schools i was unaware of how much cutting had been done and how well they've done pulling them together and hiding out from the families in some sense i think they've done an injustice because i have not been aware of how they've had to hold things together in coming into the middle school and who have yet to enter the high school i will tell you that i am also a policy analyst by job i do politics and i can tell you from what i look at your numbers you have a core constituency who just want to keep their property taxes what was possible and you have another core constituency who will fight for their schools no matter what and what this really is about is the middle and the middle are people like me people who can afford to go to private school and i am america point i look at these cuts right now and having a daughter just as spent three years around forever it's been a phenomenal year but when i see these cuts doing it's kiting at the core work and heart and soul of the school and the decision you make tonight will decide whether my kids stay in the public school system or leave and i can tell i did the numbers it's fifty one families in the entire district that you need to leave that's the difference between the vote that failed hundred two votes fifty one families two parent families it's not that i'm having it's ten or twelve families in each town you can leave those of maine leave i can tell you i already have one who's left the elementary school and we're considering coming back to the public school i can tell you as i stand around with those parents will last the public school system they say i don't want to pay higher taxes it's a school that doesn't serve like children and why should i don't use of my sleeping for the vote here meeting tonight is incredibly important because it is about the what our schools are going to be and so i really urge you to think long and hard about the people like me in the middle who want to stay in the school system but know that i only get one shot at getting my kids a military school education and if i can afford to i'm going to give them the best education my parents and if i can get it from public schools i'm going to go somewhere else and i'm not going to vote for a public school budget because i'm spending fifteen twenty thousand dollars someplace else so i've urged you to think i gave you because i don't want to but i can't put my here to our second item which is the review and approval of the revised two thousand and fourteen fifteen budget as it will be presented to voters can been up to since last october maybe and a lot of our hopes have been three to two just so you where i think there's only been one vote that was five zero so it's we've had a lot of good discussions about a lot of different things they have been close votes the discussions have been very respectful on all sides in all times and from the time of the first meeting after the vote was voted down to we met last week i received approximately fifty mails about different things some of you have received e mails because they've gone to the full board but not all of them have i have tried to keep track of that as you've heard earlier this evening the warning that two things received the most comments in the media one was the  assistant position and the other was language programs at the middle school nothing none of the other discussions cuts that we talked about really received much at all you receive a few e mails that asked that we cut the budget even further received a few e mails that that said they support the budget like this to go back with the same budget so it's been it's been a mix of things that i've heard about over the last week and before the last meeting i received a flurry of e mails and song even after our last meeting of cutting and cutting have up there now is the list of reductions in reductions that you've heard a number of times already at the top of the page there the unspecified reduction of thirty five thousand that you see there was a mistake in the original budget but we got it down to two point three two percent that thirty five thousand was taken out the committee had talked about fifth and sixth grade foreign language that was a thirty five thousand dollar amount we had decided to keep that in the budget but the thirty five thousand was left as a take out so it ended up being unspecified for a period of time when we came back together after the revoke you see the additional reductions you see that thirty five thousand to fifty six foreign language programs being added back into the budget because it was never meant to be taken out the first time round the other reductions you see there you see a ninety thousand dollar from central office as kevin said they were ours most of the only budget that went down so the executive committee came back together to work to cut money out of those central office budgets which affects all three budgets that have to be revoked so our share was of ninety thousand dollar staff reductions at the high school my question is talk to us a number of times those reductions are based on class signed that do is sign up so that peer is we would not need as many of the same level of staffing that we've had in the past now it does mean that class size will probably increase a little bit i think might use the numbers we might go from an average of sixteen or seventeen in a class to an average of eighteen or nineteen why now there's just like there is right now with this there will be fluctuations in that depending on students schedules so you get an error you have to be careful with class size because you get an average class size but you get some really small classes and you get some really large ones again based on kid schedule and how they're signing up but overall feeling was that based on science based on our continuing decline in a role and that would be those types of cuts could be made without any significant impact to the programs library assistant position you see their discussion was cut it completely leave it incompletely motion made at the last meeting was that we would cut it in half now whether that comes out a full fifty percent at one school and a full fifty percent at the other school would depend somewhat there my understanding is retirement some benefits may change and so you actually might get back more than the fifty percent a little bit more than fifty percent depending on the numbers and how they work out eliminate any courses now being offered i'm thinking particularly of low sign up e p classes you and i have talked about e p music theory we have some courses this year that might not run next year but they're not the a in some one off electives i didn't have the numbers this year you know and by numbers i mean below five side you know so you get two or three kids i have for of course we'll try to rerun that again in the future but any of the major nobody showed up there's going to be consolidation of sections right so instead of i think it's like this year and we have eight geometries next year about seven i believe this year we had six eleventh grade histories next year about five so it's sort of  then it becomes a lottery and the kids don't get the classes they want to read at that point yet whenever one hundred percent sure it part of the factor is when you factor out our to our tech students were scheduling around a little over seven hundred students you know seven hundred so we just start to run out of permutations i think we're ok but what ken said could very well happen we could end up with some twenty eight twenty nine in some thirteen's because of schedule  and that's that's more likely i think given the last section but at the same time i don't know you know what's the lowest we've ever been so i think you know it'll be an interesting time with the computer coming up  lose is some of that opportunity to do some of those are richmond tactility sound choices coming