well good evening everyone and welcome to the school committee of the town of foxborough a regular meeting today may sixteenth two thousand and sixteen tonight's agenda we're going to begin with our in you will school committee reorganization that always follows the town elections and then we'll recognize any visitors who wish to be heard we will prove our minutes we have a couple of sets of minutes tonight and then we'll have a very exciting teaching and learning highlight featuring some very special guests who are here in the front row tonight i believe from the taylor elementary school it's a math lesson i think you guys are going to share with us is that right all right we're going to get our annual update from fox for high school guidance services is then going to lead us through a town of foxborough financial policy review we have a second reading of policies that had a first reading last meeting regarding family and medical leave student activity accounts and long range strategic planning the school committee will then vote to reappoint ms debra spinelli as a voting member of the by county collaborative board of directors for the twenty sixteen seventeen school year we'll address any other matters and then the committee will be going into executive session tonight for the purpose of discussing negotiation strategies with the union personnel specifically tonight it's with regard to the foxboro school bus drivers association and the committee will not be returning to open session after that executive session just before we start i want to welcome our newest member at the table for his first meeting of the school committee the town of foxborough chris connelly congratulations and welcome to the table thank you very much and also want to welcome graduate maryland on your reelection well earned well deserved thank you very much i want to be back and good for you had to have you back i want to add my personal thanks to steve you and i think the committee had an opportunity to thank steve on his way out at the last meeting but since i was outside and have a chance i want to thank steve for his years of service and i also just want to thank on behalf of the entire committee the others who ran in the race it's always great to  interest and have others express an opportunity to put themselves out there in public and that's what serves our schools so well so thanks to all who participated in in the election i think it's very exciting chris lived in that town only six had a chance to interview you and put a little bit about you but want to take a minute just to tell the public about yourself ok i've been a teacher for twelve years my first year teacher and i taught at st catharine's of seattle and norwood where i taught religion history for the last eleven years i've been a teacher in brockton i teach history i've taught special ed math and i do the run the credit recovery for the eighth grade at my school which is students that are struggling we help  nomination or we can have a general discussion first miss lord i would like to actually have a general discussion but also for the sake of chris was never been part of a school committee  each each one of us no matter where we sit here and face your chair all our votes are totally equal and weight so it does not matter where we sit and we have been very successful past three years we've had nobody vying for for power more or more say it's been very comfortable what we had to do at one point was set up a rotating system because there was a time where there was a kind of power struggle and people wanted to keep control so we thought if we rotated it would be very fair and balanced last year everything was running so very smoothly that we broke that and bruce remained as chair for the second year in the row and tina remained as vice chair for her second year in a row now if we continue that it works very well this team together but what we might want to consider is perception sometimes perception is an anime rather than reality so that we may want to consider to put the rotating back in this year again so that people won't think anybody wants control or is trying to have control so probably be very honest it's been a pleasure to serve the  chair but i would like to hear from mrs ballenger because she's been next in line for a couple of years now and i do think it's something that she's interested in doing that we should nominate her and if it's something where she's going to wear shoes than i'm comfortable supporting that as well so you know you want to offer your thoughts and i i hate to be wishy washy but i would be honored to serve his chair and i'm also very happy right where i am you know serving as vice chair it's been a great experience working together with everyone on the committee as the vice chair and i've had the opportunity to step into your seat a couple times in different in that's been fun to sell and i'm always one to do what's asked of me thinks it's time to rotate i'm up for that and if we're happy with the things the way they are right now i'm content with that as well or good and i think that we agree if we could are you interested in being vice chair i'd be happy to but i'm also happy to support i think the only thought i can offer for the book consideration committee is barry's up for election next year is that right  well if there are no other nominations should we take a roll call vote for bev for vice chair i i got my chance but i don't think know anyone like i make a motion that we accept the meetings of the regular meeting of april twenty five twenty sixteen as presented by second all those in favor i think record yes this is just in the past if if a member wasn't present and they haven't voted because of not being able to verify the minutes or after it obviously so i'm just questioning that because we've always fifth opposed to tensions three zero to say it again for me here but i'm going to write it the way i would phonetically here up here if it's patrick and then we have a and then we have more and more now in their third graders so the girls are in third grade and want to put your chair to make room for you here all presenters sign for you so brian and john  second grade students and kiera amanda and maureen are third grade students so they're going to present to you tonight something that goes on all the time in our mathematics classes and elementary which are number talks i love their title you can see their  participating in a new initiative this year we've started an aspiring teacher leader group and we have been focused on math and improving math practices and i was excited to have them come and show some of what they are doing in their classrooms but the stars of the show are definitely in front of me here so first i'm just going to tell the school committee a little bit about number talks because i think you know more about it than they do so number talks are routine that we're using in our classroom and this is the book and it's a very well known book and there are lots of great examples in it and it's a strategy that helps students to use mental math and increase their computational fluency so what they are are very short maybe about ten times ten minutes structured times in the classroom where students have the opportunity to try to attack number problems in any way they want and they get to talk about their strategies that's why it's called the number talk and it gives the students an opportunity to engage in mental math so they're not using their whiteboard their fingers they're just using their brain and it gives them a chance to speak about math with each other and with their teachers and to think and learn from each other which is a really exciting opportunity and it also gives them a chance to try different strategies and one of our favorite things that i know they'll tell you about it is when somebody else tries a strategy that might be more efficient than theirs then they can learn from it and try it next time so the goal of number talks there are many goals but the primary goal is to increase computational fluency in some of the things that kids get from a number talk is seeing that numbers are composed of smaller numbers so they can take them apart and put them back together that what we know about one number for example what we know about ten might help us with one hundred or one thousand so that also helps us to think about place value and how numbers are organized in tens and ones and then thinking about patterns and numbers so a number of talk is structured in a  very sort of consistent way students come to a spot