would just highlight some of the events and happenings during this holiday season and first off i wanted to mention that thanks giving did again help last thursday on the with the snow and slush all over the field but there was a great effort by the marauders football team the cheerleading squad was out in force there was a terrific performance by the marching band of the color guard although they remain stationary and didn't traipse through all the snow and slush on the field and it was really fun just to see the stands full of students and families and there are a lot of alumni that came back and it was a huge crowd and really just had this wonderful community you know the senior districts results were recently announced and there was a record sixty six belmont high school student musicians that were accepted into the massachusetts music educator association northeastern senior district festival which will be held in january a low high school and this was for band orchestra chorus and jazz ensemble musicians dition november fifteenth at north andover high school so it is another testament to the phenomenal music program that we have here in addition thirty two of these students were recommended for all state auditions where they could perform in the state wide festival  again a testament to the fabulous music program to our educators and to all the students here and we do have a great opportunity to kind of musical performances at this time of year as are in the midst of their rameau season we had seen around the back on  november nineteenth stringer rama was right before thanksgiving and band around was coming up on the eighth of december and there you really can appreciate the sheer number of students who participate in the music program and it's really amazing to see the progression that they make moving from the elementary level all the way through high school and as you can see even in the stands the families that have come i think at the band around they always ask who's been to how many of you been to it that was things are shuffling around the musical instruments and ensembles they're people that have been for fifteen plus years and it's amazing to see the hands go up so those are always fabulous and there's also the generally honors music concert is coming up on the eleventh of december there's a fifth grade concert the next day and then the high school winter concert is coming up on the seventeenth of this truly is a season of great music and also as i was looking over all the events in schools there seem to be book fairs that are propping up everywhere as everyone is doing their holiday shopping and butler had their book fair in late october and apparently they raised over thirty six hundred dollars in school lastic book fair profit i think the wellington had their book fair right before thanksgiving when brooke is having a game night and book fair tomorrow december third the burbank  having their fare on friday the fifth and cherries having their book fair all this week on the list serv i saw that you can also order books online so all this informational is available on the websites the district website and then you can go to each of the school websites as well i also wanted to mention that tomorrow night as the foundation for belmont education board meeting i'll be attending along with superintendent failon and assistant superintendent darrius and they will be giving their recommendations for the cycle one learning excellence grants so we'll certainly have more details to report here at this table two weeks from tonight but there were successful fundraisers this fall the dan scharf memorial run raised over twenty thousand dollars the spelling bee had a net profit of over twenty thousand dollars so now comes the fun part of spending the money in the schools and we'll find out more about that tomorrow and there are also more opportunities to give money to the foundation and to donate this time of year as well  there is the opportunities to give out star awards to favorite teachers or staff members that can be a teacher's aide secretaries custodians anyone involved in your children's lives i mean you can give the recognize this excuse me community members send a personal message and they just ask that you sign up and place your award order by friday the twelfth of december so they can be delivered before school gets out for the holidays in just a few weeks and there's also a chance to support the belmont foundation for my education excuse me and the food pantry at the turn on the town belmont food pantry drive which is sponsored this year by hammond residential  real estate agency on december fourth for every food item that stone age to the food pantry during the food drive belmont is has been hammered residential donate a dollar to the foundation and they will also match any cash or check gift given to the food pantry by making a matching donation to the foundation thank you that's another wonderful way to support fabulous causes and i also wanted to mention i'm sure everyone has seen the signs for the holly jolly trolley tour that's coming up on saturday december thirteenth beginning at four thirty in the afternoon apparently they'll be trolleys going through winding through the streets of with high school singers and musicians and you can buy tickets for fifteen dollars and they recommend they buy tickets in advance and this is put on by the palms the parents of the music students and belmont savings bank so i think that will be a wonderful afternoon hopefully the start of a new tradition here in town i also wanted to mention for some school committee business that now that time has joined the team has agreed to serve on the finance subcommittee starting this morning so thank you very much time seems to be a great match for your skills and experience so we liaison for the butler school as a former butler parent and i was serving as liaison to the when brooke school now the times i'm bored with his kids at the when broke i think we sort of swapped that so tom will be the liaison to the wind broke p t o and i will serv liaison to the public so that seems an easy swap to make and i also wanted to mention that we were thinking of moving the start times for the school committee meetings up to seven o'clock instead of seven thirty just to give us  earlier time for certainly i hope all our central office team hopefully will get home after they have a more of a commute than we deal on the committee and also i for one would love to and at nine rather than one thirty so we're going to give it a try to see how it works with the train schedules and the schedules