the workshops this year and consulting for me and for the principals as we are whole child who comes to school with us every day as opposed to home adults who work with us so how you try to quantify some of this you know i think it's one of the challenge with initiatives like this it's obviously a seal becoming a bigger and bigger push my a lot of districts and i imagine a lot of educators and academics trying to figure out how to assess it  innovative things that people are doing in different districts that we could emulate to try to get in get to that that assessment of how effective is this and is this the right investment you know for year three or four how effective are we w i would not say that what we're trying to collect this fall is face like that because we've already we're already on our way so we can't go back in time and even before we had this is an initiative there's plenty of examples of of f t l work going on in classrooms  so there's i do first there's no such thing as a pure baseline but what i do think that if we find the right climate survey instrument and then they continue to administer it over time i'm hopeful that through that we'll be able to see improvements in the feedback the data that we collect from that that would demonstrate that the climate is feeling more supportive of the skills and the modeling that we're trying to provide for  might measure whether and for example of a district that i know that uses that does it so that the teacher knows for example that maybe in this class they need to do more work on being assertive or they may need to do more work on  listening skills to figure out what to work on in the classroom but it is i'm not sure that it's the best measure for us right now and i also feel like that would add an extra burden and teachers that i don't feel would provide something that's really that i don't think the time and effort required to do it would merit back what we might get back so we're going to start with we're looking at a number of d i think the him rachael and i just talked about this the other day that the biggest catch here is that if we create a climate in the culture where students feel safe and ready to learn and teachers have tools that they can use in their classrooms and routines and practices they can bring that out but the brain research tells us that they'll open their been with a bit thinking in their learning and so i believe that the cultural climate measurement tool and it will be one that we can actually acre will be one that we make it will be one that we probably use from a study that that has validity to it will really measure as hard as this thing is to put your hands around in a in an objective way will measure the climate of school being one with students feel that we can if we have more and more students saying that they feel that way as if that's the grades we would like to think that we could relate that to them feeling more comfortable more able to learn more ready to learn and then make sure that our learning all comes by consistent with that so we'll be looking at that as well i can't think janice enough in the these teachers that i recognize in the back of the state of a personal letter this week actually and in houses today for me saying thank you because the hours that they have been putting in to the building based teams into the district based committee is significant and as someone who sits in takes part of the district wide teams the discussions they are truly impressive and inspirational and they have been the discussions in the work that has set up the summer work last year and the work we're doing this year so when we think about some teacher driven things that are going on in belmont that this is one of them that  full change in their classroom practices to make sure that students are one feel welcome feel valued and build relationships because we feel like that's the big picture goal that all the on something else but if if we truly open up this kind of learning for students and this type of engagement with teachers and students and set that kind of climate i think the sky's the limit then we can start to put in some programming for different things that we like to see in place but our relationships first i think open circle and the other three use second step although they all have are developing other pieces of it for example when brooke in addition to second guess is using some elements of responsive classroom there is no one program that sort of is does everything that you wanted to and then as we have learned with rachel equally or even more important is how you how you bet it into your classroom practices into the school why practices and a focus for this past summer as well especially in the elementary was looking at well how do we teach it through the curriculum so if you're you do a lot of literature a lot of stories and using developing opportunities use it as an opportunity to reinforce a c l so if you're reading a story about two friends who get in a fight will have you think this character felt like that character did that or what did this character do that that escalated and how do we what to what could he or she have done to deescalate those kinds things so and and of course that can also and is also taking place in other grades in other subjects in fact there is a professional learning team at the high school that has been looking at prospective taking in history class  and using that as an access point for the curriculum so it's a ways that you support the learning but i think most importantly in foundationally is is creating a climate that where in which every adult models the kind of social emotional skills that we want all of our students to have and then doing some direct instruction and some opportunities for them to practice and develop the skills all of us get better at things when they practice and i like having twins and i can see the different approaches of different teachers all the same time we went  two data points that we're using with the high school building project because we really think about it those in rome and projections are helping us decide or will help us decide what work we need to do at the elementary level in the middle school level so we'll be presenting that detail forecast enrollment data another be so just to be up to date of why do we use our job one is the date