order at seven o'clock on the notice and we'll start with the pledge of allegiance part of the law and i've been asking basically you and some of you guys since june no one's been able to give me any information so i thought maybe if i came here i saw my face you know i'm not going to go away i will need answers to whether i think i am allowed to attend under open meeting law the first meeting of the bellman high school school advisory council is october eleventh so i would love to get the information i need whether i can and sure i can go but i'm not a lawyer can interpret the la i speak and i ask questions can i just sit there you know can someone tell me the exact meeting location of the room because it's not online so that's basically the gist of it evening you're all right just so moving to the chairpersons your porch future today for this so again drawing much information from our wonderful rich and deep web site so i just want to mention for folks some things that i've mentioned before is that i will continue to mention chronologically as appropriate saturday music school begins this saturday morning at eight am right here at the generally middle school so that's exciting and again just reflects such amazing work of students and staff and families who contribute to the very rich and engaging music program that we have this same evening saturday october first there is a soccer night at harris field on concord out and i guess it's the first ever boys and girls double header and there will be refreshments and prizes so that sounds like be a lot of fun and hopefully the weather will hold off for us dan scharf women's memorial run will be the following day this sunday october second at nine thirty and i understand from the information on the line that registration ends at midnight tonight if you wish to register on line so you still have less than five hours to get that registration online but race day registration is also available for the need to worry then looking ahead to next week there is the broadway night at the belmont high school could so i would like to welcome in the school committee in the in the public to our second school committee meeting of the sixteen seventeen school year we're very excited to announce some early highlights for our student athletes don't want high school infield talkee we had freshman katie good and who is max field hockey northeast player of the week that's just not the surrounding boston area that's a very very large area that's a very distinguished organization to recognize katie as a freshman girl soccer junior carrie allard was eastern mass girl soccer association player of the week in football senior ben jones was the boston globe and boston herald division two player of the week this is the first time in the same week we've had three student athletes recognized by such organizations across new england so that's a great great thing for the high school and for the student athletes as the community is aware that don't want to go solo a program that has been put in place  to put residential solar on our homes and don't want this fifty pianos that can be given to the schools for demonstration demonstration purposes we're very thankful to the group that put that work together we will be working to do some of that work in the spring in deciding on if we have what schools we would like to use what demonstration capacity in an applications we can use in the classroom but we're very thankful to that group that  present presenting that data it's a significant order to for the second or third year in a row be considered level one with some great progress at our high school and some really nice because the competition is for two of our schools but i won't share that secret with janice as her presentation we are at the general school there are a modular classrooms behind us on the tennis courts i was out there yesterday walking the perimeter from the neighbor's view come from washington street in the street that abuts the property the color scheme looks very good it's a nice brick red and hopes to fade in a little bit with the existing school color they are hooking up to buildings now to all the underground utilities and that will take about a week or so and we look forward to that work being done and then we can start to schedule students quote there sometime in mid fall which would be a round of amber hopefully before thanksgiving break as planned  since our last meeting we were we've been at the wynn brook we've been at the the butler in at the general i was at a high school today and i'll be at the wellington in the burbank this week so we're starting the process where we're going to each school making sure that we get into it with ou of the mine did decide to vote no on the minute me and building program so what will happen next is there will be a town meeting to vote on whether or not the time would like to withdraw from minute me and regional vocational school  to give people some feedback on that process we will probably be making a presentation at that time meeting night which will be i believe on october nineteenth  and so the time meeting will vote on that withdrawal process save the date the park a recreation should teach a planning meeting is on wednesday november second if you'd like to attend that it does have a school connection because the park to rec department does use our facilities am and then we move as a covert over the butler we have a sing along there at nine forty five then at ten thirty we're at the wellington for their school program and then we stop by and have lunch with the veterans at eleven thirty at the v f w post so there are jitters about twenty to twenty five people twenty to twenty four veterans a common we traveled together all day twice a year we've come to know these gentlemen in these women well and the hostess to lunch and it's probably one of the best days of the year so so very excited about this is our second here with this focus on this day and i know that it will be a great day for for all of the adults in their district underscore that it's not the one fifteen or the other or release time it's the early read it three hours thirty eleven and eleven on the calendar it says exactly what time we get to the next year and i looked at the calendar and a