good evening everybody i'd like to welcome you to the february twenty third two thousand and fifteen regular meeting of the school committee of the town of foxborough so once again the visitors followed by approval of next teaching and learning highlights will feature our new i school advocates program and we will spend a minute on the two thousand and fourteen fifteen school calendar discussion we'll have a and update on the vacancy that we have on the school committee currently and then we'll discuss any other matters a committee wants to microphone visitors but adam grab it in the back row is a middle school teacher at the her and school and he's also doing is a mistake of internship or in principle certification so he's here as well a learning experience so anything we have any agenda that you want  exciting new opportunity for technology student technology leadership and they can speak to the training that they got to discuss here at this table more so we had three days of training with people from with actually four people from high school initiative company and they do training all across the country in school based technology and support of all kinds and the program that we became very interested in is called high school advocates which is a student leadership program  advocates we were going to have a few more but were in full swing the first day back from vacation so the the evening is probably not just the most kids who are back into the full schedule so matt you're representing twenty one people in the first of all just representing himself you here is so impressive so i'm going to turn it right over to them and then the committee will have some questions for you and where we go anybody can stop going to started so my name year his family sent out a little video to get presentation regarding the high school program and i know for me professionally in my practice a lot of their message kind of matches up with my impersonal philosophy in the classroom using you know integrating technology having students kind of take a active role in using the technology in the classroom so i volunteered to try to kind of take part in this activity in trying to you know not really knowing exactly what was going to come out on the other end but so far it's very rewarding working with twenty two students from throughout the school of working on various projects that kind it was this fall early in the fall we had a school meeting but i mean by that was interesting the icicle program and this finale pretty much told us that no one really knew what was going to happen but it was probably the most interesting thing that had happened all year and we were kind of just informed that it was going to be a program that would teach students how to take technology in their schools into their own hands and shape it to match the way that we learn the way that we want to going i was suited three is training it was a lot of how to take initiative how to take your lying is your own hands a lot of team building exercises and then the last day we all have their own projects we get into groups and we came up with ideas surrounding ways technology could be improved in our schools towns states country and i that's when i kind of went off my own i come from  i moved here about a year ago so my old town was very different and the technology education was far less than what what is here but my my goal was to make sure that all students across the this town have a really good base education in technology because my feeling that without that the rest of their career with technology is just going to be so far behind everybody else so that's what i started doing i talked to travis allen who's the c e o of the school in issue program and he and i have been talking ever since and brainstorming ways that i can pursue this as my project and i've done my own training sessions of miss greenstein we've done i spent four days at the air here and i did training for the seventy three students on how to use their office three sixty five accounts i've done that here with the high school students i've talked to a couple of teachers to help them out it's going to interesting to see how this plays into my senior project are going to see how that works to me a lot of prep time and the clock thirty hours a week is going on but that's that's what i've personally been doing  we've got the other twenty students have been pursuing their own projects to get everything from you tube videos for teachers to teach them how to use different pieces of technology we've got students trying to look into how to make up lost learning days online which i know is a very interesting and popular issue actually this year timely topic yes seventy inches of snow we had wrestling reason but we've got students putting up televisions around the the group that i kind of got put in when i'm on the third day training we're looking into personally i'm i code in java so i'm looking at creating a program for the media center to handle how students get passes in the morning and to kind of streamline that whole process because right now it's a little so little wonky but we're going to see if we can do with that and then we've got walking we're looking into getting more computers because you know if you guys can see what there's like six computers over there and when the media center is closed for testing i think that or if the lab is closed you know it's only six computers for students to use in that and that's just not enough to get students lining up to use those computers or and look at putting more and where we can put more to make sure that everybody has the access that they need we're seeing technology used so efficiently within the building they think another set of hands are up and said here we don't lack expertise but we do like have to be from time to time and i'm spread between two buildings so i'm not here all the time these twenty one kids have really stepped in to assist teachers to assist other students when they do run and have questions or issues and to see them take that role has been magnificent matt as he said has been doing a lot of training at the harm there's a certain effectiveness that a high school student teaching a middle school student had that they the kids really seem to enjoy his presence being mayor plus to be quite honest he's also selling the i school program to them in the process because he's  telling them about the opportunities he has and as the program builds you're seeing what they could be doing in their future as well but it also we have another group called the a three group who is also taking on training issues and they have also been working and learning presentation skills putting together the presentations for training and coming up with great ideas you know like a tech day where they can come in and help other students to configure their devices so that their office three sixty five apps could be on their phone whenever i pad and those type of things so they've been just incredibly proactive and a great great tool that isn't their group the one that's working on a plan to that all kids can get certain tech training when they come into the high school get to you know like as they do with group guidance kind of those so they already started planning even during the three days of training what they're going to put forward as a recommendation so everything that was saying is i'm going to say pretty understated because it's been amazing what they were actually done and i would if i could just add just from from a teacher's perspective and working with the group it's been very rewarding just for me and you know i'm really excited to see kind of the projects that the group is working on how they're going to come into fruition once they kind of reach you know they kind of reach a school wide level i know for me i used to be really up to date with my technology but as it changes so  fast it's kind of nice to lean on the students and they kind of you know at least in my classroom the students will mention certain websites and apps and all sorts of good stuff that i never even knew existed so now this is kind of that interaction that i have with a student in the classroom it's now kind of taking place in a school i love so it's really great to kind of have that i get you know it is the purpose of the i school advocates program is for the students to advocate and now they're able to do that and i think we're kind of a sounding board for those kind of interactions regarding that technology i think it's really really wonderful and some of the ideas you know that have come up in the media center you know i have always personally felt that you know the project you know needs to be tackled and now this is kind of giving that that told for it to take place same thing with the the announcements you know sometimes the announcements can can get a lost when you're trying to wrap up a lesson or you know the bell rings or something's going on it's just gets a little noisy so now you know once again that's another told for for some for change to take place and you know i'm a big fan of shark tank and i still think that where is my boss app is going to show up on t v one day i i listen to caitlin's presentation and i'm like where's mark cuban he's probably you know if i had the money i would i mean i really i feel that strongly about it and so the training wasn't you think the training was just about have actually about it was about technology skills but it was also about public speaking communication skills teamwork and all the things you really need to be successful in life so that's one of the things i really liked about it is empowering students when they still young and you know as we said before his traverse alan's biggest message is you know it's insulting to tell kids they can change the world leader like after they've gone to college they can actually do it now and i think that's what we've seen  that they are already changing our world and beyond that the students who are working on that last learning initiative are really getting they're both small in their ideas like how to advocate for teachers doing more online learning and more blended learning opportunities but also what's the big picture gave for that and i think their public speaking communication skills training certainly work because it didn't take them long to meet with us and say so this is our idea for the media center and have upgrade and you're working on the programming of our kids through it but would we be willing to pony up for a few more computers or do they have to fundraise for that so they're very persuasive and i think that's been great the best thing about it is is their confidence in themselves you know i was going to add to your point you know this is this allows kind of that vetting process of technology i grew up in the laserdisc era where you know i remember being in fifth grade and that was the big thing in town where the you know i grew up in a small town in connecticut and they spent you know like the entire educational budget on laserdiscs and you know thought what you had sort of the announcements and how to make it better and more because that is you know we've heard the music when you don't hear the announcements there but we the resumes really took problems that were created frustration for them within the school the ideas they had the were in the school and really lior if you want to come up and add to that but it just taken some things that they knew could work better and it's almost like that simple idea of if we ask they can come up with a whole host of ideas and things that we didn't think of so when they started talking and pitching their ideas i was actually looking around the media center like i never thought about that that way so just seeing from their eyes things that that they thought could be improved and that they already had ideas for improving it with sumi is so powerful that the advocacy that's in the i school advocates it's wonderful it's great and thank you for taking the initiative in moving forward with this i can't wait to hear about your senior project at the end of the school year i hope you'll come back and give a wrap up and i was thinking well when dr carroll was speaking that many years ago now and then and i and daddy before your time we worked on the phone first for teacher plans and tonight we're going to get an update on the second iteration of that and this program is it wasn't even made it was a blip on the radar but is exactly where we wanted to go but we didn't know how to get there then and the progress that has been made since this was probably seven years ago is pretty amazing and i think you should be very proud of it we should all be very proud of it as a district and thank you for your partner and yours julian that's true it was almost like at that time  i don't know when it was exactly but took us a long time so i would say good that many years ago but i think we had so many