brings effectiveness in terms of health creativity both at school and in the workplace and so then he told that he started by telling his own story of childhood and adolescence and being  kind of enough that emotional intelligence and being a kid who was bullied and just kind of hit home the importance of time recognizing and having language to express your own emotions then he didn't exercise where he asked all this to adults in the room to sort of raise their hands and name their emotions and we all failed miserably at naming exactly what emotions we were feeling or being able to be specific about the emotions which proved his point that we that even as adults we sometimes don't know how to name and recognize our emotions and so he's developed a tool that's called ruler which is basically just an acronym for five  recognizing understanding labeling expressing and regulating emotions and it's an evident evidence based approach that now about one thousand five hundred dollars public and private schools are using it in the u s and internationally impressive that evidence that he was able to name which connects and validates our decision to focus on social learning and his research shows that students who participate in social national learning as we know have better academic performance and improve school climate and increases their roster in some sort of actual intelligence social skills degrees as ngs id and oppression and and students that participate in social emotional learning have better leadership skills and attention and then i also found it interesting the focus on helping teachers and adults in schools get better at naming recognizing  we did i say really thought that it was it's always st he was a dynamic speaker did and he was very energized around the subject you know spoken to really well read but it was nice to hear the elements of his presentations were teacher she taught me that i could get better every day and that's what i focused on this year th grade was just getting better and those are all key terms that we use in a c e o all the time you know hard work getting better you know that mindset that you know we can make it work hard it's i don't know i just think it makes it more like people are more engaged and involved in the school and they have a sense like school private school spirit and i don't like the pep rally definitely inspired school spirit but i think it's really people within the school that have to work to and but anyway i just like to conclude i think a school with that i'm spirit is a more fun school to attend and it's course you can feel more connected and inspired to get involved with them during the school day to get a sense of the student did a light on super shattering mainly involves teachers being able to spend a day following a student through their daily school schedule to learn about their academic fluid and social emotional concern feel like understanding the student experience will be even more important as we transition to like our new building and we understand everything concerning this with the logistics and how to make it all happen however we have done this in years past so it will be much simpler also a busy bee that would how to help teachers get an accurate impression at the student schedule we hope that we believe able to implement this plan in this upcoming year because we know we create the interviews student teacher connection team in the fall trimester really had a great showing they gave the school a lot of pride se superintendents your point all the good things have been taken except one big one st of all it's great to hear the students really explain what's going on in the school especially at belmont high and how all of it is connected to building relationships building spirit building community in the school which is really the foundation work that we do and don't want to buy they're experiencing that in some way and i hope that we can continue to bring those type of experiences to all three love my district the one big would call victory on behalf of the school department to provide higher amounts of space in high quality space for our teachers and our students to use that new building as a tool for teaching and learning for our seven dollars to twelve dollars students to around class size and overcrowding in all of our schools in the vision work that we've been doing with our educators will continue as we prepare to take place the next part of our journey which is building this beautiful building the voter town meeting was amazing there was no discussion a time meeting they just announced the article and voted it without discussion which is a really big deal if your politics kind of person you know how that is a big deal  so we fully realize that the commitment that the town has me with the school department is really rooted in their trust in the appreciation for the teaches and the principals they work with every day  grace and phoebe and nico then we will continue to get good support from our parents in our community which we're glad we do that also came because a lot of volunteers work very hard on the campaign in on the building committee people like the pepper hundreds of hours dedicated to this work so we thank everybody involved in we truly understand the commitment that we're taking on and we really look forward to providing the community with an asset its schools that will last for a fifty photographic book which st of all it's fascinating and nd of all the art teacher has already expressed some interest in some interdisciplinary work that we could do with that title in particular two thumbs up briefly and it's great because we have a whole class that so everybody had their own book to look through like it really was like christmas morning and day and he's out of the kids have a chance to look through that and then i got to run upstairs to th grade and  about storms and how we know what we know about storms and changes the climate really great things about this book because it explains a lot of the techniques we use less technology how we use drone footage to find out things about storms which is really an interest yes so they also enjoy that he is with the yellow because anytime we get new materials it's an opportunity for some creativity in how we create them and it's been a really great addition so i think you know it's not just if you eat it with her everyone i'm going to his administrative and teaching staff to talk about shifted their schedule to support building relationships with students and really think it's important for our community at home to view and understand you know some of the good things that are going on at every level of the district and next week when we meet we have a high school program to