welcome to belmont public schools now my name is john failon of the superintendent of the belmont public schools today is tuesday december twentieth two thousand and sixteen want to give you a quick superintendence update with some of the issues that are going on in the belmo public schools in the work that we're doing and i also want to have a conversation today with our general middle school principal mike mcallister first my update i want to let everybody know that last week we did have some testing done of our drinking  water and give you an update on that as it is on our web site right now is one of the issues we and we have been trying to communicate about last spring we asked that our facilities department randomly check fifty of our faucets to make sure that i drinking water and food prep water was appropriate and clean we did so because of the national issues that were going on at the time around clean drinking water we also signed up for grants with the department of environmental protection to test all of our faucets this fall those tests were done in those samples were examined by the state in the d e p t and it came back that out of one hundred eighty faucets in the belmont public schools fourteen did not pass except the limits per their guidelines i want to let you know as a public that taken every action in accordance with the d e p of shutting down the faucets we will be retesting all those faucets and we will be finding the source of that consideration in either leaving those faucets off permanently or making recommendations to fix those as long as they produce and continue to produce quality drinking water in water use for food prep if you want any information about this issue please go on our website we have a special website holding place on the carousel for our water testing information that information includes three letters for me as a superintendent over the last week and a half of all the results from the lab all six schools for results from the lab and also the results from the fourteen faucets that were tested and came up with a negative result so you can examine those results yourself we've also included letters from the board of health information from the c d c and other organizations that could provide you some information about lead in water in your children if you have any questions about this please feel free to call or e mail the superintendent's office as well i also want to give you an update on the building high school building committee and our space task force work the building high school committee has entered into module two of this very very big project where we are hiring an order project manager in a design architect that work will take between now and april and may to come to a conclusion before that becomes a higher  group to work with we are doing some work with our teachers in our community around what do we want to see our next belmore high school look like we hired an educational facilitator named frank walker and we had our first meeting yesterday on december nineteenth to get together to design and plan the different community sessions we will have so we can ask you our viewers our parents our families our students and our teachers and staff where they want in a new belmont high school we're very excited about planning this work and we will be announcing those dates for those community forms very soon we are also meeting with elementary principals and some folks are our space task force group as well we are examining the elementary class sizes that we have that are very large at this point in time and what are some of the space in class size remedies we can put in place for next year and the year after as you know and as we have been talking about for several years now the enrollment of the belmore public schools continues to grow at a very high level each year we are averaging over one hundred students net to the district each year our roll which is going from below four thousand to almost over five thousand in about five or seven years that kind of increase rese reserves some very very close thinking on how we could strategize with teachers being added classrooms and spaces being added to our district to make sure that we can provide your child with a quality education every day we are also at the beginning of our f y eighteen budget discussion period f y eighteen is the budget for next school year the seven thousand eight hundred school year we've been working with town hall in our finance committee to do that work in we've also been working with our leadership council to have our zero based budgeting meetings with every director and every principal and we look at what they need starting from zero in moving all the way through the needs to this point in time those meetings provide a lot of good data for us to be able to come back to our school committee and let them know what the needs of the district are and also look at what we want to prioritise the needs could be fred to ships moving forward we want to keep you up to date on those budget discussions they will also mike has been a administrator in the belmore public schools and teacher for over eighteen years he was a teacher a department head a director elementary school principal as well as the current principal of  middle school so mike thank you for being here thank you for your service to belmont i guess my first question is how's everything going at the cherry middle school your first year it's been great it's been great it's i was there for nine years as a classroom teacher and i was there for a few more as a director and then it was that bought their first seven years and i came back and so when i first got to the school there was a big sign on my desk and said welcome home so it has felt like that i think people have felt people been really welcoming to me and it was a lot of what i loved about that school when i left i left with a lot of fun this for it in some ways i was very hesitant to go to the elementary school even though i had a great experience there and coming back to the cherry has really felt like i come home coming back from home great the one of the great that already took place at the at the cherry that was worked on previous in the previous year was the best buddies award and i think that would like to show some footage where we talk about the best parties award but sarah bennett is a lab teacher at the genera who runs a phenomenal best buddies program with us students who have special needs and what did what a day that was can you talk a little bit about that it's amazing and so it was before even had worked a single day at that center i got a message from the national best buddies chapter and from steve goodwin who's a coordinator along with sarah bennett that children have been recognized not as not just simply as the best in massachusetts and best united states but as the best middle school chapter in the world and one of the