in the room and usually it's the rug area or near the border the easel in the teacher puts up a problem it's a big reveal and then students use mental math and they have their quiet thinking time nobody talks during that time now i'm going to ask my friends here to demonstrate when that you are thinking during a number talk what do you do and you show me right so this is means i'm thinking about it what happens when you think you have a solution can you show us that you have the solution right a figure comes up and what about if you have more than one strategy right then we can have more so it's a silent communication and it's not done out here because we don't want anybody else to feel rushed right we all want to respect our thinking time so we have our signals and then once they start sharing what if you had the same idea as me and you want to agree with me but with that look like write they say me too i agree fabulous so what does a teacher do it's really important actually the the teacher the teacher really has to create a culture of risk taking and support from student to student from teacher to student the teacher has to select problems that are going to be rich enough that we can attack them in many different ways she has to provide or he enough time for thinking which is sometimes the biggest challenge because you want everyone to have enough processing time to think about the problem and then the teacher is really shifting the focus away from themselves and on to the students thinking about what they saw and what they did not what the teacher did and then as you'll see in a moment the teacher records and clarifies and then obviously it's an opportunity to identify misconceptions that they can correct them so throughout the number talk the teacher is recording on paper and those things become an charts so that the kids can then refer back to a strategy that they may have seen so it becomes a tool later when they attack other problems us look at your anchor charts in your classrooms there's lots of them yes they're helpful is it a good tool so some of the student language that we might hear and you guys agree with me if you've ever said this i know another way never said you know another way to do it or i know i'm right because so you're defending your answer you have to do that or i have a question about your strategy we ask each other really respect fully and the teacher might say how did you do that or why did you think that and one of my favorites is could you both be correct and why or show me how you did something so i hope th ready because you know that when i come and you don't so welcome then i need i really want to test this out on you so this is where no pencils no pens no fingers no cell phones and i see people when they try to take them out and boys and girls have not seen this problem yet either so boys and girls when you have the solution you're going to show us with your thumb and they're going to give you a chance to talk about it so this really this problem is for our second graders third graders are welcome to participate as well so you're going to have your own problem in a moment is everybody ready it's going to come up on the screen remember you get your answer you can think of another strategy and love when there's numbers hiding numbers he says so much easier right you might want to erase that one because now we're going to try a multiple petion one and i know my second graders have not learned multiplication and actually the problem that the third graders are going to see a haven't done either so i will give you a little background part of the reason we became interested in number talks was because we had students sometimes as high as eighth grade that's where my role sort of ends who if you said to them what is fourteen times six they would either be counting or they would say we didn't have to learn our fourteen tables and they were missing that fourteen was a composite of ten and four so we really i went to this strategy as a way for kids to take apart numbers and put them together so third graders do not learn their twelve's tables we're going to give them one that has a twelve ok ready go ahead twelve times five and see what you can do with that we do not  me ask you a question so we took when we take the the answer is sixty sixty do you see how we got sixty to do i got a question for you where i do this this is more of a fourth great problem so i give you credit for you right here tonight when i do this with some fourth groups of five then i know it's fifty five and i normally really really close and then i only had one group of five left and i can get to fifty five with one five left and easily get to sixty so i just i did that my second strategy you think that one  and the easiest thing about that or the easier to me the way my brain works is all of a hybrid works is that i knew i was really close so it prevents me from thinking that the number could be over one hundred because i know it's fifty five i'm really close so if i did come up so i would love to ask the boys and girls what they think about never talks what the teachers think before we wrap up so what do you guys tell us what do you feel like you know if you had a choice say between you know math practice worksheet and a number of times what you think w that you're going to say you know them but what about your teachers because these are teachers who have been in the district for quite some time and they've been going through a lot of the changes with us and i'd love to hear your observations say i just is totally sort of an aside i was doing some research and asking students how they feel about math at the fifth grade level and it's very interesting that one of the things they said makes them feel most comfortable and confident is when they get to work with others and they get to talk about their thinking not just in a silo by themselves so i think it's an important practice and for people at home we've talked about this before but part of our standards are the standards of math practice and these are the habits of mind that students have as mathematicians and this practice really gives them a chance to engage in these practices so they have to make sense of their problem that was great we just made sense of that together so that we could figure it out they do lots of reasoning and they have to sometimes defend their well they have to always actually defend their answer or critique the reasoning of others and they get to fine patterns and make generalizations so it's a great tool for us to be able to reach some of these standards and the best part is if i can make it us as teachers flipping the script from what answer did you get we're not math is not just all about getting the answer it's about how you think so how did you solve it so we're creating an opportunity for kids to show us how they're thinking about math and then we have fun although for bringing them this is great and i don't know if you have any questions for our mathematicians i would like to thank everybody i think i've learned a few new strategies myself it would be great if you could stick around and help us with the town financial policy  very proud but i think that perseverance through the different really difficult i'm the one that mrs miller says more like fourth grade that was the best thing that happened only because math shouldn't be about just having a word she were all the answers are easy to get because that's not challenging your mind mathematically so that to me all the way you were thinking and you knew what half of things were doubles and you know all the stuff that was so impressive because that's what's going to help you in life is being able to say no i'm going to stick with this and figure it out it's go make sense to me try different things beautiful thank you for being here joe you did a great job do a lot of research on lots of things including programs courses out of so in you know in two thousand sixteen we actually have seventeen a p courses which is up from ten in two thousand and seven so that's that's bitterer effect data point right there but some of them aren't represented on here for example we have three a p are opportunities that wouldn't be in an exam such as this because it's more put folio based type of thing so don't don't think that these are all the a p courses that we actually in the foreign language  parents don't encourage it and so that the potential really helps the staff i think to pick up some kids who might not be putting themselves for to see them that way as well so it can go either way the thought