come up and share with you in this week we're really excited mike here with the staff to describe what the good stuff going on in the want the people who are really in charge of and responsible for the credit for this program talking about but i want to i want to welcome towards john in cayman and laura who are here tonight they're representing kind of what i would call it the brain trust then also we're pushing ahead to next year so as a means of sort of introducing the concepts i have sort of a unique perspective on children i started my career center is a teacher i was a teacher for ten years i left and i came back seven years later and so many things were different in the in that time one of the biggest differences there were three hundred and fifty kids more than when i left but also the model that changed the instruction all that changed the advisor very changed team time to change all these things it changed and didn't sort of that and i for he said he said yes social motion learning and advisory and i was like ok so keep talking keep talking and in in the next sentence he said that the goal was for us to make a big school feel advisory and i remember getting up and writing on the board in two years later and still on my board because i think it's become kind of our mission at the school the size of a four hundred and fifty three students is how do we take a big school and make it feel small and how we're having these conversations and he sort of felt like we were at a standstill because we're trying to we kind of worked on changing our schedule over the past year he didn't really come up with anything for this year and  me that i have this line and i said if we don't do anything different our data is not going to look different so if we want to change something we have to do something and we decided right then and there that we're going to do something different this year and with that  tassie's and so we found that this was a time for teachers and students to slow down we played some games we worked on our executive functioning our binders in our lockers on and you know we helped kids get  caught up if they were missing work but it was a nice time for students and teachers to connect outside of the regular curriculum in concert and the th grade has had success  classes and so some two students do not have this time in their schedules anymore so there is a need for those kids great teachers also and students you know enjoy the time we were thinking of you know our schedule and what we have going on next year and it came to us why don't we use our early release see we have a lot of really really steve's throughout the fall for parent conferences in october november and december out there running nice and helping us run a race that after recess and coming out of the schedule so that we're not having one thousand kids out of the same time it's been very helpful and the faculty has been surprisingly flexible creative and very responsive to these to these these days oh yeah so the th grade i did give you a little rundown of the kinds of things that we've done this year in the th grade and no  has been using some of their curriculum last year but they've slowed it down a little bit and teams are taking a little more time just to have discussions in a circle they have they're really enjoying their smaller groups  g taken time to go on a nature walk this is a picture of the team when they you know walked around the the reservoir and came every pair of the kids and gave them the conversation starters and they had to go through all the service activities and i've been creating one group is hosting a clothing drive for the whole school and i think they're collecting close up until maybe it's like december th or something they're signed up i know some groups have walked down to the senior outs we've done some progress report and we're working on some report card reflections for next week we've had some courageous conversations related to some critical morgan also as things happening in the news and in the world  we had a really nice best buddies presentation by a few presidents of our best buddies our group here they presented to each team on about what best buddies it is which was great we had a gala public librarian visit last week i'm to share some extension books for some activities in english and it's also been in time for special projects that different teams different groups are working on watch them go out for recess seeing them socialize it teaches you a lot about them it was valuable for conferences because report on their friends and their and their socializing and it's not something you get to see unless you see the kids on structures time so that that's been informing our work in that way one of the six great teachers i talked to said what i really like is more time with a small group of students it's very relaxed and it feels nice and then she went to say we had the best time with two truths and a lie in so many interesting conversations so they just played a little game but she learned so much better students that way so listen it's it was refreshing to talk to teachers and  the th grade teacher said that with some students he's been able to develop relationships that would have been hard to develop in the classroom alone so with a smaller group it meant that more relaxed time and it's easier to do not some of the th grade teachers in our th grade meeting last week said you know one of them is really impressed with how well they're utilizing the time that's been given to make up work and to organize themselves and th grade science teacher brought up something i had bought about before and she said the time has made  possible for kids to make up labs in an actual lab group so if they can't take it if they take the bus home and they can't stay after school they would either have to come to lunch or make it up individually and so she's been able to use some of that time for them what you're seeing from this i know there is sometimes the conception of the big that cherry but this is the kind of work that i think that teachers are really passionate about and it's the kind of work that if parents knew we were doing here i think it might lower the saying you should do this and you should do this and you should do this amazing things happen when teachers get a little bit of flexibility a little bit of time and they're given permission to do the work the way they want to do it and i think that's what we're seeing here so i guess i would just like to say that as a middle school teacher that really sounds great and i wish we did it at my school discussion is a lot of professional development in the s p l session in june that brings people together but when you let it be the staff and the teachers