little thin in terms of the representation here feasting of folks traveling and under the weather so everyone has received their materials and will be kept up to date that way and hopefully watch on the television  district earned that highest determination that can be earned which is level one this is based on students performance on state assessment and growth measures and continues to show the results of the  the elementary school which was last year also recognized is a national blue ribbon school candidate for high performing so high progress they say are schools with the highest relative performance on the progress informants government in recognizing high student achievement probably only two to three schools a year from massachusetts get nominated and get selected so if selected this would be a huge accomplishment for mike the cows are in the pot the staff of the students the families of the butler school  we were contacted in late spring where mike had to fill out an application which you recognize and you're able to enter into the application process you have to provide some artifacts and evidence and data to talk about your school  then they await your two sixteen outcomes to see if you continue the progress that you have been making over the last several years and if you continue on that upward trend you have a higher chance of being considered a blue ribbons who so we are very excited await the commission is announcement that butler could be a blue ribbon school this doesn't happen very often in school districts it should be celebrated we like to celebrate the by the parents staff the students the administration the teachers if in fact we chose and so we're we're hoping and we we were going to share until we were actually announced but they actually put it right on the accountability forms for the public school so he wants a picture of people knew what it was and what the potential is for the by the school being considered as a huge accomplishment being asked to fill out the the in this necessary paper to provide the artifacts is is a job in of itself and mike is team did a great job doing that in the spring and over the summer and article that that was in the d'antoni and what we we did put together some information but also the commissioner mr chester had a cover memo when he released the data yesterday afternoon and he did mention names of the three schools including butler that are that are candidates for this honors me we had lots of notes and lots of important places so it was really good ok so how did we get that level one well the the designation a determination is based on cumulative progress and performance index we have lots of acronyms and i'll walk you through them we are need to make progress on our each five or above to indicate that you are making progress on the goals of narrowing the achievement gap of getting more students to a profession so the two groups that we are that are included in this calculation are the all students group that's all the students who are in the schools at the grade levels that are assessed and the high needs subgroup and high needs is an undue blockaded count of all students in a school or district belonging to at least one of the following individual subgroups students with disabilities english learners and former english learners students and economically disadvantaged students so the reason that they created this subgroup was in recognition that in other and also from our perspective to know not only in the when you look at the aggregate our students do well but when you look drill down into the groups that typically don't form as well are we also helping them make the progress that we want for  note about the economically disadvantaged subgroup last year they changed it from the low income subgroup to the economically disadvantaged subgroup and it's determined based on a student's eligibility for any number of stated minister programs like the subsidy supplemental nutrition assistance program like transitional assistance for families with dependent children anything involved with the department of children families foster care program mass health  this number of students to be counted has slowly been changed over the last two years in twenty fifteen starting twenty fourteen the number for the group to be counted included in your calculation was thirty and twenty fifteen the number was reduced to twenty five and in twenty sixteen the number is twenty so they are making that that group smaller that is counted when the number is smaller than the twenty sixteen the change only applies to subgroups him schools and districts that were large enough to receive accountability terminations last year so there are gradually phasing it but i think it's an important shift to say that it doesn't matter the group is only as small as twenty it's still an important group for pay attention to that so you can see by this chart that we have indeed rate have all of our numbers all of this cumulative p p i number is seventy five or above last year our high school high needs subgroup dipped below seventy six and i will explain in a couple of slides that this is based on four years of data so there is an annual progress in performance index and then they look at the last four years and they wait the most recent year the most but that's that's how they come up with this cumulative four year snapshot of how we're doing in terms of our students performance on the state assessments so here's your seven measures that are included in each you can see in that memo that i provided to  look at on page three of the memo that i provided to you you can see a chart provided by the department of elementary and secondary education in their school leaders guide to accountability terminations thirty five pages that will help you sleep if you're having trouble with them and describes in more detail how they use each of those measures and how they assign the points is the is the point value that is assigned based on the scores that students are on the state assessments and so on page four of your memo i provide an example if you had a take the total number and divide by the total number of students you come up with the c p i and example on that page you see the c p i is eighty point six a c p i one hundred means