and presented to the board i believe last year regarding some so technologies that she's done integrating in and having communicating with kids in italy communicating with kids across the world doing a lot of stuff during our block during out so doing a lot of enrichment type activities there is about valuable to our students and basically that role will change so they'll be some shifting towards more of yet students don't lose out from the   in terms of academic work with kids that schedule will remain the same think the other piece to this conversation is that your part of the conversation is that this supports and services of the library assistant provides certainly could be made up by a core needed volunteer effort and simple other you know novel and that was part of our conversation and we can do this differently in the local you know for me i believe we can do this on the latest cuts really speak to a core value i mean this is the thirteenth year for me in the school and consistently  hear from the public on stuff and also we were also kind of honor administrators you know to provide us with you know sage advice and and and and and good input on to make you know into the decision making process for involv and here we have in an example here specifically in talking about the assistant librarian position this is something that we've heard from people that they did not want we said over the years we need to hear from people we want to know what they think and you know what the public wants you know these are the this is our constituency we also have stated that we want to hear from our administrators and the library assistant is listed as a cut but it's not it's you know all of these cuts if you know in this sheet that you were there was sent to all of you you know they're listed in priority and this is insist third a third level down and now that we've reached that point we're i the input that we've asked for all this time and to me you know that's not what we should be doing we should be listening to people we've been asking give us your input we want to know if you think we want to know what you know think you feel is appropriate in terms of how we operate this school district and what decisions we should make i just think it's wrong we shouldn't specifically we should cut that library system position in half  because then it we're doing exactly the opposite of what we've been mourning people do we read we got the input and then if we did if we cut that library system disposition w makes no sense to me and it's also i feel it and a wrong thing to do i mean i know that you know that kevin america you know will make the best of it you know and then but you know s activities you know would be lost it's going to it's going to diminish education quality is certainly cuts obviously we need we need because we you know we we don't want this project to fail i don't think we need to have that thirty three thousand dollars cut from this budget i don't think that that would be the make the difference between this budget voted down as opposed to being passed and it's goes against you know  and then i have been on the finance committee or budget committee as it was previously paul and we kept wanting more people to come in give us important and we contributed we would have meetings finance committee meetings and many times there would be no public input and the cake it's really what choice does there is really amazing to restore the library assistance would make only a minimal difference in that total of five operation and given the very small increment of that's involved here like a fair warning this will this budget will come as a second in motion from the finance committee i will promptly under robert's move to amend to add back to the the library assistance yeah so just real quick what you're seeing up here are the changes in where we started which we did our first graph had a three point four seven percent increase budget to the budget after we learned more solid numbers in a number of areas that decreased to a two point three two percent increase budget to budget and actually i think that's the one vote that was unanimous when we saw that it went down from three point four seven to two point three two everyone was in agreement that we would go with that so what we've done since then you saw the specific cuts we started the conversation around well what would a one point five percent increase look like what would a one percent increase look  what would a one point three two percent increase look like and so we discussed that in its various iterations the one point three two percent was to try to lower the budget budget to budget figure one percent from what was voted on you heard kevin say that yours is going down two percent i think i talked to john the room under bill senators is going down one percent is that correct and ours is going down a little bit less than one percent to be honest i was looking to just speak for myself as a member of the committee i was looking to get down to one point three two percent but in the end we compromised and we ended up at one point four six that budget the budget you remember that we were looking at basically a twelve point eight percent increase in the tax rate when we voted on town meeting day and that was with the state wide tax rate of a dollar one now in some ways we lucked out with the legislature  after all the budgets went down some of them decided that well gee maybe we ought to really look at things here among people here so of the river the recommendation right now and again it's not fine no it has not been finally approved then our house ways and means it's been out of the house but now it's in the senate they're recommending a statewide rate of ninety eight cents which is an increase of four cents over the last year so that immediately dropped us quite a bit in the tax in the impact on our taxes and then with our reduction of a little less than one percent were over there were eight point four three percent now what is done here is show you all on what those percentages would have been with a ninety eight cent stake why rate and what they would have been with the dollar one three so you can compare because it's not really fair to say that we all of a sudden went from fourteen down to  go to compare be a little more realistic in your comparisons so that's how we ended up with a one point four six percent increase by just the budget all those cuts are tough to make i certainly know  that as a committee my guess is some folks on that committee would rather add back in the behavior specialist maybe before the library system but i don't you know that's just based on past discussions it's really hard to decide well what's most important what's least important we did go with the recommendations of the administration is mark preferred to some of their discussion revolves around the fact that we do this differently can we do it with a strong volunteer program that was the recommendations that we heard so that's how we ended up there was trying to get that budget down basically one percent from where we were on time meeting so now turned over to m primary concern right now should be at what level we can obtain voter approval for a budget now none of us has a crystal ball in that regard what we do know is the following that we had over fifteen hundred people vote no in this budget we know that that was in extraordinary swing from recent history where our budgets have passed comfortably with strong support we know that very few in fact no more than one or two of those opponents came to any of our meetings any of the finance committee meetings any of the public meetings held by this  also know that there remains in our community very deep seated opposition to the level of property tax increase that was presented last time the question remains what that reaction will be this time because even with the budget that the finance