we had a teaching and learning highlight scheduled but due to an illness we're going to delay that to a future meeting we will have an enrichment and challenge update a preliminary discussion of the proposed fiscal year sixteen budget  of fiscal year fifteen budget update we then want to begin a preliminary discussion around the calendar for next school year we will have a second reading and hopeful vote of several policy updates will discuss and potentially accept the donation and then we'll entertain other matters and just before we begin we had the sadness of the loss of one of our employees since our last meeting a long time bus driver i think thirty plus years and five thirty five years betty moore's head so if we just have a moment of silence in honor of betty please  thank you so thirty five years thirty five years and he was one of those people that showed up every day over bus love the kids made them feel most of us have had betty drive our kids at one time or another and she was the caring more wonderful local bus driver so she'll be sorely missed her services were today and they were quite touching as terms of how much she's meant to this community really so it was a surprise and a shock and you know it'll be it'll be difficult you know she's just one of those people that's always the air and she was the one that drove the bus with the shamrock on the front everybody would recognize it in great lady meant a lot to our community i'm sure many people in our community knew betty much better than i did but i actually did have a chance to meet her a little bit they stored a sign for us for the spring fling at the taylor school and i got to know betty when i used to go and get the sign a rear and i think she drove many of us for if i'm not mistaken and most recently yes and wouldn't you know what i was coming down south street today and past many bus four and i thought but betty rest in peace i remembered yes you person betty rest in peace it's well for the first time in my six years we don't have a possible visitor because we don't have a possible soul in the room tonight besides those at the table so i will move quickly beyond that  just a little anecdote about betty she would i do not remember but it was one of the favorite stories about her something was going on in the school committee and it upset her so she raced out of her home and came roaring in as a visitor and when she looked down she still had her fuzzy slippers on game and let everybody know how she  q ok we have the minutes from regular meeting december first to take a look at minutes about those minutes now i make a motion that we accept them that motion any further discussion all those in favor five zero thank you very much enrichment and challenge of the most banal yes so you have in your packet as part of our school district bowls as you know we we are we have kept in our joint goals the committee and the administration share the desire to continuously expand our opportunities for richmond challenge both during the school day and beyond the school day so what i've provided for you this month because our update was to be in december is what's been happening this year that's new and  is in addition to anything that's been added over the past two years so if you remember at the end of the school year this past year that was one of my goals to your goals to expand those programs which we did and so in june you got the update of everything that happened to that point and so this literally has everything that's happened in the last four months which expands on our richmond challenge so just to give the public at home but new programs and opportunities that are been added for the current school year new enrichment and challenge ok so if fox were high school and you know we have the new engineering course and we have two sections going of that that's been a great addition to our high school to have two different classes running that the i school advocate program which we've talked about recently and one of these days it will be a teaching i want to highlight of some of the students come and talk about that that provided training and technology leadership for twenty one students in grades one through twelve so one of our new innovative programs i'll say we have a new a p courses studio art we've expanded senior project as remember last year which we're year twenty one students participated and we this year have seventy students who have submitted proposals for the senior project for this coming spring so assuming they all go forward or most go forward that's that's tripling the number of students that we had from year one to two so that's great so it was a real testament to the fact that students really had a positive experience from last year and it communicated that i'm sure to the underclassman yes and i think what's great is they can certainly share with the challenges were as well as the benefits and then make an informed decision about that because it means to enter taking a piece to have to come to school for some of those things so what they have to juggle their job their internship their externship whatever you want to call it but we do have a lot of students interested in having yes so that's great at the earn middle school in the first four months of the school year at less than four months we have two new grade eight electives if you have had students in a fraid you know that's when they start experiencing this idea of electives so they have a new grade a computer science elective which will take place in the second semester and there's a new great music technology elective using the new mix crafts music software and in the the music technology lab that we through capital improvement we upgraded  last about a year ago we've had an expansion of after school clubs and activities to meet students needs and interests and you can see that that along with the engineering course and i school advocates have an asterisk after which means the continuation of those three they are expanding that which they did last year in the going to expand it even more and they're really looking for more things that are more academically oriented rather than you know other more traditional things you might have thought of when they started thirty something years ago the i go elementary school mr stanton has he started last year a principals leadership academy because we're very interested in this idea of student leaderships you can see that in the i school advocate because he that music program see a lot of areas that students take on a leash role is really a great opportunity for them to expand their skills and gaining confidence in terms of how they develop as young men and women so mr stanton started leadership academy which actually is doing developed based on everyone know covey's the seven habits of highly effective people so he's done a lot of work in the last several years on the seven habits of highly effective students the seven habits of happy kids so it really takes all of those pillars of of how to be an effective person in the world and brings it down to the student level so the program actually is built on stephen covey's model of highly effective people and brings down that level so he's expanding that is continuing his model last year so any of the students who are in it in three and four he's going to do a leadership two point zero so that they get to the next level and he's going to bring in another core of grade three and four students who would like to participate and the second pillar for the students in the two point zero if you will is going to focus on digital solutions did is digital citizenship and the technology in social media so he's actually using the students to model for other students out of your sponsible citizens so that's their expansion the taylor elementary school this year will be developing a program very similar to be at the burl school in partnership with this school council so that rather than continuing to add individual clubs and activities they're going to really roll out a whole afterschool richmond program similar to beeping they're calling it blast so that's our update in the first three and a half months of this school year that's quite a list maybe this is so impressive i just i mean what what you've done and accomplished in the first several months and i love this whole idea of each of the elementary schools kind of taking this concept and kind of making it their own whatever however they're trying to kind of meet the needs of the students and i go elementary school again it's what's what's so interesting to me is that at each level we are really focusing on the same kind of core ideas like this leadership piece and again it's not just going to be something new that students in the middle school will come to learn about it will be something that's already being bred you know to them at the elementary level and i think that's really how you have that sustainability throughout a child's you know schooling you know that they're transferring these things and as they're getting older and they're adapting and they're maturing so i just i think that's so exciting i'd love to hear more about that you know i was thinking well i already and school with already the idea that they can and do have the skills they can be leaders and they already have the skills within them and that's really what it's about the book that he wrote about is you know being called the leader in me and so it really is about developing that and if we can send kids on to the middle school with that mindset i think to coupled with all of the developmental challenges socially as well in the middle school i think that this will be really interesting to watch over time how this impacts our students and our surveys maybe even because they're going to be entering that you know that that middle school time where there's you know they face a lot of challenges and if they have some of these you know core leadership skills you know would just be interesting to see how that kind of gets manifested down the road so i just i think that's really exciting so i look forward to hearing  in an effort to help and not affect what you've already done and are doing this i'm just asking it's great to see the senior project trouble more and more does the faculty or the student body need more project from its conception to the final execution right and so there's a lot of moving parts and do we need more out of this time i would say the nice thing about the expansion the senior project is if you remember com with our taking on the school to career when it are still very full time as a member of our staff so that really has helped i'm sure it will take a lot more work to put this many students than it would to anyone but we'll see it's early they just submitted the proposal so we have to wait and see how many students actually enter it finally but i don't really think so because she says she's as you know very good at finding places for kids but kids actually are responsible for finding their own placement as well so they can go to the er for resources but a lot of our students if you give them credit they already know what kind of thing they want to do and they can chase after their opportunities as well so it becomes a group effort and on that same line of thought if i may thank you mike stanton's piece with the social media responsibility training which i'm sure is already you know built or at least moving on it's funny i just talked to three parents in the last week who were asking me as a school committee member if we had any similar things for parents in other words like one of the things i want outside of the apple product line is to be able to track my that parents need to know as well about the social responsibility and i'm not preaching i'm just wondering if if down the road we would it might consider implementing something for the parents as well that works in concert with what the students are learning what an excellent segue searching for the exhibit so the exhibit a yes that's exactly yes we talked to the last meeting and one of the things that julia was going to talk about this evening was the rollout of the e mail and the lessons and things that we're doing to prepare kids really the digital citizenship and that responsibility because it is a great responsibility so these procedures that we were able to obtain from the federal trade commission for free are brochures that are being used in war you're huddles for high school kids i brought one for each of you too and they're also going home with every child in seventh grade through twelfth night with fifth and sixth graders how they were talking about a lot of the content that's in here but we just felt it was more developmentally appropriate for seventh and eight so this information and then also to your point we had katie greer come for the parent evening last year she spoke a lot of those things in a lot of different pieces that were there and we do have our parent technology night scheduled for march that ten national digital learning day is a later this year it's actually around the fifteenth i think of march but we're going to have our parent technology night on tuesday march the tenth and we'll be talking about digital citizenship and those things during that evening as well thanks i'll just pass these each way so you can have an extra copy in addition to the one that maybe your children bring in bill you did a nice piece about the i advocate in the paper i think and maybe that's something also for the comments when richmond challenge update i'm just very impressed with everything that is going on and i think it's exciting i love that work at a computer science elective in the eighth grade i think it will be very popular with the kids you know it's just lottery systems and i am sure it'll be a lot of kids first choice in the music technology as well and i second everything katie said as well about the leadership academy that at the end of the year i was writing it up is we've had this is a goal for a few years in richmond challenge i took it as a personal goal but what i really like is when you realize when you have that moment where you realize that when you focused on something we collectively a focus on something few years ago it was wellness it's this it's some other things and then you see that it's become part of just how we do business that no one has to say to anyone to be there remember we're trying to expand richmond