hello thank you for tuning into this live candidates debate at belmont media center between the candidates for the school committee race there are three candidates running for twenty three year seats that that makes it a race and i joined  will is senior multimedia journalist for wicked local belmont and the belmont citizen harold i'll be cool moderating tonight's live debate with roger coulton roger is host of community conversations a podcast produced here at belmont media center there is a live audience yes i'm over to the bell please do thank you yes everyone should come to nine lexington street why not it's friday night this is a party really a meme very happy to be here and the election that this is for the town election is april nd so it's very important that you get to know the candidates before you get out and vote on april nd and the candidates i'm going to introduce right now and then they're going to be doing opening statements  each of them a little bit but st i'll introduce them i have peter pan to sop list to my left he's a newcomer welcome peter andrea prestwich she's an incumbent he's already served for three years on the school i mean she's running again you know amy check away she's also a newcomer welcome amy and roger before we get into the opening statements if you can just briefly explain to everybody what a school could be committee member is what they do and i have some insight into that  nice wife used to be a member of the school committee the belmont school committee is an unpaid six member board elected to a three year term is it now much town elections the school committee is the policy center in border body for the belmont public schools its primary activities include a point in belmont school superintendent along with approving the annual school budget and negotiating labor agreements with the various unions both the teachers union and the non teaching union unions while town meeting appropriates the annual budget to the schools each year it is the school committee that has the exclusive authority to determine how the dollars are spent amongst the the belmont public schools and within the belmont public school budget thank you right here now it's time for the opening statements each candidate will tell you a little bit about themselves we have a timekeeper so if you go over the a limited amount of time you will hear a bell and that basically means wrap it up because you're out of time so we'll start with amy check away thank you i'd like to thank the media center for hosting this event and roger you enjoy enough for helping to facilitate it i think it's really important that folks in town get to learn more about everybody's perspectives so my name is amy check away i am running for school committee because i care deeply about public education and because i feel like i can contribute right away to this role in our in our special community during a very important time i have four priorities i'd like to quickly highlight if elected that i would like to focus on st and always keeping in the center is to make sure that we provide every student including those with different learning styles abilities backgrounds with an excellent and comprehensive education nd making sure we continue to support our excellent educators and keep making progress in the district's plan to employ a sufficient number of educators as well as outside of the classroom staff to help education and support our children rd it's really important especially during this time of great change and transition that our school committee to be a strong leader in our community  be present in lots of different forums and be talking to a range of perspectives as we embark on building the new grade seven dollars to twelve dollars school which is going to involve a huge amount of work and focus and management and  th as mentioned an important role of the school committee is to really evaluate how we're how best to spend our constrained resources and also planning for the future in terms of our districts priorities i think we have some  difficult budget choices to make and revenue can't keep up with our growing expenses i hope to be a really strong advocate for our schools and for education really focused on making sure we maintain high quality teaching and learning environments for all of our students so in closing as a parent as an involved phone tearin as an education policy expert i feel like i have a lot to offer to the school committee and i'm ready to jump in and help thank you should start no earlier than eight thirty am so i am really pleased that progress has been made on both these issues the town has purchased modulars the and the elementary schools the class sizes have come down  the past three years and then of course we had the approval of the new seven through twelve high school which will should solve our of roman our space crunch issues for the foreseeable future and i'm very pleased that  fall classes at the high school will start at eight o five so we've made it a nice step st step in the right direction of healthy start times i'm running for reelection because i feel like there's unfinished business st of all  the new her high school does need careful oversight and when when students st go into that absolutely lovely building i want them to do so at a healthy time most importantly i'm running because i want to preserve funding for belmont schools we are going into some lean times and i passionately believe that belmont schools are fun they are funded  per student to belmont schools ok funding is at a rock bottom i know that every single dollar more or less every single dollar we get for the schools comes from belmont taxpayer but we school committee is because as they're entering the belmont school system and they going to be in a for a long time i've been meeting with a lot of parents in listening to