that we set this information in for the school committee in the community the state department of elementary and secondary  asked for one stepchild of your attendance each year that they used to measure incidents growth across the whole commonwealth of every single school district and it's the october one step short of your attendance so whoever's in school in october one that's calculated and sent into the states in roman and website in their calculations if three people will vote in october two to bat that's how it works it's whatever it says in october one so that's why we have the october one report using a similar  that we've used in the past and i've been dropping numbers off from the left inside and adding numbers on the right side so as you can see that we have two more in two thousand and sixteen we have increased by one hundred five students net students of the district that means some folks of left and a lot of folks have moved in but the net increase is one hundred five and that's a factor of the kindergarten class being a little bigger than the outgoing senior class at belmont high school and also new families moving into the town and some families potentially moving out of the town so that's a that's how we get that and so we are currently as of october one two thousand and sixteen at forty four hundred eight students the second reason why this is important is that all of our funding for the following year is based on that number so the state uses that number for their budgeting factors one of the fiscal eighteen budget this is a bar graph of where we started in october of two thousand and ten and you can see a steady increase in our overall the role of in the last row is what we project to be in october of nineteen we made that projection two years ago it will talk a little bit about how we think we're measuring up to that but you can see the steady increase of students continues to enroll in the dumb one public schools in that represents it in a bar graph or  but again we're just choosing a five year window to take a look at so october of two thousand and eleven we were at thirty nine hundred students we added ninety four in two thousand and twelve we added one hundred forty two code to two thousand and thirteen we had in the eighty six into fourteen another in one net into fifteen and we just added one hundred five so that averages out to be about one hundred one students per year if you take the average of those five numbers you add those five numbers up in the middle column and divide it by five we are averaging over the last five years about one hundred one students for great i mean per year if you add those three hundred three students to that total of the two sixteen number of forty four zero eight to come to forty seventh thirteenth so our prediction a couple of years ago seems to be in pretty good shape with that assessment of what we big might be forecasting into really for the two thousand one hundred twenty school year  sixty four students a good two hundred fifty below our mark and the state has us add four thousand five hundred thirty seven students also all of them are so we're obviously increasing at a rate higher than what both of those folks and the other part that we should add to this is this does not take into effect to the more building projects that will be coming online the uplands for the acorn park i believe it's called is the one that's already in construction  start to have parts of the building occupied in january two thousand and seventeen and cushing village which i believe in the have been some some progress on but i don't know the details behind the timeline of that i did speak to the planning board last week and they did let me know that certain components of the uplands will be coming online in january some in march and then some in june of this year and that's a little bit ahead of schedule we thought that that might more general increase in roman but because that building is in a unique position in the town and really not accessible we're going to have to determine how we have the students assigned to what elementary school obviously the middle and high school would be easy but the elementary student assignment will be something that will have to discuss for the for the students coming out of that those apartments so very interesting we can't stress enough that enrollment continues to be a concern the high school building project we have submitted three configurations to be considered by the m s p a nine to twelve high school which just supports the high school challenge that we have an age of twelve high school which would support giving relief to the middle school in the high school in a seven through twelve high school project that would actually leave the pressure on the elementary level the middle school level in the high school level so the big picture plan is to see how that  progresses and how those pathways are discussed in and decided upon probably by fall of next year but the issue below that is a what do we do in the meantime with across all three levels because more students are coming in in our class sizes at the elementary level and in fifth grade at the generally high and also if one of those selections is a through twelve or nine through twelve we are going to have to have a plan for elementary schools what are we going to do to increase capacity in space better and elementary levels and you don't have to go too far you can go right to a playground at any one of the four elementary schools in terms of talking about the twenty four student classrooms at the children of fourth grade in second nineteen we also have two some categories that we always want to keep track of because they have been pressure points on the district in years past the continue to be one of those is the course students who are non english speaking with your losses in the other cohort of students who the sixteenth seventeenth school year by twenty twenty students as you can see these are pretty big jump for a couple years into fourteen to fifteen in the increase we have of twenty students actually feels like a bit of or a relief  but we are seeing more students come in we didn't add a yellow instructor this year to the district as part of our mandated services that we had to provide that the state says that you have to have a certain ratio of teachers to students and we did that