the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of b m c or the town of dhamma b m c welcomes your comments call us at six one seven four eight four two four four three or email us at access at belmont media dot org hello everybody welcome to community conversations on the b m c podcast network i'm your host roger coulton well we've been in school for about four weeks now here in belmont and i thought that it would be interesting to have superintendent john failon in to talk with us about the state of the schools in in belmont at the beginning of the school year so i have with me today superintendent of schools john failon john thanks for joining us here at community conversations and thanks for taking time to out of your out of your schedule i can't imagine it's other than busy to come over and chat with u roger thank you very much for having me it's after october first and my impression is that october first in the school year or at least in the administrative part of the school year has some significance you sort of have been in school long enough to know what the school population is can you explain to me what but the significance of that yes sure from from a day to day perspective as a parent and as an educator and as a person who works in schools october first represents getting the first month under way making sure that all the details ironed out from bussing to class lists to schedules and everybody's up and running in teaching and learning is happening in the very first week of school but we're really open up and running with our academic and educational work our trouble one from the state reporting system point of view and from the district point of view as when we report our own roland our first is the date by which every school district in the commonwealth reports their school attendance to the state department of education and then they record that as the number in the market that records are irrelevant each year  and that's that's a window of time that's very important for the enrollment of our schools so there there's not that programming there are programming decisions it's an administrative  date that's correct yes so that you know it's our job one is important because we're all up and running and everything's good in the schools are working in students are entering school safe and learning and engaged but here in belmont in one of the things that we'll talk about today is in rome and in the increasing enrollment and october october one of the first week in october is when we take that stop shot snapshot of the roman for the belmont schools like every other district and records of what the state now i have a whole list  to talk with you about if we have time and we won't have time so i think the thing to do today is simply to start talking and when we run out of time well sure we'll stop but one thing i don't want to talk about necessarily about today is the belmont high school building because i think that that's such a big topic that we need to put that off shore for a different show agree but before we get started i a somewhat off the wall question and that is when you go to work in the morning what do you have on your mind these days so these days on my commute in i have on my mind making sure that all of our students are safe and in learning in our teachers are in places where they feel supported in engaging kids in from a bigger picture i really am focused right now  space in rome and class size and the things that the district needs to do from a short term perspective to add space and educators to support class size and also what are we doing in the long run so everything is kind of framed by the high school building project because that's a  that i'm focused on so in moment seems to be that in the enviroment in the belmont schools seems to be that the proverbial elephant in the room what's the status of enrollment as a october one yes so hadn't we just received what we will use as the official numbers and we'll report them out at our august tenth school committee meeting we'll do a class size in rome and report to the school committee in the public on t v we always do it on the first meeting in october we received one hundred twenty five new students a district in net new to the district and i say net new because that means that's how much our total population went up by that does not mean that we haven't had families leave the district for various reasons in a whole lot more families come into the district if you really compare that number will probably have more like two hundred fifty sixty new families to the district but some people even some people correct men and surf the net right so we talk about how many new families do we have and we have a whole bunch who feel as if we want to welcome make sure that they feel comfortable make sure that we're meeting their needs but from the net number in terms of are we growing as a district do we need more teachers do we need more space is our budget sufficient net number of one hundred twenty five is an important number that number is in line or a little bit above the average that we have predicted with averaging if we look backwards one hundred one students per year over the last six years this hundred twenty five number actually is a significant increase of twenty five students in one year and are projected in rome and right now with students k to twelve who are that would exclude preschool are not involved are ou just trick students is about forty five hundred forty students if we include our out of district students who are our belmont's we serve we're over forty six forty six hundred school district which is significant and my impression i heard you speak the other night the other night it's a few weeks ago probably at his school building committee meeting and my impression is that this influx of students isn't just this year but it's continuing a trend and the trend is expected to continue throughout in you into the future so we have done in roman projections with a private company and we've also done a robot projections with the massachusetts school building authority and what they're showing is that the projection of new students coming into the district will continue to accelerate in what i've been saying out loud roughly is that our our numbers of the average grade size meaning a third grader a fourth grade is usually been about two hundred