the following podcast is produced or sponsored by community members the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of b a m c or the town of belmont b m c welcomes your comments call us at network i'm your host roger coulton another school year has begun and i thought it was time to invite our school superintendent john phailin to talk about the state of the belmont schools we're going to hear a lot about a new school for grades seven through twelve here in the next four or five weeks in so since there's a lot more happening in the schools in addition to the new school we are not going to dwell on  the new school today we want to talk about other aspects of the schools and i have invited school superintendent john failing to stop over here to the studios today thanks for stopping over john thank you roger by having me i think when i think this new school year in particular i realize there we have a couple of new principals in the school system we have a new principal or an interim principal at belmont high in a new principal at the wellington am i right on both of them that is correct we have interim principal of belmont high tom brow who has been a longtime educator in the rose and had been doing some work in belmont part time in consulting around evaluations and teaching and learning and after spending some time as the part time assistant principal last year when dean richards departed don't want we thought it would be a great fit to have tom come and do an intermediary as we prepared for the search process for a new belmont high school principal and are there changes about my high that you would expect with that the new principal absolutely even though tom is a one year ensured principal  he has a history with the with the staff and with the students and the parents and you know we enjoy tom's experience as someone who is a great communicator great with students and staff and building relationships with famil staff and students so that fits into our social emotional learning where we want to create every school to be a place where the culture of the building is getting to know every child and family because when people feel safe and build relationships we know that learning how is it a high ugly do anything you want superintendent field but please don't ask me to do a nd year i got some point i have to tell my family that i'm actually retiring so we will honor his request and we're putting out that search in late october early november for a new principal at  one look for in a high school principal and and let me tell you the question behind the question there because i do want to talk about ellie france too but i assume that a principal at a high school is different from being a principal at a middle school or an elementary school i mean you said that you you need people who creates the culture but what's the difference in a high school principal well i think that what we look for all princip  st is is someone who is an educational leader as well as understands people st we are in schools are our consumers are our families our parents who placed a child with us our product the students all of those are human beings who are ninety eight percent human driven and if you don't understand and value people and know how to work with people interact with them at a high level then it then being a principle is not the job for you so we look for basic but also complex quality in characteristic that you have to understand how people work and have to value those relationships because on those relationships all the other work it's built upon so we look for that st and foremost communicate well understand families and students and staff and in work to build relationships to to advance the academic work at the high school particular this is a big high school it's growing in size it's a high achieving high school so the high school principal don't really have to have all those  human qualities of supporting people building relationships they have to understand how to get leaders to move forward the director has our leaders in the building teachers are leaders in their classroom and they have to be truly that person that can uniquely balance how they're a leader in a supporter at the same time and so we look for folks who can actually build relationships and bill teams at the belmont high with a population of the size of the school you can't run that school by yourself you have to be able to treat teams of people to really engage in the work thoughtfully and we look for folks who can build team one thing then i'm hearing you say to you and i'm changing my opinion about the job even as i speak to you which i guess is the one purpose of this show but i'm hearing that a principal needs to be an educator st and an administrator nd is that a fair thing to say i'm hearing you talk more about education then i power i'm looking at someone who can be a leader in a leader mean sometimes being an operational leader they have to be out shaking hands in the morning welcoming kids being present in classrooms making sure that the schedule works and that the students have a place to go the teachers how with the needs that's the operational side of it but i believe in the academical the educational side is being sure the curriculum is in place that the standards are in place and working with the directors who have that responsibility on behalf of the district working with them together but the human quality that goes threads through both of those parts of the work that happen daily is building relationships and building teams with people to do it jointly with with your staff teachers are really working hard these days and they need support and guidance directors work hard these days they need support and guidance and principals work hard these days and they need to kind of move those qualities through the building and i think that's a leadership is really the thread that  ns through all those parts of the job ok so let's talk about the wellington we do the wellington principal moved out of state if i remember correctly we're not at the wellington anymore bad debt and so we have a new principal at the well in tennis well correct last year i mean bangle retired and moved to the west coast with her husband who moved his job as well in the middle of the year we have pointed the assistant principal steward as principal for the remainder of the year  we went through a search process and hired allie franky who started with us in july and unfortunately allie had come down with an illness and has not been in work for the for the start of school so we have hi principal to begin work on her behalf while she resolves her medical issues ok let's move from administration