about it could it be initiated from a student a parent or teacher  department and students and parents receive a letter on from the guidance department saying you know after taking the p s a t's your student has been an identified as a potential in the following subjects so kind of no clue it's an it's an open forum for anybody that wants to challenge themselves in them so i'm taking a few a p time but that's the other thing just because we do have a new member is that when we expanded enrollment into basically open enrollment into a p prepared by i also think that we're very blessed in this community to have the caliber of teacher that we have here not just in a p but across the board but we really do have some special people working with these kids so what makes them just a little different than other districts lease it's mandatory that they take the test at the end so it's it's not so our school was legitimate like some of the districts might have schools but it's because the only ones that have to take the ones that want to take it so all our kids demand to turn they all have to sit for the things ok there's a college is next monday so we're going to take the entire load the break last college years and it's a great experience they're exposed to so many colleges and then when they get back to the high school we follow up with a representative from a college chosen you know makes the natural transition this is a college and now this is what we're looking for and we've been fortunate enough the last couple years have the same person providence college and we'll see how that goes over the years but he's been great we serve the lunch and then we have a representative from college it's a pretty good kid and it's not to promote that college he's talking about the process the admissions process is a whole and it's not going to be like a an ad for marie on our staff is been phenomenal very busy kinds of mental health issues as i'm sure you've heard around so that continues to grow and i think there the whole mental health team really well together  on the next page financial literacy this year we had our first one at a time showcase live and that was a great success with a few tweaks it was a first year there i was with a few ideas of what we want to do for next year what we're hoping that they're generous enough to guidance so they get the same information even if they're not in the group so what we're looking forward to next year too is that now with the new e mail system where we have every student we're able to give them information that way it's going to give them  oh yeah different resources and vocational stuff you know here at my school she gets a lot of people and i think we definitely talk about it but behind the scenes what we're what we're concerned about is whether that's a huge event as you can imagine whether we can pull it off in a week with all logistics behind it and all the of the things that we offer kids because it's still a day out of class i think well so i just don't we're trying to figure out where the priorities are whether we whether we can run in any way to whether we should so i think the board get to the high school to try to minimize how many times a student's going to miss the regular schedule class i'm not saying it's not as valuable to you don't hear that from me but i'm just saying that they just trying to play time out of class versus what they'll get out of the night which is the end evening and program and there is great attendance sun on the part of our high school students for that if there is if there is a desire to learn about different careers perhaps we could and actually  right and not not not to make an excuse we do hear a lot from our staff about how many decisions are made about the level about things that interrupt their instructional flow so we're trying to be sensitive to that but i think the evening idea even if it started right after kids finish their sporting event this is definitely something because it's also a lot to ask people to come out and do it so i know my son does the high school critical for him to take a day off of from his firm and you really is a lot every of the year changing that recommendation they would have a conversation with the teacher and student and then if they want to think make adjustments to that yeah i think that's the best way don't yeah it's worked out you have i mean it's been my experience i have one eighth an opportunity to come into the school in august and the kids feel very comfortable about the time they come up and i think the course election process is really goes very smoothly from the middle school to the high school and i know the guidance department and the teachers work together with the parents if there is you know some sort of that to have a discussion about placement and classes and bruce has that been your experience as well we think that we put the time in now so we go down to the her and we try uniquely challenging year but other things that if we wanted to take this to the next level moves you with the pop into your mind or services that we could add to expand what we do well i think lori touched upon it and it's something that we've been talking a great deal about collectively with diana and i know debbie we've talked about it in our leadership meetings but you know we are a little worried about the social motional health of our students and we are fortunate that we have a well staffed gardens department that also has career and college support there so that does allow the guidance counselor's to really get into that and then when things kind of  increasing sadly i think so you know i think that we have to take care of our kids mental health first before we can expect them to take an a p class and get a three a four or five on on an a p exam so i think it's something that bears some watching we need to take some data i think to get some some real numbers about what we're dealing with i mean we i think situationally about what we're dealing with on a day to day but i think right now that seems to be an important piece of the puzzle and i think it's something that we need to keep an eye on but we're very fortunate in this community and i say all the time even with the difficult year that we've had it's still i would want to be an also we'll work anywhere else the support in this community is second to none it's just unbelievable so the fact that i think the leadership in this in this district know that it has the support school committee says a lot about the direction that we're going and we're very fortunate have debbie as a leader so i'll just make one last comment if i can but you know all around the industry of education the school experience is of all the right and i think we are fortunate in the system that we do offer so many different experiences an opportunity is for our students but i would just say that you know if there are other ways you think we can continue to help whether it's the you know the special needs population of the town the gifted or you know winning anywhere in the in between i wouldn't just invite you to come back in and tell us what other services we could offer to continue to enhance that student experience boston holiday season they would everyone's us back to me to say right now which i appreciate everyone's comments here at the table those things happen as part of a budget process in the fall before we get to you we have lots of meetings about staffing needs programatic the student needs and we prioritize those needs and that's how they get to you if we decided to add decisions we do a lot of that work obviously ourselves we have bunch of people in the audience from the town from the prize re committee and i you know i'm i'm i'm just feeling in my role i need to step out only i'm a little bit and say all of that happens as part of our budget process which we all know in the i would hope that people would trust that we consider all the needs as part of our budget process and not have an ask at the table here with the camera and then suddenly you know it's a position that let me tell you if they're going to say that the table its positions been roundly discussed or need this been really discussed so in that spirit i will say that part of the load off the guidance counselors and other high schools they're doing the therapeutic work the guidance the guidance the the developmental and in they're doing college work you know college placement so the fact that you support that position he is so good at what he does means that you are you may not realize it but by default but by