their school issues in i've also experienced some of the school issues that have been talked about  this board here today and as i've been listening to them i've been spending more time at the school committee meetings and listened and get more inquisitive as to you know how they're going to be addressed and that's where i've made  situation based on my professional background and education background that i can help solve a lot of these issues give you a bit about my educational background have a bachelor's degree in business finance i have a master's executive master's degree  finance and also have a masters degree in information technology i have over twenty years of professional experience consultant and i consult install and financial systems i been an analyst all the way up to now a global portfolio manager where i manage a diverse group  of indian and u s based employees so what does that do to correlate with the school committee i understand budget and budget is tied to stand not just from a line item standpoint but you have to understand how to budget with plan and we're going to build a two hundred and ninety five million dollars high policies how that goes along with what's mandated coming from the state and in doing the right thing that's the most important thing is what's the right thing for the children what's the right thing for the parents and what's the right thing for the taxpayers and that's something maybe the school committee board does not have today and i want to be coming on twitter with with or without thank you for you ok so now we're going to ask each of you questions you'll have one minute to answer and then if one of you wishes to rebut what the other says you also have one minute our time keeper is roger's daughter allison colton again listen for the bell and thank you allison for volunteering your time today rogers going to start with the questions and i think we're just going to go down the line starting with few years have devoted more and more attention to improving the social emotional wellbeing of students in all the grade levels what is your opinion about the role of the school system in addressing social emotional wellbeing and how do you balance in effort to increase a focus on improving social emotional well being with budget constr development is of critical importance and i would strongly support i support the investments that have already been made and the focus on it that i know exists in the district today as well as additional investments both in sort of curricular supports as well as to as i mentioned before making sure we have sufficient staff to work with kids individually with particular issues and needs or who are just having a trouble or a problem in a certain  day i think we know from research that without sort of having social emotional sort of stability which includes but isn't limited to really the ability to regulate yourself especially as a young child to involves some curricular materials it involves professional development it involves you know psychologists which i don't think you have enough for guidance counselors  so in terms of people who staff are the expensive things on the budget in terms of people it's actually not that expensive and it makes it creates an environment in which children can learn so i'm fully supportive of the district's social and emotional curriculum and after thank you andrea peter i think a lot has to do with awareness in making sure that this train staff in the right guidance counsellors so that in an open communications for the students feel that they can go to these people in and talk about their well being and in and if they have any social issues so that making sure that we have policies in place so that the teachers  they need it thank you peter does anyone want to rebut what another kennedy said ok well i will ask the next question one of the biggest jobs of members of the school committee involves labor negotiations in negotiating pay with belmont's teachers unions how do you balance the need to make pay sufficiently high to attract and retain quality teachers with the tight budget constraints faced by belmont start with and so i'm st of all really eager to to have the opportunity to hopefully collaborate with the belmont education association i think our district has a very sort of positive history in terms of being able to find common ground even when even when folks don't necessarily agree on every particular issue or challenge i think i think it's of the most importance that we invest  adequately in our inner educators in our staff without that arse our school system you know they are sort of at the core of what we rely on in order for our kids to learn throughout their career i think it's important to sort of value at the range of  the range of supports we provide to teachers and so one area to make sure to focus on in addition to discussing compensation and salaries is also the entire benefits package as well as all of the other supports that we're providing to teachers so thank you again andrea so if i was in charge of education in this country i would pay teachers like we pay doctors ok i would completely change place pay scale but i'm not in charge so that's not going to happen and so the negotiations have to take you know the reality is those negotiations have to take place in the context of a town that has a limited budget ok so increases but not massive were important to them that was not necessarily just you know monetary compensation but for example flexibility in taking personal days so so that kind of negotiation i think we can make progress with and that will help us you know attract the best teachers and we do manage to attract the best teachers somehow i mean belmont students do incredibly well with incredibly little so heater understand what the competitive wages are from both a district in