committee is recommending we are looking at an eight point four three percent increase in property none of us knows how that will go over with the voters we're going to have to make an assessment an assessment i suggest we should make with our heads and not with our hearts if this budget goes down the cuts we will be discussing in the next go are going to be gruesome it's the only word to describe there aren't easy cuts left to make there aren't classes to be  isn't money to be saved at the supervisory union level in fact if you were to look at the potential cuts to get us down to even a slightly lower level you would see things that you would instantly say how could we ever do that and beyond that if we can't get a budget passed we face the specter and i certainly hope we don't get there but we face the specter that on july first by aloft we don't have a budget we have to reduce spending to eighty seven per cent of the level this year until and unless we pass a budget now when i look at that as a board member i become very risk adverse i don't want to implement any of the cuts that we're proposing this time but i want to pass a budget now for better or worse with imperfect information we're all going to have to decide what is the level that is likely to attract the voters we need to pass this budget now for myself going in considering the intensity of some of the opposition i thought we would have a hard time passing a budget unless we presented  reduction from the budget already rejected of one percent which would have got it down to a one point three two percent well we've already crossed that line and judging by the comments here tonight others are prepared to had still more back it and while i don't want to lose any of the things that are in this cuts i certainly don't think the things that are on this list are worth risking the consequences of another defeated budget the consequences for education and the programs we care about i disagree with the notion that if we were to make these cuts we would not be listening to our constituents quite the contrary my fear is that if constituents get about in which they see a budget that in their judgment has not been adequately cut to reflect their vote that they will not only vote no but they will resent us and vote no for years to come and consequence i want to avoid none of these cuts or power but the question in my mind the one question we should focus on is so poor what is the level of a budget that we can present to the boat that gives us some degree of confidence that we will succeed and a yes vote and that's what i hope will frame our conversation remember none of these cuts were simply invented by the committee we went to the administration and said look if we want to reach a target tell which cuts will cause the least negative impact on our students and that was how we got the list that we got so it's not a question of us of us jury rigging something from the administration is a question should be a question for us as a war if you if you're really confident that you can keep adding things back there and get that vote of approval and then i'm back i don't have the confidence and clear assessment with your heads and that will tell you how to vote so that's my plea to please think hard don't simply add things back because all of us here want the programs back only if you're convinced we can get those votes to approve them because otherwise we are risking far more than we should so that's my presentation i follow up with that if i did the math right it looks like if we put the library back in the thirty three thousand it comes out to eight point five six percent exact correct so what else do that check th point four three is the breaking point here you know what i see less and i may be mistaken but if you bring them back budget with a reduction of less than one percent we were we've already skated past that that you really you really are risking voters saying they didn't take a vote seriously they really make any cuts and they're not meaningful and that's the reaction i'm fearing i think there are some out there that regardless of whether it's eight point four three or eight point five nine are going to vote no but when you're trying to tip what was a close election what you fear in my mind is that folks saying i'm becoming their campaign themes they barely made any cuts and that's why for more follow up i'll stop i would imagine what percentage of the population you think w life because look at some dollar look here is one dollar amounts what is the difference when we talk about the money here and begin each town is different but basically what we're at now we've reduced the increase from last year fifty to sixty dollars per one hundred thousand in each of the town so if you're regarded again we could get the specifics but i think it's fifty to sixty all across the board so hundred dollars one hundred thousand dollars house you'd see fifty fifty dollars less than the original budget increase of weiss here for two hundred thousand one hundred dollars it cetera et cetera so that's what the dollar czar and i again i think to michael's point britney what adding back in thirty three thousand dollars is not going to make a difference in terms of getting this passed or not passed i'm i am i am not looking up a dam assuming it's going to fall on my head and i really strongly believe that what i said before that if we just ignore what people are telling us and just go you know ahead with our own agenda then we've we've watched some of the trust that has been put in their hands by the public by not listening given the amount of input we you know we don't get lots of input and you know i don't hear a lot from people even having been on the board as long as i have i you know i've heard more about this budget than i have i think the last time i got this much input was when we met we had the strike which was a number of years ago and i don't think this thirty three thousand dollars to me is worth risking that sort of abandoning you know the public's trust in us if you somewhere in between the two previous general because i also see that we're listening to input but i see fifteen hundred no votes if again in point whether they were here at the meeting or not people made decisions to vote against the budget as michael said we usually had a plurality in the past so people were convinced for whatever personal reason that the increase was was either philosophically too great or financially too great for them to vote in a form of matter and the challenge is where is that fine line i think when we're splitting hairs we don't have around number to say one percent reduction or whatever it is then it's then it's personal choice people are going well they didn't cut the music thing like we were hearing so that's good i'll vote for or they're cutting the the  e the library system and that's that's a vital thing even though it's assistant position i have to vote against it you know we're we're prognosticating without without sufficient information the only thing we have is the vote and that's the ultimate input and so i mean i'm not sure where i come down but it's i'm i am reality of the situation is it might be one hundred fifty people with three thousand people voted so really we probably heard from less than five percent of voters as to what they really think so we are really sheep in the dark a has been a long time since a budget was defeated probably what ten years two thousand and three on the revoked most or significant shift and what kind of cut bush required this year thirty five percent change in the budget and i think my feeling are heard and they responded so we are at we are cutting we're cutting in ways that we think will not impact the students gives me data quickly and and then i don't know am i supposed to respond to this person or not and so one of the ideas is not how do we respond but how do we get the message