supporting that you're also increasing the capacity of our guidance staff to do more of this kind of work that we're talking about so we are comfortable in maybe we're do want to have a conversation about how we meet all these needs but that all does occur is very thoughtfully as is part of the process so i don't know that people know that other places do not employ a college counselor we do and that that is allowed us to do some other things with with greater attention than you can only imagine doing all you do and and having that on your back because you remember the time when that didn't occur when we didn't have them and every other high snow  together you know a committee to basically formalize the policies it does serve us in many ways which rand is going to go through but you know it's important that every word be in agreement with the way these policies are written and what they stand for and so again while he's already been in or front of i think the advisory committee and the water sewer you know we are one more stop on that before you get words like as well so i can't seem to find the drive for the  adopt financial policies which have been our practices to date and the reason for doing this is twofold which cover in the presentation but one is that our bond rating agency has made very clear indications to us actually wrote it into the rating that if we did adopt certain financial policies that they would consider us for an upgrade which in the translates into lower borrowing costs and the other reason for having  these types of financial policies is that as the town officials come and go and we do that there will be consistency from from from year to year and  and that's you know it's so we get credit for doing what we do but you get more credit if you actually memorialise them and get the policy boards to to buy into it not that they can't be modified going forward but that is that's in essence the the goal of this and we do have a bond offering coming up in a couple weeks and so we're looking to a satisfy that  so the credit rating itself just prior to going out to the market to borrow for for funds on the town's finances are rated by a credit rating agency it's a requirement you know in order for the bondholders to get a comfort level for you know what interest rate they would bid for your bonds they want a rating agency to put a stamp on it would with one of these ratings it has a very strong correlation to the interest rates that are bid obviously the higher the double a plus with a positive outlook and if you look at the chart down below here you can see there's many different gradations of ratings some are investment grade those triple b higher and then those that are a speculative grade so our double a plus in the s and p column is considered a very low credit risk so we're already in you know in good condition but there's you know there's one  more higher peg above us and that's chipped away and that's what we're shooting for and that's in essence what s and p has been indicating to us is that this is the last thing that they'd like to see and they would strongly consider us for that we did actually increase our rating two notches seven years ago from doubling minus to double a plus and that save the town hundred thousand dollars in interest on all the bonds that been issued since then seven years ago  this is actually an extract all the words on this page except for the beheading is an extract directly from the credit analysts review when they when they summarize their review they just reviewed us in november of twenty fifteen so about six months ago and the reason for the review is that we did a refinancing they call it a refunding but we refinanced about seven point six million in bonds and same process they need to be rated nor to go to market to sell them so here is the grand summary in essence of all of the areas that they rate us and you know this very strong economy which is great for us where as we're going through another boom town time here and in fox boro which is fantastic they recognize that that's measurable they say strong management with good financial policies and practices and so our goal here is we don't want to have good financial policies want we want have strong financial policies a very strong financial policies and that's why i've underlined it here and read the call it's they say it's good in essence they're saying a practices are good and we do have some policies around many things but on these key things that they're looking for to get into they want to see a written policy we have strong budgetary performance strong budgetary flexibility from from year to year  very strong liquidity so the town has deep enough reserves to cushion its itself in hard times and we have very strong debt and contingent liability position contingent liability  the the large unfunded liabilities or do have unfunded liabilities which is pension and the retiree health benefits otherwise known as opap so they rate is very strongly on how much debt we have relationship to our financials and where we stand on managing those big contingent liabilities and strong and institutional framework score that's in essence state of massachusetts the support that the state gives us valleys with state a and just the general you know climate that we operate within within the state of massachusetts not something that a lot of control over but they rate that that highly so that's right out of their rating and then they also have the recommendation as well in the same doc t everything again on this page here except for the area because of the policies in the last sentence is again right from the ratings so six months ago they revised their outlook on the town of  what they heard they liked with what they hear is going going on here in foxboro and they base their outlook on a history of favorable operating performance very strong reserves very strong growing economy and then they say stated should fox or a sustain its trajectory of balanced operations while continuing to add to its reserves and should officials introduce formal financial policies we could raise the rating within our two year outlook timeframe this was six months ago and again we only go out to we only get rated either a when we go out to borrow or we actually operated a year ago because we had borrowed three years and said i'd like to revisit us anyways because  the investors want to see what but what they still think of us three years later they haven't heard anything and then they still want to say however budgetary performance becomes unbalanced leading to a draw on reserves they could revise the outlook to stable  so the specific financial policies that they're looking for us to adopt as a town are our reserves free cash is a component of that our unfunded liabilities which is the opeth and pension our capital improvement and debt management plans again we have we have great practices in all of these areas we just need to memorialize so we're not not suggesting and doing anything new with any of the policies that policies and then ultimately voted unanimously to adopt them and bring them forward and so we've been we met with the advice re committee and they voted to to adopt  once they reviewed them it was very pleased about that and then the water and sewer commissioners saw already been presented to them and then tonight they actually took it as a formal vote to adopt them  tonight and so there are two other major policy boards in town that we would love to get the endorsement of and one would be obviously the school committee and then the board of selectmen and the goal being to actually share with the rating agency policy document that hat is signed by all the different policy boards you know assuming that they everybody agrees but everybody seems to agree so far which isn't surprising given that we're not proposing anything different than we've been doing which is putting on paper what we've been doing  so that this should satisfy the recommendations of the rating agency and give us the best position for us in the best position to obtain their highest rating in the lowest possible interest rate of the next bond offering and we are planning to go to market  in about three weeks we're already in the process of pulling together the prospectus for two projects the town project a six point eight six million and the water treatment plant project which was approved at the annual town meeting for sixteen and a half million the debt service on that is paid out of water at the price receipts it's not a general fund burden so it's a total offering