that staff person property population continues to priest but it's still relatively the same size as it relates to the percentage of the total student body because our overall room is going up a bit that stay steady at about six percent of our students are considered english language learners from thirteen to the fourteen sweet year partly she yelled population increased by seventy two percent for the fourteen fifteen school year increased by twenty nine percent in this year it only increased by  the other group assumes we look at this our monthly enrolment that we have from last year for our special ed students who get services outside of the school district as well as that five years storable trend that we keep a look at to help inform our budget incisions for next year of our district in regular collaborative special education programming fourteen students massachusetts public school has a unique program we have one student in a private place since we had forty one in october those numbers were not by two students  both of which are in the lab program in our district this chart represent the last year this was the whole year and you can look at the reason why we keep this because we like to see if there's any trend being that happens in with students coming in or we keep dropping year in we did see some students come in and come out to let the public know that when students turn a certain age that their service delivery is no longer  had a birthday or the twenty second birthday in any one of these much where our population went down they would be off the rolls and on to post high school experiences in this is just snapshot of our five year increase that trend continues to go up if we continue to look at creative ways to support the students who receive the services we are fortunate that our budget we feel that we have built would you know i didn't do the math but if we look at that being a small of an increase of just three students it's probably in line with the overall population and that was kind of a conversation we had last year that if this is a substantial increase or is it just the same percentage with the overall or the aggregate increase of the right going to the exact percentage we love to talk a little bit about the current roman implications just to remind folks that there are implications to the roman going up significantly as it has in the last five to six years we had three large of classrooms added to the high school this year bringing the total to six marginal spaces behind the classroom of behind high school we purchased to the of about one point two million dollars six marginal classrooms that have been delivered in are currently being set up next to the general middle school students will be occupying those questions before thanksgiving break there is truly no space within this building at the cherry right now with the amount of students they have that that relief will be significant in the teachers that go out to the modulus will be then their rooms we back filled by teachers who are actually teaching  really not ideal spaces and we hope that we have created at least six better teaching environments for a staff and our students and also six more by allowing those other teachers to backfill the better spaces within the  at the elementary school level rather burbank has reallocated space from a computer lab and need a second grade classroom this year and we believe that this one of the space that we can utilize it of burbank if we do need one more question is where the space next year i believe strategic plan to solve some of those structural and organizational issues we were successful with and overwrite the staff those rooms and we were successful in creating sixteen extra spaces to have teachers and students spread out and so it's a better  not only support seen friesen roman put off supports at the elementary level having to have students go out of the neighborhood district and potentially to another school across the town mandated services have increased in yellow with special education within our own schools and we did add one teacher district wide video in one special educator at the middle school to support that increase in woman in the we continue to have the impact of the operating budget from the support to materials and supplies all the way for the potential need for additional teachers to actually support all this in rome and that we are seeing when we add agreed to teacher as an example at the burbank that class has to take  but i believe that we're getting to the point at which stretching the other resources so far that when we add clashing teachers we also have to be very thoughtful about adding those small f t e pieces to those support subjects as well because those teachers have schedules that are filling up number we had last year so in one of the things that we're trying to do with our mexico program is to balance the same amount of students at the elementary level as we have in the middle that as we have in the high so we have this consistent so we've heard todd to make sure that we don't create that hole one of the convenient aspects of that co's that when we look for students to fill the elementary level we can ask for students in certain grades so we know we have first grade is the lowest in roman grade at the elementary level so we can say all right we if we want to make sure that we have a certain number of students in mexico to limit your level we can fill those grades that have the lowest number so if we had a medical student who wanted to be in grade four the show would have to say no a fourth grade is twenty four twenty four twenty four we're down the line but we did our study and will shire our mccook wanted to go in look for folders and field was it had students of a certain grade that we were able to fill those spots so we were should teach you by how we systems and i can say that right now we have at the elementary twenty seven students and the school is thirty one and high school is forty five so they're not exactly equal but they're they're closer than they that's the group that came up with the six modules the middle school that's the group that was talking about what should we do about the high school and then we were granted the application to the high school project and that group kind of stopped so now that we have the high school building committee