meeting of the school committee to order seven o five as we always do you write say the pledge of allegiance little longer in my mind thinking reading and having conversations about homework and policy and don't spend a lot of time looking at what other towns around us have done recently and talking to parents mostly willing to move starting to spread a little bit  d in reading other and reading books and sort of best practices around on the internet and in books and it seems like our current policy when i look at it it's hard to find the ones or the individual schools sometimes but the current policy for the district w just that the superintendent provide direction to do things that are appropriate and it doesn't provide clear expectations or very clear evidence based rationale for what the policies are at the different grade levels and when you look at the towns around us they don't like act in particular as in a great job of providing very clear expectations they started great ranges and they're based on evidence and rationale and evidence of why they're like that and so i would like to ask the committee to put it on its agenda or through some process to study in more depth with better accuracy and depth than i have a better way to develop homework policy for the district that sets those expectations and provides th everyone should know precinct for town meeting member for two kids born in belmont high school a freshman very excited and a nd grader i'm here to talk about the recent crash on lexington and sycamore street as i'm sure everybody knows we lost a member of the community such a kind of valor she was a mother of two both are going to one of them is in butler the other one has not started kindergarten yet and there are many such problematic intersections and there's one even closer to the better school which is the white and the beach street while there are there's a cross current there's been a lot of talk in the community and you'll hear more about that in a few days there's a lot of concern on how neglected that part of the neighborhood is but it's true for generally a lot of areas in belmont and it's a walking town it's a town where people are walking everywhere kids are walking everywhere and for such a tragedy to happen so close to a school and it's not that anything has changed since the last two weeks literally on a daily basis and neighbors in our area have witnessed almost an accident all the time this is nothing common so i am curious to know what is the role of the school in ensuring pedestrian safety what kind of measures have been taken in and in an instance like this where a intersection i known for having such accidents and there's a lot of the it out there what has been done and what should be done and what we as citizens can support doing that thank you the bare bone minimum that i feel like the public schools wellness policy is i think that there's certainly a change in the way that we're looking at health and wellbeing and traffic is that while most policies are supposed to state that districts address active transport for all k through twelve that's just one shortcoming that they feel that our school almost policy does not address and in addition to the amount of homework and just thinking of our children as being whole individuals and stress and physical activity and all the things that make our children whole so i would really strongly  encourage the school district to review again i know that the wellness policy was recently reviewed but i feel if you look at the well sat two dollars which is a stand gold standard scoring rubric to look at  where school almost policies can be improved you'll see that there are a lot of shortcomings in the belmont school district wellness policy i'll just note that we do listen to comments and we do consider all of them the school committee is will review and discuss some of the things we do not typically give responses the day of the day that the comments are received but and thirty at fallon high school which is on a sunday it's a great event that's be one of their fundraising events it's the f b we are very grateful for all that they do to help fund some of the process some of the activities and things at the schools so and strongly encourage you all to participate in that and then the f b i spelling bee is november rd two thousand and eighteen at the general middle school and i believe they'll be sending out more information about that within the coming month and that's all i have for right now we do not have a student representative present and next is the superintendent's report enough just to start off the are very very excited to welcome everyone to the same school year two thousand eight hundred and nineteen the public should know the community should know that our administrative staff works very hard prior to labor day preparing to receive about thirty eight new teaching staff to belmore public schools we provide them a mentor professional development updates on our asio she began work and welcome them to the district with the expectations that we have for every new staff member with thank you to star us for her work with the mentors that we provide which are two st year teachers into nd year teacher so it's a nice induction for our staff to assure this successful with the belmore public schools day one with staff was a great day on tuesday september th we walk with everybody back to the cafeteria from our high and then into the auditorium for a presentation susan back on the th of september and wednesday our students to school in grades one through twelve i think it was a great day and it was not as hard as thursday the following day not as bad as friday the following day after that we have as you all know at this table and this is our nd year i'm working on doing a better job but there are as particular african black students and understanding improving their learning outcomes in their school experience network a large part of that work it is our work is the adults in understanding what is the how are we creating classrooms that are welcoming and that value and validate every student who was there so we were very  pleased to to bring to the district dr police warn him who is a very well known cultural proficiency coach an expert and