that one hundred percent of the students have demonstrated proficiency and that is of course the goal so the c p i is then used to determine whether or not a school  or a subgroup within a school is meeting its proficiency gap narrowing targets which brings us to the next so no child left behind  using now choose to take all districts from where they were in two thousand and eleven and cut in half the gap between where they were and where they would need to be to be all provision in twenty seventeen so they have made these calculations so it's really important to know that it's not when they're when they're looking at this c p i number coming they're looking at where you were last year where you need to be to keep moving along that continuum toward proficiency and if you're making adequate progress and that's how you out earn your points it's an index of of your own progress toward meeting the goal that state has set onto that algorithm cut they have still not to terminate and in fact the no child left behind waiver that we're operating under expired last month but given that it is in the middle of all of these calculations of course we are continuing with that and we will wait and see what they will what accountability holds in store for us for twenty seventeen year old news leaders so can i just sort of there's no guidelines and regulations and then each state looks at that and determines what does that mean in terms of how the state department of education uses that i don't think i do i do not think that the rules asking states to monitor schools in the way that they're doing will go away whether the regulations will shift somewhat and change how they calculate or what they're calculating i mean for one thing they said proficiency by twenty seventeen so the goals that they've set are sort of reaching the end of the line for that right in this school year so something will have to shift but exactly what that is it's not clear and i believe in either the commissioner's update or the f t from the gentleman who sends the state house news might have made mention something about it that a group is forming and that may actually be the topic or may have been the topic for the board of elementary and secondary education is meeting today so i'm sure that there was more coming about that for now we're under the old rules of just a reminder about student growth percentile this is how well that a student grow or improve compared to his academic peers and example i have here is a student who earns a score of seven hundred forty on the seventh grade math par academic peers in that so that would have been last year's test executive peers or all the other students in massachusetts or at the same school or on the seventh grade math park exam and then depending on how he scores on the eighth grade math park exam  how that helps us as a district is if we see at the school level or grade level or a classroom level or individual level something or a low gross for that's a opportunity for us to look at that and say us to to us dig a little deeper is if you have an s t p from one to thirty nine that's considered low growth forty to sixty is moderate growth in the anything above sixty is higher  growing but you're growing better than the percentage of your peers so it's just such a it's an interesting thing to think about an individual child you know the whole competitive tone of it all anyway you know that you're outpacing your score is how much better you perform compared to your peers regardless of developmental level but i think so right so that it's interesting him i'm glad to hear you know that look at it from the global to the smaller is right up to right otis trends and right interesting right and when parents receive the individual reports it's also explained in there is a number there and parents if they have questions by all means should should contact the school and say can you tell me more about what this means or what questions this raises for you if there is something of concern and  it is an opportunity to learn it's not a it's not anything other than that and if there is something that something additional we need to do or different we need to do to support a child in their learning then that's part of it  so in addition to all of the numbers for the seven indicators that are on the appendix b in your memo there are also opportunities for extra credit and they've added a new one this year so you get extra credit points if you decrease the number of students in the morning or feeling category by more than ten percent if you increase the number of students in the advanced scoring category by where th gage two or more students who dropped out of school in any of the previous four years and the new one this year as you demonstrate strong growth on the access for each allows the english language proficiency assessment and we're now  for the high needs subgroup to be measured as well you see that the numbers in terms of it are quite high there there are some discrepanc said disparities between the us all students group and high needs subgroup and that is something that is you know we are continuing to look and work on our in our focus on the achievement gap the numbers in terms of slide are up in the high end of the moderate part of the the scale or even just a little bit above in the high high growth part of the scale not anything that would cause us concern and to tell us that we're on the right track for most students again we would always look at the individual student level is going to the next slide shows are for elementary schools elementary schools have subgroups large enough which is really a testament to to the hard work of teachers and staff and students and families to have those students be growing at that rate the reason there are you know and we did earn some extra credit at the high school for our students our english learners improving their english proficiency regency as well as some important things you will notice in the high need subgroup and in fact the middle school it's really hard to be noted how well they do cool the middle school is the school that has every grade tested  in english and math and also the fifth and eighth graders are tested in science there's a lot of testing that goes on in this building and