up and running and we have some options on the table that are being sorted out and will be more of a process that will go through this year and have some decisions made next year we're going to reassemble that space taskforce to talk about the elementary impact because we truly  have a challenge at all levels of the district in we need to address this concern not just with the high school building project but on an all different level so that we will be getting back together again and i'll be asking folks to serve on that committee in the next week when i set up the first e mail request to be actually one quick question i know that as relates to our district or district placements the administration keeps tabs on potentially additional students may require additional services that we may look to to place outside the district hours or do we see a number of those students in the queue think that hundred four hundred five number is going to continue to increase in the short term nor is there any indication so i haven't said sat with ken cramer yet usually what we do is we go through every student on that hundred four list and then we know that there's a point at this meetings that are queued up and getting scheduled and prepared to be held it's different schools that may result in a student seeking place monoxide and services that are needed outside i haven't had that meeting with him yet and we'll hope to have that meeting with him prior to our next finance meeting because that will be part of the update that they do think there will be so i think it will be interesting to see this year are we position to be able to handle the increase to the increase in the cost of those lines without that fund to fall because i know it for the group because i think it'll be something we may want to talk about more this year in terms of whether or not we want to think about going forward with putting in place pressure stabilization fund for teachers one good news story in this was at the urging of susan burges has engaged with us medical health to to be our partner in that we met with them in january of two thousand and sixteen mary has been doing some infrastructure work with them through the spring we had a meeting today with myself tony janice and ken cramer with a representative from us medical we are taking part in the process of looking to see how we can like other school districts build medicaid for services that we provide to then ultimately get reimbursed for as a school district or as a town it's very exciting we had our first student entered into the process last week it was like mary was setting her first and went out to the world unrolling but as we have said at this table and as we believe to be true that this may be some some extra data input but you know asked us a lot of that work farce but we believe that the federal government  the state government is going to utilize the medicaid reimbursement practice to reimburse cities and towns for a whole lot of different health related education related and potentially nutrition and other related issues as at that to that be the mechanism so we're hoping to get on that highway so we can be part of that that cumulated effect of different programs being funded back towns that way so the good news is that generates revenue and we believe that that revenue will go back to the town and then we believe that we can make the appropriate arrangements with the town to have that money be set aside to support the special services for students who actually have generated that revenue so that's a that's a proactive measure that i like to celebrate a little bit because sometimes the schools feels like the group that's always asking for more and there's very few places where we can actually generate revenue and help ourselves and this is a very creative an issue of that we've taken on of will be a lot of work but i believe that after we get settled in and it starts to be a smooth operation we'll get a chance to see what kind of revenue it does bring in and see if the time invested is worth the revenue that we that we gain but that would be about a three year time period when we start to do that work so i'm very excited about that being a part you know a revenue maker for the district and that could go back to your point on supporting students who we need that are actually funding for so it's a good news story and we ha gives everybody a chance to just review this week the articles of our engagement in our connection with that go along with they believe twenty or so other districts throughout the metropolitan boston area and then we  their desire to stay or leave the minutemen district it involves a town wide vote in september as to whether or not to support the new high school that's being built by minuteman of vote was taken in every involved the town of belmont voted not to support the high school and as part of the articles of agreement if the town votes no to on this article to support the new high school then it within thirty days can call a time meeting to withdraw from the district that the board of selectmen have called that meeting that meeting will be on october nineteenth next wednesday night and will be a league of women voters event on the seventeenth monday night where we will present again the  financial aspects of staying with management will leaving minuteman and i will present what the district strategy will be in the case that the vote is to withdraw i've provided a  step short of what the district will do over the next three years if the vote of town meeting is to not withdraw we would remain as minute in member students in a member district so this sheet represents how we would approach minuteman path which means that for the next three school years the seventeen eighteen school year in thousand nine hundred school year nine hundred twenty school year that district will remain members of minuteman we will have our school committee rep that is involved in the one school year or by july first of two thousand and twenty that districts going to have to decide whether they're going to be asked to remain or reengage back as members or or leave at that point in time so that basically  gives us three years to decide what exactly we would like to do if in fact we choose not to be members or if we choose not to be nonmember participants so what i mean by that is right now