evening everybody i will call the meeting to order at seven o'clock on the dot we have our organizational meeting as the first portion of our night and so our first item is to nominate and elect our chairperson for the two thousand and eighteen nineteen year so i would like to nominate susan burgess cox if she would accept the nomination or any other nomination for and actually let me welcome tara  you thanks so much worse ok there are no other nominations all those in favor of susan to you know the chairperson call vote to transition new committee member and next week is april vacation which everybody knows next excited about so there this is my first report as chair i know there are a number of other activities coming up in concerts in the coming week stuff people can look online and look at the superintendents report to get that information and there's no student representative so we can move to the superintendent's report thank you i would like to welcome  by former member creature and there's an extra chair here and that is that of for the school committee member tom computer who was elected to the board of selectmen the school department has sent out a notification for any committee member who would like to apply for that open seat and be appointed by a combination of the board slipped through the school committee that application process has been sent out to our media outlets as well as put in my newsletter that was sent out this afternoon so if you are in the  viewing audience and you would like to be open to coming on board the school committee we actually do to respond to that newsletter indoor article that we have prepared for our media outlets well we also  nice to be able to have that tied up so folks can begin to make some of plans if necessary if they haven't already i would also like the school committee to to know that at our last meeting  your permission to meet with a staff member who was recently requesting a sabbatical a meeting took place last week with that teacher in chip first of fury and then a meeting took place with the director of the department and our in the letter but i think i do think that as much as possible for us to encourage which we do step to take advantage of these sting opportunities to collaborate and develop curriculum that benefits the students and the environment in the school  have the school committee members here and then have the chair review would meet with the appropriate staff so thank you very much for that work over the course of last week we appreciate you and we are very very happy that all of our athletic teams are getting out onto fields and out of the field house in onto grass and turf and and still battling forty in thirty degree weather but the spring season has started and we're looking forward to finishing up with the last eight workers fairness act that went into effect on me are an april first of this year and then the policy subcommittee made a small minor change to our policy on leaves and absences just to include a reference to that law in our consistent with state and federal law and regulations so this just is adding another law to that i think we talked about traditionally the school committee will read the change of policy and then vote on it at the next but this isn't really a major change it's just a citation so we talked about just doing the vote tonight if everybody was ok with that so we have a motion to proof to to prove the change in policy is just citation see me second any discussion ye i would only respectfully yeah that this this and these conditions in this work was already part of the below public schools practices in this law in the stead line we had already been putting these things in place for our stuff for a period of time so this is not a new action that we need to take it's existing practice in the district support added space for the eighteen thousand school year for those schools in that we would look at the makeup of the boards of each of those groups to make sure that we were assessing how the over was in place and consistent across all of the boards we work with and that will be a longer term conversation but i i think the parents of the in the committee want to know are weaves still moving forward trying to create more space and impact to what to a certain extent the  people are aware that we are going to and we're going to continue the discussion that we just have not scheduled a meeting so the curriculum instruction committee at this afternoon  exciting to see the range of choices and the ways that students will be able to express and demonstrate their earning mastery of some very important skills and they will be coming to the school committee to share that work an update to the emmys p a and we will go into the m s p in boston over april break to present an updated model of our work and a lot of the deadlines were today and tomorrow for us to get that were to our o p m in our design team which i believe is in good hands we had a purpose call today at four thirty to go over the materials an updated site plan will be shown tomorrow morning for folks to take a look at i just got a copy giving timely feedback on all aspects of the building related to classrooms to house to school to the building and all that information has been recorded by the design team and you can actually see them incorporate the feedback in every last thursday we had fifteen of us go in and take a private tour of the building it's not open to students as of yet all open up into a temper and it was really great to see a lot of the characteristics that that are being discussed for for the seven to twelve school for but more public schools in that building it was because the stem school they might not all apply but it was really it was really a great way for teachers to really get a sense of what what is a niche learning room look like what is  technology room look like hardy and we want to have open space in what space should be more enclosed how do we want to use class how do we not want to use glass do we want overhead projectors or do we want t v monitors that can be controlled by your i pad you know everything from movement of students to clash room and teaching learning technology was really really interesting too to walk the building it was