other things to do we couldn't even conceive of this exam but i'm happy that a few years down the line we got the other things taken care of so that we could say you know we're ready for something of the school students i've had some students who i haven't had but it's nice to see maybe the students whom it didn't have you know maybe the glorious academic stats should give and have another opportunity to shine which i think is great you know there there is more than just the grade you know in your social studies or math and it's nice to see students take an active role because you know that's kind of one of the nice things about technology has a has a lot to offer there's a lot of real world implications i believe you should be able to manipulate it and express your ideas accurately you know in persuasively that maybe i don't have a  for so i mean this is it's a good skill and it's nice to see students i think we have there's one student who's been working training other students who i had as support freshman and sophomore and i never would have imagined this particular student spending time teaching other students in doing it in private so that's going to be really nice to see students can you know have another another opportunity other comments for the team mrs spinelli in program she sees in her her judgment but it was a cost and i wasn't sure what the benefit would be or how long it be before we'd see the benefits i'm really impressed with the benefits already and i'm really impressed by the changes to this building and hopefully it can potentially apply to other buildings as well but i i do think putting more technology into the daily life of foxborough high school can really change the feeling around this building so you know your comments about the announcements in the media center i think you're spot on i'm sure the other applications are all going to be excellent certainly your kudos to caitlin's idea and i'm sure there are others as well but boy if we can just do the little things even and have an impact on is but that means anywhere any time any any one any anyone anyone anywhere any time and what they're there the training group and they immediately started during during the three day training looking officer sixty five in the online  tools that are there and particularly they only know books and that could change immediately how kids do every subject how you keep your notes so they've started along with matt doing a lot of the training but they are working so that we don't have to wait for a teacher to say i feel comfortable with the one note you know officer and now i can train each of my classes they've got kids that are going to do that for other kids so all they have to do is get another student to show them and the teacher to take the off themselves so that will make it happen even faster the use of those collaboration tools and so that's that's example of everyday life at the high school and how it's going to change really how students are able to keep up with their subjects and keep their notes which could exist that we're going to exist year after year so when we talk about how do you keep your cumulative knowledge that's going to contribute to that immensely and i just need to brag on man a little bit matt could you tell the school committee what your plans are after graduation i enlisted in the navy i got a job as a c t m which really that's nice that's the issue that i have with the naming conventions is it doesn't it stands for cryptologic technician minutes which doesn't sound like a sentence to me  of a lot of cooperatives for me but technology's always been my my strong suit that's what i love to do so this program allowed me to get all those skills i need and hopefully the navy will my daughter got asked to prom and she's in the process of her father going through fourteen different background checks for maybe an innate sense of leadership in you i used seeing a way to pull leadership out of students that might not know that they have it but it's it might be there or are you already seeing students that are you know coming up you know you're you're leaving us and going on to really incredible things right what do you see that that's coming up from from the middle school or students here in the high school i got  the technology for me has always been something they're bring me out of my shell you know if you give someone like you give an artist you give them a hand if he's paper and they go to town you give a student who's good with technology a piece of technology and it's amazing the things that happen and i experience this a lot in the eighth grade not so much in the seven three they haven't really gotten their own devices and that training with themselves but a lot of eighth graders you know the reserved quiet ones is the second i talk about office or you know make a technology joke and they laugh and all of sudden they're out of their shell and they start talking and they help their friends and that actually happened a lot in the high school you get students that already know what they're doing and they go to help their friends and it's amazing to see maybe students that thought they didn't have the skills to be leaders realize that technology gives them an entirely different world to explore being a leader and  i'm not going as an officer in the navy because i that's that's not me yeah i'm pretty good at leading people like to think but i want to be the one that's doing the job so that's that's not what i want to do and i knew i was never good at that skill but i found my leadership in a different way and it's really awesome to see some kids that are trying to get a certain figure that out for themselves in the middle school and in the high school that you know leadership isn't defined to bringing a group of people into war you know you can be a leader and teaching your friends how to use technology in your peers how to use technology and it's i think it's going to be it might take a little bit it's kind of hammer that point home and some kids but i think more so in the middle school than the high school just because i spent a lot more time with them so far i'm really excited to see what we have coming up to us next year thank you so much terrific thank you thank you matt i think this committee would love to hear more ideas and ways we can support the program especially for improvements within the schools so i'm sure we'll route those through mrs myers paklin superintendent but if you want to give your your can your group some feedback talent at the school committee would love to hear more iteration of the of the process so i do believe there should be some improvements on what we're working on and then maybe some alterations or new projects all together which i have a little buckskin of some ideas that even in my jobs that's a good want to write that one down so i'm us you know i think we just mention a couple ideas and we kind of get a so far we've gotten a lot of direction back in school so that's been very positive in the teachers as well my colleagues around the lunch table i kind hey what do you think of this idea that's really good i like that would be nice if we could we could do that and so it's kind of nice to have that inside and kind of an inside year to maybe what is valued and you know what people like to see happen on both sides you know student from the and i guess i would just convey a sense of urgency you know if you think you have an idea we need to change the media center let's change the media so you know let's not wait have a walkthrough rescheduled yes so we were going to have one i think snow  personally and as darlene read these two ladies in our dynamic duo technology integration specialist darling of traveling among the three elementary schools and julie are going between the middle and high school so since this is a relatively newly revised and expanded role i thought to be a good time to learn a little bit about what they do kind of informally if you don't mind so maybe you could just start by telling us telling them a little bit about what you do when and then they'll ask you some questions and i would like this with technology first we're really building on basic technology skills that students need were exposing them to different tools and things that they're going to be using throughout their academic career so that's important especially in the in the lower  grades but also really incorporating technology into the curriculum to help in that understanding presenting information in different ways for us students and also allowing them the opportunity present their knowledge of what they're learning in different ways and create a way to and with so many of our young students really getting online and the younger and younger age secondary level we build upon what the team has started in elementary we also work on digital citizenship but we take a slightly different then they start talking about it with our kids about building your personal brand being aware of what you're posting online making sure you're well rounded and really teaching them to be responsible about what they're posting so we try to take a very positive turn to that because here the fact the matter is they are going to post so we want to make sure the things that they are posting are really representative of who they are and what they are we also build upon the technology skills as well it's just a little bit for us how we have been doing our office three sixty five rollout which gives our kids a lot more opportunity for productivity schools also for collaboration welcomes personalized learning and it gives them an opportunity to really have a lot of student choice and how they didn't strike proficiency in the standards and say that technology is the car it's a really nice red sports car achievement are always the driver and always of student age and i don't think there's a parent here who doesn't have not had to say the screen has to be turned off you've got to get away from the game we know that it draws our kids and we just need to make sure that when it does they're using it properly and in productive ways too so we also have the opportunity to work with our teachers to really integrate that technology into the curriculum seamlessly technologies not another thing it's simply a tool i really commons technology grab one of commons be part of your classes well i think this is a great example we just put a request for and and i dish and technology integration specialists in our budget request and and just hearing about the good work they're doing makes me i don't know how you do everything at both the middle school and my school with all those students and you have three schools that you're tunneling back and forth and so i just think it highlights the them i think that you heard a lot of the technology play and update and the things that are taking place it really has made a big impact capacity where he's just having to this year has been a big difference especially the secondary level but i think to where the proof is i can't tell you how many even i recently even over february cation the number of teachers that have come forward in e mail and have said oh my gosh i e mailed so and so on a friday night at eleven thirty and she responded to me because of questions that they had or they came the next day and they helped and that the curriculum focuses there so the teachers from whom we're hearing from really see the benefits and that's benefiting the kids having our our staff become technology comfortable if not professional and it's so important that's probably one of the greatest challenges we have an education public education education today right and i need to so you guys play an six months working with this new plan and it's the first time actually you've seen an update on progress toward our plan so just to give the community perhaps watching at home a little overview we see we stuck with the same  for for as the last play and because that took us a good year and a half to develop but we really i think came up with a good format that speaks to the true priorities in the district but keeps it concise and each objective is has its own three year goals we have four objectives each has its own three year goals in specific strategies to achieve those goals but each objective only has one page so we really have to choose our words carefully and make sure that we're really being concise and in and communicating in an efficient way where we're trying to go so we have a vision and i thinking you may have read some of this at the last meeting so i don't want to belabor some of that that's in it but i think it's important at least to read the vision and the mission the vision is in collaboration with the community for fox where public schools will provide students with intellectual artistic and character building educational experiences to inspire them to achieve in an ever changing global society and obviously a vision