out i've got from two towns on line lisa rector wrote this beautiful piece about the budget and another person respond to that saying i voted against the school budget because it seems illogical that school costs go up and roman goes down thanks to lisa rector description of school budget situation i understand now why this happened so maybe one of our issues is we need to get the message out there better maybe we're not doing a good job doing that and we have to respond to i don't know how we're supposed to respond so maybe that's for a later discussion but won't when i get emails or i'm part of a group email we're all on from a committee or a board who responds how do we know these people are getting a response  or here thanking whomever is providing correspondence acknowledging that we've received it and appreciating the input i don't necessarily agree or disagree it's similar to expressing his or her opinion so it's i view it is in play not something that i should either can down or  but if they have questions there is one one recent question i got data from from you was well it's the teachers who are living the commune they're just voting themselves a raise so i think it would be appropriate to say what percentage of how many voters we have in the community boating for the budget and and or we just ignore the sort of question i don't know how do we deal with that and that would as well as not also the one that indicated that it teacher voting on the budget was a conflict of interest yes it sounds so good but how do i know that you're responding i feel like i should respond i don't want to put my feet out of term how do we do it that it could be a different discussion a different time but i think that one of the issues here is are we listening to what the voters are telling us and are we letting them know where we as i said i got lots of emails i didn't respond to every single one and basically the tone is of a lot of ones i received i don't think the response was expected since it was my thoughts on the budget but once i did respond to are the ones that had questions specific questions or the ones that have factual errors for instance the band once i tried to answer those right away to say that there's no plan to cut any music program so i did not respond to every single one but those of the two cases if there was a question or if there was a factual error and sometimes as you all know they are sent to the entire reply all because then we risk being in violation of the open meeting law so i only respond myself so you would you would not necessarily know that i responded right so should i respond if i feel the if the person didn't get a response from us i'm feeling like i'm not doing my job i respond to their questions and i'm confused on this issue when we have a smaller board the idea we could talk about yeah i mean i right now is the time to have a discussion but i argue whether or not you feel like the state helping us reduce that eight percent increase on your taxes is still too much for many people so i know that we're talking about small amounts of numbers increase so i just you know please don't do that january and at the time debate when do we need to get below three percent for total budget increase to get this much it approved and we had a good healthy discussion like tonight and a majority of us to term and now will will present a budget with more than a three percent increase and through a combination of good fortune and good central office work we've got it down to two point three two percent  and we adopted that budget and it's still  i think we need to focus on is will we be able to get this budget passed in the face of an argument that someone made then that we have not made the meaningful part cuts will we be better positioned if we can say that we made the meaningful hard cuts and is the risk of the next round of cuts if we do fail this time so serious that we ought to think twice before we do anything that undermines our chance past interpreted as sending a message either towards our support of the library or supportive this is babbitt and that's unfortunate because that's not really what the target is but i think i feel like that's how it ends up getting interpreted by the public is that that's a priority that we could just we could just do without so when you call them had put forth that that was your reductions were you know over three hundred thousand dollars in the budget fairly came back together again and said you know what do we think is going to have the least impact on students and are there some creative ways that we would be  able to mitigate that do you would none of these cuts are things that you know we we enjoy or necessarily want but it's the more the reality of what we were facing and that's the way we we approach i just in the mornings are just the afternoons and i mean between having like the library assistant their part time or cutting out middle school band for fifth graders i don't know if that's even like on the table i think that's i think that you know having the creative outlets are a little bit more important and i think it's really good to have librarians there but i mean our school like the m m u school most tried to implement a ninth period just  could have more access to having like arts classes and i think that we should try to prioritize it like how students can stay excited about school i get excited when i come to school and i have like an artsy talk about the future i mean that's one of my fears is next year we've made some difficult decisions this year but unless things change them up here earlier some of this reduction in the statewide property taxes to use a one time money that's gone next year we're going to be right back here again facing some of these same issues and one of the things one of the recommendations and i'm just going use foreign language is example one of the recommendations michel made is that between now and next year the curriculum committee and the finance committee start talking about a k to twelve foreign language program and what we at mount me as field offer to follow up the program at the elementary school because it's possible that could come around again next year and somebody is listening we already know that that's going to raise a lot of issues so in addition to michael's thinking that we don't want to get to july without a budget which i agree with fully i'm also a little concerned that that even know if we start adding stuff back in this year we're going to be right back at the table next year looking at some bigger  cuts can we live in the now certain we talk about what's happening now let's not worry about next year until next year yes that would be a concern next year let's deal with this issue that's in front of us right now and not you know i don't know what's going to happen next year none of us knows what's going to happen next year fully in in full detail and let's just deal with what we have in front of us cap that we are negotiating against ourselves here nobody knows what to point is going to be we know that the press spread was one hundred two votes which is about the spread for the underhill central school as well i suspect my own town is responsible for all of this but i will move to amend the second it motion by adding back thirty three thousand dollars to the library assistant positions to enable those positions to remain as full time positions that's my motion second two three four and post and underhill lay the very same talks about where we were in our march there and then talks about some of the reductions and then how that influences the tax rate and a reason why we going to do that on two towns on my front porch forum other venues people read that and you know reclusive the only thing i would say is this i really felt like the finance committee did a really good drive job of trying to get it out in every venue they possibly could we did a