challenge i just have to call for the updates and everybody has one i think that when you realize there's become part of the how just the regular way we do business to constantly see more expansion that that's what makes me happy and so i'm going i just want to speak on i just love music technology program i'm a very big fan of music obviously i think i took almost every course offered the middle school when they first started offering electives your musical with the spanx behind the music of her interrupt piano guitar and like here at the high school taking those extra music classes like music theory this year and jazz choir i just love that they're starting that at a younger age kind of like composing it's such a personal thing that i enjoy and i just love that it's being offered to younger kids there at the middle school is that that's a great she's the  and that's another example the earlier we give kids a little bit earlier experiences some of these things and i like also i've heard so much great feedback like from like students and all like my friends who have done the senior project and who are a p now they absolutely love it the people who did to see the senior project last year loved it i've never heard anything negative from it at all and a p r they're absolutely so like grateful for and everything expect those people who are all for art like it just like course for students who really that is their new area and their talent and their brilliance the a p studio art really gets them to that next level so they can really don't want to end with a stronger portfolio but it just gives them so many things to to do so i think that's a great example about you know challenging challenging oneself could be in any area it could be an area you just feel like you need to be more challenge or if you're not as good as you want to challenge yourself that it could be in the area that you really are have exceptional talent in what would it take to just get you to that next level so anything else i just remembered sitting here five six years ago when other members of the table were really pressing on this as a topic of focus and i like what you said not only do we have a list of new programs just this year but it's really becoming systemic yes so that's a that is a great accomplishment not just the sheer but over the years i think in the the student feedback is the icing on the cake so it's it's great that we offer so many expanded opportunities for our kids and we appreciate that so thank you to you and i mean the entire staff are putting focus on that i just want to say as well i agree with you i think as you were talking about what's different it's the culture and i think it really is led by the leadership of you amy and bill in the sense of really trying to support and expand what students are looking for and looking outside of what the maybe typical educational programming is i mean obviously all these things are part of that book but the expansion of it like you said for those students and we had we know that for instance aren't we had so we've had so many students in the past right who have won awards and even those who that have not we know that that program is so expansive right now so this a p class is giving students another opportunity to really be a challenge to to really have a place where they can feel that what is of value to them is being recognized by the district they live in because we are providing these kinds of opportunities for them so we talk a lot about it but i just thought it was important to recognize and importantly i think have teachers who are willing to take on almost anything if kids are interested we have teachers will say i'll do that or i have a particular right talent i'd like to share so that's where we often see our staff step forward and say i'll do that i'll do that i'll work with those kids on that so i think that's part of the culture that preceded all of this i think an awareness that we want to expand is there but you know we have great people who are just willing to step forward beyond the school day and say i'd be happy to do you know the kids really want it so they'll make it happen so i love that our people we're offering so much more than you have to you know and for a small little school system like ours for our children to have all these opportunities  i'm ok mr you know budget well well well so while bill's getting to me i would point ready to give you a little bit of background as everyone knows this is our time where we present the preliminary budget and i'm going to say especially this year i want to emphasize the word preliminary look i think there are a couple of things we're still watching and so as you know it's early it's in december but this is one o the first iteration of a budget that's presented publicly there are a couple things that you'll see in here that you might have looked in in a little bit surprised by and some other things that you expected to see i think our goal tonight is to explain where we are with the budget now what are some of the changes that you see and why in the rationale behind that but there is you know an area too that we are watching that will explain as as we get along so even though every year this is the preliminary time they're there this truly might be preliminary we might come back in january with some were made or some one thoughts about some of this because this is based on everything we know as of what we know today so we're starting with presentation i'll do the intro and then bill takes over with all the fine numbers in the explanation and all the detail that he has much more interest in so here we go so the time budget time line is you know we start meeting in usually late october with the townsite folks with tell me and enter finance director and they put out the timetable for the development of the budget for the next fiscal year so we had our leadership team meeting this time very just past october just in early november as you know the committee have the joint meeting with the board of selectmen to look at the revenue forecast so that we could see what was coming up in terms of incoming revenues for the town and how that looked like it was all going to balance out our budget request went to the town finance director and we have a public presentation at the school committee meeting room and that's actually fifteen twelve fifteen fourteen such be a fifteen tonight school cleaning so as you know you have one more meeting in early january where we'll still be talking budget we would like to come back in january meeting with any questions of further information that you might need after tonight so i'm going to say that at the end but i want to make sure i say that the beginning to so you can think be thinking about what your questions advisory committee by the end of this week we'll be going over a detailed budget with them answering their questions which could bring up something we'd like to share with you in january as well and then you will tell meeting is when the budget is approved so our budget message part of it hasn't changed in that in that the overall intent of the budget is to maintain the same level of educational services which we think are pretty high for students as we just discussed while working with in a very reasonable level with the municipal funding in the town budget framework we've been pretty successful for many years now working within the budget framework of the town and we have great relationships with them so ongoing communication with them really truly helps and that's very consistent with how we've historically approached the budget here in town also thank you to the community has always supported the the schools the public schools so i want to make sure i don't forget to say that as you know our strategic plan is new this year to me so we're in year one of a new three years teaching plan so these overall overarching broad objectives have changed from the bus budget message from past years so as you can see that the budget priorities really reflect those four brother objectives that are current and that's to continue to offer dynamic learning experiences within a regular rigorous curriculum that promote critical thinking creativity communication and collaboration and foster high levels of achievement for all students by preparing them to be responsible global citizens the second overarching objective is to continue to strengthen school culture ensuring that students staff and parents and all stakeholders feel valued safe and have a voice the third objective is to enhance district technological capabilities and infrastructure to provide an increasingly safe and supportive physical and academic school environment in the last just to maintain strong support for public education within our community so the the rest is this budget intends to preserve our very reasonable class sizes which the community holds at high value preserve our current programs and services to students and i think you can see from the last item on richmond challenge that a lot of the program expansions we do really doesn't cost a lot of money it's about will and an effort and also we always want to move our academic and strategic initiatives forward so you'll see a couple of things in the it will help us to do that as we are going to go back to that point when we get to the specific changes as everyone knows technology cost more and more in is more and more focus of what we do as a supportive environment for the learning not as a means in and of itself and it also enables us to meet all state and federal guidelines across all aspects of public education and as usual it doesn't address all the needs of the district it really this budget addresses the need the highest priority needs as we've identified them this fall so what's new and you're going to see the specifics in the budget when bill goes over it so when it comes to meeting the current needs and the shifts of needs in the district so what we have you will see is new is we would like to increase one full time equivalent position technology integration specialist i think you know right now we have two that we share among all five schools so one of our tech integration specialists misread travels across all three elementary schools and we're going to keep that the same miss greenstein shares the herne and the high school she was the teaching learning how late tonight they will come back in january she's amazingly talented but she also serves schools with about sixteen hundred kids and a couple hundred staff members in it so what we would like to accomplish in the f y sixteen budget is to add another secondary tech integration specialist so that we have one full time at the high school one full time at the middle school where most of the tech integration is quite complicated and complex and then we will leave the shared elementary tech integration specialist so that's our biggest priority need in terms of the elementary mass specialists that with this was a position that you as a committee first supported i'm going to say about eight or nine years ago because it preceded when i came back in two thousand and seven we had one in place i know with the time when they came back so right now we have two point five elementary math specialist spread across three schools and the point five is only this year because we got an increase in our title one funding that we actually didn't expect so we added the point five mass specialist our goal is to have three so we have just one elementary math specialist in each of the three schools so that we we reduce the travel and that person as you know that position was created to offer in richmond challenge to students who can be challenging math and also to provide intervention for students who need some more work on the math standards so if the if the grant stays as it is which we really won't know until july then we would our goal here is to have one at each school if for some reason that grant goes back down which is no way to predict at the point that we would be able to be able to preserve what we have currently which is two point five so this could be a preservation or it could be to get us toward the goal of having three be able to know that we spent a lot of time in the last month with all departments on all levels bill and i looking at class sizes looking at student teacher ratios and trying to make sure that we have allocated staff where the greatest needs are and so that we can repurpose or shift our human resources around to meet where we are now so one of the things that came out of this when we met with mr massey is they is he and his abrams had a lot of data that they each presented to us separately and in different ways that showed the student and teacher ratios in the music program at the middle school can be as high as eighty eight to one so there are some hearing aids in the day that there's more coverage for that and there are other periods that there really isn't so it could range anywhere from what you would think of as reasonable class size all the way up to some of our bigger performance groups are quite large so except for most will see most of the day at the  teacher that they all day long and then we have three or four others that do come in for part of the day so what this would really accomplish is it would continue to grow the program in the middle school and the data that we collected even though you know our population is trickling a little bit but our music participation is increasing at the middle school so kids are staying in the band groups a little bit longer than they might have before and so that has really expanded the student teacher ratios to a point where we decided this year we should really address that so we're suggesting the addition of a point for me as a teacher for the front of her middle school and that really would be plenty in my last conversation with steve he said if we could do that that would actually we have one teacher who travels across three levels high school middle and elementary that would also correct that problem reduce the the traveling but more importantly it would really outfit the herne with the number of entities that are needed to meet the capacity of students enrolled in a music program at that school and according to mr massey that's that's really all that the music program needs in there that would really put us in fine stead so in looking at the class sizes and the opportunities we have to wear on