interesting things about gender is actually one of the original one of the earliest if not the earliest chander middle school best buddies chapter in the country so it's a huge honor for them and i can't take any credit for it because i didn't do any of the work but i can certainly give credit to the teachers as far back as and they do who started it back in the day or karen frank who started it was a lab coordinator but sarah bennett has certainly brought it to a new level and it's just a great it's a great thing to be able to  to be the school where where that value is so important and where that values recognise that students especially those and they do have something in common with students who are in sort of general education population and that there is a common ground in that there is ownership of all students so i think it's a tremendously it's something that community certainly something that i'm proud of it's certainly something that china is proud of but there's also a lot of families involved and there's a lot of students involved and you know what when a parent allows their child to stay after school or when a parent comes to volunteer for best buddies it's really everyone pulling their weight to be sure much of the credit goes to sara bennett and steve goodman but to be sure also the students i think of a lot to be proud of and i'm happy to take the credit for it really except their word but really of all the schools what best buddy does well yeah that's real genuine i think i think that you know if you just look at the number of kids involved in that program and you know there's upwards of fifty regular education students who are coming you know once a month to those events so and i see it in the hallways you know when they see their friends from lab or in the lunch time and when lab comes in with us in sixth grade luncheon in you know kids are saying hi i'm just if you look at the pictures you know from that from that montage of sarah better put together you see how genuine those relationships really are in those friendships are real and agree great challenges are so that that's definitely if you were to tell me if you would ask me sort of one of the big changes from when i left to the big changes when i came back and what had changed in that time it's certainly space and how we've used our space i think that you know when i when i left cherry not that there was a lot of space because it was still in a school of about a thousand kids maybe eleven hundred kids but in that time we've seen things like the staff development room turn into a concert turned into a classroom the office you know different conference rooms turned into classrooms teachers sharing classrooms teachers moving when i was a teacher there none of that none of that had happened so i think the way we've had to change the programming you know for example when i was in sixth grade i was a sixth grade teacher of language arts and social studies we taught for classes a day in a in a been tightened and so all those things i think higher in roman effects on the ground level of a school in many different ways and i think that's the way i see it so the teachers credit i think they've they've remained as committed as ever to giving kids individualized attention but you know but to be clear to be fair i think it is getting harder to do that and i think that's the that's the crunch they see you know i talk to teachers about it the conversation isn't always in the so hard it's how do we continue to do we've been doing how do we continue to provide kids with what they need how do i give the kids individual attention and that continues to be where the focus is put but i think all those things have impact an you know in terms of you know when i was at dollar the population increases sometimes hit a certain grid but by and large i wasn't always affected because if for example houses went up another neighborhood they went to a different school whereas cherry draws from the entire district and it's all for grades cherry's always getting hit with every with every population increase that happens in the district so generally is the biggest school by the number of students your r over fourteen hundred we were fortunate enough to get an override two years ago so we did add teachers and guidance counselors and special educators to the staff as part of our financial task force model so the i'm sure we could use more of those resources in terms of teachers classroom teachers special education we've got a d l l i believe as well but we do still have some students and study halls that would like to create some more coursework for so we know that there might be a need for more  been installed and we're actually preparing to move into those in the next month so can you tell us a little bit about that process yes so it's it's great and it's difficult in some level it's great that we finally get a bit more breathing room and we can return some rooms back to their original purpose we've had mates in the back of the staff development room in a classroom with just a partition and you know for her to get her own classroom is thrilling for her at the same time it increases the amount of campus you have it increases the responsibilities to monitor that whole campus so two times a week and gerry boyle our facilities director has been has been on the ground there a bunch so i i think that the classrooms are beautiful i think it was great for teachers to walk in and be able to see them so prior to the time i had arrived anywhere from november to january it looks like we're going to be able to move in in early january which is great so what we're going to do is we come back over vacation we're going to be moving a lot of the materials when we come back we're going to weeks transition and that transition will give us an opportunity to transition children opportunity to open up to parents if they want to come see it maybe an opportunity for the public to come in and see specially some of the budding neighbors who are now seeing these modulars and i think when they see them i think they're going to impress them that they're going to see a really clean really quite large and really well lit space so i think it's i think it's a good thing because it gives us a little bit of relief the school is still huge and there's still a lot of students but at the same time when you have a little bit more breathing room i think it just feels like there's a little bit more space for everyone so it's interesting at the beginning of the summer we had a community meeting with folks that live around that show that have bought the property and several streets that are surrounding the cherry campus in we have to make sure that we  are thankful to those folks there are a lot of cars pulling in and out of cherry modulus won't change that we've already had this is just addressing the amount of students that we have in the building every day but