of twenty three point three six million so it's a good size offering should get a fair amount of attention  and would it be better for us we got a lot of attention then we had a lower we had a higher rating so we're here tonight to meet meet with you to discuss the policies and so   but when we came up with the policies we wanted to make them very measurable and measurable every year where in essence a report card could be issued every year at the close of every fiscal year that we could say here's where we are with our policies so that we're not just going through the exercise of putting down on paper what we're doing but we're also measuring and we're measuring in a way where everybody in the community all the stakeholders all the policy boards are aware of where we are and the rating agencies as well so once we once we do go forward with this this will be something that would be part of the regular ratings review would be to share with them here's the you know here's where we we stack up on all these policies that we put together i haven't seen many other communities have actually translated the policies to a report card like this these and these are the key policies that they're interested in there are many others but they're not as is as critical as these one it's here so just please that this is something that we could develop all the metrics have the data and will be able to report out on every year so what you have in front of you here is the the summary of the what i call the f y twenty fifteen report card obviously we're still within twenty sixteen yet the book isn't closed on that  and there are several metrics here which in essence are the policies that that we're looking to adopt and happy to tick through them quickly if you if you like so that the first one is actually the most important one from the the rating agencies perspective and it's something they call unassigned fund balance used to be an designated fund balance it used to be fun balance but as the accounting world has progressed they've refined i t you know to this but in essence what it is is all of the an allocated equity within the general fund and they're looking for the rating agencies are looking for certain ratios here  they're traditionally looking for a double digit number here that you have a ten percent of your budgetary expenditures you know in various states of reserve uncommitted so we currently stand at fifteen point one nine percent very enviable position course everything is scale you know our scale is relatively moderate so modest but it's still enviable that we can we can do this because usually  seven and a half percent which is really a base minimum but really a target of ten to fifteen so something that out of the gates not going to hamstring the town you know should we fall in some really hard times and should should we struggle to maintain that i don't see that happening for the forseeable future when a good position right now as we know that can change you know with with the economy but so that in essence the target range ten to fifteen percent we're already on ahead of that right now the next two items are actually sub components of the unassigned fund balance the first one is in essence free cash which is the end of the year we close out any surplus revenues we've collected on spend budgets that sort of thing and every year we target two million dollars in free cash think in our financial planning discussions here our financial forecast sessions and we talked about free cash we could do a whole course just on that but in essence this what we turned back collectively at the end of the year out of the general fund revenues received in excess of what we committed in and budgets that are under spent and it's important to know that we don't commit all of the revenues that we anticipate receiving so we can generate a free cash reserve like this which gives the towns on the quiddity from from year to year and it's a hedge a hedge against them against hard times so we're at a we're at a good place right now with five points of a five point seven million in free cash our annual recharge target is two million and go up and down really fast in hard times and it and it has you could go back about  a dozen years and there was never any free cash to carry forward it was generated and then it was all used in the next year's budget so we were finally in a position because of some  some economic activity that you know in the town over the last decade has really come in the town's favor and we've been prudent with those funds and not letting it burn a hole through the pocket which we live within our within our means could really consider that sort of a one time one time  the next item is is general stabilization that's really your core stabilization i wouldn't i wouldn't call it rainy day i would call it like a disaster fund because the only reason you'd want to tap this which is our target is five percent of the operating budget which is the rating agencies target they consider that that's a good benchmark to have and we do have it which is just over three million the only reason you would want to tap that is if you were struggling to make your debt service pay that's what the rating agencies looking for from municipality here to have something like that not necessarily to bridge your service gaps from year to year but it's if you really had a had a meltdown foresee that at this this point in time and in the near intermediate long term future but if you did that you would you would have this to rely on and help you get through at least make a debt payment so you could least maintain your credit and you could continue to operate maybe borrow if you needed to because if you can't make your debt service payments on will have great difficulty on getting credit and it's important to note that any drawdown now on the general stabilization fund is a report of all of that to the rating agencies it radiates it's called disclosure of events so the way to look at that is once the money goes in there you know unless you unless rating is not important to the community anymore i would consider it's a locked away and that's really sort of your your worst case scenario there are some communities who don't believe in the general stabilization fund because they don't believe in locking away the money for the purpose of getting a lower rating but if it actually does it it does pay dividends on the other reserve is capital stay well as ation which is just as it's as it sounds it's so way to put away funds that th don't go into the general stabilization fund you can put it put money in take money out that's not reportable so you can have once they once the regulations change where everything every all the activity out of the general stabilization fund became report when they allowed other stabilization funds to be created so we were fortunate enough to have a capital stabilization fund is pretty modest at this point five hundred fifty thousand and the suggestion is that that you know we use that for  major capital projects and where it makes the most sense at this point in the town cycle is to reduce but we need to borrow for and excluded debt projects i like the barrel school so it makes more sense we could have could have used that to reduce what the town hall project would have cost but that didn't make sense because rates are nice but we're alone out me by the time of our own comes on board rates might be a little higher but then even more importantly we'll be able to you know buy down how much debt we have to we have to carry that project if we put if we put this is fun towards it in the thinking is that we would try to maintain something here over time try to squirrel some money away here over time to have the same effect that  we're going to have with that particular project and with the central maintenance department being a stablished through the great cooperation of the school department and i think with the way the were i think we're already seeing some dividen reserve that's a requirement by the department of revenue but it is a reserve that's in essence the funds that we used to pay so you pay for exemptions that on tax payers are allowed to have in every year for the town those come out about two hundred twenty thousand dollars tax exemptions and then there are the abatement requests and i always encourage any property owner if you through your properties the property value to please submit an abatement request because the whole the whole monch m o of the assessing department is fair in equitable cash value so so in there's that has