come up with good ideas then try to find ways to make it work which is a leadership role it's just great so think the faculty who are not here i specially think the folks that are here and we've been talking all night in that score a bit we haven't talked about the sideshow we've been talking about creating environments where high school students say spirits important and having teachers build relationships with students or shadowing and how sports is important and how these types of dates make students want to be in school feel safe about school and ready to learn at a higher level so the outcomes will come if we take care of the process and work with students of the relationships charice knows middle school learning really really well and those words can echo a different way for what we want to do with our elementary folks and how we want to get job high school books there's there's a financial case which i think is what makes it all happen but there's a philosophical case too that the st time we are investing in making a more climate neutral future it also i think it's great educational opportunity for the students to see an innovative building design that's really investing in their future and then the financial case makes it all possible in terms of that really a three step process from a financial is the design team is able to achieve this your energy ready design which includes the geothermal system as the heating source rather than fossil fuels and also putting solar on the building as part of the movement towards achieving the falls you're an energy goal and they were able to do geothermal design in that and so that was the most cost effective solution so they did a lifecycle cost analysis looking at conventional approach versus that that also was an operational savings that out weighed the cost premium that's applied to the funding for the school and so that ends up being a cash flow positive for a town so again something that's reducing our tax payers cost of the project go and then because we know that the building is a large building and they can only offset so much using that so it's on the roof itself we need to go that next step projects the geothermal system will generate credits other alternative energy credits and that will be cash flow income to the towns and schools and the value of that cash one rather than having to wait eight or ten or twenty years for it to pay back over time and you look at our pond payments versus our operating costs from year one it's an operating savings and that saves your well so we're basically cash flow positive with this package for your one through you're thirty so that's i think a big part of why the energy committee just representing your to write the letter or advisory committee so you know just to reiterate a couple things one is i think this is a kid with a really nice icing on the cake is the financial benefits of these projects in terms of  her before that's a part of part of the process when you're educating kids it's one thing to tell about the future of energy it's not a thing to show them to me by example in to enable for my kids to go to zero net energy high the only changes that we change references to selectmen to school and we'd love to just beyond signing a piece of paper just look at your thoughts on what this means to you or where you see it is really into the town for public record jacob knowles is my husband having consulted with the state and it's commission disclosing that he's my husband he's a resident and has been voluntarily providing professional expertise to the building committee for no money we don't have any financial interest in this i personally don't have any financial interest in this and i filed a disclosure of appearance of conflict of interest with the  and i just trying to say thank you so much for all the work you have all put and i think we're so lucky as a town to benefit from all that hard work and i'm so just very excited to see it come to fruition with the  not all of them are really a make or break on this being the right investment there's only one piece that could and could in theory have an impact would be that question about buying the rx at five thousand program the only thing you can change potentially is the value of those products are going to distort it consistently increased by two percent per year there's no guarantee it absolutely that they will continue to increase or decrease over time to actually also  so that's the other nice thing about this is that this can be decision could also be made on your behavior basis to say this is still financially attractive let's keep doing it so you have that opportunity over those thirty years or longer really four million so they're valuable but not a game changer so i think that's a great question and that's part of why the resolution is worded where it's that this is supporting it to continue to go down this path but it's not some sort of a iron clad mandate to do anything necessarily but it's the idea is just that we're getting this consensus from all over the authorities in town to say this is important say i think that would be really interesting for students in the school to have this like st hand experience with their energy like i know i'm part of a club of the high school that's an environmental justice that activism club and they've talked like a lot about this and how  and make it part of a school project and i would think bill for his working gauging this discussion right at the beginning of the project to make sure that it was shepherded through the end and we had meetings about this is  afternoon for this very subject bill and i in working the wells and getting them ready and all the infrastructure that has happened so thank you very much for your work in your participation in the long hours that you spent attending the morning meetings of the night meetings to make sure that we  own energy resolution for the new seventy trough school there is a zero net energy building is energy efficient and the residents of belmont have demonstrated their overwhelming support for energy efficiency and sustainability in the following ways i want val fiscal environment to responsibility sustainability green designer into the top three of nine priorities in the belmont high school building committee belmont citizen show an interest in investing in clean energy the municipal life board voted in favor of options a roof solar array in the design has been shown to be cost effective so what it's saying is that the undersigned chair of the school committee support the bomb on high school building energy ready design which includes geothermal and rooftop solar and to carry this effort forward we hear by sign this resolution in support of the town exploring