sixty to two hundred eighty students maybe ten years ago our average class size in the belmont public schools right now is more like three hundred fifty to three hundred eighty that's over one hundred students more for every grade so when you think about kindergarten through twelve that's thirteen hundred more students that we're looking at that's one hundred more per grade and so we are projecting maybe twenty years out with these experts in showing that the for town will be more like three hundred sixty on average for every grade level what the students were just ten years ago that was only two hundred sixty so that's not that watermark will not go back down there will be some blips that maybe go to three eight four hundred nine might be a couple of blips that go down between three forty or so but the average would be about three sixty so it we're trying to really look at the school system and provide a capacity a functional capacity of good class size and good space in appropriate space that's not only efficient for us in our taxpayers but also beneficial for us how students can be engaged with teachers of around three hundred sixty students per grade  moving forward for for ever for the belmont schools so it's not a bubble i've always read that oh it's but i have at times thought in the past that there was simply a bubble going through the belmont schools that would eventually go through the channel go through the high school and i'm hearing you say that that's not the case there's going to be a new norm that will be significantly higher than it is that's correct the the bubbles or the waves have come in and they have in the past if we went back all the way to nine hundred seventy we looked at the data all the way back to learn from history you know what belmont's capacity has been as a town and what the roman looks like in the early seventy's it was very very high as well it did come back down a little bit so we're only forecasting from experts what we know but they're predicting that the new the new line the new watermark will be about three sixty per grade now in my mind there are huge two points of significance to increasing an enrollment one is teaching capacity i may or may not be right on so don't be bashful about telling me i'm wrong  one is teaching capacity and the other is simply physical space and i missing something there no you're absolutely correct we are we are benefit we have benefited greatly by the override two years ago were a third year of over funds where we have added twenty teaching positions to the district to support class size maintaining appropriate class size also we didn't have enough teachers three years ago to give every child at the middle school or the high school class seven periods a day so we have students who have study halls in middle school which are very rare and i would concede i would venture to say not productive and at the high school we have students who have free periods that we would like to engage both middle school  school students with meaningful programming as well as time to study and get their work done but we see that that staffing level needs to be higher it's just a math problem with if you have more students you need more staff to support them and supervise them in terms of the space when you have that many more students you just need more classrooms we have a significant amount of high school teachers who share classrooms they don't have their own classroom and i asked mike to callista just yesterday for again example would be physical education classes and now at thirty three and this three classes at a time in a gymnasium that's really only so supposed to support two classrooms of about twenty five so now that's a numbers i need more teacher issue but that's also a space and you have a space issue so that's kind of the example that would take both of your principals and time into one well and i think i've heard people talk that there is space and i don't mean to denigrate the public schools by there is space that historically was used as storage space that has been converted into teaching space is that myth or is that it that is accurate two years ago we did an analysis of what the space usage at the high school was several years ago and what we use base for now and we did a same thing at the middle school so basically at the middle school it showed that there was a there was a storage closet that was being used for small instruction or for teachers to get together there is a very tight room that we use for  services for students there are spaces for what's that i'm sorry patient therapy ok cicle therapy i walked the middle school two days ago in we have small breakout spaces that most schools would have a place for students to go and outside of their classroom to work in small groups you know we have students working in hallways and all of our schools so we are at a place where where over utilizing the footprint of school space that we have and some of the spaces that we're utilizing on traditional school classroom spaces and it seems to me i actually wouldn't have thought of the gymnasium but there are some spaces that simply can't be expanded like the cafeteria or the library the libraries that's correct what do you do so we i think that's the great question that was asked of the burbank reporting modules of the burbank and the parents in the educators were concerned that the cafeteria might not have enough room to accept that many students and yet that many students or the cafeteria were making do where were expanding the amount of tables that we have so we can support all students the food service department as an example the cafeteria is an amazing group of people imagine your job in the middle schools to feed fourteen hundred students in a two hour period that doesn't happen in a new york city deli on the average day and so they work really hard at the spaces conveys restrictive we use outside space on the days that it's nice at the middle school for example the kids get to eat and then move outside to play a little bit too to actually relax some of that space but those are the challenges of the fixed base units that we have that even though you add more teachers or you out of class and second grade to relieve class size we are having fixed spaces that are reaching their maximums libraries cafeterias gymnasiums etc and my impression and again this may