to the teacher says something that we hear less about is turnover in teacher and i always think of teaching as being a high stress job and it wouldn't surprise me if there was a large turnover in teaching it on the other hand  great school system maybe when somebody gets a job and they want to keep it what kind of turnover and teachers do it do we have we we hire about we have about fifty thousand four hundred and thirty or four hundred or so teachers you know we have a five hundred and fifty employees but think teachers a unit a folks in directors we probably have somewhere around four hundred and we hire about the turnovers about thirty a year so that percentage of the thirty of four hundred or so we see people moving from belmont to other districts merely because in moving locations of where they live they may have met carlos or a partner and they're moving to a different part of the state or different part of the country we don't see too many folks  happy with the work that they're doing in belmont with that said i would say out loud teachers work very hard in the jobs a lot more complicated than it used to be twenty years ago ten years ago or even five years ago you look at an elementary teacher who has to prep for all five subjects has the responsibility of engaging twenty five to twenty two students every day communicating with the families being up to date with the curriculum and the nuances of the shifts in the curriculum that you get every year from the state we're asking them to engage in social emotional learning and ensure that every child is known and that they actually scaffold that teaching and learning to every individual students needs and then we have worries that there's some students that we have the need support learning the language of english or have supports that they need for special education purposes and also and you're looking at a pretty complex mix of work that is stressful because these teachers who work so hard get into this business to help and support students and when they have such a wide variety of child in the room that they're trying you know with such great efforts of support that brings that brings stress to those to those folks so they are professional to do a great job our job as superintendents and principals of directors is to support yes is the most important place  schools the classroom yes the secretary at the front office supports the classroom the custodian is supporting of the classroom to superintendent wakes up every day to support the classroom the teacher the student the two most valuable folks in this whole equation it's why we do this work that's it that's the job that we do every day now last year i had a podcast and can i assume that that you know most of the teachers all of that he journalist but not all my old district i was there for eighteen years and i would say i knew almost every single individual teacher but in belmont i'm getting there but i do know the person that you might be referring to ok yes i had nicole pun yes and as a podcast guest and i may have talked to you about this before but my podcast with think related to the last question that the poll cost the whole pond would be the most relaxed and has the best job in the world because she teaches art while she does have the best job in the world and she loves her job and that's clear by when you speak with her but she has a hard job that doesn't mean it's not a hard job and she does it flawlessly and i benefit by her coming by my office once a month to put out work up in the conference room at the superdome of course i've seen how i've enjoyed meeting with the cole over the period of  four to five years in the other achi years and being in the classrooms and i can't think folks like to call enough for not only being great teachers with children but when you're in the arts whether it's music or art teacher you find yourself doing a lot more community events and being involved in things that are outside the school and she is so it's a great example of someone that extends the learning for students in the community even outside the classroom and outside the school how do you find a nickel pot or does it just happened you hire somebody and and they happen to turn into a call or do you have a notion when you hire somebody that they're going to be a superstar the i think superstars to go pretty quick when you look to hire you can get a sense of who they are by what it says they provide to some of the questions and the question is just on all about what's the standards for art in grade three hundred and one of the standards in art for grade four it's really about why are you passionate about this work what's meaningful to children at the age that you'll be working with them you know how do you feel about the work you do with your account with your peers and colleagues in your school and what drives you every day to get up and get out of bed and go to the to the butler or go to the school you work in and when you get a sense of that passion  that's where you know that that's the person you'd like to hire so you do see a lot of that but it has to be the passion st and you have to work with people who put children st and then the rest of it can work out from there and passion is something that clearly came across in her i hope i'm not embarrassing her in the community if i know i think that she's a wonderful teacher i'm thankful that i know her and i vix and have great conversations with her and i think that she's a great person to put out there as an example of why belmont teaches a great one of the things that worries me by nicole ponce of the world is and i say worry with sort of quote marks around it it's my concern with  people i know at the high school as are flam and are to how do you ensure that the program is sound and isn't built around a  so you know you pick you all star so you have an all star and as for flim he is probably one of the best people in the state as a teacher of drama or we're so happy to have him in a cold similar one of the strengths that argo has a dorian in our directors have in working with all stars like as a writer and a coal is that the program that would building should really be able to sit be sustained over time similar to the aggregate composition about a superintendent we need to build systems that work not just work because you have really good people in yes yes so when you work with ezra and we have worked with him to shift some classes not just after school but now he works during the day we have yes a drummer in theater classes during the day and after school you know that's systematically good for the program so as road does happen to leave and want to move to new