you know the folks who live in washington street in some of the body streets have really put up with a lot of  it's a condensed neighborhood so you know we ask our parents to be thoughtful and not idle their cars while they're getting ready to pick up in the afternoon that we're all careful when we pull up and leave the generator for pedestrians and not parking in front of our neighbors driveways  and because we're asking for those those neighbors to we have to be a good neighbor because they're being good neighbors who are so i just want to be explicit about that i just had a nice discussion with a gentleman in washington street last week and he brought some concerns to my attention that i thought that i could say tonight will be working with you as well and trying to remedy for him so that that is something that will continue to work on to get better and be a good neighbor so we have the middle school growing we have added a couple of teachers to support that started becomes a sprint to make sure you're addressing the needs especially in a busy middle school but as you're doing your conversations in coffee p t o meetings and meeting with staff you know what are some of the big things you think about that you could look towards yeah we had we had a couple of you know sort of marching orders and we came in one was increasing communication both among staff and parents i think we've done a good job with that and i think the response of parents has been good to is really making general welcoming community and making sure the parents feel like they can come in the building and students do feel like it's their school in three was really talking about sort of our management with the school is big is that you have to flow the crowds correctly you have to go in the right doors you have to go to the right stairwells they have to have every organized lunch and organize halls and things like that and entry and dismiss so that's a lot of what we worked on we first got in and i think there are spots that has been good sometimes and you make so many big structural changes like that there can be pushback but i think a lot of people have really appreciated sort of a more calm entry in the more calm hallways and in lunch duty  to the extent we pull that many students through through a school today we've been really working on getting students be responsible for cleaning up or recycling and things like that as we go forward it's a little bit more sort of more substantial leadership changes and one of them is really how do we make this school which is really a big school feel small how to make kids feel connected to that so some of the things we're looking at are our students feeling connected to adults in the building do we have an advisor program that we could put in  coming from the elementary school and coming from really one of the smaller elementary schools i know what the expectation leave in the elementary schools is i know what the experience is like there and it's really small and it's really interpersonal and it's really comfortable and i think sometimes it's a bit of a shock to the system when kids come up and you know they can go from a principal knowing every single name in every parent name to suddenly feeling like you're one of really a lot of students walking in the door so we're looking at moving forward how do we what kind of things can we do is a school how can we arrange our team talk we arrange our classrooms how can we you know run some kind of advisory how can we run some kind of opportunities to increase the time that students have in small groups with an adult they feel connected to so there's not one answer to that but that really is going to be the major push with that is a push again taking the lead from the moment you're with is a really robust response intervention program and just briefly the concept being that everyone gets a tear one level of instruction simply by being in the classroom but not all kids are going to respond right away to the exact type of instruction and some kids need something different or something more and at the elementary level i think that we have always intervened in and seen our kids respond to it and sometimes we catch them up and sometimes we give them more intervention and i think sherry because it had been such a big school and because staffing i think had been low although getting better there was less of a focus on the r t i program and so that's a big push of ours that really is an example of making it seem very small and you know when you're in a small skills group of five to ten students and this is regular education not special education i think it has that opportunity has the ability to connect kids to their adults and has it up to me for adults to really get to know kids quite well one of the changes that happened when we went from in six and seven created we stand for classes and into five classes that you just increase your student load by twenty five and you decrease the time that you have with kids potentially by fifteen minutes a day and so finding ways to recapture that i think is going to be a big part of our push that's not a one year goal that's probably more if i can five year goal but all of our efforts are sort of being directed in that now that we've got sort of a bit of the low hanging fruit figured out and that would fit very nicely into the social motion learning that district wide goals that we had as well so we've created as a district we're looking at social emotional learning in how do we create you know good relationships from teacher to student and actually teacher to teacher in modeling those because if we know that we build good relationships with our students they're going to feel safe going to have good routines in the learning will up in the world it will happen so i feel really proud that we are we're taking that kind of action in our schools that may be big picture in the way it looks through social moesha learning but really gets to great learning  outcomes in the end if we spend time working on the whole child and getting to know children each day so thank you for doing that what does it really feel like to be the principal of such a great school in general it's great i mean it s there's so much great work happening at center in the classroom there's just so many amazing things that are happening and one of the things that is great about a small school but also a bit challenging about a small school is that it's great in that you have sort of total command in total control of that in your hands and sort of every pot and you have a big influence in shaping the culture of that school in a bigger school it feels a little bit less you're you can't be everywhere at the same time you can't spread out as much as you can but there's also more people to help you out and so the work of your teacher like leon dyer for example or carl hawkins who is working at the student council doing a lot