great for the for the educators to actually put a real building into their thought process of sort of feedback that they could give to perkins well so where we're thankful that the feedback loop is in place and it really seems to be working and when we look for it it's mars meaning through that process of looking at all of our square footage we were able to reduce the amount of square feet that the building will be the that of the building my belief we went down almost four to five thousand square feet which does not seem like a lot but it's a good amount of money if you buy that by the price per  foot that we would have paying so that is something that i believe the town really wanted the team to look at and we did in we did yield space that i think is a good exercise to go through and also during this process we have really looked at how our program was going to be served by the building and that it's a very practical school i know it will come across as an expensive project but we are getting two schools out of this one project we've reduced square footage and we have really targeted the space that we are keeping in using to really best serve the programs of the students and the staff that we have so this last month has been a real fine tuning of the work in here really  in the time for this project and the community path update we talked about that sort of working with the high school building committee so you don't really have those updates there's been no action  separate from the community power folks meeting on several occasions with the building committee folks and in really taking into consideration the site plan that they're presenting that there is definitely room for  path on the campus if in fact that moves forward so i know that you very proud have certain the links from our wife to the school site from the school site to the bridge and from the bridge moving down towards  i believe are along the lines of congress so that there are there are feedback has been taken into consideration to do that stuff the vehicle for that work to happen moving forward and then the library long range planning after that the sentence starts after the just and then perhaps that and we could do moving forward with this proposal and put a colon accepting addition discussion the school committee agreed to have superintendent reef fail and report to the town of illustrator patrice garvin that the school committee is in agreement with moving forward with this proposal accepting the position in defining the funding find the funding the funding source to find the fun the i don't know if we ever voted at this meeting so i don't know if you want me to bring this topic up on the twenty fourth for a formal vote of accepting the position of the funding sources identified and we can have that discussion at a stable maybe the night of the twenty for th jennifer just a formal vote and i can give you the background when we talk about funding your we can present with the funding sources and whether we want to formally vote to accept the position as offered by the but the time  source and the details behind that ok great principal of the loan to the school she is an assistant principal in the sum of all public schools the search team from the wellington went through many resumes the team was made up of educators administrators parents who for three public to know and call her previous employees and to talk to her superintendent personally and we do all that background check to ensure that we're getting a candidate who we feel is a great fit for the for the for the wellington school i think all three of the candidates that were moved as finalists were all very talented but it really comes down to which is someone who understands the wanting community and is willing to walk into that position in a way that we think fits what the goals are for the teachers in the community of parents and group they did interview i believe five candidates reviewed one thousand resumes and brought one candidate forward to meet with students i teachers the leadership committee and parents in janice and myself that can that kid it was also vetted in the same fashion that allie was vetted and i did actually sit in on the staff question in the answer period and i sat in probably to hear that our students ask questions for over an hour of this  candidate which is usually the best test of any one that we you can put in for the children and feel how they would work with those students despite the fact that this kid it was very talented we did not choose him to be the principal don't want high school we have decided to  wait and find the right person as opposed to hiring someone because they were the candidate that moved forward in the process so this does probably creates a manx with our educators a bum one high so i will be going to the high school tomorrow afternoon at dismissal to have time to talk and meet and it's a question for the right with the high school staff we did put this news out to the listserv from belmont high school and also my newsletter and we're now in the process of hiring it in term fall we waited until the early winter january i will probably get out right after thanksgiving to get that posting out so we can get the deepest and best full of can that's because i don't want i deserve that so that's the plan moving forward in the short term and in the long term appreciate everybody's work who was part of the process and we look forward to the short term goal of next year in the long term goal of finding great leaders about what i think  so it will be appointed by the superintendent and we will look for internal candidates first and we've already started a process of talking to folks then we will probably reach out to the massachusetts association of school superintendents for any kidlets that have in the mass association of secondary educators so principals to see if there's any folks in that pool that have actively been part of interim work and and then decide from there how we would approach high reflex you know that there will not be a search c right so the only thing left is future business upcoming meetings people twenty fourth we have the scheduled meeting for the final seven eight seven thirty and then our next group committee meeting is here