york city or florida or california to be a star somewhere else in the world that those systems that he has helped built with his input and feedback in audio is help lead in his role as director and we have help support the district you would hope that someone would come in after and say wow what a great system and programatic opportunity i have and you would be able to accrue to another all star so you build singer you want to make sure you give them the appropriate space to sing in and be in be that star so we have built supports around them and try to make their work life day pleasant in we listen to the feedback and we try to treat everybody with respect and with professional you know day to day environment that they can work in that they like to come to work now speaking of superstars or all stars we lost one about last year john mcclelland yes retired after not years but decades after doing the saturday morning music what's your opinion from your position of what's going on in the music program and this is a this is exactly the challenge you're talking about this year so we have john mccone was a long standing i caught in the town for many years music families have just thoroughly enjoyed and benefited by his expertise it's a patient of that retirement really recruited we have an experienced teacher that took his place it's another example of the perfect example of if you have a quality program you will have an experienced educator from another community want to be in that program yeah because you've built a program you haven't just built someone who's really good at it and then it would fall apart around around his leaving so we have an experience educator who came in who knew the reputation of belmont and wanted to be in that because the program was so rich the saturday morning program was almost something that was so hard to duplicate that we actually brought in powers music school and have built a relationship with them because we felt we needed to to  to get some assistance to fill that void and still maintain that level of quality in community that is the saudi music school so we believe that we've been able to move forward in john's absence but it was because the program that he built over time was not just built around him but it was built around what's good for kids it was good for the program one of the things that i hear on occasion as i'm going to ask you about the other end of the spectrum perhaps but one of the things i belmont public schools teach technology well teaching technology in utah i don't even know if they have seen the yeah so will will say i will say allow that technology is a great tool one tool that is used by our staff and educators and our students at the high school it means an i pad for every child which really gives them the power in their hands to access content that can then can be brought to them individually or to a small group or to a classroom to then you can leverage that you healthy conversations have to be is a facilitator of the learning amongst teacher to teach your work yes as a student work in student we feel technology is a good nice lever and that and that equation of what good teaching learning looks like students can look up the information themselves you don't need to tell them about the war between twelve they can kind of get that what we're asking to do is something a higher level objective is what did you learn or what was learned from the war between twelve how does it compare to something that happened at another time in the world and what can we gain from that now when we live in two thousand and eighteen so that higher level objective and high level learning happens in our schools every day and technology allows us to kind of do that a little bit at the elementary middle school  level where teaching students not only how to use the technology but also how to use it responsibly what's what are you reading in what are you looking at in researching is it real is it work is it worth the academic information were the in factual information every th grade it takes a class with our media center person to actually walk through and navigate the web to make sure that their sources are accurate in worthwhile sources and so we feel like we're trying to scaffold the use of technology through the grades and put technology in a place where belongs it's really not the most important thing every day the teacher the student or the most important thing every day but i think the technology can help navigate the learning for students as well and as a fault of the schools to teach students when to put the technology down it seems like that's a pretzel responsibility to you know is there a role for the schools there i don't know the answer and i think i think that as a parent of five children i know that i work hard at having my children put their technology down in have some expectations for that during the day and on the weekends and after school i don't i think at the school level during the school day the teachers work hard at having to put it down when it's not part of a of course using so we're going to talk together in a group that we need to be present in a conversation with each other than phones down phones over here and what you see actually at the high school is these cases that they hang over the doors that have pockets so the students can when they put their phones in the pocket so they can sit in the distraction free when in fact they don't need that as a research tool and they need to have more human contact with teachers or their fellow students so  in terms of the life of how they navigate technology in or around their their day and night and weekend i think parents have a role not as well so of course of course well i said that we weren't going to dwell on the high school let one of the concerns that i think we need to talk about is the fact that as i've heard you talk about before enrollment the schools is in is expanding is rapidly expanding and we are out of space can you talk about the concerns about crowding in the schools sure so we're fortunate enough over the last few years to be able to use modular classrooms at the high school because we've been short of space at the high school general middle school were definitely out of space at the general and this past year the town was generous enough to provide us marginal space at the burbank so not only have we exhausted every interior square foot we  increasing those measures have been our short term goals how can we increase the effectiveness of the footprint that we have before we ask the town for more money for modules and then go to modules if needed and we've done that the town has been very responsi thankful for