there's a lot of learning with a lot of children and in many districts the middle school i a place where they struggle to have the students continue to make the schools that are set because there are so many students being tested and that the numbers are more challenging but in fact in this middle school we have sure that it is a well aligned curriculum that it is and learning experiences for students leading to the kind of learning and thinking that we want them to have and result in the outcomes that we're hoping for for all children  you may wonder why there isn't any for english learners at the middle school and is a factor of you have to students have to be in the school for at least two years to get the growth score and all of this data is available on the web site it does the nice thing about the reports that are on the web site if anything that you're interested in you can click on the link and dig down deeper into the data to understand that and one important earn that the student growth percentile extra credit for the access is that the growth has to be sixty or higher which is in the high range so in the places where we earned that our e s l teachers and classroom teachers really helped those students develop english langauge proficiency in an extraordinary way so you take all of these numbers and you put them together to come up with the progress and performance index from the current year and the previous three years and they wait up as follow ups i didn't update my dates that should be twenty thirteen fourteen fifteen and sixteen apologize for that the result is a number up to one hundred and again all o here again is the accountability systems local for each of our schools and this table also has an additional feature the accountability system which is the school percentile and this number is relative to other schools is where the this is your percentile radke between one and ninety nine and it is used by the state for districts that are level two in their level two with a centile i believe in the twenty percent or below then they are level three schools so they take the lowest twenty percent tile districts that are low and classify them as level three which comes with extra support from the state to try  held harmless districts who are choose who chose park as their as their measure and because i don't remember exactly how many districts chose a park this year versus m cassar for the twenty sixteen year but in calculating the school percentiles they took out the twenty fifteen assessment choice in the calculation for l a and math achievement and growth data they have twenty sixteen twenty fourteen twenty thirteen and twenty twelve but not twenty fifteen and i think the number the balance was was off the science achievement gap that is the last four years for the percent tile because that is all and cast in all the same and for high school it is the last four years wellington we are still have work to do and you can see the number of high school is not where we would like it to be and in all of our schools we know that there are students that are not performing at the level that we want them to the state gives us data on other subgroups not just some group and that's also data that we use and look at and and use as part of our learning about what's going well and what what we need to continue to work on and in particular we look at are when you look only at the students with disabilities i can subgroup and look at them specifically that's an area that we need to keep working on and also our african american black students that they're achieving at a level lower than the students that when you look at the aggregate and that is the achievement gap that we're talking about that we need to keep working on so just a couple of strengths that i can brag on my but it won't keep you out here we do see very high achievement for our students they are doing well on the measures that the state has asked us to use to to demonstrate their their learning and it shows that our curriculum is aligned with  the frameworks of the state has set forth and i continue to show strong results on the park assessment which is a more rigorous assessment than the m p s was and although we don't it will be another presentation to talk to you about and cast your point know in the twenty seventeen state what is the i meant and more information is coming out slowly bit by bit but i imagine it will continue to be along the same lines as the commendations we do still have a gap between the eyes of all students and students in the high need some through and as i mentioned again students with disabilities it's due to african american students ensuring that all students needs are met a district priority as you can see fire to focus areas for this year addressing achievement gaps and improving our social emotional on a framework we do feel strongly that they they are well separate initiatives have a lot of overlap and do go hand in hand and that is the focus of my work success of every student is is evident in this data it's it's how we are where we are there are very few districts that are in this designation if you look at the  massive spread sheet of all districts across the state and you sort by level there are seventy six districts that are level one that is you look more closely us districts that are like ours that are k twelve districts there are only five other districts that students many thanks to all involved in continuing to keep the money at the top of the list massachusetts for a great school district i guess my question is around what are the biggest challenges you feel we're facing to maintaining obviously the achievement gap which is an area of focus are there other things that can keep you up at night when you think about how we continue to achieve level one for the coming years that we shall be thinking about the maybe the school committee particular should be trying to think about how we can and i do we do pay attention to it but what we we really pay more attention to the teaching and learning making sure that that we are providing professional development to chart teachers and holding to a standard of very high highly effective teaching in all the classrooms and i think we are very fortunate in belmont to have a core of administrators