postcard can posted it on  there was at the meeting in richmond the information meeting in richmond and i saw her after that and she was telling everyone just in case she said that she came in contact with the jericho town turk's office that they really really like to attend the second information meeting because she was it was so much more so much clearer to her how the whole thing worked and the rationale for the tax increases that did come from the state and were she felt and i'm not putting words in her mouth but largely it was cleared by the to the governor's request for everyone to scrutinize their budgets and that really put a damper on the whole budget system or for the entire state this year one thing that we don't tend to do is we don't tend to write it or of the plain english with a passionate twist we don't we don't pull people in an argument we tend to give them the data and the graphs and the charts which a lot of people glaze over and be very factual and we don't ever say you know it was with agonizing discussion over several hours hearing the points of many passionate people that we came to this decision we don't do tend to do that would that be in our favor possibly how could we decide that there would be one person who would be responsible for that so that it would always come from a single voice that's the other issue we get into because if everyone is posting in their towns and putting a different spin on it how can we be speaking as one voice to these are really good questions as to how to do this may not want to take up the time from their technology thing but that's that's where i come in and that's where lisa's argument i think was good because it threw in more of the plain english and more the passion and emotion exactly exactly and if you read some of the other reports that we've put out you know like the merger reports and stuff like that dry now we will hear at least on the story i mean we it's going to be difficult to persuade people who are going to go it's like you said speaking from a whole board i don't think so i don't know how seriously can you put like flyers at the polls because i know that a lot of people who went and voted if they weren't aware of what that eight percent or top percent was coming from and how much like it got down they were going to just vote no because it's a big increase can you put flyers of the board like out the poll saying like hey this is why you're like can they be outside of the polls kind of student just like sam their hand them out is that quote like like is there a way to make sure that every single person who goes to the poll like at least is offered a fire like and like all these like encouraged to look at it because i i feel like if somebody doesn't know the information they're going to vote no they brought selection ringwald prevent you doing anything inside the building in terms of influencing th list for the town clerks to decide how far away from the building you have to be it's not actually in the statute many people think it's in the statute and think it's thirty feet but it's actually the for the  and i mean these cuts affect students but if you do spoke tonight if as students you think yeah there's some cuts there but we still have a good program to me won't be effective he says if there was a strong student voice that said yes we understand there were there were difficult cold cuts made by people talked it over with mr west or mr hamilton carbone we understand the issues and we really think that we will be able to still have a very good strong program here if students said that i think would make a difference i just want to mention that because i've always thought of this it's not necessarily going to impact this vote but thinking about education spending as a test and versus an expense is ultimately the direction that we need to go in because that conversation should be happening each and every time we meet in this case we're talking about it as an expense and we're trying to get something passed but we've got a tie you did with our strategic priorities with our curriculum changes with or teacher negotiations everything has to be this is an investment in the future because this is what we're going to end up with alba life and yes we have to think about today but we also have to think about five years from now and ten years from now and plan for it and so that's that's an investment and there's twenty seven million dollars which is a lot of money to just say well it's an expense and i think if that's if there's any role that we have as a board it's that we've got to be out front we can't if we're reactionary invariably it'll be a flip of the coin will make the wrong decision percent of the time so we're either going to step out in front and say this is the direction we're going whether it's fifteen to zero or eight to seven but this is the direction we're going in the voters will let us know and say ok no you're going in the wrong direction we're going to correct that and then it becomes a dialogue right now it's it's tentative and i think if we continue to do that it will become less viable one group of seventh graders because we have a team that has a seventy great team and actually well i'm lucky enough to have one of the teachers here and he can chime in if you would like to brian regarding our one who wanted to shoot if and i also want to talk a little bit about the integration technology position the person that supports teachers in terms of the actual integration using those tools and some of the things that they've been doing this year joanne found again is one of our integration specialists she helped put together this slide presentation tonight so just kind of some of the benefits that we've seen from the one to one and working with the integration technology specialists to just plan lessons knowing computers or always accessible speed of access save class time in the past we have a couple of carts they get passed around and they're not they're not plugged in they're not charged they're not they're not working correctly they have to a back and these students are very efficient now the classrooms are very efficient time now there's a lot less loss of instruction time now waiting to get a computer card down to your room and make sure all the computers are booted up that they get it gets frustrating it's a loss of instruction time and they've saved a lot of time in terms of instruction in class time so that's pretty great benefit do not have to print out work sheets and other materials again this is all they're doing a lot of google docs a lot of different things with technology web based tools that they do they work together they work on projects together teachers are able to head out assignments through the the web so there's not and the work that's lost well i shouldn't say there's not any wor lost there's less work for the work that's lost and the teachers are more efficient with the work that they're doing and there's a lot less paper that's been use wide variety of tools readily available as resources and for creating and sharing and again these things we find more and more students share these two tools with us as well they find things so there's a lot of teaching going filed with our teachers as well so teachers are learning from students so there's a lot of creativity how a lot of tools that are being found tools travel with students so these these computers are blogs keeping track of monitoring what students are doing with their work glod so what you'll see of version of a glove that's kind of a interactive poster there's an example of that a little bit later videos presentations q r codes if you're not familiar with that that's a little squiggly thing that you take your device and you have pop it on there and take a little picture and it scans it and you get information from that q r called wolfram alpha is kind of a you know i had to get really clear on the