roman is trickling a little bit as you know and looking at all of the departments class sizes we went through this with a fine tooth comb with with everyone we really do think that we can reduce an english position in a math position at foxborough high school and i will say that the reasons behind out a couple of things one we used in the early days of m cas and  forward we were offering a lot of sections of m cas prep and cas review and we don't because of the nature of the the kids are doing better in the general curriculum we've changed some of the standards so we're not offering as many of those classes as we did before so i would say it's a it's good so a combination of that and that the trickle down role that we believe that this is the time that we could do that so we look at all those the math position i would say is is going to require a little bit more careful scrutiny in the next couple couple of weeks we've had ongoing conversations about that we do think that we could reduce a position at foxborough high school due to increasing in romans because i schools drinking just  every year and looking at across all of the departments we kind of feel the same way about english but not as strongly it's a you know the english department seems like a pretty confident move the math department we're going to have to look and we may not know exactly until a little bit even longer than that but we have an early budget season so at this point we have met with those departments i've met with those two departments so this isn't a surprise to anybody we've looked at the numbers there are also some moves that can be made within the department that doesn't mean to i don't want anyone listening to think the class size is going to be huge in english and math department they're not going to really go up go up dramatically at all because there are some things that we can either not offer as many sections of don't need them anymore and so i don't want anyone to interpret this as the suddenly going to be a huge expansion of the class size english or math because that isn't what we believe to be true but i would say that with confidence in the english department i would say it with a lot of confidence for math but that's going to require careful attention in the next couple of weeks and we're all on board it's very transparent so we'll see how that plays out but there was there were some unknowns when it comes to things electives that students pick when they do the course election that could surprise us so kids  the core selection in february and that's when we know which sections are going to be offered and which aren't based on what the kids sign up for so there could still be a surprise in there when it comes to where kids are but there's no way for us to guess that right now so we may have to adjust and we'll figure out a way to adjust at that time but we won't know that until the end of february and that's true of every year is no different every year and obviously we have some targeted expense adjustments and bill will speak a little bit so obviously we always have incremental costs what's driving that we have increased cost of tuition reimbursement and that's that's a good thing if our teachers are taking more and more courses to find you fine tune their craft that's a good thing contracted in there it's a contractual obligation bill speaks you more about recurring costs with software network licensing and being with requirements has been a lot of upgrading in that and that also will cost more we're offering that many more i mean i guess to brian map every year that's true so we have a little bit more expense in student programs and leadership opportunities in the middle and high school talk about the telephone cost me gets that we obviously all the staple items printer chawner if you're buying anything for your house you know all that copper cost more we do transport homeless students it's a federal mandate and that costs that cost more and more each year and we do have almost students that either became homeless in foxborough or not living in foxborough in either case if they are declared homeless each district whether it's the the home district or the district they are now living in there's a fifty fifty cochere for transportation of the federal law and then we have some aging equip in the music department that needs replacing that we typically don't put in every year but every once in a while kind of like the curriculum cycle of the computer replacement cycle every seven or eight years or so you need to replace them aging equipment in the music department and this is the year that so what are some examples of needs we might have that we're not requesting at this time and once again we've done this the last couple  years increased the textbook adoption line so we really as bill would have said we're really putting the money in the budget we're really is going to be spent and we're not going to put it we don't think it's going to be spent so there's a lot more online resources now we're not buying as many textbooks so we've kept that line item pretty flat for the last four years or so and we intend to do the same we will need additional computers or mobile devices for to address the future park the federal national assessments and those will be administered online in the middle and high school in the spring and we decided to keep the paper version for the elementary students a couple of reasons we don't have full labs at all three schools we don't have beryl but more importantly the younger kids haven't really had a lot of practice with taking online assessment so we'd like to get a look at the test and keep it in a format that they feel more comfortable in because they're pretty young we need more interactive whiteboards for the middle and high school you know if we had started when everyone else started we probably be fully operational by now but ten years ago you weren't acquiring interactive whiteboards at all that wasn't one of the entire district seven years ago actually so we have eighty two percent of the classrooms at the ahearn have them or they have a short throw projector either or and we're ok with either or but we would like to finish getting the middle school and we only a fifty eight percent of the classrooms similarly outfitted at the high school and now we're at the point where some of the originals are breaking down and  to be replaced so it's all starting to catch up with us we are not addressing in this budget the possibility of needing another social social worker either just wide or particularly the high school we've talked a lot of this table about mental health needs social motional needs increase every year and that's true everywhere in the country would say that we're no different from all of the school districts so we're in the process of discussing whether we need another person to address those needs you may see that come up next year but we're really using this year to collect data on how those services are delivered and what the caseload is and we just don't have the data yet so i don't recommend anything that we don't have any data for to show with the need is so we've got a great person this year very talented but she's also new to us so we will we'll see at the end of this year if we still feel the same and you probably will see them that way i just have a question how many social workers do we have right now at the high school one at each level basically we want at the high spring we went to school one of the middle school and one that does both one that does a couple of different jobs at the elementary school one being of the so short function but not a full time person and so we're looking to ten potentially at this at the high school possibly next year right so sometimes what we put on this list are things that have been discussed right but they didn't make it to the top of my priority list and you know we've never gone for with a budget that puts everything on the list that we've ever done it's not a it's not necessarily a  everything we want to budget we do right we haven't ever done that so this is something we spent a lot of time discussing but without having the data we're not ready to put it forward but it does seem on the ground it does seem like you need i'm just struck by the example that you just use about white boards i'm not equating the two obviously but i mean you know i'm just recognizing that technology was something that we took our time to start to develop and i just want to make sure that social services is not going to be something that we're going to take our time because these are going to be you know this will be time lost for students right so we just want to make sure so if you find you know that we need to put more direction of that on that that i just want to make sure i know you'll come back to the committee because i know there are so many every could change you're right that's an area that could change within a span of a month depending on what's happening right and i know you're trying to be you know juggle all of these  obviously to be fiscally responsible for them but again just that's just a concern so it's definitely a need i just don't know if it rose to that level yet or going to collect the data that we should put  as we all know we don't have free universal full day kindergarten however we have very little market in foxborough for they have to a program so i just want to remind the committee that we have only one half day section that we're running this year i so we're basically bussing families students of families from all three of the elementary schools into one have to a class at the i go so pretty much we're getting to the point where the market isn't there for half day pretty much everyone in town wants a full day program which is tuitions base there is a there is a sliding scale for family income but at some point i think my my goal and i'm going to bring the separate now before we get to the detail i thought maybe the timing was right at our next meeting in january in a neutral way to come to the table and explain what the cost would be for free universal kindergarten with no tuition not to make a recommendation but just to make a little bit more public what how much we take in intuition and what would it really take if we went for that grant would still be in place but the cost of it is really what we take in intuition a few of the factors so i think it's a good idea bill and i've been talking about this with i think it's a good idea for the first meeting in january when we're smack in the middle of the budget season to just lay out what does that mean because we get a lot of questions about why do we saw for tuition and i think just in a neutral way to say here's the cost of keeping it to ition based and here's what it would cost if we just as a factual information to be in that factual information session could you also just for our kind of orientation to understand what other districts do as well we know what everybody does a state because i think that would be helpful to kind of put it in the context of maybe whatever it is that you're going to address for us we always like to know excellent not that we're going to do anything necessarily but again we always like to know what other districts are doing in this is our sixth year over that seven year period we have one when full day kindergarten was first offered how many half day sessions were we offering in the beginning is a strong seven out of ten so and we haven't have to yes because i know i remember the first year grant i was hoping for sixty percent the interest rate and we end up with seventy which is more than we thought and then the next year went to eighty and then and now we're up to greater than ninety and so that the gotten experience so that's our free right and we really are not interested in going towards a model where if you only want half you come to school with all your friends go in the same class and then at some point somebody says you and your friend leave and everybody else gets to stay it's not good for five year olds to do that so we need to reserve a half day class somewhere in the district if we're going to continue to charge tuition what is the enrolment of that  explain what that would be and you can certainly take it under advisement and think about it the department of education has sifry points which the school and drop are to operability framework that's what s i f stands for and the this is been going on for a number of years and they continue to not deliver in a timely fashion when they promise it but what it basically is is we have more requirements that edge up every single year and the eventual goal is to make the data sharing between the public schools and the department of ed seamless so that's what i we have mandated department of education training for teachers of any student who for whom english is a second language we don't have many kids in the district but you never know what classes are going to end up in all teachers now in order to relicense in the future need to have their shelter in english immersion indorsement which is that they take in this training on solid techniques to teach children for home first english is not their first language that's been interesting because teachers are chicks who tr to get into spots that about me that is not offering enough slots so you get shut out a little bit nightmare but it's still on a man katie's thinking with the interactive whiteboards these are an expense i don't know what that number is off the top of my head yet but is there like some kind of you know comparable numbers we have like do we have the right number of  severely deficient now that adoption has taken place in the if you will industry so i don't know where we sit on that you know literally i don't know and the other question i had was maybe i misunderstood you devon i apologize if i did the school stuff you said the dio we is slow to come if you will is a four years ago they plan to have their end so they develop so that we just had to do our stuff and their end is now full so i guess my question to that point is have we spent money on stuff doing our due diligence that's now mothballed or gathering dust that they can't implement yet and do i think it's you know i think the opposite more is that they told us a few years ago we would have to be prepared to do x and y but then we had to wait for them to do something on their end so if you remember the the