who are both curriculum and content experts k through twelve that are really the backbone of making sure that we are rest of any changes to curriculum at the state level changes to teaching practices the math teaching practices the science practices all of those things are the  potatoes of the work that we do day in and day out and they do it teachers they do it during department meetings they do it during our curriculum meetings they do it in the summer with summer curriculum work through professional help and they were able to offer  throughout the year so not losing sight of you know there's sort of the behind the scenes people but they're critical to our success and making sure that we continue to maintain that structure and provide the support so you just have to to me it's no surprise that that students have good outcomes because when you walk through the classrooms you need to learn watch you see teachers and gauging kids that are really high level and you could be level two next year very quickly with a seventy six becoming a seventy four and trying to explain that they go on formula that somewhere in that seven component formula that one number went below a number but the reality is that every time we watch the clashes we have teachers engaging students in a rigorous way the parka seems like a great fit for government because the teachers had already been engaging students in creative thinking analysis writing explaining their thinking in all different subjects other forgive being in a fifth grade class last year w the students going to round monitored their own learning with primary sources and it was a student led class in fifth grade and it was amazing to be in a social studies class so that that high level of of expectation of rigor in the fifth grade class so there's those kinds of learning outcomes and we have teachers in gauging kids like that and i'm not sure that happens across all dishes so we're fortunate to have teachers who function of the high level students who come in ready to learn at that high level into point key people who are working behind the scenes to support teachers that high level what keeps me up at night is that i rudely continues to increase space challenges are putting students and teachers in spaces that are not idea environments and that the class sizes that we have will start to take away from the ability for teachers to make really good really unshifted students this is not just an academic oakum that we see this is we go back without an increase in staff to support that it will be in an increase in space to support that world and so those are kind of the nuts and bolts of things and if you think about the last couple years we took care of space in class size by adding positions in creating big over fourteen or fifteen additional classrooms to balance class size a little bit by role continues to go to go up or give our october one report and our next meeting to compere are rolling over past years but i  the focus of a couple of meetings coming up after we get the policy committee and it will come up with two minutes and changes to the policy committee sees fit and bring it to the larger group but we figured we'd give you an update before the work started y most of these with so the harassment policy is one that we are wanting to update it exists our procedures are well established but we think it's time to review it and probably update that and make some modifications with the exception of that the rest are all issues that have come before us because the laws that have been passed are new regulations that have been passed and just a quick run down there at the opioid use bill i know that you know if you all over the media that that's a real priority for the governor and with good reason and so it's there's a lot of work going on a fat both in terms of laws and the department of elementary and secondary education is also doing some work on this and so we've started doing some work on that with guidance from the state and then we'll need to to craft our policy and so we're starting that work the chancellor transgender rights bill again that's another issue that is forefront the media right now in the commonwealth and of course across the country as well again we've already started looking into some of this work and what is going to be involved for us and we need to do some some deep work on the policy committee subcommittee to sort out what is the most appropriate policy for the district charging policy and procedures the department of elementary and secondary secondary education now actually requires districts to have a policy and procedure in place for collecting unpaid  and so that's something that just in o'brien our director of food services has been working on he was working with that's the last year and it's got some good work started on this that we can pick up from the on the policy  subcommittee will pick that up and develop that into a policy and he will work on the procedures and then the last is the domestic violence bill which actually we've had pieces of this already in place and we just need to to make sure that our policy reflects all of that that is again another state law that that allows people who are dealing with domestic violence in one way or another who need time off to deal with that whether it's legal issues or whatever  and so that's another piece that we also have been working on make sure that our policy reflects the work that we're doing that's a kind of a quick no children anyone have any questions should very quick would do we have much discretion on these or is it the state has said you must do this and we just implement the logic and rubber stamp it so the state usually you know they pass a law that either the legislature passes a law that we then have to to  create a policy that is in agreement with the law and then we have to develop some procedures we don't really just rubber stamp it we try to look at you know you have to have the  policy has to fit within the law our procedures have to fit within that but we have to look at what works best in belmont and and how best do we get that information to staff and if it's a procedure for for  example around the domestic violence when we want to make sure that we have very clear procedures just like