she led us she had a captivating manner and kept four hundred dollars people in the and welcoming learning environments for all of our students and so that was our afternoon with dr warner that kicks off our work for the year will be continuing with our two as superhit failon said our to focus areas on social motional learning  of the side parking lot has been increased the back patio or the back playground area has all been removed the basketball hoops are going up tomorrow and the front lawn has been really unscathed and ready to go for this year that happened and he was able to jump right in with his knowledge base and didn't actually give consols to provide expertise that shift work in the in a very positive direction so very very thankful to him and trisha clifford the principal of  very excited to be in the air conditioned space i think they wanted to put the whole school in there on thursday when they wouldn't fit so a very very thankful for the time to provide that that that advantage that we have now to create a sizes that that just two years ago we had twenty six students a kindergarten and we had over fifty percent of our classes in elementary school over the guidelines that these can be set for a nice size rates this year we started the school year with zero percent over the gosh and the reason why that so it was that we have a whole extra strand of teachers in classrooms at the burbank and we do have actual classes that are running at the butler and that has reduced our class size significantly over the course of the last few years when we talk about why it's important to create cassady within the district for space because right back to the classroom a child's experience with twenty one students in his class in kindergarten in st grade is dramatically different than the experience  very happy when we had his the student outcomes to be much better we expect you mean teacher experience to be much better because if you can just have that many less kids to work with and that's the appropriate size that's not know that's just a busing in belmont or any other community knows that that's really a huge accomplishment the committee will recall last spring we rolled out a presentation where we reconfigure the bus routes there by basically reducing the  we'd like to thank the parents in the students for their participation in these changes in some cases that the stops were placed in such a way that students hadn't walked a little bit further from their home to the bus stop distances  completely appropriate and reasonable but it was really a community effort in every sense of the word and so the things close to the parents and the students and certainly your resume my office who can see the what the new ro with busing is the afternoon busing at belmont high school the the issue is that the buses are arriving at belmont high school later than what we would like them to be we've looked at different options of potentially reconfiguring certain routes are changing what stops certain neighborhoods or service by this point no matter how we've kind of sliced that there's not there's not a more viable solution at this time  reach students st then it goes to the elementary schools which the smiths shortly thereafter and then at the end come back to the high school we've actually had a rd bus the service lie school in the afternoon versus just two buses that we've had in previous years but at this time we've we've kind of looked at every alternative among our existing fleet of buses and how we might be able to configure that differently so we recognize it's an issue will continue to see if there's something we can do to help  o a school resource officer which is a nd position that the district has available to support the middle school now as well as the high school that they are in partnership so we're excited about those partnerships we appreciate all the work that all it a really big deal so we can plug them into the library and have them access and connect with our cover fiber which is a great resource to our community and to our students and we've connected with peter as well with the high school we're going to create an app that will work on all the high school students i pads that will allow them to access research tools to research in search engines that will help them in their daily practices at the high school so thanks to peter and his group at the library thanks ingenious and steve was older than mcdevitt for working with peter to bring that half the amount of study halls that we have in the middle school this year with the additional f c c that we had in some work with a librarian who's been very supportive of creating some programming to call half of the students out of study hall so she has so we literally have half the amount of students budget and by adding a few of those activities that we were able to do from last year this year clubs like robotics courses like robotics coding are all alive and well and we are able to also find the stipends for all of the after school clubs that is the st substantial gain in that line item and over thirteen years we've always been growing by about thirty two percent a year but we also took that money and put it back into the where our deficits were occurring in our budget to the world and so us very very good reason to be confident and proud that not only did we have a great program and a great project coming to the belmont but all the different groups embedded especially in this be a were founded to be responsible forward and share with the next steps for the building program and then i'll have a few more slides that i can show as it relates to the current seven dollars to twelve dollars building and then the alternative if need be i've been in this industry now for thirty five years and i'm going to say people look at this and say we're almost done we want to do the imaging and the virtual reality this is quite a treat that we're able to  what we felt we wanted for our students and teachers and how it was that like in the building that we were drafting creating and designing and how that work was also making sure that we support our students and i he's in a special education for  important for us in what's important for the students and we got that approval and