a national level is a good starting point and making sure that we stay competitive enough and above that and i think teachers like to work in an environment where they have peer groups that are very similar with specialized skills and look to see how we can get them into like the lab collaborative program is something that i think is an area where we don't have enough skilled or trained teachers and with highly can look at the pay efficiency there ins and see if we can bring in the cost down with the budget because a lot of out of this trip costs come from that and we can look to bring down that money by saying if we if we hire these hard like the highly skilled teachers at the salary and it was enough need for it we can bring it in house thank you peter rodger next question there are a number of parents and i believe even some educators who this is a high school related question and number of parents and even some educators i believe who believe that high school students are under too much stress because of a cut through a combination of both classroom work an extra curricular activity and trying to get into the best schools do you have an opinion about the presence or the absence of excess of stress at the high school in what if anything school system a school family and a community responsibility in terms of the culture that we set both in the school within the home within the community i i think that  from what i know of the stress level in belmont high school i think it's it's an issue that that we know many districts especially districts similar to belmont face i don't think it's unique to our community i think that it's it's important i think you know the teachers are old to play in this i think school leadership i think again as we talked about the social emotional sort of supports and mental health supports that we're providing to students to have a chance to talk about their stress and also to the extent that we can reduce the amount of sort of direct competition over grades or scores or sort of rankings within within the school that that responsibility you know the expectations at belmont high school are extremely high and that's good but we have to recognize that people students have different learning styles and you know not everybody's wants or should be going to ivy league schools  i hate to sound like a broken wheel but i think that if we fix the start times that will help a lot because you know stress is made much much worse by sleep deprivation so you know we can have kids coming into school with you know after a good night's sleep and a good healthy breakfast that'll help thank you peter yes so i think a lot of changes to the two to children school environment especially with the high their home field and having them to use a feel what does that do to them and making them travel back and forth you know what is i do with their emotional well being what do i do with their stress how does that affect their grades these are all things i think we have to be aware of  know as these are going on and if we see that something is from out a global level to happen at the high school the teachers need to be aware and we have to have some you know policies in place so that we can offer them the emotional support in talk to families and just communicate with them if the families are saying it's happening to multiple students maybe we can have some small workshops with them and talk to them to explain to them you know how we're going to dress these issues does anyone want to read about one another and that though i have the next question the proposed ice rink to replace belmont's current ice rink near the high school now appears that it cannot be placed at the old incinerator site how do you balance the need for a new rink with the loss of athletic fields if their rank is placed at high school does it make a difference if the loss of playing fields primarily involves fields for women sports should belmont pursue a public private partnership should the town go it alone so about three or four park question do you need me to repeat or just let me know amy so i'm i'm supportive of us finding a way to build a new rink i know this is something that's very important to many in our community  from the information i have so far i think a public private partnership would make sense financially to help support and we probably can't afford to do everything we want to and so to the extent that we can  partner i think that would be helpful i know a lot of important details are need to be worked out and the high school building committee is in conversations with the architects to explore sort of what the viable options are in terms of the exact spacing and hopefully will give this the time it deserves to explore all of the options and the pros and cons of each in terms of the actual space i would certainly not support by seeing decisions in terms of taking away things from women versus men i think that was part of the question i think it's important that we that we evaluate the impaction that it be distributed any negative impact be distributed andrea so i'm ove l in favor i think the public private partnership is a good idea i i am a bit concerned about loss of of of the playing field i think we'll do the next steps we need to take is to get input from the athletic directors and the architects and basically figure out you know which fields which field might have to go and you know i would to you know minimize the impact over all of the sports that are played we to march to try to privately fund this power fund as publicly i think being able to get the right partner in here i know that there is some partners that are going to use it for the right reasons we don't want to generate a lot of traffic or have it to give it to a person or part of private partnership that's going to use it in a way that's going to disrupt