of all of us here but i just want to alert folks that we're going to try to move to seven but plea it's just everything will be posted obviously forehand and the last but not least i wanted to mention that belmont special education advisory council the b s a c tomorrow night is holding a workshop in title basic rights and special education workshop for parents and professionals and this evening will begin at six thirty as usual with a paralegal and then the presentation will begin at seven and followed by a q and a session on this will be held at the burbank school and then the following morning on thursday there will be a parent information session at ten thirty a brutish for people to gather i'm sure discuss the events of the prior evening and it's just a chance to get together and i think that is all i have to say tonight i'm sure i've missed something along the way for yes so next  like to have our students come up we're grateful if i would be on time tonight so please come forward i wanted to come over here introduce yourself and share all  things with the high school of performing arts company or theatre group going right from play in auditions singing additions and dancing additions and callbacks are happening this week for the spring musical anything goes  in addition to that there is a coffeehouse sponsored by the p c featuring mostly singers and vans and other small acts that is going to be probed proceeds from that will be towards the new york trip for the finance company is friday december nineteenth at six fifteen pm in the cup three and tickets are ten dollars for adults and five dollars for students so also over the past year we've noticed a lot of nice changes to the cafeteria especially in terms of the food we know there's a lot more with locally sourced ingredients i think there's been some local butternut squash a few times on the menu which is really nice also there are the new list mondays where the the main dish order at every monday now is one hundred percent vegetarian which is nice because a lot of it and so yeah and then also before the power i lay around me and my one of my friends part of the leadership program that i talked to last time i was here we had a project about increasing spirit so we had many spirit week so monday we had the seniors house and a winter wonderland so you were sweaters and they had like free hot chocolate in the cafeteria and then tuesday we had twenty a clone day so you and your friend would wear the same things and head on wednesday was the color of your class and so then also we prepared a video so we had a little dumbass trying to go into a music video so me and the principal ran around think about fifteen thousand dollars which is amazing and still the same as we did last year but we're hoping to keep our third place or town or higher and then this week we started selling snow flakes which if you don't know what they are they're purchased a bunch of stuff like i got some awesome black friday deal that was really cool and then a decorator baskets actually today in school and will be delivered this week so i believe that parents can buy snowflakes well for but i'm sure you're aware of it just the level of stress a ph as you know in a lot of day classes there is just kind of a culture of competition which definitely is good but it just kind of with everything combined with college applications and e p tests it it really does build up so there's been some steps to combat the stress with homework free weekends where you have a weekend work with hopefully less work although obviously there there are some flaws because it's hard to completely eliminate work but they've definitely been a step forward and it's really nice to know that your work is being recognized and i think it's really a pretty big step forward but i just think it's important for the school committee to keep in mind just the level of stress of being a jest and so i think there's some great work being done on it but it's just something to  committee had mentioned and i was told there's a subcommittee on it and i was told that recently that there was a report of it with the conclusions about it i think that both stress and depression related things are are really things that it's not a thing that oh just teenagers have stress teenagers have depression it's disease and it's it's a weight on our shoulders that is not necessarily easily just talked off of so i think that more public awareness more public activities and announcements about it would be would be definitely helpful but it keeps up all of the read the report you mentioned what the student life or pull out and the modeling which is made up of staff members school committee members community members that's been split up into a security officer safety and security and health and wellness and the topic of depression and and  stress all those topics are something that are concerned that we do talk about in trying to figure out are there ways that we can get that out to the public and have speakers come in or have more work that's  done on that so it's certainly something that it's important for you to continue to raise that but also see you know that it is something that is really foremost on the minds of the school administration and the school community because we certainly understand that lots of people need some more support so i'm just i just i hate it i couldn't ask for a better presentation by our students to bring to light some of the issues that we were kind of talking about as adults and i may take your words so seriously ingenuously we're talking about the most large is really important not just around the pressure but about what are we doing as adults to kind of work through some of these issues so it's exciting to think that our well this committee is not only taking on nutrition which  had to look at one was in rome and because the classes are getting bigger they go to the high school one was security so we decided to break out our troops and look at security or better for the third was the social emotional well being of all of our students and staff in that big conversation is how do we proactively support students around stress around depression around accessing adults in agencies and folks when something's happening in women in adults getting to training and support are recognizing that with students that they can have good conversations with students if they don't have the answers putting them in the direction of folks that do so the adults are listening to some of the things that the teachers in the students are saying our concerns of organizing our work and our resources