early days not in the early days it was when i was the system but we had the the federal grant dollars the top race of the top money we had put some of the race the top money aside to address this issue ok and then the next year and we did that three years in a row and then they hadn't done their part so we actually couldn't spend it on that so we reallocated spent on other things that we had put in a race the top opposed so basically it's that they tell us to hurry up and get ready and we plan and know what we're going to do and they don't do there and so we're stalled out but we haven't spent any money that isn't when it's more or less that it's just a guessing game they really district wide adopted so every elementary classroom was an interactive whiteboards projector the middle school obviously started picking up on it pretty quickly after that because of the way the curriculum were changing going into it  and you know what we've done to the best we can do is if we do have you know some budget money at the end of the year for a fortune of a logical or something like that where we can outfit a classroom or two or three and then try to do that yearly it's that's the only way that the earn quite honestly it got to where it isn't even that high school has gotten to the point that it is because we didn't have specific funds to do that the only advantage to be honest with you in the fact that we are a little bit behind the curve is is is that the new technology which is not touchscreen interactive white only be it's a it's a it's software can arsenic so we basically where we had to buy a smart board in the past if we wanted that for the math area with these new the new equipment can run smart software and be on the smart technology so we're practically able to do anything that we could do with a multiple level of whiteboards across the district so i think we've we've accomplished a lot of goals but it is when you look at the number of rooms we did this year as an example we had a little money left in the year we did an entire department  but again we have to do five to six classrooms just to do that because teachers move from room to room and if they don't have the same technology available to him then you end up with a problem that can't teach a course the way they just did for class a for class b so we have to be very you know dialed in our stars how are we going to implement these this package unless we have the money to do the whole thing which really at this point don't so i think you know we're trying to do it in and as organized fashion as we can and you know we've made good headway in the last couple years but i think it's really going to be sixteen hundred dollar unit is used to be like two thousand dollars to for the old style now it's down to sixteen hundred for the new stuff so but there are some content classes ins and departments in some classrooms that don't need the whole interactive white but they're happy with the short to a projector right which interfaces with the computer and that that's enough so we're saying either or we're not saying that every room suddenly has to have you know the whole set up so we're very careful about what what they actually need and not we're not going overboard in providing equipment to somebody we use so who are thoughtful working with them saying do you just want to short the project or do you need the whole set up and it really often depends on what they teach and what software is available that supports that do you guys have a perspective on whether more classrooms need more technology or whether you feel but we're ok while some classes don't need them but more so i think english classes they  sometimes need them but some of the old ones don't work as well because the pens only stop connecting and then you have to reconnect it but the touchscreen ones which are in the math department are wonderful they are really nice  student can just go up there and then when you're solving a problem you can just go right on the board which is very helpful but some classes just don't need them right but that late that that's a whole like department that doesn't need them but departments such as like math and science stuff like that would need them absolutely right yeah so social studies for example so so the department has not asked to have every interest because they're doing a lot of content that they're using to project but they're not necessarily having kids what would solve problems so it's a little bit different in how it's deliberate and i agree with that like for example  the music department has like no need for like a whole smart board and in the classroom but something like for a class like a p can they take like mr charpentier uses it every single day to teach us their power points and their problems and everything and my math teacher uses it as carlson pre calculus every single day while we don't really need that unlike french and english or something that so i think it all depends like department really so i'm going to try to summarize what you guys are so it sounds like you want to fix the ones we have but we don't have a lot of classrooms where you really wish you had one so fair because the classrooms that we now are they have them are wonderful but then the cost of that don't happen they don't need them thank you we do have classes that in quarter so sign language foreign language you know we went through an upgrade equipment wise on that we're going to go through a new upgrade on software on it we tried something to work as well we want to we're trying a second one right now which seems to be the language latin language lab so it's it really is department by department what type of technology do we need to make this really kind of work properly so i think we've done a good job again not just rushing throwing stuff out but looking at each department prioritizing with what the needs are but it's nice for the public also to hear the number at the end so that so nobody's fantasizing about a twenty thousand dollar piece of commercial grade equipment which i can under two grand and the faculties familiar with how to use this technology in the students a e how to interact with it as well so it's comforting to see the prudence and how we're doing i just didn't know if we were like grossly behind or right in the middle or was a little behind grossly you know ok thanks i didn't mean to p you know we're trying to maintain if not increase some of our current offerings obviously anything we do with increasing you know computer science corps as we did a couple years ago with video lab all that type of changes are always come through the budget process relative to that class sizes it had have really been the key i think to to foxborough at least what i hear from most of the parents i know with our kids going through the classes were a little bit larger at the time they went through but i think the the nice you know the nice thing with the sizes the factual curly's maintaining is i think the kids are getting the most they can dismiss that younger levels which is where the critical side of this whole component is special education obviously  is always a topic i think we do a very good job in this time you know i think back to arlene gruber and right now with the center and so you know we're very fortunate we're only with about twenty kids outside of the district we have some very good programs internally in the district they do cost us money but obviously we were able to do that more efficiently and i think give a better offering to the children but we have to take that all into consideration with all the budget and then it's the supply side of it i think you know most people look at these budgets you know i always laugh at the the different terminology ground up zero you know zero based budgeting in effect we always have and i said this you know for the last three years i've been here we do start our our single lowest point  starting with our sellers and we do that by person so there is no you know just actually my dollars for english math or something it's every single teacher that we have throughout the district what are their steps what are the razor going to be do we have someone leaving someone coming in to replace are we doing some type of modification so we have all the the back up to those that for the entire salary side as you know that's probably close to eighty five percent of our budget systems our side so you know what you really have that nailed down you're kind of know where you're going there as far as the the expense side though you know we really do try to keep a reasonable level expenses i know having a wife to teach is another district where they really don't have the expense money really puts a big burden on teachers to get the job done if you don't have the resources within the classroom so i think fox was very fortunate in that fashion that you know they've the teachers when they need something we make sure they have the appropriate tools to get the job done you know if far as this goes as you as we talked earlier  you know we're presenting it here and then you know we'll have a standard of four to five i think you may all remember that our budget starts with one hundred twenty five thousand dollars docked in our salary accounts that was something that was put in place years ago by the outcome and what it really does is it says that we know that there's going to be retirements obviously in december i have no idea who is retiring or how many of them to be it really requires us to hit in a good year a minimum of four to five depending on what we're losing if you're losing you know in areas like the mass in the sciences you don't have the luck of getting in lower level ones that are very talented to move your programs forward so sometimes we're  taking a trade off when we lose somebody who's retiring and you don't get any savings out of it and sometimes you know you are fortunate you bring in a younger you know a teacher at the lower end of the scale and losing someone on the upper end so that hundred twenty five thousand is a mark then who are bringing in and sometimes it's not a you know a reduction so that's a challenge but i'll thank the town for my little summer salary game so if i can ok i think that again speaks to the thoughtfulness of hiring a teacher based on their qualifications yes and that it's not just about a dollar figure it is and we also say let's get the best person we can that's right that's what our kids to learn but then it is just me that answers everybody else just gets the best person they can you know and i just have to worry about how that translates in the saving since hundred twenty five thousand was already removed right so it's when summer got a little close  and i and i did this exercise for double last year we are going to run into a couple years that's not this year but i believe two years from now it's going to be very tight because we have very few teachers that are in that class that area and try our power from retirement less t just retire early so it's going to get challenging in that particular year or two that we run and i think it might start this year i'm just going to make a little prediction because it's really my peer generation that we've talked to and a half been around one nine hundred eighty one to remember that when the property capped a lot of educators lost their job and every enjoyed to patient because of it that's my generation so i will tell you that it could it could be this year that we first see the squeeze where we don't actually have four to five the time and so we'll see but i know that i don't have a lot of age peers right now in the district at all and when and people here on the retirement say here that you know some of people even think we have a higher number than the reality is that really has to be teachers if it's at assistance or  anything like that that the dollar values aren't the same you know how to do so you know take two or three of those to make up for even actually more than that the to make it for something you know one of the other things in the budget process obviously to the best we can trying to determine what the grants and revolving accounts can because this budget is a difficult budget in the sense that it's an all in budget which basically says day one we're referring to every expense that we believe we're going to spend during the year and we're trying to account for all of the revenue and it's a little easier on the towns i think we've got a great working relationship and rand has done a great job as far as really predicting he tends to be conservative in his projection so we're we tend to you know when we get to the budget  so you know we've run from some years where the grants are gone you know downward some where they're going upward as as this particular year had we had one grant that was dropped fortunately was a small amount we had one grant that was brought on for almost the same size and then we had the the the title one which gave us that the ability for that half a mathematician had that not happened obviously we would have been able to do that we would have had the funding for the revolving accounts you know a number of years ago they were obviously considerably higher than where they are today over the last three years working with you guys especially i've used a lot of the money in a revolving account not only for our budget process but to do some of the work around the school that you've wanted me to the turf field the security camera money that we've put some away for the track renovation over the urn was almost fully funded out of revolving accounts so over the last couple years we've spent over two hundred thousand dollars doing things that are nonrecurring you know got  directly you know curriculum based but using revolving house to do it and pull down our remote rocky balboa comes quite a bit to the point where i again even randy looking at him now doesn't seem to be as concerned too that there are a number level that they used to be you know where we've really kind truck those way down and i'll give you a breakdown that the next meeting so you can see how it's all worked out through there but again i think it's the appropriate use in where the town's benefiting from the fact that we are using that money in that sense our  budget is now thirty one million seven hundred thousand four hundred thirty five dollars it's an increase of one million one hundred ninety one thousand eight