our community so i think if we negotiate for the right partner they're willing to fund the majority of it and we can also look anyone anything you know ok roger you have the next question i'd like to bring the focus away from the high school and down to the lower grades i believe there is any merging concern in belmont today about student safety particularly at the at the lower grades and it's due to the immense number of cars at both pick up and drop off do you believe that it is appropriate for the schools to encourage walking to school as an alternative to the use of car and what's the role of the schools again as opposed to a family in promoting walking yeah i've experienced this traffic every day for the past past six years so i think this is definitely a big issue and i mean traffic in general a major stress i think in in belmont so i i think to the extent that we can encourage families and i think we do have some initiatives and sort of programs in place to do so to walk to school i think that has multiple benefits one of which is decreasing decreasing safety concerns and them out of car traffic i'm surrounding the school in another which is sort of giving folks and especially young kids  chance to be outside in the morning and wake up and clear their head and go into school ready to learn i think we live in a community where a lot of folks are able to walk and i see many families walking every day i know not every family's able to do that and so i think we need to be conscious of families specific needs and situations but i know the walk to school days are very popular and support more things like that so i really want to encourage walking for you know any number of good reasons i actually think that this is a issue that needs to be addressed in the larger scope of the school committee you know identifying routes not just to schools but to you know library town center that people take and making sure that those routes are safe that there are crossings appropriate times you places so you know whereas i think that the school administration needs to give input to that but it is actually more of a town white thing rather than just a school family type thing thank you peter i think we have to work with the town selectmen with the school committee  i think part of it is you know program such as ways has people cutting through belmont and given them you know access to you know all our streets and i've have seen an uptick in cars coming through the town and caused in speeding so i know with bad weather and climate weather walking is not always an option so looking at it from a you know a year long we have the party put some controls in place and look at which areas have the most traffic and do maybe some studies to find  out where the danger spots are where kids do the most cross and and maybe communicate with them to cross and maybe if we need cross guards or more power cross paths installed i would i would i would be more in favor of doing a study st before and getting i'll just continue with that because if bus fees are reduce perhaps more students would take the bus to school this could potentially reduce traffic do you think the school committee should work toward getting more students to take the bus by reducing the fees and promoting the bus more start with  i i know that transportation in buses is a very complicated issue with a lot of a lot of different variables working into it i again think that for for i think that a lot of families already take advantage of the bus and again there are various reasons why some families choose not to some of which may be financial certainly and some of which are sort of personal choice and what their schedule is  at the beginning and the end of the day i think i would i would need to understand a bit more honestly sort of like what the what the options would be here to sort of assert my opinion but i'm in favor of exploring ways to increase and encourage transportation i just know that it transportation is also very expensive and so we would need to evaluate additional cost to the districts versus you know additional options  for family andrea so i would love to encourage bus ridership and cut down on traffic but the unfortunate reality is is if we lower busing fees then that my my kids actually take the bus it's about five hundred dollars per per kid ok but the year so i would say is you know is there a way to reduce fees because maybe that's a lot for families and they don't want to pay it so i said they're driving which is so to answer the question i would i would have to look at you know where those fees are coming from the budget and where we take them in those fees from students and you know if there's some revolving accounts worth it was the general call for the financial technical perspective that we can school it means that the st class starts at eight o five am the st teaching but actually students who are coming on using the bus will be coming at the earlier time and that's one of the big disadvantage of doing it this way which is that you know if any further until we get the new high school configuration going ok and then you know it's a whole new ballgame then we'll have an upper elementary school and they will probably need to be using buses a lot because they're going to be young kids ok and they're going to be coming from all over so they're not going to be able to walk or you know get to school by themselves so we'll have a completely new territory for buses when the new high school is opened in the same buses or use for all of the schools middle school or high school we all use the same person looking at a for budgetary standpoint where adam and th pass to solve a problem of student enrollment you know maybe we can look out of the box and say you know since we use all the same buses to how can we better you know maybe use the routes and or maybe