or may not be correct and i have no particular insight into this but my impression would be that that big classes might effect the younger kids more than the high school with that teacher you know there's a lot  we benefit by a population of students and families that come to school ready to learn so we could afford to have class size be a little higher if we had to and we've been doing that for about five or six years now and what we're seeing also that that is hard to implement as we're seeing a lot of students who come into our schools whose first language is not english so the not becomes a challenge in a class of twenty six that may be a little easier to engage in a class of twenty three so all of a sudden your class size does starts to feel different because of the population is serving we have students who have ips which are a special education learning programs in five zero fours which are a combination plan so when you start to look at the population of students that our teachers are working with the range of learners and that room is starting to get a little bigger so when you have a high class size combined with a wider range of students to support in engage that's when the real that's where the rubber meets the road it gets difficult to at the high school what they do as an example is that they'll have classes that your a p classes might be a little higher in class size because those students might be ready to at to advocate for themselves engage the material quicker and  be challenged in with the rigor and be effectively taught but the students who are in a different level of that subject area who might not be in a p class you might want to have that class more under twenty two or twenty four classes which is more traditional so those are the choices that we're making that are not ideal but that's that's the world that we're living in and one of the at aspects of the world that we live in are modular units that you mentioned and i know the schools are coming to or i think the schools are the high school we have five units behind the high school we have six units at the middle school and they're working out very well in those two levels of those two schools we had a spaced house forcemeat let me last year to talk about what we're going to do about the elementary that group had to have to decide how many rooms we would need and what location or what school we decided as a group and i presented to the school committee that for modular spaces almost four watching the classrooms and the space was going to be at the at the burbank i was at the burbank last week i spoke to the to the p t o there the burbank community has been fantastic they came up with some thoughts of infrastructure that the school needs to support more parents coming in more students coming in like parking like the playground we're taking playground space creating better playground space all infrastructure that's good for the for the burbank community that that will be part of what we present the town meeting i believe it's on november thirteenth and their request will be for the infrastructure work in the marginal clashing  space and we're going to be asking the town for that funding so we will be with modular space at every level of district starting next september i'd like to change directions just a little although i understand that all of this is  intertwined but tom let's talk about budgets for a bit and again i understand that that the enrollment issue is in the budgets are maybe not one in the same but they're closely in a related but you reference the the two thousand and fifteen override a couple of minutes ago are you guys you guys are the schools doing ok financially today realization that we had a seven hundred fifty thousand dollar gap in what the expenditures were going to be and what the budget was for the year that we were starting the year that i was in we had to go back to the board selected in the school committee eventually town meeting to get money to supplement the budget that school year the department in the whole town had not having or had not had any override revenue generated for i think between ten and thirteen years and so we worked really hard to demonstrate in the school level what the needs were of the teachers and the students and the families as related to the a new will operating budget different from a capital budget which will leave off the table for a minute that override was successful because i think parents in the community realize that the enrollment going up is closely linked to how many more teachers we may need and how many more services we need to offer to our families and we were hugely grateful for ten positions in year one of that over had five positions in year two and five positions and yet three we have also done real good work within the district to save money to create new revenue streams we did discuss raising fees for certain folks that brought in more money we have engaged in the medicaid process where we are providing services to students that actually is reimbursable by the federal government the time wasn't taking advantage of that we have spent a year and a half investigating that and in training our staff that we are producing our own revenue as a school district for doing stuff that we already do for students and fields which will go right into the towns coffers as well and so are our special ed budget which had been a million dollars short of seven hundred fifty short when i arrived we now have a million dollars in our circuit breaker funding to prepare for the year is out that we are going to see where the money will disappear in fiscal nineteen and we're ready with a with a savings account to spread that money out over the next three  we've positioned ourselves over the last couple years yeah so we're financially very very solid it when it comes to the big picture items of the budget for now for now where we're i will pause calmer and say no we're not in good shape is that the enrollment has actually escalated of the budget has allowed us to provide new staff in we do have high class sizes at every level of district despite adding twenty teachers and we have been behind so long with purchasing instructional materials and supplies that books were so outdated that that we've been taking a conservative approach where we don't give the principals all the money that we have at the beginning