hundred fifty dollars or four point zero five percent over last year gives you a quick little of comparison of last since two thousand and eight forward and you know as you can see we're we're basically for the last three years and then in that roughly one point two million dollar range again the largest portion as you'll see in the detail portion of your projects is in the salary of contractual increases we are running a two percent cola increase in this this is the last year of the teacher's contract so for  so and obviously every year that here they go with steps locked out one third of our teachers are on the top step two thirds of our teachers are still moving through steps so obviously they get that increase on the staff side as well i think in two thousand and nine eight or nine and actually i think i've got a graph shortly in front of this but again we're we're fairly consistent in our district programs our preschool has stayed fairly consistent again the preschool is really based on students with needs that are three and four years old and they are determined in testing to to have a requirement that advanced you know capabilities within the school system at an earlier age might be able to to help them with and then for every one of those trials there's here is to be a peer child also on the peer child that's that is a paid tuition at the parent wants to put a man but it gives them a chance to have some socialization and also be in a program that has an educational environment for a child that's either three or four years old maybe forward so that's why that enrollment states pretty consistent you know fortunately that the level of children with the extra need that the younger level has taken system within the town as you can see here is really that enrollment thing as i said two thousand and six i guess was the actual high year in the town you know i said this last year and i and i guess i'm i was a little ahead of where we are but then again i'm seeing it in my own neighborhood and i can't imagine it's not happening across a town there's four houses for sale in my neighborhood and all younger families are kids and it's all it's all you know my generation a little older that's moving out because they just have large homes and need the space anymore so i think that you're going to start seeing that type of theory a resurgence there is not a lot of building going in time so it's not a matter of we're going to have the one hundred house developments going into place we've had things of of the doctor or hospital  that have happened but those are pretty mature at this point most of those houses are built hartnett's that are there are you know some rent and some are rented but you know it's not a lot more going on the sopranos and some smaller homes going behind that area but it's not again surges so i think you know in in that particular sense where we don't have a pent up demand on housing that's going to all the sudden flourish within the school the school district or the town but again i think what you're going to see is is said from a from a position point of view you know the increase of the the half mast specialist again we hope that to make it a full bit of if the grant funding does get lost and it was back to the level it was previously then obviously we don't have the the other half of that funding it would just builds to maintain where we are today you know middle school having the second integration technologist and again this is to your point steve this is extremely important with the more technology we put out there whether it's the you know foreign language labs or the one interactive whiteboards within the classrooms the integration specialists really are what's making that whole program successful because the more technology put out there the more we have to teach you know the teachers how to use  repeatedly and get the most out of it and even working with students using different components of that it's critical that we can put all the technology we want to know in the world in schools and if you don't really support it then we're wasting our time good option adoption is everything goals that have been prioritized salaries again no big surprise is the biggest portion of the the increase is coming out of the salary side of a million sixty seven thousand one hundred eighteen thousand is in the actual expense side of it and down below are just some of the larger category items anything over two thousand i think in line within the budget you know instructional materials really throughout the district we've we've held the know for eight hundred students i think it's it's not something that's shocking and either the material or supply accounts and the high school really did put forward our need for the interactive whiteboards and again not taking a chance here of not to the right to twenty seven hundred dollars that's that's in there for that one of the things we're running into obviously as we're upgrading equipment especially on the high school level in the science labs and stuff is that a lot of this new stuff in the electronic microscopes all need to be calibrated and a d on a pretty regular basis it's not something we had had in the budget and we've had to kind of scrape by to get some of that stuff done over the last couple years so basically what i'm putting in is just about five thousand dollars that should be able to keep us on somewhat of a regular program and redoing all of that i mean every year and even if it's only we do kind of a series of this year's series next year just to keep it in and good of operations that way as deb said the federal requirement on the homeless transportation we had budgeted last year for twenty five thousand twenty five thousand dollars actually in coming in at thirty seven thousand dollars this is the third year in a row that it's increased pretty significantly we do get or the town does get a portion of this back based on our filings to get last year we get about fifty percent of it back to the general fund so we track this obviously very closely so that we can put that money forward as far as i was a recoverable but unfortunately still to put the  they've been going up fairly steadily between three and four percent and you know there's not a lot of negotiations that we can do obviously some of these programs are very highly specialized and so while we obviously will complain of different kind of levels and what they're with their cost increases are especially if they're above what we would consider normal for one of the districts and suffer getting you know we really don't have a lot of opportunity to to refuse to to pay the differences we don't have any more students going you know not just that they're going out and it buys reese come out from the state level to them about how much they can go up because they will cap how much they can go up and i will say that they take every advantage to go up to whatever the case i that's the way it is one of the things that we started this last summer and you're aware of that we were spending a lot of our c i p money on as far as it was the district was concerned was the upgrade to the entire technology network and  what that brings obviously is going up to the new system for the the the backbone of all of our schools much higher speed much higher throughput it also cost just like you have a home if you decide to go for the highest level of bandwidth for your internet at home that you're paying a little more than you do on a lower level well do that across five buildings and twenty seven hundred students and and you obviously you have an additional cost i think i have to be honestly i think aaron has done a phenomenal job working with  fries and he actually got us pricing on that that is considerably better than what comcast and a couple others were offering so now that has been brought into the land we are fiber throughout the district we are ten gig to every building at this point right now and we're just now getting into all the switch here which actually gives the functionality classrooms are short here so to be honest with a five thousand dollar increase and what we were paying for internet is actually very little have the capability change we're just about to really launch one thing he has noted though is that we you know obviously with all our licenses every every piece of equipment is building every piece of software no matter how specialized i is has a licensing requirement we're no different than any business or any home technically we're supposed to make sure everything is licensed appropriately fortunately a lot of our licenses are based on being a school and you get grouped or bundled you know licensing so it's not like you pay one to one but you do have to pay for the you know enterprise type licensing throughout and we did find a number of things that weren't up to date on our licensing that were so we're not making sure we have all that  corrected and we also found some that we weren't you know we didn't buy the right licensing level to really give us all the tools we wanted and that would obviously help us get rid of some of the things that we don't need anymore if we if we can solve it now microsoft's a perfect example again we're kind of evaluating that but we've put a few thousand dollars more into hopefully kind of take care of all of the little pick ups that we have in the process right now some of the stuff we're finding one of the big advantages we had as a  was what they call the rate discounts in this was really driving down our telephone costs are up to district and we're saving one point as much as forty thousand dollars a year because of the federal e rate discount now what they've done is they've changed their focus from being just general things like telephones and web access and then what filtering and stuff like that to really trying to go to a focus thing on technology we're at that point already so most of the districts have already realized that was their biggest bottleneck and have already gotten past that now they're going to offer all this money to go in that direction but the way they're doing it too is based on the level or tear that you fall within as a school district where we fall and what they would classify as one of the least needy the cities get the big crowds so almost all the money will be sucked up by the the bigger cities before you even have a chance of getting down to us so what that means to us is effectively we're losing eighteen thousand dollars he just comes next year  in an area that we were always able to get our bills knocked down and we had to make up the difference in our process and again the tuition reimbursement by contract you know we did do a three year stepped  increase that we would allow for both teachers and assistance to get a look at more money towards their requirements of the contract phase of it and it was about two thousand so it sounds like there's some basically outside of town funding we have three different buckets of money that we've been using the revolving accounts as i mentioned earlier state federal grants and circuit breaker and as you can see  might so we're just hoping we stay just over that bar for at least another year so that we can do the slow increase of what we need for the manson but we'll see right the the revolving accounts as you can see we're going to be a  little less dependent on it we had a a large chunk of money back about four years five years ago that came in for from the spoke program hern and so we've been trying to just take a piece of that each and layer it down because obviously if we use it all in one year the next year we'll be coming back for a large chunk from the town side so we're now now to basically you know a point where i think we can make another three or four years before that's entirely  then then obviously so what i'm trying to do is we know it's often there a little each year and yet not make it such a shock when we finally get to the the last thing where it's all gone the circuit breaker is is finding that we received from the state relative to our special needs program it really deals with trying to give a relief valve over a certain dollar value for cost to a program sending a child to an outside program in most cases it was referring to  numbers in roughly twenty eight thousand dollars range anything above that they'll split with you fifty fifty transportation is involved so there is a reimbursement and transportation for that as well but we do have some programs to be honest with you that are two hundred thousand dollars so while we're splitting it's we're putting up a lot from so we you know we get this money back in and then obviously we have eighteen months in which to push it back out through our program so that's why we sense continuously cycling that back out into next year's budget to use back up one of the things that randy and i have kind of come to terms with is that the reason i don't take any one of these grants all the way down to zero in a given year is that always gives us a one year cushion to be able to say ok if a grant goes away if if the circuit breaker drops to significantly can we still survive that next year's budget process without throwing everything out and you know again we did use a grants and circuit breaker i mean we really are trying to make sure that we always have that that roughly one year out it's not exactly working that we're a little under that in most cases but it would be a culture shock if we have all this until the time we didn't have this money available over whether it has the authority to do that so that's again a prudent way to to to run things because it's up in the air still play yes and that's meant consistent for quite a number of years i mean i guess you know when you're on my side where you kind of get immune to it a little bit over time because they they they move it up and down you know year in and year out and you're just trying to keep things level so i think you know a lot of the changes that they're making there will be some impact potentially to a community like ok so the allocation itself ironically is is in each one of these numbers obviously it's fifty nine point three percent you know twenty four point something but they are literally within tense of a percent of the same percentage as last year and i find that actually a little interesting because we've done a very good job in the technology side as far as doing quite a bit of work in that area you