watertown sense approximately seventy students two minutemen and they're not a member district minutemen has sufficient seats at the moment to give member districts their amount and they have another  and fifty percent of the seats are available to nonmember districts so we believe there's a very very likelihood that we could stay as minuteman district as nonmembers and send us students there to me that's a very good option we know the quality of the program at minimum and no one's questioning the quality of the program that i'm in sensually i think the town in the warrant committee and the other folks who are discussing this issue financially feel that the funding mechanism is broken and it doesn't serve member districts well and that's really the end of pings of why that withdrawal is being considered no one's really saying that minute me is not a good place for us to use to be i think our kids have had a great experience there so we could continue along that path and just be nonmembers for for a period of time as long as seats are still available there are many districts that are non member districts that have sent minutemen their children for a long time the other path that we owe the community to investigate is what happens if we want to if the seeds that minutemen dry up and it's not enough seats what happens if they build a new school and students from other districts want to go there as well what are some of our other alternatives what we have done and what we will do is we will investigate the other programs that are within a reasonable drive of belmont that offer chap seventy four programs like cambridge public schools some of the public schools watertown i mean i walked  public schools and lexington public schools as an example they offered chapter seventy four programming what we will do is we will get their programs of study this year and get some documents together and in  september of the next school year which would be september of two thousand eight hundred seventeen we will put a formal committee together to explore the quality of program we've been in already in programming at these alternative schools the types of access that we could have the capacity each one of those districts the cost of each one of those relationships with those districts and have that committee within one year's time during the seven hundred school year come up with an executive report to presentation to not only the school committee but also the board of selectmen because right now the minuteman funding and the the funding for students who access chap to seventy four schools is in the town's budget not in the school's budget so that uses one year to get that work together and present  their analysis to review the documents maybe what visit schools and come back with their recommendations that record those recommendations we made to those two boards in spring of two thousand and eighteen that's still the first year period to acclimate out budget and to also acclimate our parents if in fact we choose not to be a nonmember minutemen students and we choose to have another pathway to give us students the services that we owe them by law there's a lot of questions that will come up that i think people want to ask in my opinion those are questions about how it will end and i will urging folks to focus on the process that we have a three year window of time to investigate evaluate research and come up with what we think is a great plan for our students to get a quality chapter seventy four education for up belmont residents and students there our students that we have to take here and it during that time period we can also see the implications of that and the educational promise of what direction we want to go and while we're doing that work in the right hand side please keep in mind that that will give us a couple of years to watch and see how minute means capacity continues to hold out other always seats available at minimum in do we think that those seats will still be available in the future we'll have a little more information about how that's trending and if we believe statement of minutes nonmembers is an option that we want to explore as well as any other option that is put for that group  through those other towns and cities that have chapter seven for programming so i think it will be a very good group to meet next year and we'll get some quality folks which for this issue and we'll have plenty of time to implement this smoothly  with our parents our students the schools and also our budgeting for fiscal i'm one of the things i will stress is that i won't address the money side of this conversation my job was only to outline the path of the options that we could have for the educational opportunities for students i believe the war committee is going to talk about the financial aspects of this not only it's how meeting but also the league of women voters meeting that we have on monday so they got a lot of questions  receiving out some of them have to do with the educational options but a lot of them have to do with the financial implications of whether or not we leave minutely in a state or how we access i mean of it as nonmembers and one of the financial outcomes of those decisions and the budget those i encourage everyone to go to that meeting on the seventeenth it will be here to generate to be informed and especially our town meeting members will be making this decision and i believe the town meeting  moderator may ask this party for a vote whether they have proof other withdrawal or they would prefer to stay and i think this group decided this morning that we will have a school committee meeting on wednesday either in the morning or in the afternoon right now  looking like six thirty right before time meeting so we can the symbols of group to digest this information hopefully go to the monday night meeting at the legal near voters and then we can take a vote in preparation for tommy lee once in it seven i think we had a very good discussion about this this morning and good that i think the whole committee wants to get more information and to hear from him get as much information as possible before we make recommendations and i think this meeting recommendation spend some time looking at some of the high level roma data and then also thinking about plans for what additional topics we tackle   update the committee on an