they were very excited about the design very excited to go to these it provides our students who are on i p's and in the lab and we think it's great cost into that they added three dollars factors income poverty and property wealth and in the belmont community we don't get much more than a few one percentage point if you use other communities that are  recognize that we do the best we can of maintaining our facilities so thanks to the school of art in the suit partly for doing that because it now reflects on more grant money coming in almost way of there's also another point that we're allowed to get for choosing the construction manager at risk method of birth pyramid one for the night a we actually are a renovation in their definition of a project because we're leaving a small portion of it in sixty percent but that allows us to get another quarter percentage point and finally energy efficiency is another big one that allows her to and you know we've talked about a lot we're going for a busy building that's well beyond their energy level that they need to give us two reversable they looked at they looked at a couple of things and said those are not parts of building that you will contribute to that being the pool that being the fuel house even though we were keeping them we have to do some work in them so they're excluding that because that's not a program that they allow for schools we're keeping it they said fine but we're going to lose in a couple of spaces where over the cap auditorium we're not we're matching what we have and that's still more than they allow so they're taking some square footage out let alone bring two more classes in but they have the rules so when we add all the square footage and they said well we're going to take we designer fees that are eligible on a proportional basis so that's why there's some investment in they said well that they're going to screw that up in a new policy because the credit the energy credits that we're going to go after and all those other incentives we are now allowed to get but if they were twenty million and then there's this last which is just forty million dollars that they're excluding well that is this is the fundamental thing that there makes are approaching where they say that they will capture all costs that they will contribute to this project in any state project at three thousand three hundred and thirty three dollars a square foot i don't think there's any building right now coming in at three hundred and thirty three dollars a square foot that's that's the rule so that inflation's climbing in a high rate and there increase is a very slow rate nonetheless we have to work through that so that's the excess of the square footage and when you just take that square footage time is there the excess it doesn't matter if they took out the to offer those credits so i'm happy to say that this is a very fair process john knows that we spent a lot of time going through these numbers to understand both to explain to people that want to ask this from taxpayers a couple other items in your swing space m it's like that that doesn't matter if you're in elementary school or high school or how many people can figure out that it costs a lot more to furnish technology and furniture equipment in a high school that has many more rooms than an elementary school but just a bit more but it doesn't matter to them it's the same cost per student so we we were advised very early on that we need to go higher it costs just to put us in chairs and in these rooms so every anything above the twelve plus twelve or two thousand four hundred dollars per student is excess and that's what they're they're saying they won't reverse this on when we finish all that out and try to rush through this but i believe you're going to say that  know these numbers pretty well we have that a number of seventy seven million nine hundred thousand on construction costs prior to contingencies that they're they're agreeing to pay for us and then our construction contingencies are pretty good size number of fourteen what i want to make sure the folks you know are to this what is the exact form that the industry a gave to the town of belmont that day is here you have it your chance it's the exact spreadsheet bill will give it up to the early tomorrow there's no confusion about what's eligible what's not and how they're going to be applied and if you look at this live behind me that i showed a few minutes as part of my other slide show that still means that we have up to eighty million dollars that's that represents the twenty eight percent that the cost to the taxpayer so it's not twenty seven percent of the eighty the eighty represents the full amount of funds that we can get from the state as a releases but if you spend it all keep in mind that if we don't spend two hundred and ninety five million we're not going to get  we were able to move the needle from forty forty percent to forty sixty six percent every percent is a couple one million dollars right there and then also we were able to find ways to look at things for costs then just to close you know what's next well super to validate i've been working and we're not just sitting on our hands waiting for a vote and then we're going to go start working we have a lot of work to do to make the construction start on the schedule that we've got which is this the summer of next year and to do that we have to have everything planned so that with a successful vote in the ever were to go in not planning so we've been working all through the summer to work out what that plan is with our design struction team they've been in the building doing some production valuating our phasing of construction worker our john i was superintendent principal would be affected in the school october where we'll talk about those jewels thermal n p v it what it means to this project but it's not something that's solely on the shoulders of the of the building committee because to operate the building comes through the school department the school committee and e s c supporting this project we demonstrates that it's a worthwhile project in the community to consider and to take so we're excited to say this update that we're going to provide you are really demonstrates the need that we