to try to remedy that so i'm glad you like me less mondays and i'm glad we like the fresh squash but i'm also glad that we're targeting some of our thoughts in conversations to what students are saying are a real need so thank you for bringing them to our attention in and i can think of nothing better to get students feeling good than being at the pep rally on wednesday and i was there myself to watch students and teachers competing on a small bicycles different things you mentioned today and now lead to recognize the high school administration for all the good stuff and i'm glad that you are able to bring that to other communities attention is that it's being enjoyed at the high school so i truly appreciate your feedback  speech that we can use in the needs that we have around our school buildings due to our increasing roman and also some good news some of which has already been touched on tonight by our students first of all the last time we met me to talk about the the budget being very slim to share in our projections not right now but our projections by the end of june of two thousand and fifteen is that we have a deficit that is much really built around some of us student services allocations that we need to  make we have more students who are to distribute and more students in general in the district that need services that they cost significant amounts of money that we need to provide to them home i have drafted a set of  thursday again to hire you know some of the details with a couple of the measures that are quite complicated but frankly they involve restricting some of the purchases that will make reducing the professional development that we offer and take part in  reviewing very very strangely if there are any vacancies that we have whether or not we will fill them what try to work creatively to support students in different ways with the staff that we have all the way to go operate stacks and ice at our school couldn't be in reducing the different types of services that we provide our minister to staff and our teachers during the day we take very seriously the obligation to  spend what we have enough or that what we have i think it's important for the public to know that if you have a budget that we need to live up to to the best of our ability but there are some expenses that come up during school year in every public school that are it at our meeting in january a second meeting to do which i believe is i generally twenty so this is definitely something that we're taking very seriously and will keep the committee closely updated it's a topic at a loss to finance meetings and it will be a who is here in the audience we have a statement of interest that was placed into the authority last april that i believe the district has done for the last several years and as part of that statement of interest process they came up to visit the school and they did what is called the senior study where they actually sit and talk of the building principal of the leadership team in the facilities group around the the state of the building its ability to for to provide proper space for the teaching and any father than we have in the past it is this is part of the the state of interest to face and we will find out of the end of december whether or not our proposal moves on to the board to be considered for a proposal that would be funded due diligence inspecting the schools that they consider possible candidates to move forward and we look forward to their response in late december and if in fact that response comes back as a negative response we will put our application again in april of two thousand and fifteen if it is a response that they would like to have us take the next step that would require some work to be done to be have the school committee to the school department in preparing somebody documents they provided enough to i will be commissioning a task force on space for educators from all three levels of our school system to take a look at the report it was shown to some of the focus today it's of finance and that group will come up with some of the options in review the options for the school committee and for the committee to consider as you for this is basically to say aloud if we continue to grow in our role and size do we have enough cash from space in the footprints of our buildings as we have them now and if yes great but for how many more years can we sustain that and if not what some of the alternatives maybe for the district to take on  in the short term and in some options for the district to look out in the long term so it's a it's a pretty healthy report of options for them to consider so after we review it will give school  dollars for grants being considered by the foundation for babylon education given to our teachers so our students in our schools at all grade levels can be impacted by unique enriching activities in you and i thought we could do is like the other we have eight miley moves to begin with the other seven reports have already begun to be needed and presented on ahead as we have done with the others you can just get a brief overview everyone had the full report in their packet and i believe that something on the website order will soon be i don't actually check before i'm for the full report is available for everybody to read their early on but we'll just go through a quick summary and then we can open it up for some conversation between questions and marvin groups have a specific charge for the committee to investigate an issue or an area of our school department so the group was to develop a model of stable salary benefits options that would inform the negotiations that took place last year  massachusetts teacher contracts in this outline some of the professional teacher status language in your will these are working to actually define were periods seniority one being rights all those terms are in most all  compensation contract to teachers and it also features some of the actual tables in charge of the cash compensation system that we have here from one of the school the thirty year in that was investigated was the assessment of the  on public school teachers fell for into that category so they were the fourth highest paid of the ten that were reviewed the other towns were arlington bedford burlington lexington marblehead watertown wayland wellesley w and develop criteria to use to allocate those funds beginning with a few basic measures the third recommendation was to write is going to fight schools in cities and towns in massachusetts and other high performing states in districts which have moved away from that point