to be funds there in order to be able to make an adjustment in value and so it's in essence a doubling of the exemption and any any excess that that builds up there we wind up bringing back into the budget process for one time expenditures like like capital and that's required reserves and other reserve that's become less important over time because of some primarily due to some massachusetts law changes is our operating reserve i know probably and in and in private sector an operating reserve might be a percentage of the overall budget like one percent or two percent or something like that as you know but the reason that it can be that low and we can still operate and not and get through any shortfalls that we have primarily two reasons one is that  that was created back about eight years ago which allowed the town town manager to make year end adjustments to budgets within three percent of a budget to either within the budget  voted line or within other municipal budgets doesn't apply to the school department but the because the school school apartment has bottom line autonomy there's flexibility built within that as well so between the bottom line autonomy and the town axis what i refer to it as gives us the flexibility where we can make ends meet year end to meet any you know modest changes or needs in budgets those are all the the reserve component to fund here as a policy we've been doing it now is what's called the annual required contribution i know many of you are familiar with that that's in essence an actuarily determined number because this is how much you need to be putting away today so that you can be fully funded in our case by twenty thirty eight because we started the fund in two thousand and eight and were allowed to take a thirty year funding cycle so in order to there's an amount to be able to do that every year to to hit that we are currently funding at that level at the arc level seven hundred sixty four thousand this year and that will that's it's going up for next next year by a hundred thousand eight hundred sixty four thousand water and sewer enterprises are also contributing as well because they have their share of the liability as well and that's why it's an odd number we're contributing eight hundred thousand general fun sex so meals tax driven and then the balance is coming from water and sewer so the fact that we're here we're actually at the arc funding at the arc is a very positive thing the very few communities in the state that are that are actually doing that so it was good that we did that because by doing that and making the changes that have been made  a plan design and some decisions of the selection of made we have actually cut the the town's liability based on the lax last actuarial study from about sixty four percent from sixty two point two million to twenty two point seven good shape now and we get credit for actually addressing that the other contingent liability is the pension assessment we really don't have any control over this it's it's the non educator pensions that the town funds  you know the state funds the educated the the town share the educator pension so they're not to worry about that but we do have to worry about all the non educated pensions and that's managed out of norfork county retirement system and they have their own board of trustees and they have close to three dozen communities that participate in that system and they determine what the assessments will be based on their actuarial analysis and they're currently targeting a twenty thirty one fully funding schedule and that's currently putting us with an annual assessment of just over three million dollars which has been going up pretty consistently because they've got  they have a pretty aggressive schedule this good news and bad news but if everything works out by two thousand and thirty one that assessment will drop dramatically because the majority of that assessment is actually funding the unfunded liabilities so that would be a silver lining down the road some communities are actually waiting until their pension assessment is fully their pension liability is quite fully funded for they address the yoke of liability but where we're addressing both the next pieces are our debt related so as you know we've got we've got multi components here we have excluded debt which is where the voters go to the to the ballot box to vote an increase in their taxes and we have included that where that's within the operating budget itself and so we we looked at the committee looked at some parameters about you know that the high and the low end of what that should be in the ranges that we came up with is for all debt within the general fund of between two and nine percent currently we stand at five point two four percent our debt service meaning our principal and interest payments just over three million dollars so we have we have plenty of flexibility here even with the borrowed school and the town hall added in here our percentage actually won't won't move significantly because it's as a percent of expenses of sixpences are growing where amortize in the debt that we already have the time these particular components are layered on these percentages really are going to move that much so we're right in the middle of the range there's nothing that there's nothing that i foresee over the next you know five ten years that would conceivably put us you know on the outside of these these ranges are clearly where we are living within these ranges  and we have been and that's been a long long history we've been well within both of these ranges here just for example that the town when the save the barl school comes on and twenty eight seen  debt service on a map with an estimate of what that would be you know currently we're at four point eight four percent of expenditures and excluded that we would even be less than that in twenty eighteen because the budget is growing and we will amortize a lot of debt will actually be somewhere around you know four point four three so very very comfortable you know range that were in here same thing with the included that within the budget we've let that run down dramatically over the years  it had been you know as high as about one and a half percent and even with the town hall debt service layered on to that we'll move from what is currently zero point four percent up to one point three percent and i'm not aware of another project that we would likely you know layer on mere to intermediate term so still well within that zero to two percent range for including debt but it's good that we're actually adding that back in because we always had a significant percentage of the operating budget going towards included debt and it's appropriate to do that to maintain that consistency and not put it all on excluded that the other two are related to debt as well bond  urities but the rating agencies look for is that a benchmark of fifty percent of all your debt paid off within ten years typically we're borrowing for twenty years on average and you know right now we'll have fifty one point eight percent paid off in seven years and seventy one point seven percent paid off in ten years so well within well within that you know there are other communities that will go along on thirty year bonds and things like that appropriate to go thirty years there to ease the burden on the water rate payers you know for that one that's still on it really impact our r ratio here as well will still be comfortably above fifty percent and then the last item is really just something that the you know the rating agencies look for in general which is that we keep all of our general obligation bonds the debt itself within two and a half percent of what's called the equalize property values or take all the property  down commercial residential industrial add up all the value and then the state then equalizes it for different discrepancies in assessing across the across the state and they come up with equalized values who are currently at  that are being proposed here there are there are others that are specific to the water to part water and sewer departments the enterprise funds but the rating agencies aren't so hyper focused on those as they are on this because they know there's a different revenue structure there than here but i will say that the water and sewer commission has did vote to support you know all of the policies as including everything that applied to how they they manage because they understand nothing is proposed here is a threat to how i was managing today which is putting into writing our practices