we have for the harassment policy on the website you can look at the policy and then right underneath you can click through to see the procedures so if i was somebody who wanted to file a claim or if i'm somebody who suffers from domestic violence and i need to take time off that's very clear to staff so we have pieces within that that we can make clear and work well for belmont but we always have to be within the law and the policy and before up before i started here six plus years ago the policy subcommittee did a tremendous amount of work to really bring the whole policy manual up to speed and entered into in line with where it should have been at that point in time and they did a tremendous amount of work so really the policy subcommittee now we sort of tweak those as we go if we need to or add where we need to but in general we try to the emphasis has always been to keep procedures out of the policy and the policy needs to be clear in what's in the through the end of june and are one of our concerns as we talked about that was whether or not that combined with our staff having the ability to also deal with each of those holidays within the contracts that they have the ability to not attend work to observe their holidays there was discussion at the table what happens if a lot of folks are zero because we now have been looking at this counter in the spring with no holidays in it it will be ultimately voted we said it in the contract is a provision that anybody who is looking to take a holiday no matter how far along it is in the school year they have to announce that put that into our electronic substitute in attendance program by the first week of school so we have the data to present to you because we felt i believe as a group that it was important to look at that we did begin to see if we could forecast any concerns so mary's going to take you through those through those data numbers that will allow us to kind of look at what the attendance can look like over the course of the school year when some of these religious holidays will be held so  session so just so to walk you through this and you have this in your packet says well i thought it was useful to see the data so in two thousand and thirteen fourteen you can see that thirty two employees across the district for that entire school year took a days off work as a days off or religiously it out was a year where there was no contractual right to two religiously days of religiously so in two thousand and fourteen fifteen is where the new contract language  sand and you can see that our number one up to ninety district wide in two thousand and fifteen sixteen went to one hundred four six hundred seventeen went up to one hundred eighty three you might wonder why do we already know sixteen seventeen is superintended just said a little bit the contract language doesn't require that notification be made by the end of the first week of school and so we know already that this many people have requested religiously for one reason or another just some information that i thought might be useful for you just a percentage increase from thirteen fourteen where there was no religious leave of the current language not in the existence to fourteen fifteen the percentage increase was one hundred  eighty one percent the percentage increase from thirteen fourteen to this year sixteen seventeen is four hundred seventy two percent so that was interesting interesting first and then if we look at the to be helpful for you to see i think it's we talked a lot about this during those calendar discussions here and also the counter worker who talked about the diversity of the fitness staff and so i thought it be useful for you to see which religious observances have staff requested leave for and so you can see forty people have requested russia in the first day of russia china eleven on the second thirty have requested young kapoor one has requested b this one has requested probably all one and no vani and then thirteen employees have requested holy thursday it's important to note that this year the christian soul ration of holy thursday and the orthodox christian celebration of holy thursday fall on the same day which is not always the case so this year they fall in the same day thirteen staff have requested that day off and then eighty six have requested good friday for a total of  hundred three absences if you have questions while going through these please stop me and ask them i don't need you to hold them until the very end if you have questions on a particular slide so to be helpful to look back at last year we have i should pause for a second and say that we are using a system called a stop this is our second year of using this system for a for tracking attendance and absences and substitute requests and such and so gives us really good data and that's it we're able to really break it down so that's partly why you can see all this for this last year this year so last year we can see the holidays were requested remember last year we piloted taking we were not in session on yom kapoor last year year and we were had a half day for good friday and also of no last year you can see that christian holy thursday and christian good friday fell on a different dave than holy thursday and good friday in the orthodox christian faith they were on different days last year so just walking down that slide we can see thirty nine employees thursday orthodox christian and three for good friday orthodox christian for a total of one hundred five absences in session on young kapoor and you had up to two days of religious leave perhaps more two people took both days of russia seana whereas perhaps had they had to choose if they had if you have to will the days of religious leave you might take one for rush on the one for younger bore because if we look at here's the fifteen sixteen data for you can see russia china is thirty nine seventeen on the two days and this year it's forty and eleven but then thirty on yo think it's really pure speculation on my part but that would be one explanation and the other passions of those ok so i thought it would also be useful to look at because we know that so so we know that this year for six hundred seventeen eighty six people have requested good friday they've notified us that