know both with what the town gave us an argument example of that las with the vendors he's worked with for years and that one hundred fifty six we ended up having to come up with one hundred sixty eight percent of being a three year program one hundred fifty six the one sixty to the entire thing so he's been phenomenal force as far as how far we've gotten with our technology money and and you know a lot further along than i think i expected we could get and in some cases forty percent less than state business right so this is not you know it's not that he just doing something he really is doing something that not every community is getting away with so don't let him go now he sees sees a great guy to work with and i think it worked well with the three of us and we're trying to go as well obviously as them said we're going to continue to monitor here you know whether it's the position issues at the high school level or any other potential new information that comes out to us revenue wise expense wise or other issues  think on the revenue side randy does a very good job as far as keeping us in tune i don't expect we'll see another revenue upgrade from him or update from him till probably late january but and unfortunately i think to steve's point that the state budgets and stuff don't come out you know we're well not by the time they actually will give us any real information there are tonight's meeting and then the january fifth will be the next discussion time for this budget as i said at that time  might just want to make sure you know it a circle a favor eleven you may have had another date on your calendar but that that was the early when really first gave us the first calendar when we had the joint meeting think it had a different date on that at that time when we had the joint budget meeting so make sure you make thirty five of those in the district and they have to be looked at every single year they have to remember the entire few years you know many years ago without doing that so i'm a regular probably really making sure that would be proactive with everything  totally we have every every sports team that's out there has one with them and obviously we have them within the buildings themselves the nurses have access to all but there's you know it's not just the service contract basically replaces preparing the the proposed budget and bill i don't think i would have wanted to be around your office or pam's in the last several weeks in light of what you guys just presented to us it's a lot of work  proposed four point zero five percent increase up one point one nine million much of which is driven by salaries and expense debbie you've come up with your list of recommended four or five key positional so i appreciate the care with which you guys have gone through that we do we'll have a couple more meetings to discuss this as you talked about otherwise i suspect we go into a lot of depth of discussion tonight the one thing i would like to request is could our budget subcommittee meet with the two of you ideally prior to the next public discussion of this because i think you know i think you'd be great if katie and steve were able to formulate an opinion and then come back to the committee with a recommendation on some of those personnel changes you know just personally speaking you know as you went through them and i was going to tell you my gut reaction you know i love the idea of an incremental technology integration specialist because we're putting so much emphasis there yet the idea of reducing english teacher or math teacher you know made my eyes pop out for a minute not to say i question it but it just makes me think i want to learn more and i recognize the value of going down to have to ease there is helpful  some of the other things we want to do but i think if you guys would be willing to maybe spend a little time and analyze and come up with your own thoughts about where dylan amy and proposing we invest may just give all of us  for schools is that we tend to overuse the life if you will assets so therefore leasing it is an expensive option as compared to buying something that most people would say well to five years of life but we're still using it ten years later on an instrument like a like a microscope even a microscope you know it's again you know this equipment if it's maintaining taken care of well yeah we will use it a lot longer than maybe the general practice with the business environment  and again if you're going to lease it over a five year period and you're going to basically water three and a half year period it doesn't make a lot of sense to go through the town has had not really had a huge appetite towards leasing in the past again we borrow when we do borrow at a much lower rate than some of the financing rates are on the lease package now the you know as an example that's one of the reasons we buy our copiers versus leasing and because we can negotiate much better price on the buy then you can get on the term rates for the lease itself and you know we continue to drive those prices down each year in our process as well so right now to my knowledge there is you know there's nothing on the school side that's under a lease there is very little if anything that i can think of even on the town side i was i just had my last had i'm and you know we would have instruments that needed regular expensive third party calibration to come in know you're leasing in basically you put low mileage on it and you just like a new car every five years or every four years the lease can be really good for you if you're using a lot and using it for a lot longer leases don't work and in this particular environment is a specially in schools are quick there there is not a lot that we don't run you know even even computers i mean we run our computers for five to six years in most cases so it's not like we're on a two or three years cycle programmed to get the next highest level of technology and if you're in a five year cycle just like computers the police they don't work so it's it's definitely it's something you have to keep thinking about and keep looking at but until you get to the point where you're on just what i call hyper spee question so you know thank you i know it's a hard time of year and i'm looking at our budget subcommittee now do you guys think you can get with the bill and before january fifth that are not so other times we've done it individually because that when you i would suggest that again otherwise it's a post meeting because it's easier to coordinate one person schedule that was i think so that couldn't do it before the before christmas but you know after or the fifth i hope we're there in between yeah and i think i could do that you know i think i mean obviously dig into whatever you want to i don't think you have to go into this and depth obviously we have a lot of confidence and bill and and all the work that has been done in past years but you know i'm sensitive to a four percent ask of the town and that's point one and point two is you know these discussions we can get into a blank like whiteboards versus a point for of this or you know point five of that i think those are good trade off discussions so angry and other i also would welcome it because some does what we're always doing is prioritizing where we should be investing our dollars and i think we want we want to have everything let's don't sit but we more importantly we want to be responsible to the town where we've been pretty transparent about what we do and we've been honest in the past years about what we need and for putting forth forward new positions why we need them and what's the changing face of education and i don't think we can expect the community to accept that if on the other hand we don't diligently really analyze where we might not need a position so i think that's where we are as distasteful as it is i think that's our responsibility well what's great is you've given us a list of you've figured it out here's what we'd say we would go for and here's what we'd say we could do without and i just think the committee should analyze that i agree and make a really nice to have another set of eyes a couple more sets of eyes on so we'll look forward to our point that ok anything else can you guys stick it out for one more topic because i would love your perspective on the next topic you know you will see if anything is going to change both second on favor and thank you very have you guys heard about the calendar and i am not a word so here comes some and some other coming will have an opinion and i hope they do so although i'm i'm going to have no opinion meaning there's one calendar for the school committee to look at one recommendation and usually there's not a lot of controversy in looking ahead though next year i realize this is a really difficult calendar so i thought i would give you the option a committee sort among all this over a little bit and i'm actually giving you three options so the dilemma is this this is our latest labor day so the labor day weekend is four to seven so the first tuesday after labor day which is typically when kids come back isn't until september eighth which is the latest possible labor day and the latest possible school start using the traditional calendar which is great for some occasions oh it makes a very nice long summer vacation there's probably a flipside to that certainly is so when i started looking ahead at this and realizing that it is pretty complicated that the realization is that with it being the latest school start because of the latest possible labor day if we keep with our tradition of not bringing students back until the tuesday after labor day which would be september eighth puts us at a really late late late ending in june now if you were a senior next year you won't hear the group but if you're anyone other than a senior so it's kind of imagine yourselves being very affected by this then then it it's not great  so wait so i thought i would share with you even though it's a very early stage three possible options for next year's school calendar and i'm calling them the traditional calendar which is in white an early return calendar which is in green and the earliest return which is in the pink so i'll just explain what the options represent so option one in the on the white page which we consider traditional what fox throws pretty much always done staff returns before labor day for three professional development days and you'll see on the calendar the would be september women that would be september three four five and then the long weekend and then kids come on the eighth to make sense no seven no six five four three two one three september first one two three see this is just going over this we really need to show what the dates are date without any snow days to june two thousand and two with the five snow days built in which it must be built into your legal calendar that brings us to possibly the last day of june on the twenty ninth we may as well stay and celebrate the fourth t so this was helpful janet produced this magic computer and if you look at the last time labor day was on monday september seventh was two thousand and nine ten and we went with the late start september eighth to students but way prior to that back in ninety eight ninety nine which was the next time before that the labor day was on monday september seventh the students didn't come back before labor day they came back in the second so this community has done it kind of a couple of ways so we've had the late late start than we had the earlier starts a one time we did what's proposed on the other two calendars which is bring the kids back early because of the l of the calendars so there's no right or wrong so that's what the white represents the green calendar which we're calling for early return brings the staff back on august thirty first and september one monday tuesday so still only the week before labor day and bring students back on wednesday the second and went and thursday the third keeping the long four day weekend and then they start up again on the eighth so the staff have two only two professional development days before the kids and the kids would get to school days in before labor day so we're going to we're calling that for discussion purposes early return changes the end of the year only by one  yes but still making it very day yes and you may ask why does it only change by one day and that is because the even though you think you see two student days before labor day this the teachers only have two professional development days and their five days are built into the calendar so the professional development day that were missing in august had to be built in later you can see it in may is a late p t day in may so that bumps the students days later so we do do three staff days we actually work one hundred eighty five day calendar hundred eighty with the students and five days for the staff and so that early return only gains us one day because we typically get three days in with staff before now we're getting four days into staff into students so that only that only gains us one day and then option three we're calling for earliest return staff would return on august twenty fifth for three  days typically what we do with the end of august or tuesday wednesday thursday three consecutive professional development days that's not all that different from what we do now they came back on the twenty six this year they typically do come back the last tuesday of august and then the students would come the following tuesday on september first and get three days in so because this is actually a gain of three days on the on the f one hundred eighty five day calendar because that's the it just happens to be a late labor day but staff when you look at the physical calendar of august they're not returning any more unusually than they do it's just the labor day is then deferred so that actually ends school in june on the seventeenth which is a friday which would be lovely if there's no snow days and if there are snow days it could potentially end on friday the twenty fourth but no later so since this is quite complicated with a lot of pros and cons to all three options i thought i would present three possibilities and our teaching staff actually also we always consult on the calendar with them so we sent them this last week and they will also mow it over in it just we just consult you have any feedback from the good