definition of it but it's it as i've heard it's a it's a search engine on steroids it's just really our high capacity search engine to that does a lot of things beyond a search engine so our kids are accessing that a little bit more it's that extra up and coming thing if you haven't seen that hop on there you can kind of see what's going on with that it's pretty impressive what it can do in terms of computing things and making comparisons and it's much more than a search engine it's much more than google they lot of different things that are going on media access to information about current events again the immediacy of a kid's if there's a question that comes up the classroom they can immediately go to or they can do a little bit of research immediately on create quizzes or informative assessments on  so they they're really right there with teachers need to make a formative assess and they can get that out to kids immediately and get immediate feedback on how kids are doing so they know they can tell if the kids are learning if they're lost a little bit and they get more immediate information on how kids are doing in the classroom student learning i get a lot of sharing a lot of collaboration that doesn't just happen in the classroom they can collaborate in the evening they may get a little bit distracted with an instant messaging once in a while but they're learning that's a tool that they need that's a skill that they need to learn but sharing a collaboration so they're doing projects together even though they're not even in the same town so a kid in jericho maybe collaborating with a kid  o'clock at night teacher student student student there's a lot of collaboration going on teachers can give immediate feedback a student can have a project at you know seven o'clock in the evening of the teachers on line at that point in time they can take a look at it and give feedback to that  detailed feedback again blew it in seamless again a lot of there's a lot of efficiency and kids are more in time instruction learning problem solving analyze again students learning so again if they have a high interest area they're so related to the topic that there's surgeon they can really get dive into that and get more information and really be engaged in their learning based on what they really want to learn independently by accessing  resources again individualizing their own learning accessing information meaningful to them ownership of and responsibility for their own work access to experts again you can walk by talk to people directly we have groups that are talking to authors  you know we have people that are going out and doing job shadows they can contact with people all across the state across the country across the across world obviously supporting students with special needs  this was coming from our special educator and they thread again and share doc students to special educator side by side work on laptops teachers special educator for modifications it's discreet and that's always a concern with the students who are on i p s receive modified assessments and assignments so this it gives a little more discretion it's not as obvious to kids and it really helps with the self esteem of a lot of our kids who are on i tunes and you know feel that it's a negative thing even though it's not this is theirs and gives a little more discretion inclusion every student has the same tool not singled out voice attacks of software customisable for individual students so if judge student has trouble writing they can have voice to text them and that really helps out a lot in terms of that special sporting students with special needs videos so different ways to give presentations to present their work to present their knowledge the flipped classroom for those you are not aware of that that's basically students can get instruction at home they can get a lesson at home coming to do the practice in the classroom rather than getting the instruction in the classroom and then going home and practicing it's there's a lot of research to show that's a better way to instruct students laptop helps all students particularly those with executive functioning processing so it's an organizational tool calendar you know a lot of our kids with those executive executive functioning processing thing this is help with our access stead of saving everything on the network which was local i can save it at home and then i can pick it up at school and it's not an issue i don't you know the dog and the homework is basically what it comes down t the it's there they save it on their on the on their google doc and they go on school and it's there for them as long as they remember to bring your laptop but if they don't remember the bring your laptop they can use another computer or another device to access to work again some of the shared documents science experiment i density share data create and analyze charts so they may have been working in different places and just adding to this and then i come in and have a discussion classroom fall and i have some students they don't like it they don't like it they were used to coming feature of google documents but this students who have stuck with it have been students who really are those students th ey reach out over their minds and they like or they like to connect to d s and they stuck with this was a they see the power of and they like to go back to their what they collected along the way and that's a great thing about the ego as a collects  the next day glod which i mentioned earlier if you remember back when i when i was a kid you made a poster for a project like glaad as an interactive poster on this poster here as you can see i really miss you i won't use a laser pointer so are the poster on the right was created by a super student you can see the little triangles the little arrows if you click on one of those this will and this one is not a live one but if you clicked on those you would hear the student's voice describing the content of the book or the story or whatever it is they'll be they have a q r code that they link you again to something about the movie so they did a review on this movie so it's an interactive poster that they had and just again any reading that technology you do it i can see a lot of the good things you do with computers but i read a lot of papers they're printed by students and i talk to them and i wonder what you do about the issue about copy paste in print you know what sort of plagiarism software  use to really know if the students are really writing or they're just grabbing stuff and putting it together and printing i don't think we really use software that's more of it intuition on the teachers know on their kids amen and knowing their writing styles we have run into that you can actually just copy and paste and just do a google search and it pops up right now so we have run into that saw it in terms of us what we've used that's what we've used but we have a lot of discussions around copyright around plagiarism around  you know citing your sources so there is a lot of work around that as well there's an education around that i would say that they had best intervention that we have as our teachers know our kids they know the writ writing style and if they see something in terms of a word that doesn't quite match up to the discussion they may know that they may have a child that they'll do a little search on that and you know we we try to do this more educationally now obviously at this point in time obviously there's some discipline policies to this but there to submit it through google to go to revision history so if there's nothing in that document at twelve will want to know and some of the documents fall at twelve or late at night yeah gives you an indication that maybe they did some cutting and pasting right so we have  but they save it as a new name and that would now and then you'd lose that right well they didn't show the