is deliberately broad so that it meets that but when you think about what does that actually mean in words i can't think of a better example than the i school advocate talking about what that program has done for him and what he's observing of the students because you never know when a new opportunity that we provide is going to speak to that vision of helping them be good citizens and in global society and realizing that they can have a role and and as dr carroll said some students who may not in the traditional things we think of a student achievement this may be the time that they shine to every new opportunity we offer to students whether it's engineering whether it's an art course whether it's this i think it really gets to that vision of giving each student an opportunity to really find something they're passionate about to build their educational experiences that in an inspirational way the mission of the fox were public schools guided by its core values is to engage students in a rich diversified education thereby empowering them to challenge themselves as they become productive responsible citizens so those two were were reports in through the new process the values have been the same for core values emphasize the acronym care challenging and innovative educational experiences a safe supportive and collaborative environment abbreviating this part respect for diversity in dignity of individuals and cultures and ensuring the quality of education called to be a bio grown communication etc so we have three broad four broad objectives objectives number one in general is to continue to offer dynamic learning experiences when the rigorous curriculum that promotes that promote experiences that promote critical thinking creativity communication and collaboration and foster high levels of achievement for all students by preparing them to be responsible local citizens so this is basically our objective that speaks to our are high the group that something is designated by the department of ed which includes our special needs population our yellow students and our socioeconomic free reduced lunch those are the three groups that make up the high needs group so as you know from all of the reporting that we do baseline a benchmark reports and cast reporting all of that we're always teasing down to look to see how those groups are doing and are we meeting their needs in the best way that we can so we continue to do that  intervention groups really putting in a specific intervention based on what we're seeing from the data because it's important what we're seeing that we're doing something different so that's an ongoing process and then also to looking at some other technology resources that are available for at home that can really supplement what we're doing that can be diagnostic that can also be adaptive for students so we're looking to some of those other resources that we can pilot whether it's through our summer programs or for some of those identified groups of students as far as the number of students that feel challenged by schools that comes out our k twelve and site survey that will launch again this spring and we'll have that data point later on in the school year the global curriculum connection piece across all content areas as you know we have a six year curriculum this year science is under review as well as world language so it's a great time for us really to immerse ourselves and the global connections that are there through our language but at the same time where do they fall within our other content area so it's much more on the radar if you will for our curriculum content areas but we will continue to look at ways to do that the other piece of that we talked about bringing in students next year with your support that's going to be a huge piece to really meet this goal by having students from other cultures come and to really diversify what we have and then the is the standards the international society for technology and education standards for students teachers coaches and administrators that has been a huge focus this year through professional development that started in august looking at our curriculum where are we embedding this technology standards what does that look like in a regular ongoing basis that followed up in october and has continued with the expectations for teachers what that looks like is so huge focus will continue to be and obviously with all the technology we've talked about that is something that we will continue to define and make good progress on some of the specific strategies in meeting those goals just to call out here a couple of them that are in congress or the enrichment and challenge opportunities in classrooms across continuing to increase those opportunities for kids the opportunities for students and faculty to participate in the global learning experience is again going back to those opportunities that are already in the curriculum how can we extend those it could be through skype ing and again using our technology resources to broaden the scope of the opportunities and activities that we bring for students but the other piece too is continuing to look at our service to live remodels whether it's a special education our you know well population how do we best meeting those students needs and going back to all of the data that we have and making sure that really isn't forming how we go forward and that you may have i think i'm not sure if you said i don't think you did i apologize for did the adding the third elementary math specialist which the committee did in the budget that speaks to this objective to provide the right type of consistent support for both for students who can be challeng ble bit more and for students who are trying to meet the standard so i think that that is really an important key to our goals under the subject ensuring that soon staff parents and all stakeholders feel valued safe and have a voice so i'm going to have me do the update on most of these until we get to the next one which is really builds up to it so go ahead maybe so one of the things perception data is really important the k twelve insight survey gives us information on that as well as the tell mass survey that we've had in the past which is takes place every couple of years that principals their goals for their school improvement plans it drives so what we're doing at the at the district level and the information that we have and some things are specific to schools and levels whether it's elementary or secondary that's incorporated within each of the school improvement plans and again we're continually going back to multiple data sources of where are we and where do we still need to go the opportunities for teacher collaboration with talked a lot about office three sixty five that really is the catalyst for providing us opportunities to collaborate much more within district and then outside and that piece on and proving instructional practice to enhance student performance the more that we collaborate it makes sense the more that we learn from each other we've seen a lot with the two technology integration specialists again just the conversations that are taking place and there infusion into the peel sees the professional learning communities into cycle meetings and the department meetings and taking those opportunities to extend learning because we do have just a wealth of knowledge and our colleagues around us and to learn from each other is huge the guidance of mental health services that all levels to better meet the psychological and social emotional needs of students we've talked about students really coming to us with some very different needs social emotional health is very important how r vast meeting their needs a lot of time and effort has been spent in this area with professional development we've had some really high quality professional development opportunities for our mental health staff this year and just sitting in some of those sessions for myself it is eyeopening to think about what our students are bringing with them and the things that we need to think about and how we can address their needs more effectively so there's been a lot of them to system professional development in this area and you can see into the strategies that our goal after we've ramped up to the professional development and in mental health issues for the staff which we always do provide but it certainly we've talked at this level that certainly is a is an ongoing emerging need a growing need across the country i really believe in education but the next step would be to take it to the next level where we're offering families parents and families a little bit more information and training on how to address those needs because that's where we see the partnership really having some value it's not all about what we're doing but how we partner we do it with families but could we do a better job offering those types of informative workshops for parents and families and that's that's where we'll we will be going with this that she killer area developed collecting the data us and i know we discussed this when we approve the plan by i just wanted to remind people that when we we have collected so much data i think we had a stack about this high that we sifted through in order to formulate where we're going next and i it's great to see the progress that has happened in the things that we're working on and will continue to work on over the net is such a good point five years ago we had no data on how level but actually no three through twelve i think we do students in the spring of two thousand and eleven so this will be our fifth year i believe that for us collecting that type of perception data and we're now at the point where we've addressed some of the issues that have come up and we continue to get fresh information about how people perceive were doing and what areas they would find more helpful so we have come a long way between not knowing how people felt about our school culture to really having a lot of data and just really good question and to say some of them are in progress but we didn't feel that we've made enough progress to say in progress but i absolutely feel that we will get there and will get there not only on schedule but ahead of time so we're six months into a three year plan so i think if we if we didn't have some not yet four or seven promises you should wonder whether the plan spoke to three or goals i think goals and objectives so i think that it's very appropriate to at the six month mark to have some things that say not yet or that we were just beginning or in progress or similarly many of these will require a comeback i guess training of staff for example yes so even though we mar complete i suspect if you look through the three years you'll look so fit which leads me reinforcement or right answer mentor and the specific strategies that have been marked as completed a really things that had to occur first right at the beginning in order to that achieve some of the other that it really did span the three years of program improvement for the for the schools but it wasn't so much that it wasn't so easy that we achieved on the first year and it wasn't so much at the end we felt like most of that had been achieved and the few as long as we keep going back to it and saying where are we and is this logical that we would be able to get there next or are we disappointed that we didn't get to that in the first year but most of it as you can see at least is in progress or ongoing strategic planning process which was entirely different so i love that we have institutional history in the committee and strategic planning because it just it was the same process but it felt different because we knew how to gather data we had a lot of data to review it for all of these objectives and one of the things we realize is that we had come so far in technology or at least in the acquisition of things to that point that we knew by then i think we were more informed that when we did this year ago we knew that technology should not be an objective in and of itself and by itself we felt that technology really has its its tentacles in all the aspects of what you and we should do so feed that into the other analogies but it's not just the we don't need a red sports car objective trying to make a connection here it's not falling for we need the we need to say there are there are parts everywhere but we need to say what is it we're really we really do need to focus on that is about capability and capacity which the capacity of everything now is dependent upon technology so we really wrote objective three about infrastructure and capacity so it says to enhance district technological capabilities infrastructure to provide an increasingly safe and supportive physical and academic school environment so this is the objective that took us longer to actually word what was our intention and our intention really or in layman's words is to say what