me michel foucault know they're they're going to spend the next few weeks getting their own bit so i mean i just ask you question which i think is kind of interesting if you look at the school year starting dates from previous years yes the first day students when you look at it twenty thirteen was september third yes twenty four was september second and if you look at the you know i guess the issue would be do the majority of families go away on labor day and is would that be an impact to them with with the changing of the schedule and the changing of when the onset of school actually yes look i would think i would amend that just slightly i think that's right but i think it's due to the majority families prefer to still have time away at labor day or do they go away in june  right that's the trade off it right it's also you started on the front end you know there's also the back and right right and we see that would have a four day labor day weekend so people just go with the right and that's fine but i think you're right the calendar dates i don't really change they just still coming back around september two three exams where they typically do i think it's more of a under feeling or a perception that if in your mind you have until labor day with your family then that it's about how you think about it rather than the dates my understanding tonight you'll know this better is that most districts start before labor day yes that's true we're somewhat unusual or unions and that we haven't done that so not to say we have to join the masses but you know i mean i don't think what you're proposing is is unusual given the times is not unusual and it doesn't mean that we would then in the future always bring back not really but it just means this is a different form here and you could do something different for this martin did a survey of the peers community i was overwhelmingly in favor of coming back after labor day however you know parent opinion can change and i don't know i just might be something to think about whether we want to survey our parent population i also noticed that in the one nine hundred ninety eight ninety nine we went back early but the following year the committee chose to go back on september eighth when given the choice so i wonder if there was some sort of feedback yeah that's what i was looking for so it's just again it is something to think about but i would i would be interested in how parents you or do we know how effective professional development is when it's held back to back to back and you know try and three three day versus two and then one  and the students at the end of taking a vacation from middle here for a minute here because the actual vacations during the year don't seem to move my right to the same this is same april it's the same very same situation right so  our people at you know we're talking about seven habits really right when are people at their optimal level for professional development and you know absorption of material and implementation in the year and when our students chins in their hands watching the i would say this i think we believe in front loading professional development because we give teachers new tools or training in new programs that are coming in yeah but to do two days or three days we wouldn't want just one i will i will say that but were willing to sacrifice the third day i'll let you see some professional development when right now if it helps the overall calendar and fixes the late ending in june that one day isn't as big of a deal so i mean we've had so many great presentations of like the staff appreciating the p d that they've had and the collaboration they've had as faculty and staff and i just so you know three days turned into two and kind of want to maybe that maybe that quality say but the staff was because they would prefer to get a little bit earlier start and finish earlier in june because it's very hot etc so so i'm going to hazard a guess that their opinion probably hasn't changed much at all not that i know which offset of that is when you think about where is that other day going to be so the further we have to think about whether it's testing and all of the other things that are on the counters and here goes through and if you have a p d day it was difficult to really try to place that one in may two where it was optimal for professional growth and learning at the same time not impacting what we think about heart testing and cas testing and a p and all of those other things that are is that way right on the calendar itself so there's other pieces of that p those academic pieces she just mentioned it's probably preferable to start seems a little earlier you know if we were to start you know does that push up the start of you know things like marching band camp football practice everything it's practice everything may day for a professional development the edges are pretty tired or if the students would not get the benefit so late so late in the year it's more we want to have the teaching time with the students to prepare them so they're we don't want to take out another professional development day out when we're trying to get every day we can for students to be prepared for an a p exam i don't know how you know i mean i was just the professional development there means the bulk of the students will not get well not necessarily because what we have on us which we're not taking up a day before all these deadlines of testing but if there were going to be new programs implemented the following year we could start going to some of mr so it actually is long as it's only one day and not the majority which we're willing to say that there probably are some very good purposes for which that could be used i want to address the and impact i know that when we had to run school in june i you can do this i had to write and have my son take exams early because his camp counseling t young people have that start because in parts of our country people are out of school for the summer by the end of may so it's going to be a trade off here that's going to be a trade off shore year for some so i think this is a question of how do we minimize the impact for as many as possible through the world in an online survey i think part of why and i thought we put it on the agenda tonight was to start to get informal feedback  maybe we can see how much informal feedback comes in before we commit to that we still pay a fee for an online survey true sure so before we may remember or i'd want to comment that i think we'll probably get some feedback i know frank can help us as he always does to get the word out thank you frank so i don't i don't know that i want to commit to that yet unless you all feel strongly about it i just wonder what yes so honestly if i would choose i'd obviously choose option one  know but if i would to choose like the early ones i'd choose our early option too because it's not just coming back for those three days but some people like some teenagers have jobs that like go until labor day that go through labor day but since even though last year the year before like labor day started like we started school like the second but also was i just want to say i complained but also students might try to skip those first like a couple days but then again those first three days or those first two days are just like here's your syllabus get this signed and those those are those like the first like learning all this is what you're going to need those classes who are you going to be learning so those two or three days would be schedule fix story of a problem with this or here's the thing here's how i want to set up your here's what i want you set up you know it's all of that they felt if they were to be able to get that done in two days they could hit the ground running with the content on the tuesday after rather than taking the first couple of days and not really getting rolling so they actually felt that they get all the logistics out of the way before labor day and then really get going on tuesday after labor day so that's something that so many pros and cons to this it really depends on what you value what your perspective is was just speaking on a point they brought up earlier like the fact that starting early or early or kind of pushes back all the stuff that students do before school that teachers only see like i know band camp is like a whole week that pushes back  week in the summer which means that any family plans that you had you'd have to delay because you'll be at band camp or pushes orchestra camp back a week also versus tryouts back a week which take a whole week which means that families at the back a week earlier and on top of that there's a of camps that we do to prepare for stuff like this throughout the summer which kind of pushes the those backs for all of us to just like keeping special perspective that they may also like push back everything that happens that we prepare before the school year starts  back a lot for the students who are actually starting in earlier but so i'm trying to figure out in this is one of the dilemmas is does it really do that because we've always had teachers come back the last three days at the end of august so you around the twenty six twenty seven twenty eight this year it was twenty six twenty seven twenty eight twenty five to six twenty seven around that time that's when they'd be doing it anyway so i don't know if it's really in i don't know if it's really going to push all get to vittie as we're thinking about back even more whether it's football whether it's being hit because that is historically the time when teachers have been returning for the days anyhow so i don't think it's going to do that i think to know that and yeah yes mr massey we could ask the athletic director  coaches because we just just because we usually don't have like because our to coach isn't our teachers our teachers themselves have to take the sat feldmann days right i don't know we usually have things going on in those days they have to go to them yeah i think so they may or in the days anyway so i actually i'm not sure actually is going to push back all of those the early returns for the summer teams or more b and i don't think it really well i think that's that's that would be important to know but i think that we also have to look on the other end of it too you know the kids are going to get out the teachers and everybody's going to get out a little bit earlier in that june and so you know that's going to start that next summer earlier and one of the things that we always talk about is in the summer time how different you know a lot of times families do start their vacations or you know they have a tradition and i think we went through that one year when we were not can't remember where when it was it was couple years ago i think we were discussing that yes happened and the kids getting distracted and i mean you know there's there's always a million variables on each end so in the point i think we ran into if you look at the white one the traditional one do a school for us a couple days school to a son to the camp do i forfeit my deposit on summer camp so it's very it's very difficult to go to june twenty ninth and that's what first calendar would that's that means no one can sign their students up t children for anything at all until then or shouldn't and they're going to face that dilemma so i that's why we're here with three different options i think it's great to have that you have brought this forward because again that's just our discussion today there's obviously many sides to th twenty sixth it's really whether tell us one more thought i was actively agree with you you said earlier also that i know i always participate every single summer in the jazz camp taken at the urn and that starts and because of like scheduling it's been interested in this topic and tell me if i do it right so scenario one is we start on september eighth in the worst possible day great to students and the last possible day is the twenty ninth of june correct scenario two is we students start on september second and the last possible day is june twenty eighth i would strike that one as an option there's not enough benefit to me to come back six days earlier to get out one day earlier but that's just me in the third is students start september first and would finish on june twenty fourth ranked so to my way of thinking it's the first or the third do you want it on the front end or do you want to the back end but to me the second option doesn't give us enough benefits but we would like the public simple and i will thank the reporter in advance for their help i know they'll put a story out on this and we will continue the discussion so just follow up would you like me to create a survey or do you would you like if if frankly it's a nice story about this dilemma i really don't know how i feel but i'm here all year round so people don't think i have a motion that we suspend the reading entire reading for all it says i think the readings i second that any discussion i don't have any discussion but i know they weren't here last ok oh yeah all right so all in favor of waiving the reading ok five five zero so there are three here the first is about student absences right mr belin did you want to summarize what this was about shorter basically these three policies are you make our school committee say manual in here to current law changes that went into effect in mass general absences and you have to do it in writing and have to give a right to a meeting so it's a lot more procedure to make sure that families and parents are in the loop of the student has at an absenteeism problem that you can't just say well i sent an email and they're not aware you have to really take much more concrete steps to get the family involved with the attendance problem for school because there's a lot of there's a lot of data out there that that the more you engage the families and the parents in the students in it and and have a little bit more of accountability for that that it helps with dropout so we don't have a drive up on the hospital but this is a statewide law you know just to emphasize that so the biggest change that we saw as we went through these polls i mean the first meeting was there's really not a lot of substantive change what there really is is a lot more detail about what has to happen primarily on the part of the school department when they want to follow up on something so it