you know it's a lot of questions because it you know actually i think there's a couple things do you kind of simplify and some of your thinking when you look at the free cash balance a lot of people get excited about seeing that number if you look to the far right you see that that number is about six hundred thousand larger than it had been the previous year so that's a pretty good swing in one year ten percent but you also have to realize that just a town meeting as an example we just spent three point four million dollars in free cash one point four million dollars against the operating budget so to the recharge point if you don't have two million you have an operating problem next year we spent about seven hundred thousand on the barrel project again it was great to have that available not have to borrow and asked taxpayers for additional tax money and about one point two million in c ip so you know quite honestly even though it's five point seven the day you get certified it's a it's you know pretty well the nine dollars number by the time we get to the end of the year right and then you have to hope that there's additional funding coming back from our operating budgets and and from potentially under estimating some of our revenues the stadium is a big wildcard in that obviously we don't anticipate we're going to get every single concert that comes out there because you don't know any given year things can change and we've seen that has really wild swings up there you get lucky and you get some playoff games obviously that's big money but you can never gamble by putting that up front exactly i think randy does a great job when it comes to the estimate on the revenue side but the kind of town that we are in the way our funding is done as far as where it's coming from especially when you have a major venue like that you have to understand that you're going to have some significant changes up and down each year but you also up understand you have a certain dependency and it's that free cash each year just to make you balance i also look at the general stabilization fun in a way that you know when you when you start off and have a lot of education from your mortgage company they're always saying that they want you to have six to twelve months in your savings account so that you can handle your mortgage that's what the stabilization account basically is it's they're telling you the exact same thing they want to town take the same kind of outlook that they expect you know a reasonable person to take and not have no reserves at all because bad things happen and you just need to be prepared for i think the one thing that those policies while they're being realize one thing they have done for the town over the years quite honestly is help us weather the storms so even in the bad years when when many towns were doing a lot of layoffs and changing services and really you know hitting what they were capable of doing what fox who had to do is basically slow down its economy whether was reducing what raises were things of nature but were able to maintain services and i think that's what the critical component of any good financial plan is to maintain services good and bad times  revenue side of one of the things that this does is kind of put a fence around our debt situation so we don't mortgage our future and that puts us in a situation where we make good policy on the revenue side and then on the expense side not lever in the town too out of the meals tax was that when it was put in place finally after the third vote it was it was put in there are no way of how it was going to be used because it was a big concern that it would just be added to all the operating budgets and  spend it all right but it turned out to be a million dollar number so it's a fairly good sized number but the best thing that was done about that was it the majority of it went towards the open which again other communities didn't do a lot and just used to fund the and as as randy show you this is twenty thirty eight i mean we've got you know a number of years to get out there in funding because you know if we didn't have that type of source there's no way this community would ever be able to live i think i think to john's point we building building maintenance is to really you know put aside money for that because those are our largest investments as we all know schools done a phenomenal job many taining their buildings and now you bring that over to mr side but we need to put process ends which we do every year repeatable consistent predictable everybody understands what's happening takes a lot of the drama out of budgeting for the town and i think that this report card just fits into that it helps us stay on that path right and we can easily measure ourselves so i think it's a great tool this is it a great education to do this explains so much to the average but i'll say i'm an average also say going into the future when this is you know proved in voted that i hope that the policies are online because when people ask even things about what a capital projects how those decide it's a long explanation that we give virtually and planning for our town financial future that i was so impressed with reading through this document was just as you can tell that a lot of thoughtful work went into this war product it's a great explanation i completely agree and i do think if somebody was curious about well how do they do things this is a road map to how this town plans its budgets from top to bottom and and one other thing you didn't say on your the front page of your power point responsible stable thoughtful some say it right up and it's what we're trying to do here at this table try the board of selectmen are trying to do it's what the advisory committee is doing on a weekly basis and i mean i was on the outcome with larry and john when we discussed the meals tax in the open and you're right that's exactly the discussion that went on and has been carried out in the years since we passed it  right now my only comment would be certainly we have an excellent track record with randy both down with the coordination of the school side finances and with bill having come on we've certainly i think just upped our game even more the only thing i would offer to the committee is a thought that none of us are accountants are experts in there's a lot of numbers and percentages in the document so we might consider approving this based on a contingency that the but anybody any other questions thoughts i myself would be comfortable endorsing it tonight because of the details and you take your top experts they saved the town so much money there i would be comfortable on endorsing it without waiting i think the only reason people wouldn't indorse this to be honest with you is if you felt that it was somehow limiting your ability to do your jobs within the school department as an example i think randy has done a good job explaining why we really don't see that as an issue or our ranges you know and john was really kind of the ones pushing to tighten some of the range up and stuff which is important too you don't want to have these these gaping holes like the grand canyon anybody could you know match type of thing but so i think they're reasonable but i also think there's enough wiggle room within these that you know again in the storm years or the problem years what you're going to have we've had cycles you know every six to eight years where we're going up and down i think that the you know the guidelines are strictly that they're a guideline to hold us and we've got enough of a range that we could manage our ups and downs as we have to but the reality would be once you had a down you'd want to build those back up again and make sure that you're falling back within your range there's obviously nothing that would ever stop the town from you know coming together again and saying we have to do something different than what these guidelines are saying so again in in one of those extraordinary events where it was just bad times for a long time the guidelines are what they are you know they are your policies as to what you would like to manage but then then you still have to manage so  intent is to bring forward the report card every year and you'll notice the we're not looking just to have the border selectman be the the only endorser here you know there are other other large  departments that have a stake in this as well so i would say you know if we don't have unity then you know it then there's an issue we all need to address it so i would say that you know if we did run