do we need to be doing that enhances a safe and supportive physical environment which we talk a little what and academics we're buying and that they're not necessarily two separate things and they they really aren't so turn it over to bill to talk about our progress to date or anyone else any wants to weigh in ok you know the three obviously the three major components as debts that are really broken down into different portions of technology but the first one is something that's been on th agenda for a while and that's the safety and security measures within the facilities second one really is to improve and expand the functionality capacity of our infrastructure to support teaching and learning and the third one really is the maintenance of minors ation of school facilities and grounds so to that point obviously you know we've been in a review process on the cameras in access we do have a budget request to expand the funding that we have from one hundred twelve to about one hundred eighty thousand we believe  based on some of the design stuff we've already done that we're very close and in being able to pull the trigger on this and really hope that by the may will vote that we can actually pull the trigger and get moving with everything going into place so we would have quite a bit of  june of this year the other thing was really on the safety within the buildings we've obviously fostered a relationship with police and fire to have a better understanding of our facilities by having them come through the buildings with us and review the different you know response systems internally as well as the you know you know possible problems within each building so that we could address those as we go also just know that they have a familiarity with the building we walked through the building to know when we talk about a room or a wing or something like that what we're talking about they have no idea or so we were able to do part of that in the fall but it's a continuing process that we have to do as new staff comes in on their side as well the collaboration and you know improving collaboration and implementing updated communication platforms i think we've made really market improvement here obviously the office three sixty five is a huge change from the e mail server system we had and also gives us the ability through shared files and shared  a number of other options that are in that that take us way out of the realm of where we were before not only kids communicating with teachers because communicating with kids and really students being able to work on projects together in a much more collaborative fashion  in addition to that we just completed as of this morning the wireless on the junior high level so now we're fully wired wireless on high school and junior high and we have some access points on the elementary level junior a lot to increase the speed and abilities of our network running wise and even increasing what you know what the capabilities are far wall which would give them most of the students more access to things that they didn't have in the past because we can be more selective  in the data and stuff that they are looking at across the networks as far as you know increasing teachers access and teacher and student access one of the things that again the firewall did for us was allow us really to give platform  know access you know things like areas maybe within even something like you tube where we could control control where they went within a certain thing obviously we know that there are many things that are out there that teachers like to use to really show real world examples what's going on but because of all the concerns on good citizenship and and making sure that they weren't going to areas that were inappropriate the old fire wall system didn't really give us that control no one really does and really i think it's made a marketing crease steps that i think in one of the last means we really haven't heard complaints this year for where students can get to as far as what teachers are trying to have them go to so that that's been a huge change year over year but again i think part of that's a technology change that we've we've put in  place the you know so far as creating a full campus here at the high school which is a program that obviously started a number of years ago with the turf program turf field where as you know in the c h p budget going for phase two which is the bathrooms so feeling that we can do that in bite sized pieces rather than large chunks i think is has been the right approach and again i hope that that's the way the taxpayer look at it as far as my doing and in this step by step we're not asking the taxpayers for more money all right well you know effectively i mean i live within the c i p budgets that that are standard budgets and again what has been said by randy and in this current discussion is the number we have put forward for all of our c h p is within the the budget scope that they anticipate is to do so we've been able to do it within our own scope of the c h p budget itself and again i think that's to your point yes we're not looking for a special taxing bads that we are trying to live within the taxes that we believe we have at this point modernization plan as we all know you know we've gone through a process where your number of years ago that fourteen fifteen years ago the herne was done about twelve years ago the i go just about four years ago i guess now the high school was completed and that leaves obviously the borough on the taylor obviously we've prioritized the barrel as our number one and as you know we've gone through two submissions already with the m s p a one of our discussions later on this meeting will be our third submission  i think we got close in this last one so hopefully maybe we got close enough to get to the next one here about but again we constantly look at it the miners ation and and the issues within all the buildings but this is such a large project that obviously w outside help to to do it and then the final thing of operating efficiently within our physical systems and our buildings as far as making sure that what we do do is as cost effective as we can a lot of the systems we employ whether they're through our utility sides meaning of that we are controlling how we heat and electric usage within buildings the change in technology to virtual servers has basically taken from what used to be thirty servers down to three the power and heat and requirements that go around those that change is huge and obviously should have a beneficial effect on the district financially but also obviously gives us updated quitman that that can manage the processes that we're trying to go through so i think we're we're really in a process a lot of this stuff is not something that gets done in one year and as is done it's an ongoing process but i think we've made huge you know advancements this year so far with the support  your leadership one of the things that i just thought was interesting today we had our technology steering committee this afternoon and this second go here as far as expanding the functionality as bill was saying today that went live having full they're being used so that information is something to we see the functionality in the improved access to it and to be able to look at that and that's going to comes for kids so i also think having a sort of having a having the system that we've been installed that then can monitor what's coming on and also gives us an idea of what their students have access to which will help us i think as we move towards the want to want to environment because you know they want to want to vironment is not necessarily want to one provided by us although we may provide you know quite a few units in the end but it's also kids are our students are very comfortable with devices that they deal with all the time so as long as we can react to those devices i think we can go a long way with so i think having the right equipment to look at things and be able to monitor as a movie here is very actually what you just said is what i wanted to point out is the part of the building that went live wireless today is the fifth and sixth grade because seventh and eighth already had  youngest middle school students visit so it's coming up and it would be a little be interesting as we you know continue to provide that access in the school how many of our younger students have their own devices the techniques which is so that the speed in which data is moving through the middle school now is significantly faster and they did some testing when they were doing the switch here implementation last week and they were just stunned at the change that was happening as they were doing  quickly they could see stuff moving down on downloads and uploads on things so i think teachers will start to see that very quickly to the things that they used to be a little concerned about running because it might have had you know the lays within the process really should flow very quickly really speaks to the value of the all the work we've placed on infrastructure in the past six months and i want to give kudos to aaron higher just that the emphasis emphasis we've placed on let's put a hole in some of things are trying to do and let him rebuild the infrastructure that has been so important for us to learn to be patient to not move forward with some things to make it right because that's going to make such a difference much and that's invisible to the public and even to students yet give it to complement focus yes like with you know the three sixty five project i correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think we're pushing too much technology on the faculty that's not necessary as opposed to as you said before technology for technology's sake i mean we're not putting a three d printer in every room and having people make statues or whatever it's a kind of a different philosophy which i value i think we all collectively value which is you know we often do ask ourselves what's the next thing that our teachers and students need to enhance what they do whether it's a learning experience  we think is the one next thing that will really get a so the next level and where once that's what focus is all about we're one step at a time so we're not actually even talking about whether the town would support a one to one that we provide because we we actually don't you know sometimes if you just wait it's not necessarily the way to go you know it seems the way to go last couple of years everybody's doing a really good thing highlights means we don't actually we've never gotten to the point where we think it's the way to go we think we think that of experiences are important so we've bought the mobile devices on carts that teachers and students can start now experiencing to have a one to one experience in certain classes on certain days and certain lessons and kids can bring the devices they're comfortable with to provide their own want to want to experience when they choose but we think maybe that's the way to go and that so far is working for us and i'll give you a perfect example that many districts jumped on g mail when our first came out what was going to be the next cd or in the process and it was a great thing for school districts who really had very limited access but the reality is by waiting and deciding to go with a tool that was not only a communications tool relative to e mail but it also had all of the other components that were unified you know gave the shared file sources and gave the one notes and gave all these other these other devices all worked in in one you know collaborative tool was really the right move and what we're finding is that even though because you're going to go through the pain of teaching people to do something you don't want to do that twice you really want to do it in a very consistent in a math you know thoughtful manner and i think i think us waiting to get the right tool at the right time really you know sometimes it's frustrating to people but i think is as dep said is really what will drive us to be more successful in the end with these tools we push on and we do talk and let's leave out how to roll out things what the process is so i keep looking at adam because he's our audience very now and it's just death but anyway so feel free know but i think you know what we decided was last spring when we start off let's just switch everybody to that e mail just get used to e mail me as everybody knows how to do e mail and then we saved all of the really technical training the one note the one dr took i guess when she just came back when you're raring to go and in throughout the fall when you're actually using it and that seems so going well we have great teachers here that jumped on board we didn't have really any big issues switching to a new form and and now people can acquire those other skills learnt their own pace and kids are learning along with the