mandates that the principal has to do this or someone has to do this or that and in this number of days  miller said they really want to make sure that we are reaching out and contacting the families so that students don't fall through the cracks so now if there was like a medical a medical issue and it was within like two days would you guys have to contact up even if there was like a like a notice to the school well not really because it does date which absences are you know which are known excused absences so it's sort of spells out a little bit more clearly which which types of reasons we totally get why students but it's this student was absent here and there and it adds up and we don't know why and it doesn't appear to be onerous they just sort of irregularly come to school that that's really what this puts more procedures in place so that that doesn't so that comes to people's attention and so that they can intervene with the student student absence policy as it's presented to the same second any more discussion all those in favor five zero jim thank you so the next one is exclusions and exemptions from school with time limits yes the only thing that changed in this this policy from what we had in our policy manual is the one sentence that i been struck that's in red because you can no longer exclude a child from from school because they've been expelled from another district there's an obligation on the part of the district to educate that child so if a student was expelled from the community thirty minutes away from here and that's where they actually live and they're looking around to where they can enroll their child high school we wouldn't have to take anyone who's been expelled we could decide if we wanted to or we could say no  that has now changed so if a student is expelled from foxborough high school we have to continue to educate that child in some other way environment and conversely we you cannot deny way either if that happens more often or there's no reason to move from the town you're in if you're style's been expelled from there because that district has to educate your child in some other way right so there won't be as much shopping around for another school to enroll in but there's also no leeway at all to deny entrance or to educate so it could end up being costly depends on how it's probably less costly for a small suburb like us but it has some potential potential financial and real impact because there are going to be students that we don't want you know general populations but we still don't have obligation to educate them so the whole goal is education thing sure yet but it's the law it is the law right and that's what that it did seem and i don't know it's dangerous to generalize i cast but it did seem when we talked about these at the first meeting like these policies are written to address perhaps some of the larger school systems that have more complexities and more challenges than we have traditionally experienced rancorous that's us and that's typical of the like let's say we have an extreme case and with all best intentions and following the letter of the law we we really don't think it's a good idea or if just flat out don't want the student in a school where is it that says how long we have to take yes or no in the middle of a candidate's application i mean what period of time do we have yeah is or will not really an application because that if you know somebody is trying to offload a problem that they should be dealing with from another community because we have to comply with the law that we have some kind of a situation is unique and we're going to pick the best option i think that's key right that if situation is going to be unique because when a child is expelled obviously that's a particular situation is going to present with unique circumstances as to how they got to that point and so therefore whatever the plan is is going to be geared specifically to that individual to help them gain more education yes so it's hard to make any kind of it is because you have to keep the best interests of that child in mind in the best interests of our students our general population and mine so we have it would be held by yet but we'll see it go itself doesn't put any particular time frame on it i'm looking at it but it does say any school district that suspends or excels a student under the section cal shall continue shall continue to provide educational services to the student during the period of suspension or expulsion under section twenty one of chapter seventy six if the student moves to another district during the period of suspension or expulsion the new district of residence shall either admit the student who was or provide educational services to the student in an education plan under section  anybody that this is expelled from here what are we going to do for that child and that's what's interesting the others you know i was just i was just curious in a case where some of our expelled from our school like for the other forms of education offer that's it could be online we don't know what our options are going to be i'm just going to tell you what's possible out there you could take courses virtually toward your high school diploma we could find another placement educates children with some challenges whatever that may be are even with that would be i don't go out of district placement you know we might have to think about i don't think we're big enough but some districts i think are thinking about educating after school hours so there would be basically school from safe water whatever and that but there's a huge cost to do that i don't think we're big enough we never do that there are some places that offer evening degree programs cademy says one and stone one means field i thin but some of those things we have to fund so for now i can educate them here then we'd have to fund them which is the potential impact i don't really know what options we're going to provide we haven't we haven't gotten it together yet we also don't have anybody waiting for that option but we're going to have to put and actually you have aren't doing it because this is a law on them the one that we used to have is completely out so the one we are replacing it one page fairly high level set of reasons for possible expulsion or suspension it was basically a list of what not to do in school right i'm in no new policy of six change you know year to year with something new you don't want to have a list like that that seems to be the be all and end all as we know that there can be more reasons so what the new legal policy that's being recommended really doesn't six pages  it really outlines every step of the process that must be followed to defend the rights of the students who you know are under suspension or who are receiving notice of  those who have received notice a possible expulsion or have been expelled one way to think about this from a committee standpoint is you know it really puts a burden on our superintendent and our building administrators to follow a pretty detailed procedure age and now we have section thirty seven age section thirty seven and a half section thirty seven and three quarters mass general chapter seventy six section twenty one and an entire section of the code of massachusetts regulations that have been promulgated to put into effect these changes to the laws so it is exhaustive it is in the interest of protecting due process rights of our students and it is set out  here we are on to acceptance of donation i do like yes so i'm going to turn this over to bill this is the nation we had some wonderful guests at the last meeting talking about the dug outs in the back baseball complex baseball which was very nice they came forward and said hey we'd like to do another piece to help finish it up and i actually like that we delayed just a little bit because it came to us under visitors last time and i want to be sure bill and tony and diana and her elsewhere are comfortable so it sounds like you are comfortable but you know i think they're they're committed to really supporters of the goal or i mean you know they take the baseball field very seriously their use of obviously much more than just out and really does give a nice name tag to the area so you know they're supporting the program i think if if they're willing to support this and help us maintain it and it's in for and you know it actually by having a place on the have a sad other matter which is the barrel school in s b a today we found out that the we are not being invited into the school building authority around this coming year  the s b a identifies the school facilities that have the greatest and most urgent need based on an assessment of the entire court a statement of interests that are received for the considerations this  eligibility period at this time so i would say i'm i'm surprise in that i was very hopeful to get in the second submission that we've had but i guess i'm not surprised because we do maintain our buildings really well so it would be hard to imagine that when they looked at urgent needs even though it is urgent for us our standards it's very it's quite urgent but i guess in terms of how school buildings of the maintainer across the because of that we're not really in the cold war so i think we've got to do this just happen this afternoon so i think we've got to do some thinking about what our next step would be about resubmission or repair into it's going to take us a bit so we'll come back probably at the end of january with some thoughts on that it certainly will be for generations in which it's going to take a lot of conversation about how we're going to what we should do next because we know we have a serious roof and heating system needs and you know we've been pursuing the state of interest with them is that if it was as simple as replacing the roof or simply replacing a boiler then you know we would just go forward with that and actually have a separate program with those those my real concern is once i start that process i open up such a can of worms that you know will just never get the funding we need to fix everything that's going to go wrong in that process it's as dave said it's the age of the building and you can maintain the floors and the walls as much as you possibly want but on the roof is finally going to go on and when the boiler system is gone all the units and all the classrooms are gone everything is connected so and we tried to make the point very clearly yes we could do some of the smaller projects but then what happens when you finally go to do the rest of it where you can do with a component that you've already fixed here i can put a new roof on that and tomorrow start ripping holes in it to fix you know to put new apparatus so good so how deep is the well i mean is it because there's other people in front of us up because this is a judgement because it sounds to me not to people like they're rewarding bad behavior or no i agree there's a certain number of buildings that probably have fallen in disrepair due to circumstances of out of the control of responsible you know school committee or township so it's really it's very hard to say in in you can imagine as you said some of the bigger school districts that are in you know more impoverished areas as far as what you know if they're going to make cuts they're going to cut to make this before they're going to try to cut a teacher or something of that so  i think to deb's point under the old process you actually get points for how well you maintain your building and when it was finally time to really we know it was to be done but you got point because you did a great job getting it that long you know that far out that there's not you know jack tried to make the concept that it was jack mccarthy that that still existed but it doesn't it's clearly not in the new rules so you know what it really is you know to our to our chagrin yes the building we keep it the way it needs to be kept for the for the kids safety and the kids you know issues within the building but it's still there's just a lot of things that are far beyond their age and you know you can only put band aids on it for so long before you really are going to have a problem and that's what scares me the most i mean even another year in the process means you're really talking you know two years in the process because of the planning stages in the process go through the you must be a process just getting invited in only would have given us the guarantee that we could go to the next step and let them pursue looking at the process with him that would have been another year in the process and then if they still took us outside of that process we could finally get into a state of actually doing construction which would be a year out from there so the concern is that the lazy are just going to push us further for an unfortunate job that we're going to and i'm just meaning that was that they they're only going to fund about twenty projects out of that hundred eight  they mentioned it when compared to the average when they get very very well done i just don't know why that shouldn't have gotten its own and they didn't come for a visit so the fact that they came for a visit in toward the school we knew we were under some serious consideration it's just that you know we i've been only one after wait for it to fall in complete disarray here like you see in other towns and have things be horrible and in the paper but i don't i'm just really disappointed so that was upsetting new because i think it does reward the wrong thing and i really don't know how much more money we can put it to borrow school on our own i mean that we're kind of past the band aid stage so it's disappointing i will call jake there as though but you e we were two wonderful concerts last week and wednesday concert which i was unable to attend the jazz concert had the visiting australian students and their instructors which was a rousing good time that would have been the night were and then there was a night's concert band i think that was one of the best concerts ever yeah that was just wonderful and my husband who is very much a music afficionado said that he felt this is one of the best concerts he's heard over the number of years we've been attending he said to quote my husband rich full brassy just the way he likes it so it was really really an outstanding and they did some retrospective pieces it was is wonderful so it was awesome