of the year we want to let the it go through first into to make sure that any an variable costs are accounted for and then in may and june which running around and saying i will do that book purchase now for next year will do that furniture purchase now and we're buying assets that will last a long time for the district so we're really trying to be thoughtful about how we approach the budget but those funds are not enough to support the amount of students that we have right now and welfare and my own press i keep using that phrase i guess but my impression and or i think the impression of many community members is that while some services at the schools aren't further deteriorate in we've lost things little haven't been replaced and maybe we'll not be well let's not go there but we've lost things that haven't been me place so good it's haven't been replaced librarians haven't been replaced that's correct and so that's why it's so we're working hard to certain programs that have not been replaced  that were reduced before i arrived and what we're trying to work on are the capital assets so if yes if you're a family and you're saving up and you want to if you want to be able to spend in plane your money accordingly we're the same way we want to buy things that we know will last a long time things like book adoptions we need books we haven't have new books at the high school in latin and we're asking our p t o folks to help us by latin books or asking our p t o partners in the f b e the foundation for  huge supporters of the schools to help adopt professional development we've been using a lot of what i would call outsider soft money to support basic functions of the belmont schools so we're trying to buy assets with the money we have that will last a long time and we're trying to partner better with the foundation for beaumont education p t o s boosters we have a lot of friend groups out there that are providing support to us if we didn't have those volunteer groups in the town of belmont the school system would be very challenging its ability to serve its children i would like to in thinking about projects that i'd like to think for a minute about the the folks who have kids who not only go  to the classes but who participate in out of school activities what do you say to the folks that that would come to you or come to me and say i'm paying taxes but now i have to pay an activity fever my kid to perform in the fall play or play basketball or play field hockey i think that fees are now a foundational part of public schools which i think is a shame because it takes the public out of public schools we charge for the bus we charge for lunch we charge for kindergarten we charge for athletics we charge for clubs we charge for music all those fees in most districts across the commonwealth of massachusetts have been adopted over times where financial realities have really been hard for create the capital assets of the district's food service program so we could actually serve better food you know we're now you know we're now localizing some of our work with local farms in local companies to provide better food but we needed facilities and machines in organs to cook it didn't to do also so i think that it's very hard to be a public school parent when a lot of the public school piece is really your private money that has to go into your tax bill but also into a fee so we're trying to keep them to a minimum and we haven't raised them in generally the three years of four years that i've been here and we'd like to keep them as low as possible when we can in additional concern that is expressed to me on occasion and more than on occasion on a regular occasion is  a concern that squeezed budgets present a particular threat and i don't know if that's the correct word to be to arts education and to  libraries do you have a response to that i have a bias because i think that our music education is just critical so i think that that's always the first place where most school systems would look at trying to reduce services if and when they do have a budget crunch i can tell you four years ago when i was looking around to see if i want to be a superintendent where i want to be a superintendent the two things that attracted me to the belmont public schools was how many students i used to see receiving awards in the boston globe arts edition every spring in the incredible music visual arts programming that we have here so we did some visioning work for the new high school and during those vision sessions and more people talked about those disciplines having such a huge impact on student learning and student outcomes that were equal to the math in the english and the history so i'm passionate about those things as well and when and if we get to the point where we need to make decisions that might be hard for the district to to reflect on what should go and what needs to stay those things will be in the forefront of my thinking as well that's great jo n we're out of time that's unbelievable can't can you believe it it's it's been thirty minutes we will have to get you back because there are any number of things that i would enjoy speaking with you  about and i think the community would like to hear about i would love to come back this is a great form to get out the good things that are happening in the belmont schools the successes that we have the challenges that we're working through but i couldn't think of a better place to be a student a teacher or a family or a community member in belmont nasa going to double public schools well we've been speaking today with superintendent of schools john failand superintendent the belmont public schools we have talked about the budget we've talked about and brawl meant and we will in fact bring john back to talk about some of the curriculum issues and my activities that are going on in schools today so thank you again for joining us today john and i would like to thank you the listeners of community conversations for tuning in you can access community conversations online media dot org simply stream on demand community conversations through the b m c podcast network and you can also access community conversations through i tunes by searching for the b m c podcast network you've been listening to community conversations i'm your host roger colton and  i will talk to you again in two weeks thank you for listening