minute it seems to be working and even adam help train teachers as well you're an r p g there's only i have a lot of the right stuff up and i mean i would just time back and going back to our culture and climate data and all data that we sifted through that these are responses to our teachers comments in our students comments but going back to the one one two one device thing if i'm remembering correctly the responses said that they like to bring their own opportunities and this was a response to you noted very true that we needed to address so i think we were thoughtful and we plan and we try not to do anything that we don't have the director for the last objective has remained the same to maintain strong support for public education within the town of foxborough this may be the most important of all the objectives because if we don't do this then the first three can probably just sit because if we don't have strong public support and obviously we can't achieve any of the goals that we're hoping to i think we're very lucky to live in our community because fox was always had strong public support for the educational system for the schools and we certainly continue to see that so in this area we'll probably all chime in but the goals are really about continuing to be fiscally responsible we take that quite seriously we we don't our we've discussed is just under the scaled average is usually skidding right along under the state average and we think that's reasonable for our community we're not asking for more than the state average for people we think we get a lot of value out of that out of that expenditure and to maintain high level students even within the fiscally responsible perspective that we have and certainly as bill stated earlier also speaks to the c i p process as well that we really have not ever put forward a c i people pose that we don't already know won't work within the framework of what the town finance people are saying and that they conceive as reasonable in request so it's not that kind of battle where we're going to put it forward and say whatever you know we'll see what happens in the end we really do work with them to see what the what the possibilities could be and what the low can be and we and we have to pick and choose them prioritize we want to continue to foster mutually beneficial partnerships local businesses and community agencies that certainly is something that we continue and it's ongoing we want to maintain strong citizen taxpayer support as evidence by the approval the in your budget and special budget requests that tell meeting so we are hoping to have you know another successful budget season where we can we certainly don't mind questions feel we can explain and defend any of the requests that we're making and are happy to do so and we want to continue to promote the public schools within the town so as you know from our last meeting we've refined artistic report card and that will be mailed out very shortly and we do that annually now we are very transparent with our budget process and make all of our information accessible to the public we do try to increase public awareness of student achievement data through a variety of methods that we speak about at this table a time one of the things that we have to do is says not yet for because that is something that is a little bit more challenging for us is how do we make we have a very good website when you look at all different types of schools websites we actually have a very good website it's construct and the way it's outline it's very professional and it's very thorough and it's got probably everything you want to know when there the one thing we don't have is kind of a almost like a live news that that changes what's going on what are the highlights almost like a what's new box that we could change with more frequently and so that's something that we do want we talked about at the strategic planning table and that is something that we want to make like a current live feed kind of thing what we're struggling with isn't what to put on there because we have things here at every meeting what really is our challenge there is the district capacity for who's going to me and enjoy all of that and it really is something that we ought to pause and take our time in because right now we don't have i can't i don't even have access to changing something interesting website i think anybody realizes in today's day and age you can't just have anybody that can get on and change your content so how do we set up a structure and a system by which people choose what to put there and then have the capacity to access and make those changes of those choices so that is it sounds like an easy thing to do and you expect to see not yet but actually underlying that is much more complicated and does give us pause to be to have a cautionary note and to make sure that we're doing that right so and that includes recognition of local community business partnerships which we part of that to an outside provider for the managing of our website which we currently don't do we do not so most districts have an outside support provider that i would say that would develop the website for you but they also develop the links in which you can train people internally to go in and update my we've actually our website is actually has been developed by one of our internal staff members and you know as we've all said it's a great website in that sense but we're restricted by having really one person who has the true knowledge behind how it runs i would operates and by going to an outside third party we open ourselves up to having a full service organization that can support that for us as well as train us  that each building level we could potentially have the the people the dems talking about they can maintain content and they have the right safeguards built in so that we can ensure that something does accidently happen so it's more complicated than one might think the play sixty grand you know we're the internet intergenerational eventual looking to do a little bit more of that kind of thing generational with the with all kinds of people in the community we are to talk to this before but we are having our school visits this spring as we did last year with the senior center so i'm working on some dates for that right now and we are trying to expand this idea of having parents community members who have expertise in real world things that connect to the curriculum what we're really struggling with which if anybody has an idea or a solution we've had some we've tried the speakers bureau reporter published that idea at last you know in in the fall and or in the end of the spring i think but we really didn't have a big response so while a lot of people speak to us about how much expertise there is in the community we don't really have a lot of people coming forward saying to step up so i'm not sure how we actually get people to not just talk about that is a good idea but actually come forward to make it happen so right now we have about five people who put their name because puro but not not a lot so that's definitely a challenge is that how do we find mechanisms to tap into the talents in the community in a way that people feel comfortable coming forward or to actually make it happen it's probably much more of a challenge this is not one of those with that if you build it they will come i really i think it is absolutely wonderful how you list the in progress not yet under review complete me that is such like that something like that significant progress under review teachers have a two year cycle ministers have a one year cycle so about media year you had done this for the last three years you haven't had your update on how i think i'm coming along and i really do like the format that you as a a couple of years ago which is at the mid cycle for member the first year i gave you the volumes in the tabs of the notebook and everything and i think it was your suggestion bruce in that the committee all voted in favor of it you just provided update on my goals then answer three questions that you asked me at the time which really helped me focus my thinking so while i could go on about a lot of things it really forces me to think about what are the three major things that i want to say to you at the midyear mark and how in home i come along with my goals so that's what i did and i do like that format for midyear update and i think that this type of conversation when you first proposed it talk to my ministry years i said you know this these three questions are great a conversation with teachers in the middle of this cycle because it just allows you to really to really get to know what it is rather than sort of compare your checklist and your evidence against certain things it really does result more conversations so i hope that's what this does to me so this is a formative review which means your feedback forms how i continue my here with the hopes of another good evaluation at the end of the year so i'll just go to the goals first because i didn't catch that i was attached to bowls with some little notes as to how i'm coming in so my professional practice goal was really to implement utilize the tools and features of office three sixty five so i think this is a great evidence of if we're trying to do something well it starts at the top we often try to use it so starting in august when i have the training i made a commitment to using the online collaborative tools for administrative functioning and not kill bunch of trees that would tell me in a meeting and i have really done it which is shocking to me more than anyone else so it's all central office and building ministries are now using three officers to five for basic people as communication and collaboration so i think i've made significant progress because while i'm doing it for basic meetings that are communication i think i could find some other ways to use it that might be a little more creative or for other purposes and now that i've become used to doing it i think i've got to start thinking about those things so i put significant progress in it's been going great so that's one thing my student learning goal was really to focus on empowering student leaders of rocks for high school to  technology leadership and that spoke to the both our five year technology plan which speaks to building capacity of both students and faculty in our june technology program evaluation report that we explore on extensively how we measure out but that was the need so for this school year my goal was to implement that icicle advocate program that you just heard about tonight so i think the timing is good for this meeting and to assist with ongoing oversight of the program which i do i do go to their meetings when they have it with students not every time this is really their program but i will go check in with matt one of the meeting and they need me one of the before and so i continue to maintain contact with those students and to find out how that's going and what i can do to assist them in their goals so i think it's a significant progress on that we have a district growth plan for some subjects that i've shared over the over the years and i put some progress on this one because we implemented the engineering course this year and that's going just terrifically i'm thrilled that we have two sections when the skull was written i think we were we were hoping for the one you're happy with the two for with the two my goal was really to hope for a computer science course forced this september so this is a goal you are not likely to see met at the end of the year because i think i've already discussed this one i want to reiterate too much but it's really been more challenging than i thought finding a viable life computer science curriculum that really introduces students to it as an intro to computer science and involves programming they seem to be specific to gaming specific to simple programming to other things in computer science but to have that introductory course like engineering is is is really difficult because maybe because i'm sure it's because it changes off a lot so anyone responsible for that there isn't and there isn't a lot out there we have to piece something together so in order to have it first th september we had to have a course curriculum selection by the end of january and we didn't wasn't for lack of trying but i think that's just going to take us a bit longer than i thought so the fourth is is another district improvement goal which is to monitor and publicly report progress toward the goals or at the recommendations in the technology program evaluation report in our tech plan and i'm sure it will be no surprise to you that this is the area that i spent the most time on is his technology and making sure that we're really thoughtful about implementing and getting the right people in place and continuing to move forward so i certainly think we've made significant