say the that escalation in this project or four percent which is what we're running on this project is eight million dollars a year ok so time is obviously correct if we were at the same table two years ago with arlington traffic commission with the community planning we've been working with the fire department the police department all these different agencies groups of feedback sessions input provided in and solicited and we are working with all of our top partners to make sure that this is something that fits the town's landscape and everybody's approval before oh why do we need this new facility let's go back just a little bit if you haven't been to the new high school at the to the high school lately we have outdated systems we don't moving through the elementary into the middle school and slowly approaching the high school we have modular classrooms now at every level of the district so we have large ones at the burbank have to generate and we have them at the high school at the middle school and high school that is quite frankly not enough space as we are and lastly what the and this be a was really focused on is the space that you currently have appropriate for the teaching learning program that that's a corner of whitman that they use inside the existing classroom with desks to try to do some of the hands on learning and some of the teaching and learning in one classroom space the picture below here is the old auto allows us to house those students but it does not allow us to engage them in appropriate way this new building will provide the building as a tool in these classrooms as flexible spaces that supports the age where the way we feel our students should be used and the way the teaching learning is moving over the next ten to twenty years so what does it look like this is the site plan if you have an aerial view of what the new building in the fields of the site will look  are very fortunate to be able to say that we're even almost all of our amenities for our student athletes what we believe the only loss will be is tennis but we are keeping baseball softball across courts and girls in all the fields available not only for us to nothing to come up high but also far a pocket wrecked apartment and for all of our town leagues this site is used heavily by soccer programming for children in the town baseball programming a softball program with the children in the town and for all of our youth sports this will be a substantial upgrade in all of the field space as well as a school that provides not only sufficient learning space for the students at the high school  presentation of the building to how the building orientated to the sun to our it creates sustainable energy in how it supports the site and incorporates the upon it we're really talking about traffic we have in newtown why traffic commi a town wide view as well they were really focusing on the site being something that would be an asset to the town for a very long time this seven dollars to twelve dollars project approved by all the committees throughout the town if we spend that much money at the two hundred and ninety five dollars the project hospital down two hundred and fifteen dollars after the reimbursement you harvey out to two million dollars for the taxpayer to do the feasibility study that's a two hundred and thirteen million dollar s burden to the taxpayer at the end of the project for this well constructed almost forty percent of our students will be in a brand new space in printer learning environment comparable comparable projects in the house just nine through twelve wing of the building the students in two thousand and twenty one will enter so the th graders the nine through twelve folks will stay in the building that they are in right now how the building built next to them will move over in the summer of two thousand and twenty one the existing prepare for the next two years of planning if we do have a successful book the teachers want to know what the schedule look like what the stock times will be how their classrooms will align what a four through six building looks like we do for the great different how will we do six gr different what is the separation between seven and eight at night twelve what will the k to three school look like will feel like and how will that work interest in station getting to school safely there's a whole lot of questions that we have that we feel if we put all those questions in a on a table we'll be able to see the themes rise up along with the bids who staring committees it over the next two years will do that work with our educators and share that with our community and get community feedback on that work so we think that with a successful book we have two years to do a lot of planning to get ready to walk into this new building successful prepared with teachers feeling ready for students feeling prepared for the transition and i family's feeling tradition not just at the new building project but  arcade three and four to six that it's really important that this is a reconfiguration of the entire district that that is the bigger part of the s that's all that's all the really good and i want you to remember the government would be the number two hundred and thirty the question has been asked how do you respond if the district is for phases the st phase is we know right now our schools are overcrowded and if we don't have a long term plan that supported on november th which we think solves everything there we're going to have to go right into temporary mode of supporting the middle school in the high school with watching the classroom we had that were priced out we believe that we'll have to do some design work like we did the burbank just this past summer like we did at the middle school two years ago to develop an r f p we'll have to get support a funding from the different bodies of the town in from town meeting it potentially the community so this one phase requires a lot of work around design organisation planning and then seeking funding from the town for this temporary support now why would you go to the middle school st in our rights the high school well if you notice the high school project that we embarked on initially was a nine to twelve high school but we were able to convince