poll on time so there you know you don't read in the dark no one time so when you if you if you have suspicions and you have a conversation what's this about where just a quick think students are really aware of what can happen if they get caught plagiarizing even in fifth and sixth grade my teachers talk to us about it we know that if i would like let's say that i recall plagiarizing i would never play dress i talk to  administration my parents would call all of my teachers are notified i need to get mark to the student plagiarised so they're i mean i don't i don't necessarily know the cystic but i feel like if you make sure the students know they can get in a lot of trouble they're going to be less inclined to do even with the computers the question that i had was do these computers pretty much replace the need for a textbook like if i have a computer do i not have to carry around my little americans text book  it's supposed to be and i don't mean that that is connected to your foot expect haven't already talked about that so our young our seventh graders working with the library have looked at new books coming out synthesize condense all this information and then make some decisions around that presentation in terms of what is going to be funny and engaging one sort of stuff and then you can do this one without thinking maybe you don't have to  is the example i have you can really see that you know a kid using sound effects he's using video here and he his presentation is some of the details of the book that he's hoping that will draw in the reader to read the book that he's ways in libraries is one of them i saw a presentation by a like very a conference and basically she had an eight and a half by a leavening piece of paper with q r codes of all the classic books  i mean that's where the kids got the books they went out and got the q r code and the book was downloaded on their computer different conquered to fix periods lawyers face this because judges are now starting to read my writing i'm screen and you have to write differently because they perceive it differently so if you're writing persuasive pros evidence what your reasoning if you you know boiling down that that books and what's going to hurt these kids to read this book and then you know you have to do all that thought process and put it all together you know the dramatic effect in the presentation voice you know that when he had the cliff you know he cuts the music he does all those are those are for me really good uses of of thinking and using you know electronic media or presentation skills to get your point across you could see a lot i don't and it's it has to do with what you're getting at when you print something out if you look at it on paper they could do a much better editing job than we could ever do on screen and i've seen this for years and i don't know the psychology behind it i just know what happened so just the high school like i was going to put up sort of similar but i'm just going to take a different twist decided to talk about a couple things i want to talk about a tech integrationist air call the person that we hired beginning  of the twelve thirteen school year and they're juggling work with teachers and it's to help teachers think differently about instruction because every student in one thousand tenth grade now has one of these in the room in that does a lot of things a part of me just like the fact it gets teachers read we talk about the curriculum you know and that's just those conversations are great and it makes them think about what they're teaching and why they're teaching it the challenges the out the challenges teachers on the output they ask for students so instead of always being the same thing as it was ten or fifteen years ago maybe the difference between a poster and a paper we're standing up a given or a presentation but now you can more easily make a movie you know with one of the things i was going to show with some of our movies from our tenth grade history class this year julia your maturing with class they they had it they had a debate which was instead of just sitting in either writing down your database questions d b q's over and over and over and over again or typing them they got to speak of and if anyone turning the earthquake data into charts and then trying to look at some of the precursor data to make to see if they could think of ways to predict earthquakes now you could have waited over you know fifteen years ago you could have done that as well you would have to wait for to come out the paperwork you know you would have to contact the university and printed out but it this allows the class to move at a quicker rate that allows the teacher to in some students have really liked it and some have detested it so it is something for us to to to think about and to ponder and to does it change what we do  do we have an answer yet no but it is something that teachers are sitting in and talking about it was that lunch today with jen that it was here earlier and she teaches our eleventh grade a p course and persuasive writing and it is different if it's something you write to speak something you write the hand in or something you write to mail in to the to the free press short article it's a different way you you you present your argument and you're right so a lot of that is driven by eric eric goes to vietnam of course meetings every two weeks so without a means is given any course with more than one teacher gets together every two weeks and sits down for a period and they are trying to go as ma possibly can to be a fly on the wall to offer suggestions to say hey i'm here in the assignment you doing to think about using this piece of technology or that piece of technology and these are great and we're doing all the things that they mentioned but without changing you have to change how we teach otherwise it's just a fancy wrapper and i think it is and i think it is leading to do something better than that and that too is twenty first century skills about students taking try to do that and doing things differently isn't always easy but i think people are open to it and a lot of times you'll hear sound bites on t v or you'll hear an individual here or there that says  the transfer of the impact fees yes this isn't something we need to make motion necessarily to approve but i do need folks to sign it and this is basically time you're signing that we can transfer money impact fees from going to be that we're going to collapse and there is a bank account that towns hold on and they distribute it annually and so these are the amounts are ten thousand and twenty five dollars from the richmond impact blood drive coming up in a few weeks and they are sponsoring the annual mr cougar competition which for those of you who don't know is essentially a beauty contest for the senior male students of our school which is it's it's a great great thing the money goes toward student council or project grad or something we have cougar house is winding down we did not do as much as we had hoped this year but we're set up next year to be really practive and get a lot done which is good the spring musical had a great opening closing weekend all the same time and the theater department is getting started on their senior production which i cannot remember the title of but it has something to do with spring sports just started this past saturday i think not all teams have had matches or games just because of weather so we're looking forward to a good sport  season we had a quarterly lunch with admin a few weeks ago some good stuff came out of that a lot of students were curious about the budget and so students were kind of able to understand a little more of that i apologise  awesome i fell by well ok to to quote one of the one of my classmates who was in the room testing with me she turned to us and she has this should have really tested this out on students before having us