progress and we've kept the committee i think pretty updated in a very detailed way about how we're coming along in all facets of that  superintendent coffees at the public library they're open to the public and we're continuing gauging with other agencies as well so i hope that by the end of the year i certainly should be able to say significant progress but for now i would just say some progress and then the is a general goal that's what was to develop a plan for the completion of the ultra complex a fox one high school toward our goal of having a full campus of the high school to work with the committee and time government to move the next phase of the plan forward through the c i p process happen by then but this is certainly a goal that i am going to keep on for next year because as you know we have other phases so we have much more to report but so that's the specific the six goals that i have for this year and how i feel i'm doing on that at the midyear is certainly sizable i think the three hundred district improvement stem technology program and communication i think are sizable the notion of the facilities in the outdoor complex to me is significant the one that i don't think it really reflects enough of what you do is the student learning goal and i know this is just one goal but i think as we think through the year i think we need to just make sure we don't focus the student learning just to the i school advocate superintend certainly share this challenge to talk about it so what student learning goes directly influenced by me and wouldn't be a goal that i put forward that everybody at this table would know i don't work on directly myself so i certainly can't speak to you know broader academic goals knowing the work is done so i think it's really challenging to have a student focused goal as a superintendent so i picked one that i truly thought back in the summer when i was writing these that i haven't started yet that i was going to initiate myself and do most of the work for myself and get it all set up myself and not just say to the high school here's a good idea go ahead and do it put it down as my goal so i actually did not leave it to the high school people to arrange for the training to all communication for the training to stop the training i put forward the materials for the i school students i made the video for the students to try to engage them in the process because i don't think it's fair to superintend to come in august and september and say here's a really good idea  you know just make it happen so this is something i was actively pursing your response yes taking personal responsible ownership for and so that's why it was my goal back in the fall so you could be bro i think if you could think about what you think for next year i think that would be helpful to me to say what do i directly influence with student learning that i own that i because i do feel compelled to not put a ball down the that i know in my i think i had to think a lot about that but most of the stuff i'm really proud of has to do with kids so it's still why focus is still what i love to do it's still the things that mean the most to me so what i'm most proud of are really several creative that started this year that we weren't even thinking about a few years ago so not only the i school advocates but the new engineering course which is another thing i took personal responsibility for finding implementing getting a grant to provide the training for pat nash and texas all of that i did do myself so i'm really happy that that's turned out well the p c c program which was brought to the project in temporary competitiveness is also a program that i personally have pursued and that with and they're willing to come and they've extended their deadline for their deadlines or not but they just wanted to make that clear because i know we had discussed that they wanted to talk to people you know in mid to early early to mid february yes they did and then we got snowed up with their there and they're removing all the deadlines because where where there was community and so that's not going to be an issue some thanks for bringing that up i think that's a really unique summer program that families might want to certainly experience a wealth of opportunity for kids in the summer for things that they never knew that they wanted to try and then most recently we signed on to the massachusetts preparatory program to the cambridge institute of no two and diane and i have been working on the c of a certification which is the the the the certification you need to actually bring international students to your high school and so diana and i submitted the certification documents already working with cambridge institute and when i visit this thursday morning from the people who do the background checking in security on us so they're coming to meet with me on thursday and so we're making good progress so that should take us a little while longer and we're we've been working with cambridge on marketing materials and i think that although so far on our expand global education experiences so those four new things even my fourth year superintendent in my first year would have dreamed of these that we were you know place so that's what i'm most proud of our for really uniquely creative and different opportunities that have all begun this year that i think i'm very proud of those things so what am i working really hard on surprised technology but i am also most part of that but i'm going to put that is what i'm working really really hard on the progress that we've made as i said with the right people the right will the right spirit the right commitment the talented staff and of course the terrific students everything goes toward that to improve our technology infrastructure and our technology integration always for the benefit of students in i think we've made it i use the word astounding progress  just over seven months and i really truly believe that so not only my we're going hard at we're all working really hard on that i think that's if you asked all the administrators and teachers and probably the students what was the one thing the district's really working hard on this year i think everybody would say technology i mean what else has that's been our major focus in then what's been most challenging i'm i didn't write a lot about this because obviously it's you know it's a person it's personal and i think that it requires a lot of my attention and personal we have and as i said we have tremendously talented people working on a district i'm just so very proud of that our faculty and our staff but when they set the bar as high as they do and then we also have a happens you really feel compelled to make that in every place every classroom every opportunity every staff member every interaction every level of service across the district that release that idea of a high standard of quality really i think is pervasive and the challenge is really to ensure that all students are taught and served by the best doesn't matter what your role is and so when when you value that then you do have to spend a lot of time on on personnel and issues that come up and  people in their needs as well adult needs student needs and that can be really time consuming and very challenging but i think as educational leaders you know i'll start with myself it's the most important job that we do is to develop encourage and provide feedback to our staff while also remaining self reflect of about what we do what our role is and what's the right thing and so speaking in generalities that is a challenge that i think certainly we faced o years and i certainly worked very hard on that last year and i would say that's my biggest challenge that comes i think you left something you know i think you left out that you that this is to your credit that your your scene and you're very active in the public eye as our superintendent i'm not trying to me like you know stroke an well you know yeah yeah we've had this conversation for you're out there in the public eye and not behind a shut door all the time and i've talked to many parents who've had one issue or another and much i will echo what steve said and i will just chime in that you know you're always innovating and the changes that you make are always good ones i know i've talked to several people who are very happy with the evening coffee since you called because their mates february one was no doubt so i was going to reschedule for march but then i have one coming up are you going to april so i might just wait till april we're going to talk about global education and the in the international student program because by then we'll also be recruiting the ho family so i don't know if i'll be able to which we're still trying to reschedule things from the first storm the second storm of third storm and it's weird it seems like we're just rolling on the rescheduling and some things have been rescheduled twice so like th but i'm not sure there are enough even in the calendar so i'm toying with the idea of just waiting in till april well i know it was well received the evening yes it's certainly been a conversation and an opportunity to interface with people get home during the day but i think that was a really good suggestion that i think is wor balanced always because that's the way it is right come from you know i think dean used a great word innovative and i think you're innovation with your structural programs is  superb and you get support helping you with that but that's part of it's building a good team around you i think something we can continue to work on i think personnel will always be there you know we're a public school system we don't pay you know the highest salaries  you've got you know you have to get out of your staff what you do through your sincerity your leadership your your being someone that they want to come work for and do their best and i think that's just going to always be  i think one thing i've heard others put out there for you to continue to think about or to think about is you do so many outreach programs families for parents to the coffee  the daytime fees and i ask it every evening coffee and the evening coffees i've started with what do you want to talk about but i have my fill or you know i have i usually have a topic if we're there and i don't find a lot of ideas forthcoming and amy's with me at every one of those i always ask that question what would you like chalk one next time what's on your mind and if they say something i do it the next meeting and i think i think you can validate that for me and i've done the same in the evening coffees trying to say what would you like to talk about first and to brought up a couple of things that were just questions that individual people had that but i would love that but it does not want that comes out because i would talk about that if that's what if somebody showed up and said i really want to hear more about x then i would i would keep my i go to topic you know under the attendant she but it doesn't happen that way i can picture well those are just chime in that i think it's a testament to the openness that the district and it really started with d  so that i think i know when we first started with the parent leader meetings there were a long list of topics and i think yes that you have shared so much with the parents over over time that we we do feel pretty well informed but i know and i would encourage parents to continue to come parents who are new to the school district we had a a lovely gentleman whose child wasn't even him in there was in in or new to the district maybe we will see more topics in different different requests for different information and things of alban change over time so so i think that's that's another that is sort of like the idea of speakers bureau you can you can invite people because every email i send out whether it's the daytime coffee group you know which is the parent leaders which is a huge if you see how many people actually goes to this post number so i always say if you have any topic you want our police and your ideas to me i don't get that those when i send this to superintend even coffee goes to all parents in the district which is how the preschool parents showed up and i'll say i say in that bring anything you want to talk about it's open it's your meeting so i don't know what more i can do to invite people but i  if you if any of the committee members have thoughts of between now and the end of the year about what you would like to see me work on or specifics that you want to talk to me about individually that's great as you know we have individual meetings with me at the end of the year before paragraph within the box you need to update it was supposed to be able to have two thousand fifteen just so we have that's three d and you can probably waive the reading of this as as it is somewhat consistent but basically what we're doing as we've done for the