the purchase of renewable energy credits to achieve the class d zero net energy at the new seven through twelve school so do we have to approve this resolution as written so moved in the nd all those in favor building principal so it is the same format of the same expectation for the teachers role in the classroom all the way through the superintendent's office the process today on the form of the day layout is the reason behind the goal and the goal itself and then also attaching it to the superintendent's report which i'm a valuated by and also the public public school should teach a plan which we work with the issue council to to develop each year as well so i want to let everybody at home know that each goal is attached to the rubric that i am evaluated by which is the department of elementary and secondary secondary ed superintendents report and also the set of goals in this you plan that we have it that are always in your package and posted on on web it's also attached to one of those as well so the for st goal which is effective teacher planning is to lead the district through the strategic planning of our space in great configuration work this work will be conducted through the belmore high school building committee and the educat and now through our next marginal with the m s p a communicate the impact of the seven dollars to twelve dollars plan provide dates for all community members to take part in presentations in the process form in charge of educated steering committees to make recommendations on these issues related to the new building reconfiguration and have education have educated steering committee report on providing summaries of their work upon their completion in those steering groups below the key actions are always benchmark i won't bore you and redo each one but there are benchmarks that range from august to two thousand and eighteen which is the beginning of our school year all the way through june of two thousand and nineteen to give some concrete steps and goal posts that i need to meet throughout the year through the use of consistent school based walkthrough as well principles some of the key actions at the whole walk through us in each school each week that schedule has been developed in it's already knocked out of the entire school year provide discussion feedback in order to strengthen the relationship between educators in a guy who wears an increase of productive conversation that improve teaching and learning for us students so the key actions are to collaborate with the b a a and pilot this process this year  access to the outcomes of the evaluation assess the evaluation outcomes of this process at the end of the it is her next steps are run workshops led by john saf year research better for better teaching which is a really big catch that assistant superintendent dire this was able to make he is well versed in this work on his nationally recognized and with the market and with we will also monitor observations and feedback for consistency  to safety in our schools which we had a meeting about this afternoon to just focusing on teaching and learning each day there's a lot of work that goes on in development for the school day but we feel that we pick our goals each year on in particular i mean i love the classroom walk through and and the fact that here goal is to get into schools a couple times a week i think it's great one thing that occurred to me when i was looking at the benchmarks though is just not  summary of what you learned from what learning looks just at the end of the year just to sort of say this is the value out of doing or learning like this is what we does what i want coming in school is just a high level give us a sense of you know whether the community past which would be part of the property issues that residents have raised about transportation and traffic and the impact of building and possible reconfiguration of the district on those issues and there's also the discussion of the possibility of a new drink and potential partnership with values hockey regarding that things that are other issues that are like to take for that and then last year a big issue that people raised in the community members raised for the school committee were concerns about afterschool programming and so we  meetings and we had a number of discussions and so we're going to continue to review most of the programs have made changes have increased capacity and there is sort of a general understanding that possibly the issue is bend somewhat resolved but we're going to continue to review the needs for the district in the coming year and then we divided up by the various subcommittees we have as to the issue appropriate but some of the grants just based on the timing of how the expenses work and when services and programming is rendered there still is a some component to that so some father carried over which of the brands in turning to prison estimating a positive year in general fund balance approximately seventy nine thousand dollars and so it would a break that down different categories in the school budget how does that fall in the area of salaries were projecting a positive ending balance for elementary and middle school teaches and in terms of the land use the pay of those folks and that's due to staff savings from turnover deficits at this time when we look at the line items used to pay our high school teaches and that's due to kind of the converse of what we just talked about a minute ago a net cost from turn to turn over savings that does happen from time to time generally there is a savings but and in the case of just the turnover at the high school the teachers with it fell such that these we hired in general in the aggregate cost us more than teaches that  left in addition to that in the area of administrative salaries we're projecting a small unit deficit and that's based on administrative supports that we have in place for the well in this year in the area support staff well we're projecting a positive view here in deficit based on vacation buyback for some retiring appointees and we need to add some aides and some tutoring support for student needs this year in the area fringe benefits a grant a state circuit breaker funds and lab collaborative credits special education services special education expenses for direct student services were projected in the year with a positive balance at this expenses a substitute's we're projecting to be a break even in those categories and then analysis comes a ball in two different approaches one is in the case of the district wide and school based expenses  a break even as a commitment to the principles of curriculum directors to be able to spend their entire budget is about everything from it's a freeze budgets