the state that we needed a seven to twelve fix because the middle school is the peak of where  need the support so we have a gauge with an architect firm estimate day who gave us some initial pricing on what it would cost to do our only adds the middle school but we're having some of the common spaces could you have to make your cafeteria little bigger you have to make your physical education space is a little bigger you have to be able to provide some of that flex base in the coming years that price tag would be twenty million dollars that's an additional projected cost that we would have to dig in deeper to win again we would have to get a team of folks together in a green gage as some of a what some design cost in the sort of design work we would have to hire an o p m we would have to go for the time for funding town meeting all the boards and then i assume the community as well for a vote to support funding for our phase two which would be the support of the school nurse that we have to do that nd so we're not style network to two thousand and twenty one and probably not completing that work until somewhere around two thousand twenty five basically would be plan designed to construct a renovation in addition to the high school the high school needs more room for the more students they have in the substantial renovation that we need to take place that don't  if you notice the theme is in red that each one of these phases requires its own individual planning its own individual design its own individual finding support by all the different parts of our t each one of those is done in two to four year increments which means that this work total will cost the district a lot more money and i'll show you the slide it'll be done over a longer period of time which means that all of our top of the structure for a period of do in five years the project cost us to ninety five dollars but with the eighty million dollars reimbursement for the state we're looking at a two hundred and thirty million dollars tax payer in ten years of construction if we if we didn't go down that path with it would be a he didn't mind we have to make moves to support the infrastructure of the town to support the role is to support the aging facilities of the high school in to create sound we've built it from scratch over two years with visioning sessions and work with educators in our community and our architecture we really don't know what that space will look like until we get there with the other culture that we have one project one would be a series of votes over a period of time we really believe that this one project they have one vote needed that will ready lower the cost and provide state reimbursement is the is the best over the next six weeks will be going out to every p t o meeting we're looking to go to the community center will be also providing this in different community events throughout the fall to really demonstrate what the side by side analysis you have any questions or erbil thank you want to before you leave thank you for all the work that you're doing the building committee has done it's exciting to see the timeline  for this chart now that how much work has been done i remember in the beginning things that were going to be done and the phases that we were going to go through with so it's exciting to see that where we are now and how quickly everything is  again isn't it going to be cheaper just to renovate the schools in succession you know the answer is no it's not going to be cheaper and it can be far more complicated so that that was very very helpful thing to do i doing this might not know the project their moment of our seven to twelve school so i think i would be ready to put it on that paves that they can see that it's a larger enrollment project and that the is there more expensive school take you up with that i that one tiny suggestion as well to slide number twenty right instead of saying yes no to the security it's the funding secured a supporter to the state could you drop the numbers  iter so we we asked town council to take a look at that article that paragraph to be able to reword it so it had the director of present form to both of us but not calling us aboard because essentially that restricts our ability to talk to each other about facilities and meet with steve because we would you always have to have an open meeting just to have discussions you know individually or as a group of three traditionally how that interaction works is steve does meet with me regularly about the list of the work list and capital works at the school department he meets individually with patrice and there are times we try to meet monthly to go over what's the work of the year what's the budget except are in august and we reviewed a the protocol that is being amended for staff regarding the use of technology and that is included in the packets that are here what the school committee will be voting on is amendments to the policy as in looking at what they do uses the term protocol in this what we reviewed the policy said committee meeting and then looking at the policies themselves and all the other protocol and procedures and things that are on our website for students and staff and regarding the ology the only thing that the school committee would be voting on is an amendment to the policy saying that the superintendent challenge for the development of excessive except of the use of technology procedures protocols guidelines or administr e policies for the district is what we reviewed at the policy subcommittee meeting just to have a presentation and have a discussion on this topic was a protocol that the administration would implement part of the reason we had the discussion was that these protocols are listed on the website and provided to staff and available to the public but what the school committees role would be is related to the policy and we would just be and capacity is up to two hundred and ten spots for after care from eight when brooke at that time had no waiting list for aftercare and should probably know the community path of the school committee to sign off on a request for the ministry of you so we could very quickly do them one by one to have a motion for the june th minute to be sent nd or all those in favor