of the work that i personally did it with school pride and you know having core values of a school and really trying to get work on the culture of a school to have so many people help and he was a great thing or to have to really great assistant principals to help with some of the discipline and to talk about what is our discipline approach to students when they when they make a mistake and to have some really good discussions like that to me has been the great part about it and that to me is it's nice to be able to share the load in to have somebody capable people beyond that just amazing things happening as they always have happened at the cherry and it's exactly what i remembered when i left it's exactly the kind of work i think i was a part of as a teacher and of all the things that have changed the commitment of children in the really innovative things are happening in the classroom i think remains as strong as ever that school well the public schools is fortunate to have you see middle school principal we're so delighted that you were able to decide that you would make that jump from elementary back to middle school the teachers and parents do seem happy we're very excited about having you there it is the biggest school  district had a unique age which is middle school and we appreciate very much the service in the work you're doing with your teachers because we're we didn't change their secret staff the leadership may have shifted a little bit  took place at the butler school before we go to the clip we want to say out loud that mike was the principal of the butler school for seven years ten years in that time made a great school greater gauge the community of parents  teachers and teachers systems and food service and all the way down to the incredible custodian that works at the butler and was recognized by was recognized nationally as a blue ribbon school that's the highest award that any school can  get in the country mike did put an application because they asked him to because the student achievement that was going on of butler was increasing year of a year and mike filled out all the forms in when he filled it out they came back and said that the school the staff and the students and you know i really had this feeling that it was our goal to bring it from from good to great and i think we managed to do that i accepted the word behalf of the school but really it's a teacher word and it's a student award and it's a parent award so i want to make that clear and the othe thing i'd like to make really clear is that there are different reasons why a school can earn a blue ribbon award one is for gap narrowing measures and one is for student achievement and it's a real testament to considering how diverse and how challenging that that student population can be at times a massive number of languages and an incredible diversity that they're achieving at that high level for multiple years so it was a good award that i've been saying all and i think it confirms what i've known all along that there's just amazing teaching and learning i think it was validating for the teachers that work there because i think they've known that they're doing great work and when you start to get recognized by your principal i think it's a great thing by the school committee it's a great thing about a superintendent and then suddenly the state commissioner and then suddenly the federal department of education you know what half of one percent of all schools are implement awards in a given year and that includes public and private schools so it's not it's really similar to the best bodies it's really a very very difficult word to get and i can't think of a school more deserving them than the butler they've been that school has been unbelievably dedicated to their kids and the parents been unbelievably dedicated to that oakum unity so going down to d c it was great because part of it was a conference among other  principals and they're also superintendents there and some vice principals and even some teachers and you got to share best practices you know what have you in your school let me tell you about my school but then you also get to meet past blue ribbon award winners and the question is how do you sustain that level of them to get in and how do you continue that excellent work once you've gotten the award and it was interesting to see schools be nominated in awarded multiple times and principals multiple times so i think there was it was a great you know teaching is one of those professions you don't have a lot of travel and you don't have a lot of conferences and you don't have a lot of recognition and i feel like in that one week i got enough for a whole school so my goal is just to bring it back and put the award where really it deserves which is in the butler school in the hands of those teachers so you'll see that clip after we leave today  that nationally within the schools program recognizes public and private elementary middle and high schools based on their overall academic excellence or their progress in closing achievement gaps among students  every year the u s department of education seeks out and for all great great american school of school demonstrating that our students can achieve at high levels mother school in now one of these great schools i would like to introduce former butler principal michael mcallister mr mcallister travel to washington d c two weeks ago to receive the blue ribbon award on behalf of the bottler community he's currently  provide students with the resources they need to reach their greatest inspiration by coming together to honor excellence in education you are recognizing not only the work of institutions but also the work of dedicated individuals teachers administrators in family and all of massachusetts get this award and it's one of the children fifty nine schools in the entire country get the word so what this means is the father is in that top one half of one percent of all schools in the country and getting this award that's kind of a  congratulations on your accomplishments and for rising the challenge of excellence in education you all remind us that through your determination effort anything is possible i wish you and your students continued success and the years ahead and here is most important why he says he says i urge you to continue the challenge to challenge your school to be the very best and i know that mr bad form is going to do you have given him  national blue ribbon school two thousand and sixteen works really hard and it's really nice and we always knew this was a great place to work and to come to school as a parent or guardian or student but it's really nice when someone says you're one of the best that in the whole country so hormonally i want to make sure it's all for i believe i want to make sure i beg every teacher every staff member every parent every guardian everybody from bob who got the best welcome in