last two years is there's two categories in which we're submitting our application for the first one is the replacement renovation miners ation of school facilities systems such as roofs windows boilers heating ventilation systems and to increase energy conservation decrease energy related costs at a school that's on a category five on a category seven it's to replace a replacement of addition of any dish into an absolute obsolete building in order to arrive a full range of programs consistent state to prove requirements now a lot of the other choices work that you can categorize and go under our you know facilities that about live their life and and or are in such a theory a position that needs to be totally replace so really what we're looking for is there's there's two things here is just like we've done with the high school and you know somewhat like what we did with the  that we want to bring everything up to current code current requirements get the away from the single pane glass windows to thermal pane windows to give us the warm cozy rooms look at the facilities internally to make sure they're all eight compliant you know an area that we're we're sorely you know week in is in in this elementary school we do have an expansion requirement or request for two additional rooms on this building basically to build the appropriate size classrooms for the pre k program and i will say one thing and i'm sure we'll get some are saying well you want two more classrooms why do you need that you've got a population doing what it's doing but there are two pushes going on the state level one of them as we all know you know full day kindergarten  which we are pretty much as far as even though it's not universally paid it's it is almost all the district is the next push is on the priest ok and if we don't add these to classrooms we will not have that capability it will be marginally close with this with this doing it but still we at least have the option to do it as as a state moves in that direction the other side of it is just the requirements in the pre k program again you are you dealing with three thirty three and four year  olds so your facilities internally are very much different than that the be for first second third or fourth grade or even more improved more you know demanding that what's even on a kindergarten level so i think you know when you look at what those classrooms have to entail the capabilities they have to have we can even fit those within the structure of the classrooms that currently exist we really were doing the best we can but it's not we're not doing as much as we should be doing there so i think that's why we've kind of pushed for that and  as we've talked on the whole lines here you know we were basically living on borrowed time we have a forty seven year old building relative to most of its systems we've tried to maintain and i think we've done a nice job as far as cleanliness and safety wise but you know you get to a point now you know we just had a major issue just before the school holiday on the boiler system which i've said for a while now is is my biggest risk we were able to get through that but basically it's you know it's each step as well so they're in support of us moving forward with the application it does not commit us or the state at this point all it does is recognize that first of all the state isn't committed they are just you know allowing us into a  process they're not making any financial commitment to us at all but it understands that you know as a as a committee set you believe that this is the priority process for the do strict something that you really want to move forward so the the wording within the box is has to be exactly as you see it within your text of your minutes assuming that was meant to come back to your next meeting in our proved i would get a copy of those minutes signed off by the chairman and that's part of my documentation going into the  actual program basically is is twenty seven pages long that we've written about in the end the all the supporting documents and requirements that go along with it fill this binder so it's it's while you have  there's a number of different issues that i have to also pull together a budgetary previous of evaluations of the facility itself you know engineering issues that we we've already had a den of fide and looked at so wh our maintenance process has been through that the program so you know it's all it all has to go into the station and that's what they are reviewing to see if they'll take you forward again we made it close as last year and we made it down to at least the final two groupings and just didn't quite make it through so we're and but they only in the end accepted twenty for actual entry into the program and i will tell you right now even the twenty that get allowed into the program some will not go all the way through the process because of issues that don't fall in the first phase of the  it's like i said this is just getting us into the program if you looked at a funding thing in this and obviously randy and i talk about this on a regular basis ok so he's trying to program out funding if we were first of all the the process is that we would even find out if we're into the program into the first phase of the program until december of next year possibly january of the following year getting into that first phase strickly is a development of what the program you're going to do is so even at that point the the maximum output from the townsite is basically is hiring an engineer to do some study work for you and then getting the m s p a to agree that that is the appropriate educational environment that they want to support  and then you get into the actual final design documents so this isn't really from this point forward to any real funding probably at least a two year process so so that's my concern why i want to  change the the time we send in this document that's it and that's we've got to learn the lesson on the high school that while the process was changed we didn't have all the pieces in the original think of we never had to deal with it quite that way so now we understand and that's why as i said they can be additional classrooms everything is outlined in this we can always agree with them to drop something out but they're never going to add something it so the process now is to be as detailed as you possibly can with everything you believe the building so there's that and then changing from abel eleventh to april tenth two thousand and thirteen then i think we dropped a period at the end of the second paragraph under category five just at the end of the senate description of these categories for which we're applying for funding are there words you know are shafter five and chapter category five category seven this document actually is their document so can't waiver from the wording at all what about the summaries of the twenty seven page yet that's our opportunity to buy detail under why we're selecting category five the category seven i just i mean it probably doesn't matter because they know what they're reading and they understand the issues but to me these don't scream urgency of needing to do things to a forty seven year old building i mean you do state that you know the billing does not meet most eighty a requirements or state no interest actually is when they came for the visit in the fall we went through that document page by page if you pass it over if you like you know it's ok but but i will say to you i know what you're trying i know what your concern about this is strictly a motion that says that you agree that you want to go forward this is what they read want to really understand is why this document exists is the last paragraph and i'll read it because your question and and here by and here i further specify acknowledged that by submitting the statement of interest for investors to school business authority in no way guarantees the acceptance or the approval of an application the awarding or the granting of any other funding commitment from the best use of school building authority or commits the city town to regional school district to filing an application for funding for mas so what they're really wanting to get on record is that yes you want to do this but you know there is no guarantee you going to get anything for you and i think i understand that's really my only thought was is there a way to increase our chances this time parts of the book that they spend all their time on the studies that are done by the b b so she gets to you review the building and detail you know the her reports that were done on the building i mean everything they're looking through all of that saying oh ok they that's where we would you know we actually devon i would thereafter that currently exist we'll make our final tweaks to it before it gets a minute but again i recognize that they know what they're reading i'm just thinking of ways to try to increase our chances th and so the discussion really for the committee tonight is as it exists with the six no days we've gone over the five the previously voted the calendar and so the previously go to school calendar ends us was going to end us on june twenty fourth even with the five snow days now that we've had six we would have to extend the year into june so now we're ending there's a twenty five so without any further discussion over the committee our role would be just to extend the school year in june and keep going but as i'm sure every school committee in the state is doing this it's a public discussion about what to do about all the snow days and that's why i brought it forward to you so just to summarize what you're saying we we need to approve extending the calendar to the twenty fifth if that's where we would like to put an extra make up tick right or are you who are going want it all sort of other options and i'm sure everybody knows what other options are there school vacation weeks there's saturdays there's a religious holiday in there is there's a lot and other districts we've in this been as you can imagine a hot topic or doing one or more of  or all of the above i think it's totally up to the committee what you want to discuss it we have to make this decision tonight i would say i don't know it's up to you between now and next week i think it's ok i would say no but i think probably it's helpful if we could get a consensus tonight and i feel i know i know how i feel i mean if the choices are extending one more day in june or going into april vacation week or having school a religious holiday or having school on a saturday or sunday i know which one i feel i want to bias the committee but i would feel comfortable voting tonight you all have similar gut feelings about how you would vote or do you need more time to think about why i'd like to offer us to revisit something that there is a precedent for this and it worked so because of that i'd like us to revisit it taking the option because good friday is not connected with april vacation this year to have one of our snow days on good friday and i cannot tell you the year but i do remember only the i go building had to go back to school mag years ago and everybody almost everybody went and there were very very few i mean leaving the option that for religious regions that you know a child would not have to attend that day and very few people took them option we don't have to worry about hanukkah because it doesn't start until own own decisions based on their religion and so that wouldn't be any in the different really i would like to see that for one of the days especially because good friday this year is not in connection with vacation plans for anybody for the whole week either comments on joe joe i do remember in one nine hundred seventy eight professional development days do we have two left and he left oh well we've used them all yes and i know we front load those at the beginning of the ok i don't need to make my next comment suggestion i just got in there was that one of the precedent where they decided to do one saturday and then a couple of different afternoons but i actually remember going to a p d day on a saturday in the ninety's don't know why but i remember we did do that now but i all other than it was there on the job a way but so we don't have to think about that but i i would i would like us to consider that that one it was april third friday april third i believe don't give kids lunch for example but i think it's a different kind of day and maybe maybe we would stay to lunch or i don't really know i think the committee we have to vote and then we'd have to discuss what we would do about that  now that we would but i would because we haven't discussed it we haven't discussed things at it but an early release date does constitute a full day yes for the state law yes so i would say it's likely even maybe we do a little bit longer day because i know it does impact early release impacts families and and their job