system and to do an in depth study in this system in performance recommendation of for which we find these proposals through joint work of the school committee school department and union leadership and so i would like to thank you and the folks who took part in this compensation margaret or and the financial task force does have this report amongst the other seven and i believe they're using this as they get ready place in massachusetts and really throughout the country and some of the challenges that were inherent in that system first was staying within the financial boundaries especially with a two and a half percent increases and also not having the same type of reward with these goals of the system that we want to promote and that try to stay within the available revenue so one of the ideas that surfaced was to have some portion of the compensation that would be guaranteed some of that could be related to a bonus pool as we said as we explain in his recommendations but i think the realization was that there will be very difficult for one small system like belmont to achieve such a change and that's where the other get a couple of things so one thing was that unlike most of the other groups i think i think there was some interest in some of the other groups we were trying to construct and started out trying to construct a model that could inform negotiations and actual practical thing that we were heading into and then that occurred before we were done so we had to put this off to the side and engage in negotiations and then come back to it and it was very bracing or really it gave a real life real life data about how difficult it is to do some of this and how easy it is to do other parts of it so that was that was really illuminating to see what was pile of the sky versus what was true to go shabelle aspect of it that was quite interesting another thing was that for me personally i was very clear that going into it th the our compensation system as it structured is unsustainable in the sense that it grows larger than what the available revenues that's kind of known and we're already seeing how that each year in the budget cycle that that has to be accommodated for  have was kind of illuminating to me was to think about compensation system is not as just system is in place and everyone uses them but that we have an organization the school system is an organization that has goals and that a compensation system is a kind of leverage that you have to implement those goals so it isn't something you can actually you can choose how you relate to it it isn't like a given in your it's not  not of the effect of it only you can actually work with the union and the teacher you know everyone to say how do we want to accomplish these goals and the compensation system is a method for that that was very freeing and even in the negotiations it had an effect that we were more willing to try other trying different kinds of ways of approaching it so i thought that was that framework of oh look it isn't just a defined thing we can actually choose how we're going to talk with encourage excellence and improvement again the notion that compensation system the issue that we kind of came came to see apart from the financial and sustainability was that the actual rewards or compensation the the things that were done to encourage as the things as encourage excellence and improvement the methods of the financial methods or any of the levers that were encouraging or improvement were correlated to any goal that we could speak of they were arbitrary established many years ago and they didn't correlate with success of students for example they didn't even correlate with the success of the teachers or the other staff that the excellence how they were compensated is that correlated to anything except how long they've been in the system so that not to prove that longevity is an important thing you know it was loyalty and so forth and  people learned more about the system but apart from now apart from one charity there's nothing that's being rewarded per se there's nothing in this leading people to work in a certain direction apart from their own commitment which is great and they have it's clear that  group that our staff is very committed but a compensation system can actually help them move in a certain direction and that was that was all that's part of what this encouraged excellence is about and then ensure equity that again apart from the financial and and sustainability steps and lead system produces results where people are equally compensated there's aren't these artifacts that can happen by someone happens to be yours or merely having to take certain classes and and then they're paid differentially and it's not again correlated to anything that's about the success of the students so in a sense it's not it's not a rational one can say toward the goals of the system so if i were to take something out of the analysis that this represents are two things one is the reinforcing the financial insisting ability which we kind of all know and the second is everyone structure isn't correlated to the goal of the system and that that should cause pause and think about what would work and i think the union as well as the unions as well as the administration would say was that the the recommendations originally the recommendations had a specific plan that we were toying with proposing but it came out that well the facet this is a good example of a plan but we did a line on it as plan so and that just to be clear it isn't like some of us thought this was the plan so most of this was a plan and this is a like a middle ground or something it's that we kind of step the level above a particular instance we developed and said with the principles work of it shouldn't form any plan to leave a lot of freedom for the people who are working on the system so that's why it's that's why the recommendation is to develop a system not to implement a system history going that's just that's just elements of a system that isn't specific proposal and i and i hope that whoever now engages this conversation can can take that into account and negotiations and but i i appreciate the work that we as a group did i certainly learned a lot of working with the other folks in the group and i think the report is a great  benchmark for now the community and other stakeholders to to begin to review when we can begin to sort of this cross this as a community so i think i think it's a great site  up organically and i i did bring up our attempt and our report there was there's a lot of interest amongst all the towns about sort of coming