into one of those hard time scenarios it would be just one more call it would it would be we would we would have to have a consensus amongst the boys and yes we need to do something different here and we would be the reason i'm here titus i was part of as the representative to the school committee yes it is out of committee so the reason i came was most important what we did have a lot of like serious debate not like syria we had serious debate about this and things were tightened up and i do think to bill's point my point the other gentleman here tonight there's plenty of levers there's plenty him from the policies to bill's point you're going to end up having a lower recharger pretty cash you're going to basically cut you see ip down most likely you're probably going to go way projects all that to keep things you know balance the budget i would i would i was the ideal target ranges along allows a lot of transparency allows everybody to see if you're on the low range of the of the target then you know why you're trying to build up that up little bit on the other hand for the high range of the target the average person can see that and say wait a minute you're at the ceiling maybe some of that money should be reallocated back to some of the needs that we've discussed you go to town meeting more or elsewhere so i think it really allows the public to participate a little bit more in the in the finance  the town and the loss of fees that guy who disagrees i completely appreciate the time the audit committee has spent on this and thank you as our school committee representative for your time put in and for coming here to talk to us about amended next quasi is j j f student activity accounts and the changes highlighted in yellow are the ones we discussed the amendments we discussed at the last meeting does anyone have any additional questions or comments on just refresh your memory this is back in january i think bill brought forward december the rights of changes  legal changes to student activities counts policy and we were he asked us to set a minimum balances regulations governing student and i for the policy subcommittee had taken a look the student activity accounts policy and the strategic planning and again the changes we made here as we discussed at our last meeting are to just update the policy to reflect our actual practice with regard to strategic planning the policy had said five years we now do a three year planning period and that's what the changes are designed to address it's anyone have any questions  dollars which they have been very generously supporting for many many years now and that's for the summer math camp so that there are no fees for parents whose children want to participate in the math camp in the summer and taps is a extremely generous donation in mr john eva is directly responsible a great opportunity and very generous atlantis and that's why it's been very popular and for the second year in a row related topic we're offering our computer science on campus and we're actually going to run two weeks this year when you could choice of the beginner level of the intermediate we ran it once last time and we're running two sections two weeks so that's been pretty exciting new offering that's ok the other thing i think it put your place this is just finalized with the senior citizens today s schools so we will have our wonderful senior partners and friends visiting the hern middle school for the grade six dems day so we thought we select this year one destination last year we went to all five schools that day was a pretty rigorous day so we're going to do the morning at the herne and this is a day mcdonough has been before you many times are used to be an eighth grade science teacher now she's our sixth grade math science teacher so she's taking on this project herself grade six ten day which stands for science technology engineering and math and is a full morning with a keynote speaker from a theone and many activities for kids in the seniors to pick from including squishy circuits tower building finger printing robotics google glasses would work in three d printing bridge building build a team programming balancing act one's in homes which is the franklin park zoo company and many more sessions so the seniors will also get the same menu the kids are getting and we're going to have  around the school to the sessions that they like to see if you and they'll be up to see three so and then we'll have a light lunch and return on the wonderful yellow school bus so we had a great day the last couple of years with the seniors on really i personally really look forward to that so i think most important particularly for female students to become interested in the subject by grade six so they don't if sold out of the thought of a career they it very well be have a passion and a challenge for so  extremely well for us which was the grant writing you know she wants to do that on a consulting basis for a lot of the other communities around it's where passion originally started before she came here i think she's made a great  change to the food service program the connection between food service and health and wellness i think has been incredible huge so i think we are hoping is to continue that the strides that we've made over the last three years principle at the end over high school and her family's on the north shore and she has as you know a little little ones and i believe she's going to be really her feeling good to her own personal family up there as well so she's a very talented individual as well so i certainly both having i have nothing once again absolute kudos to the music department for i was lucky enough to be able to attend both saturday night and sunday afternoons the pops when they just they just a marvelous custom i agree and then i want to particular because christians know oftentimes it falls to the chair to give a graduation speech but we've never written anything formally in stone for foxboro and it is it is customary that if one of the board members has graduated senior we have offered if they felt feel comfortable giving the graduating speech and handing out diplomas to that person so we do happen to have a board member with a graduating senior this year  conversations i had in past years about whether the chair would like to do that or whether someone else would and it certainly is a conversation that's occurred but it usually is something that occurs the scenes isn't something this board to my knowledge votes it's not a motion but you know it's the feeling of the idea if we're comfortable with that one thank you for bringing it up and i think they will and i thought well that certainly we've had some great speeches  because we've had a shift we've had a retirement the middle and somebody new takes over and i give all credit to jenny greenleaf who i thought they have sounded never better and so it just goes to show what strength we have and do everybody else can pick up the ball and keep it reinforce that the wellness and fitness that we're trying to do in our wellness classes and also the memory of joe is just a great thing to do and i guess we're going to do it last period one friday so  everybody well and the kids were raising money and sponsoring raising sponsor money to go to the joe comeau morial scholarship so it's a wonderful way it is it's a great idea i hope it's the first annual so home we will see this every then the only other thing i had to go to other things we have two concerts at the hern this week the seventh graders on thursday the eighth graders are tomorrow night and the burl school i was going for me lion king kids this weekend so a baccalaureate mass for the morning of march first graduation on june fifth the nine o'clock liturgy welcomes all of our graduating seniors attending both public and private high schools i was hoping that you might be able to bring this from the  information with your fellow members we thought some of this book remembers might wish to attend as well so that's once again the parish baccalaureate mass at st mary's for the graduating class of twenty sixteen both public and private high schools nine am sunday june fifth graduates are asked to meet in the lower church by eight thirty those who have graduation gowns are asked to wear them please do not bring caps as they may get misplaced institutions do something special for graduation really nice if they invite people it certainly is i do plan on going but it's an individual choice it's not sponsored by the schools but i think it's wonderful we have a great partnership with the college