that the capital committee in the war committee in all the town officials now are at that point that in parallel to that short term planning the long term goal was to say how can we best position the town within its schools to have a capacity to support the ongoing in rome and that we see forecasted that is the seven through twelve project with the belmont high school building committee and and that started with the two thousand and fifteen application st thing i did when i got here was rewrite the application with a few folks it was accepted  in january two thousand and sixteen regard navigation to the state and that has just been officially unanimously voted by the s b a the massachusetts school building authority to support the seven through twelve project that w supported by the board of selectmen the school committee and we believe that adding that capacity by providing that seven dollars to twelve dollars new building that takes the pressure off the in roman tissues at the middle school high school and then allows us to have a different setting at the middle school the current generation and really pressure of the elementary as well is a long term investment in the town's assets in the town schools and so when i just heard you say is that the new seven through twelve challenge our real challenge is we the high school we feel is rundown and we need better learning space for kids at the high school level but we have this in roman thing that's k to twelve and they agree to entertain different options and so we put those options in front of the town the town shows seven through twelve which i feel is the best solution and the state partnered with us so we're really getting two schools out of one project with this seven to twelve project and at the risk of putting words in your mouth so tell me if i'm wrong doing a seven through twelve is not simply an adequate solution it is the best solution i believe is the best solution not only the seven through twelve configuration and exciting configuration for me academically and as a as a parent an educator because where think about that th grade jump you walked into a pretty tightly run like mcallister middle school and then you go up to a high school that has a little more independence a little more flexibility in your navigating a very different day having those th and th graders in their own section of that new building in the team concept that's currently at the general separated from the nine through twelve folks but able to use all the brand new space and all the amenities of a new school when they walk from th grade to night grade in a couple of years that step is going to be a small step there's going to be a very little transitional difficulty of young person to navigate the high school because they're already there so that kind of transition i think is really really important for folks to understand and then you think about if we do  parent does a th grader have more in common with an th grader or a th th grader yeah i would say a th grader so you have a four hundred and fifty six school that is the best age and if i could work in any building in this district in the next ten years it be at the four hundred and fifty six school that is the perfect age to really build culture build confidence create great learning environment in a smaller more elementary school version and then have them go to that seventy eight into that middle school version so we're really excited about the new configuration from a social emotional standpoint from an academic standpoint and we think it's great for the town that's great let's change topics to a somewhat somber topic you may have  air and pick up at the elementary schools last year i remember can i can you tell us about pedestrian safety at your take on pedestrian safety at the schools yes the school the school principals work very hard at communicating the expectations for how students can arrive safely and how they can depart or at dismissal leave the school site safely it looks a little different every school but the general principles are as a for middle school principal try to keep your buses in one space you drop off and pick up with cars in another space in your walkers in your bikers on another space because you have to create clean and safe pathway to interesting for everybody to get to school so yes i'll take the burbank as an example we were worried about the bird because we're we're adding more students which means potentially more traffic at the burbank on gail road behind the school we have all the cars come and go the buses come in the front and the students will come up the side so we're creating safe pathways to school for however you get to school we encourage walking and biking to school this morning even though i was out at a seven to twelve building meeting last night i was at peace and road in common street this morning for international walk to school day to the wellington so encouraging folks to walk to school is really important so a lot of our elementary schools and we're getting into the middle school where we're bringing safe routes to school and trying to get them involved in our schools and actually tomorrow today wednesday so friday morning i have a meeting with walk boston which is a nonprofit group that helps schools in towns create safe pathways for their children to not only get to school but maybe get the buses so they can be identified for parents  had that meeting on friday so you know this is an ongoing challenge when you have a growing population and you have you know a town that is between where folks live in where folks want to go where folks living in towns outside of belmont but they want to go through i do look forward to having you back each year if i think it's good for parents and i think it's good for the community to hear what your opinion is about what's going on in the schools have so you know i will surely come back and if you don't have to wait a year i can come back in the spring to order of you and i find this to be a great vehicle to to get the word about all the good things that are happening in the belmont schools and to your point it's not just the buildings that those are all the great things is but some things are going on inside them so we're excited about all of it so they keep having me thank you for stopping over john failand school superintendent for the belmont public schools appreciate him taking time out of what's an extraordinarily busy schedule i appreciate  and thank you the listeners for tuning into community conversations you've been listening to community conversations you can stream community conversations online and the b m see the podcast network and belmont media dot