take it so i feel like it i don't think it's ready to be rolled out to students as it stands today i was given two and a half hours to answer six questions about math i it was great i had an hour and a half to know i had two hours to work on my history homework that it was more the math section just because it forced me to use an online calculator which students aren't used to using i would have much rather had my graphing calculator on my desk i know how to use those graphing abilities the graphing capabilities on my calculator on line was super limited and also i can't show my work on line i can't show my scribbles i can't show i can't i can't even do a geometric proof on line and i like that's an easy way to show your work and you have to but the biggest complaint that i've heard from students is the computer component and and that would be yeah and i'm sure freshmen sophomores because they have their own can talk about the aspects it's a neat little pile i'm glad we're going to chance to do it we're learning a lot of things but when we have to do it for real next year we we won't do you know are there certain rooms we won't use we probably won't do to test in one day next year will probably  one test a day you know there's different things we're learning the test itself it is a pilot stage for those who've been reading about the f back it's supposed to be a reactive assessment so if you get three or four questions right the questions get harder if you get three or four wrong way they get easier that capability is not available in the pilot till you start getting into late may and that window didn't work for us so we weren't we're in one of the things we noticed it is the writing task there is to test your basic test and there's a performance data in the performance task you were taught two or three days before some key concepts i believe your former staff of viruses write ye and that so there was some there was some discussion of viruses within the science class that was done two or three days before yes we did it in camp so there in that part of the test and then you you know so that there was activity some prior knowledge when you're taking it from looking at both looking over the shoulders i did not actually look at the test but looking a little older students what the freshmen had to do was in my opinion a much harder writing task than what the juniors had to do the freshman had to write about the impact social media has on journalism as a right right unlike a letter to the editor about that they were given a article from the huffington post they were giving another document to read and they had to sort of go back and forth  compose a letter what did you have to do i wrote a mock article for my school newspaper about whether or not the school should buy antibacterial hands up so to me that's a different there's a different taps in the nup the briefest person to think that committee assignments here we tried to give everybody you know everybody is in one committee we tried to give them their first choice and then there are a couple people that are two committees and we try to keep people when we could on the committees that they had this year and if that and if it was a first and second choice i think we did a good job of that if you really want to be young on a committee and that you're not on just email myself in duty and will work it out so this is just and i'll if i don't hear anything from anybody in the next five days and it's some polls then i will send people can do you have something does not mean that there's been a decision made on any issue just means of the committees found that to be a very useful way to focus the conversation and get down to the nitty gritty of the hardest issues that need to be resolved if if a proposal is to be presented to the community and we are also very actively monitoring the progress or lack there of this that they may present merger lead legislation in the from on state legislature or next meeting is on monday the twenty first at four thirty pm at the central office and of course are invited and w beginning earlier about communication i think that you can count on it least one posting on front page for based on tonight's mote in so i guess the question is how we respond to that should it come i think that's a good question you know we ha to give can that direction if that's something you want them to do than just an easier way for folks to read and understand it that aren't geared towards the graphs and the charts and the diagrams you know more and hitting more of more of our residents that we're you know emotional people who are are struggling with trying to meet the needs of the entire community so if if it works that you know one person in charge of finance can do that that's great i'm very reluctant i've been very reluctant to put anything in writing on the front porch for him because so much of that can come back to bite you i'm more than willing to talk to people and have a long conversation about what i know and what i don't know who to go think we need to be the ones putting it out there tomorrow and not waiting for somebody else to post whatever they're going to say we need to be with the same obviously not charts and graphs right at the end of the very easy to understand  not getting into it responding to in a repurchase and that's what i'm i'm more meant that other than you know you can you can always put out a very generic comment in terms of getting ahead of things and inviting people to give more feedback but once you get that and how are you going to tell we need help from anywhere we can you know i mean i always have just one friend i know where i could call people thought that was you know i think it would be good if we started off with something from can be a chair we all know people who are in favor of it have them ask them to start writing school websites for a teacher principal to put something in it can be the same statement or something else but just to remind people that the budget coming up and that you know it's difficult to look we've cut what we've cut but this is the best for the time that we're in right now and we would really like to see people coming out to support the idea is that we do that remember brought up to get themselves in trouble doing that while ten fifteen years ago you do need can't advocate for a position using public money now i don't know how you could say putting something on a website is using public funds the website exists regardless you know so it's right for me is do we want to say that it's fine for all of us to be able to post on front porch for us is it a manner that simply says we've had this budget you know revamped you know the budget is coming up we're encouraging participation and this is who i am you know just some generic stuff you can say that but i think it would be good if we decided that yeah it's ok if we start seeing each other's posts and i think that's fine as long as you make it clear that you're posting for yourself and your opinions as opposed to speaking for the board and this is where we get into your saving lives which is why i haven't done it so far you know i know where i call in talking points that we could all agree on that are fact so he came individuals can actually use that as a template to draw on to write their own personal messages but at least will have the facts as we all see  them straight between the three i would be interested in talking a template to be able to do you know something f all work out ok we do have the need for a brief executive session before the bond before july one and have the bond reimburse that we have to you have to approve this declaration or we can use the bond funds before the bond starts going to pay for it and we've got into declaration official and ten of them out means field you the school district to reimburse certain expenditures from the proceeds of indebtedness for the on to fix the roof