complicated i do not think that the administration has the bandwidth right now to do any complicated changing of bus jewels before the new high school so i guess my question  on the school committee it was something that i would look at those data points and maybe a look at in more detail and look if there is a we don't as the question was to bring down student fees i would definitely look at it since it's something that deserves attention and i would be i would be the one that would do that long resisted the idea of selling things like may mean rights or advertising you know whether it be at the high school football field or the high school field house  given that i argue in two parts you have an opinion about the sale of naming rights and advertising and secondly how would you if at all proposed to raise non tax revenue i don't have a strong pre formed opinion about naming rights generally i don't love the idea we're talking about product placement earlier sort of having advertisements everywhere but i think i think i'm open to considering that option as a way to as a creative way to bring more revenue into into town  i think if elected i am interested in it in the exploring additional revenue opportunities for sure and i know the town as a whole and the board of selectmen is also  actively working on that issue but i think in terms of continuing to seek out additional grants we have a wonderfully supportive local foundation but i think i bring a lot of connections at the state level at the federal level and in terms of private funds for education that i'd be interested in looking into in terms of supporting and initiatives in our district so i would be open to you know potentially having commercial partners come in and give us lots of money and then we name something off to them with the whole concept but i think we have huge budgets tight so we have to at least be open to it we have to have the usual kind of constraints you know to alcohol tobacco and then we have to have you know the ability to pull back i think i mean you don't want to name something after a product and then you discover that the product is bad for people you know or something and then you want to be able to step back so it really it really does have its dangers i don't think we're overwhelmed with offers to be so the st part of the question which was the naming rights i do believe that it could be a good idea if you have to look at the cost benefit and if it's with local businesses that fits what the community  it what our community is about i don't think it's what we should entertain if it's going to generate more revenue and i think it's marketed the right way we work with the town selectmen in it's something that generates local business revenue which also generates tax revenue and you know it's a win win for the community i think it's the way we market it i think we'll get what we can generate more interest and if i was elected it's something that's in my alley that i can i can definitely take that upon us the nd power non tax revenue fee how we generate more laws local school committee has very little substandard authority other than hiring the school superintendent and engaging in high level planning explain what role if any you would want to have as a member of the school committee on issues involving the review of staff and curriculum yeah you know i think these these criminal or isn't walls are in place for a reason in that the school committee is not involved in all of the day to day operations although i know that sometimes they become involved in particular issues involving staffing decisions but i don't think it's appropriate for us to sort of micro manage in that that's the superintendent and district administration's role to really review and evaluate the performance of staff unless there's a serious issue that arises that i think i think in terms of reviewing curricular options i hope to sort of advocate for continue continuing to explore sort of innovative instructional strategies as well as curricular enhancements i think we need to sort of keep up with the future of our society and constantly be reevaluating to the extent that we have control over it what we're teaching students so i would plan to suggest some ideas there andrea so i don't think the school committee should be in the business of micromanaging teachers evaluations that's up to the superintendent and the principals i think again that needs to be a very kind of top level view of things and you know really it's a lot of fun and i really enjoy learning about all the amazing things that i want teachers come up with but really what we're looking at is to be sure that there isn't anything totally crazy in a curriculum like flatter or creationism or you know things that are inappropriate like that so yeah and again and of another very high level approach i don't think we should be you know getting into the weeds their own right thank you peter i would look at that i don't have the exact number but i know a big part of the budget is to the number of out of district students and i think if we look at the teachers  the staff i think there's an opportunity not to micromanage but to look at do we have the proper staff the new school in space we're going to space for lack collaborative program in the new school what type of students need this kind of help do we have the right staff to do this in house and what's the cost benefit of seven out of district students that we don't have the type of staff to be able to give them the help that they need that  causes us to have them go out of district it's a huge cost to belmont in the school system in if i was like that i would want to just sit down and do some more deep dive into that and figure out is there something that we can alleviate the budget by doing it in house and can we used some of the space that we're