right now we expect it will be able to continue to do that for this year that's a good news story and for a number of categories we look at expenses year to date this year through the in the september and we compare that to a multiple of in some cases up to six years of historical average costs is a cost that we have we need in september each of to be about seventy nine thousand dollars at this time by that's factoring all the information i just discussed i'd like to remind the committee that again this is just the st quarter update which is only through september th it represents one month of school literally friedman i'll just note that two of the individuals who submitted letters of interest to us have served previously on other because maybe what i like about the other three in the general neighborhood and has a lot of experience and she was recommended to me as i was trying to do some outreach since i had been liaison into the path committee and understood that some of the qualities that they are looking for at this stage having to do with more professional experience as well as the understanding of the current state of affairs in terms of the work that's come before us by certainly can speak highly also jeff roth who has served on a previous committee for the the most suitable for the west end of town and having gone through the process realizing that they weren't the most suitable for their for economic reasons or to be of value to really connect kids to schools  really one of the primary benefits i see is the power of the path so those are three candidates who i am familiar with leslie being new but i'm very impressed with her her resume also think that she's extremely well qualified based on her professional background and i'm not familiar with the other candidates i don't have many comments that everything people have already said you know looking through the rez you me busy maids i'm just struck by how lucky we are to have such an incredibly you know one good credibly good pool of people to draw on and there are people who are extremely qualified in the community care a lot about our community and that's really wonderful he was i think leslie is also very impressive but he i think what he would bring to it would be the perspective of being a neighbor over to the community path which i thought was would be important and priority as a school committee would be have somebody representing the interests of the school and i think it's all free to select and have for the who ever is going to be the chair of going to serve on the nominate one of the candidates oh move to nominate lesl t meeting to have each one of them come and give us a statement of us of questions that have so in the interest of time and fairness everybody said have the opportunity to submit something provided more information than others at least look at the past more broadly going forward and part of what leslie appealed to me apart from her professional background was her geographic location was in the general area which i think is the sort of central to the town in the majority i'd say of the appointees that have already been made to live in the windbreak neighborhood and there is one person i'm aware of that lives  towards cushing square and so i think it would be beneficial to have at least to be considering that the past fully as a benefit to the school district and having those folks on there who could at least have pull the lens back in that way and not be quite so close to to perhaps one of the most contested areas of that this is the project so that was one  kind of so we have three people one of them for example was chair of this is heavily involved in the path and and we have new covers right and i think that if we're looking for someone who already knows the and i think just finally somebody has moved to a point two of them are very active in the town rammstein a body treatment and so we're very interested in very involved but to have a very strong voice in the town of belmont already so i think part of our we have is helpful everybody is sad and giving new people new having new perspective on things i think it's very valuable to have people who have that background and you have the experience and the voice and the town on there and you can feel it's nice to have some fresh perspective and i thin whether they've got a lot of experience or less experience isn't as important as how well we can connect and communicate and we don't know all of these individual and i like gerald i don't know how many of them except a couple from being in different meetings together so i think that you know several people submitted more information than others and provided more depth about themselves and that's helpful so that you know gives me a little more to go i'm going to making a decision but i feel confident that people would not have put themselves forward if they weren't willing to be a liaison in the fullest sense and i think it's up to us to reach out and make sure that we're communicating well and just so i'm clear we're women that's enough point not just  is that right disability there's always that maybe you have some ambiguity or confusion around that term this is a full member is it not a community like it's you know we have a member of the i guess can't make a comment yet so i do still feel that jeff would be a great representative with his background knowledge also and as we need to actually make a decision and it seems like from comments people made there seems to be most consensus around leslie and she i know her i think that her background and her communication skills are excellent so so i guess i would say  concerns relative to that process particularly as it relates to the social emotional health of our students and recognizing that there should be a balance  literature in the field about this kind of practice and that fits and challenges they present and i'll tell you that the data that they have on the students and also what other districts are doing in this regard and their marketing of this work now and will come back hope to have some something to come back to the school committee in the spring to report on what they learned and what recommendations they might have and recognizing and the capital budget committee meeting for the capital budget committee we have the calendar where i am at work so i don't have a calendar with me but we're meeting a week from thursday which i believe is the six am  you're a junior so i'm sorry i'm a sophomore your sophomore at it better to meetings but i wouldn't expect her to come to every school committee meeting but just maybe give us updates when you report out what have you so next on air other we need a period at the end of that sometimes after the prophecy is yes