coming up with potential models and they were very interested that we had started to look at this and it was suggested that we that ed koch bring in start bringing in some speakers and consultants so that's on future agendas for the the round table and i did tell everyone they should go to our website and read our report but nobody had come up with anything yet you know everyone was interested that we even were considering it before our recent negotiations but that given the way negotiations went we sort of left left things as they were but i think everybody agreed that it was hard for one individual town to make a move like this and so i think there's a there's a lot of interest and hopefully momentum amongst all of the communities to look at it that's really interesting because as we sat around the with that and killed the perfect you know right and that's all i'm saying steps and lines in negotiation by the communities than we did in this meeting in this group but i will say that even in the framework that we have we toyed with or that we kind of put out as a straw man and adjusted the and say well what if you just threw away this dessalines that it was something else that was clearly subject to all these questions about who were the winners and losers rose to their expectations and when you  in your search because one of your recommendations says looking beyond our massachusetts are you aware of any districts that have around the country that have a different system and there's some of that are in very different circumstance where it's been imposed because there are failing system so you can sort of i mean they are completely restructured which is so far from what we are that's right you know sort of and i think one of the things that i learned was that as tony said we learned a on explorers until two ten years from now it's really important to engage to talk to the union about it talk with each other and explore that was very clear because it was we got only so far in the time we the last collaborative which provides transportation in special education services so the eco collaborative articles of agreement is given to every school committee of every disappeared in detroit just so we have a body of  as a member district in general we were prepared to vote this exact cause of agreement and suffer article of capital reserves but there was conversation that one of the articles had been actually to revise their articles of agreement to comply with changes in legislation at the meeting today the eco collaborative board of directors approve the revised articles the next step is school committee approval followed by approval of the commissioner of education a summary of the provisions of the echo articles as well the articles in their entirety are attached so this is a process by which these will be also be submitted to the state the recommendation is to approve the end polk collaborative article assessment in capital cost not funded through the above process and now they are asking for a two thirds vote so it's a very small technical change in this large articles of agreement that anytime there's a charge of capital assessment cost that that is done so with the affirmative vote of two thirds of the board as opposed to a supermajority that is the only change so if anybody would like to talk about that article of agreement and that us because i had a conflict that that days of the first i was there for the first presentation of it and but then not since i think it was lincoln had asked for the change to two thirds and i didn't hear any of the reasons or if there were any real issues that led to this other than just their desire to have two thirds different ajanta sure that the the last board meeting comprised the budget think that the amendment was very subtle in everybody at the table that i was with agreed to that i know they're being put in print for all of us to consider ok so i guess we can take a vote on the motion revolve around the capital reserve fund as it relates to the ed koch collaborative eco says that we also seek your approval to allow us to establish capital reserve fund for eco collaborative in the past eco has funded capital in expenses meeting the d e s c definition of fixed assets including real property with a unit cost of five thousand dollars in a useful life of one year or more debt payments inductive putting in deposits into assessment funds may be used for facility upgrades space modifications extraordinary maintenance expenses technology upgrades and equipment with a unit cost of five thousand dollars and a useful life of one year or more so the recommendation is to authorize a coke elaborative to establish a cap on river reserve fund to support costs associated with the acquisition maintenance and improvement  fixed assets including real property pursuant to a capital plan at our next meeting which will be two weeks from now just to sort of look at the framework to examine some of the fees charged for our facility rentals for you know our list of fees for students and families and i think that's something we want to begin to make sure we do january with the presentation and then a second reading two weeks later twenty twenty something of january for a vote and have already included the courses presented for students to register for the twenty fifteen sixteen school year mean what we did last year but previous to that it was a little bit later it's one of the challenges of both school budgets as well as the planning your you're in the current year you're reviewing what you have done in the past and learning from that and you're also planning a year that's coming up almost at the same time so a lot of balls in the air but trying to continually provide opportunities for students and to keep up with what  the needs are because they are changing things that were horses that were appropriate and challenging ten twenty years ago there are different opportunities that we need to be thinking about for students now  so i am very grateful to the curriculum directors in the building of the principals it's the principles at the high school who are are always thinking about well what what should we be looking forward to and trying to incorporate into the offerings for some preliminary discussion on available revenue thank you wellington building to many nothing there and the financial task force i know that the last large grouping was postpone next one here from november eighteenth might suggest i don't know that i've had a chance to look to look at it very carefully perhaps we can put this off for another two weeks to approve it then and i think that