going to be having available in the future in the new high school to accommodate th have very uncommon needs so if you take their students who say are hard of hearing we just do not have enough of them to be able to have a heart of hearing program in belmont ok certain kinds of autism ok there are many different kinds of autism we do not have enough of the students that's why there are collaborative so i don't see yes we have to pursue that option but i don't see it's that you know that that's going to be a major cost sav so i'm a data driven person so i want to qualify that and quantify it with numbers so when you say we don't have enough do you have numbers to support that because i'd like to i'd like to see did we do our due diligence in actually do a cost benefit of actually figure what that number is or are we just thinking that that's not available if i was elected i would find out what that number is in if that number makes sense for us and we do have enough kids who are on the spectrum or have autism in it makes sense to bring somebody on staff from a cost benefit perspective then it's worth looking into that but we can't just sit there and say i don't think not sure and it's probably not we need we need to be one hundred percent positive for the taxpayers for the children we need to do the right thing you know and can i pop in here for a minute just to prevent this from being from sounding like an insider conversation can somebody take fifteen seconds and explain to our listeners what you mean by  out of district state because i fear that that might be a term of art that you all understand a lot everybody else so these are students who are who have challenges that insufficiently severe that they cannot be educated in the mainstream classroom they got regular i e peanut program won't work they need to go to a specialist school ok thank you and they cost far more i think i don't know if we have time for another now recycling crayons and the felt tip pens pens and things like that what little does the school system have in promoting recycling what role if any let me i think this is a win win and not a big sort of imposition on the school i know there are lots of efforts in place across the schools and i think it's really important that  i think this goes to sort of both teaching our kids about the importance of conserving the environment and actually doing so and i think that to the extent that we can encourage kids to learn about this a responsibility for our actions and understanding how we can help help the world so i'm very supportive of i'm very supportive of it for all the reasons i gave we need to teach our children to be you know responsible environmental citizens and my only slight misgiving is if you know it's difficult to incorporate programs that actually take up a lot of teachers time or for example you know lengthen lunch breaks because you have to worry about what the different recycling options and make sure everything's done correctly so you know so the the daily  yeah it has to work out otherwise you can end up taking too much time from stuff in theater i think this is a life learning lesson and it goes beyond just the high school and or or the students in school in general i think it's worthwhile to teach the kids and to set up a policy from the superintendent always down to the teachers and let them know show them what that recycling do not just for them in the score but for the world in general because when they leave as you know they have a everybody has an every resident has an obligation or person has an obligation to help recycle and so i do think this is an opportunity maybe no kids are right in the middle of their school careers i mean involved community member and leader i've spent a lot of time already volunteering in our schools and classrooms and i'm an education policy professional i've worked with many districts across the state and have a firm grasp of what goes on within our district  and what the different roles are that folks play so i think this is a really big job and i encourage everybody to learn more about us and to vote regardless of who you're voting for and i'm really excited about the opportunity to take this on so please check out my website elect check away dot com to learn more about me and i'd be sincerely honored to have your vote on april nd thank you well in all honesty i don't think you have any bad choices in this race i think amy and peter both very thoughtful people who make excellent school committee members i respectfully suggest that experience is important i've served on the finance policy in the curriculum subcommittee members thought this is it and anybody here right on this panel right now it's a non paint job you do it for passion and you can tell everybody has a passion for this i'm not i'm not a politician a lot a school teacher i have a very strong find his background and i believe i can help the next few years there's going to be a lot of budget constraints in the reason why i'm going to go for school committee is because i want to donate my time and help the community even if i don't want i'll still stillborn it my time for somewhere somehow and still i we're all doing this to help the community i just feel i have the stronger financial plan and background and i can bring that to the table in an advise you in that space in the school committee which might not be that strong right now so if you vote for me you know just like i do my professional job with my clients your children and your taxpayers just like me and you i'll be you'll be like my st clients and i'll give the same passion as i do my professional job to you guys  much thank you thank you all for being part of this very healthy debate i think is a porton i think it's important for voters to get to know who will be on the ballot in april nd i want to remind everyone to get