so it might it might be wise to consider a full or a full birthday rather than a full day  same wavelength because look what i wrote down the side of my calendar ending of term three question mark should it be april tenth yes if then term two now would equal forty four days which is about what were supposed to have terms be forty four forty five days in length as a quarter of the year old so i actually already made that note so regardless of what the committee decides about good friday we're going to need to move the term to the following week yes i wrote that same thing down yonder with the so range so i think people are deciding given on their own unique situation so i don't think we're paying too much attention to other schools are deciding to do because we're in our situation their calendars are also different so i think you know some some might already be going over into the next week into monday some might be now ending on a tuesday so they might they just you know everybody feels differently about the calendar where they happen to be ending the year and that's very different a lot for us when we delayed of move in the past on calendar or we've had counter issues come up we get differing opinions there's not a consensus and i think i would be in favor of receiving more entertaining motion and see how the vote falls if anyone wants to make one my only bias and i will offer it now since before you go you've offered yours i would personally like to see us respect good friday personally if you're observing good friday forced us into the following week on monday feel differently  i don't see a big difference ending wednesday the twenty fourth person is thursday the twenty fifth again my personal bias now if we had more snow days you could push it i might feel differently i forgot to mention one thing when it comes to our faculty and staff they are expected not to make plans for the vote in school calendar which ended on the twenty fourth because that is part of the official calendar they have to prepare for  they are not expected to not make plans for after the twenty fourth which is the voted school was the voted ridgeley voted school calendar so there are conflicts on our faculty and staff for starting on june twenty fifth that they really can't you know really shouldn't be held so that's that's the that's another problem so that actually that sixty created more of a problem on the staff and faculties thing than than one might think because they don't they don't keep their calendar personal calendars which includes the five snow days when i didn't say that there's an obligation passed that at this point so i think the one day for us did make a difference when it comes for for a few people for i don't know how many that is because i think people just waiting to just think we should just want to make sure people fully understand that this is the same that going past the voted calendar is the same as going on a saturday probably no it isn't as ok a good friday don't i don't want people to think it's different in that people just expected to stay till june gets out because some people do make plans and there are special family celebrations and things going on too and it's want to make sure people understand we have the option of stones that know you must be each school building must be open with because i think that does impact at least my thought process i think that also ask if if we had to go further into the end of june but how many days if there are days of padding we can accommodate each other o for making up at least one of the snow days and just to let me know would you have a conflict if we went to school that friday would you have a conflict if we extended to the twenty fifth yes you are harmful to  twenty six thirty and would you have a conflict if you went to school on saturday what you did to give me a day samea what i would say is maybe just not a sentence on that says you know if there are too many with conflicts and those that you asked about then the committee may have to look at additional options such as a saturday because well i wouldn't want them to do is say ok you know we've covered all these days well we've kind of been in today somewhere unless someone tells me they have a different feeling i would like to avoid school vacation week and i'd like to avoid a weekend so we should polling all staff on polling teachers teachers you know what do you think of the idea i think information is always good for informed decisions so i don't i think we can get that yes too because we are a number of those that are in situations that are directly affected individual students anybody anybody who's in front of students or in facing the students well in buses as well see i think that i think it just i think it should just be likely chance of a good instructional day and so if that's what you're after then we should just pull teachers because the other stuff just happened around that day that's exactly i think that's what we should  have talked to a few of you who have called me actually one of you has called me one on one and recommended in light of the short time between now in the mail action that we will not fill the seat which i think was our rough consensus and very brief discussion of our last meeting i did speak to the chair of the board of selectmen today and she is of the similar pin that there is not an urgency from their perspective and of course they are involved in the joint appointment as we are  so nothing has changed in my mind that would indicate that we should quickly go in and appoint a person to fill the chair but i think i would like the committee's thoughts and reactions and the sleep go with what the committee would like to tonight and the ass off by our major crunch things are in its now bill bill's creative challenge to see how much of our if we have any surplus left over because we're spending so much know not uniformity a vote it's the but i mean we don't have crucial things right now that we have to follow that would require a fifth member of the present i don't think there's no reason like i agree with you the  reason that i can think of to offer to the committee way fifth might be helpful would be to help break a crucial vote you know i did feel a little uncomfortable abstaining as i did on the first school calendar issue and received some feedback from people that you know they were counting on my support didn't doubt but that's what i did so that we could make a decision could that happen again if we leave it for certainly could but i do agree with you we don't see anything significant on the horizon and we're only talking about a few point we have two weeks to notify the selectmen no thirty days and then we wait two weeks so by the time we get through this process there were only one or two meetings left as an area lot of sense lately does not make a lot of sense so i guess my recommendation i th through it is that we go go forward to the may elections without the seat filled the one other consideration i'll just offer that i research is if i look at our policy statement filling the seat it doesn't say that the school committee has the option now i read it you know lawyers wishing she looked at the law because i just wonder what the legal reference says because our policy actually does say as provided in the law and we reference mass general law chapter forty one  paragraph eleven so perhaps we need to take a look at that and see if we are actually required to do this by law i think it only it only enhances our discussion at this table to have an additional member whether it be for you know two meetings or not i don't have a problem with that at the same time our time is valuable all of our time and that of our board of selectmen and we would have to make time to have a joint meeting it would be a somewhat lengthy process so why both sides of this argument but in a apologize have been out of town and i have been thinking about this but i really didn't tune in on the legal reference so i'm  thinking maybe we should look at that actually before we why would we do with you know a few years ago we did the precedent and there was no legal action no and yet we still want to make sure we comply see about this and i'm not a lawyer but what i was told was and i asked about the law i spoke with planned and he said that the law is there to help fill but there's nothing that says when thou shalt feel and while i do believe that you know this board or any school committee should have a full complement of people on it i think it's a complexity and i don't have the appetite to do it if we don't have to frankly and i'm of the consensus that the board voted in disco that the board discussed at the last meeting hi i'm afraid i wasn't at but  it's ok to wait but you know if there's further research to be done or we have to call our own attorney you know for guidance i don't know but if we're to vote tonight only thing i would one so other matters i want to say congratulations that's for high school has been selected to perform at the ellington cont essentially ellington and so going to been better news that they get it again it's the twentieth anniversary of that national competition and it's a pretty neat experience the only and so that was get other other matters you know i well i will add to the congratulations and faking graduations to our girls and boys basketball teams for making the playoffs i understand the girls are playing tomorrow construction and the snow conditions one of the good things that happened during the two big storms was obviously significant wind so what that did do on the higher roofs was blow quite a bit of the when the snow into the direction some right off the building was nice but and both a bar on the tail or because of their construction and design it blew the snow to the back sides of the buildings and the upper roofs in the biggest spans which are cafeterias and jams actually are almost clear because of the mom's snow that was blown off in the borough which was one of my better concerns it was in an area where we had a clear span so what we did was we hired a valley crest landscaping and maintenance to come in and they came in with loving guys on  saturday and between the two buildings spent nine hours basically removing snow from the building on to the ground and then the d p w came in with loaders and stuff and will take that that snow away basically clearing the areas that are what i would classify possibilities of being able to clear that type of span the only practical thing to do is to assess you know individual schools and individual areas and to try to address the areas as we move here and i think you know i think both  that you know could potentially fall off the roof fall through the roof whatever but i'm more than one to contract with somebody who's doing that as as a service i will also thank you let's stadium because that call their maintenance crew basically is what gave us the contract because most contractors were tied up and they are while they do all they are the ones who maintain that facility all of the you know the area around places like that well so they obviously have the resources internally and they came through and like i said they were there seven o'clock in the morning and told close to it must be close to four o'clock in the afternoon life so we've done as best we can at this point again what we'd love to have is a day a week of warm weather which looks like in the forecast what i'm seeing forward is that we're going to some cold weather minor minor flurries but then we're going to head a couple days in the high thirty's early forty's getting those periodic lee is the best thing that could happen because that will start to melting process the other thing we will do is we're going to go up on the roofs and just where the drains are clear around those because that allows for the moisture to actually continue to move its process i used to use in retail stores and it works very well so i think we'll do that but again the ability to clear in these entire roofs is virtually impossible we also have in the engineering design we look at the buildings in the bigger buildings the high school and the hern one of the good advantages to those as they were older buildings built with much higher grade steel much larger beams and a lot of the newer gongs even though the code has changed and improved they like to use lightweight steel girders and structures and they actually had more of them so they're technically should be better but you know i do find that the older supports the way they are developed were much stronger and also all of our roofs were designed for tar and gra roofs the tall sense been removed and now we have lighter weight insulation and p v c or or rubber roofs so you get a little bit of an added benefit from that as well so keeping my fingers crossed i think the  you know we're trying to address things as we see them and and and where we're most concerned with them