they're to take religious leave that day we also know that people will sick on that day we also know that people have requested personal business past so i thought it would be helpful to look at what the absences were last year you could see on holy thursday we had a total of thirty two point five nine of those were religious four point five work family illness sixteen point five were sick leave of the employee themselves were sick and two point five were personally on good friday seven point five were personal days twelve were sick were family illness and thirty two were religious just looking at our other our next highest days of absence the russia china dates for last year similar breakout sick leave six point five family illness one personal one and then on the second day eleven point five people are out sick one point five to clearly illness no personal days and there were seventeen religious so what's our take away from this is that we can see that the number of evidence in the for most religious days have held at a pretty similar rate from year to year the number of absences on good friday increased one hundred sixty nine percent from fifteen sixteen to sixteen seventeen where we had the change of have to fold a school if we look at the number of sick and personal days and if that holds to a similar rate in sixteen seventeen as to what it was in fifteen sixteen we c anticipate approximately one hundred ten absences on good friday if that number holds the same again that's just a guesstimation based on data from last year so you might ask what are we doing it now that we know how many people will be out on good friday and what are we doing to mitigate the number of additional absence of the good friday the first thing we've already decided is that we're not going to offer nor are we going to approve any for professional development leave on good friday for any other staff we're asking principals to adhere to the contractual requirements for personal leave for example it requires that you give a seventy two hour notice if you ask for a personal day unless you have you know a crisis like your water heater broke and you're waiting for the plumber or my all time favorite somebody had bats in the house overnight in the corral them into a room in there waiting for the exterminator is my all time favorite for a personal meeting so we're doing that we're also reaching out to subs now and asking them to sign up because we have this great system staff have already put in i'm going to be out and i need a sub and so we've already asked over we're encouraging all of our subs to go in my in and take jobs if they can for all of the religious holidays in particular good friday and we're also continuing to recruit and hire if i've done already two group interviews for new subs and have one of the one coming up at the end of this week so we continue to try to recruit and add in new selves one thing that might complicate this it additionally is that friday good friday has a perfect storm it happens to be the friday before it will be cation week as well i don't know what difference that makes but just another piece of information  so i'd like to thank mary for the data and you can see the data that we have now with year two of a sub software which can be really disagree gate in a couple of different ways it's very helpful for us to be able to really pick up on the nuances of not only religious states but feel believe in medical leave and sick leave and personal time issues across the district and indeed it helps us paint the picture of what what the district looks like on certain days as we had predicted i think as a group at this table back in the spring we were anticipating being concerned with good friday going from have to do a full day of school it does combined with the day before an april break session which is difficult to combine in the first year  productive school day that we offer one hundred eighty of those days per year so we bring this year attention because it's timely it's the first year that we had this kind of a school calendar and and as we learn what the school calendar will bring i think we're also learning that different events and different things that we have at night all all will start to center around whether or not we stop and move things because of the hallways or do we continue o school district and and move our community forward regardless of a holiday being in place are they going to learn and balance that together as we work through our school year and through next school year i didn't expect any any kind of determination question so i mean just looking at the total number of absences it's not a question in my mind was you know how many people are using both ace you know religious holidays and clearly this is just going over the total number of stuff we have in the district so is the other trends you've noticed about people who are indeed taken to religious holidays compared to folks who are taking no religious holidays i so that's an interesting question clearly when we look at sort of the two day holidays we look at you know rush on of these two days of rush on a there's a holy thursday in good friday or so apparent together clearly many many more staff are taking good friday than holy thursday or numbers on on russia d we can break it down by building it certainly isn't i mean we've got almost six hundred employees total we've got you know well over five hundred employees total in our daily staff that we employ  isn't that is something i could get that information we certainly could get that information for you as you have one and a pretty hard text and the different roles that individuals taking the lead that's right so what i very small number of people who requested religiously and who are not part of a collective bargaining agreement and it's should be noted that our asked me contract does not have this clause in it so it would be really interesting if there's ever a way to track because i know that part of our determination in the spring was encouraging a culture where families could feel comfortable saying this is a you know religious observance my child will be code absences and it's a creep but more student absence is don't necessarily help the problem for you because you have a classroom of twenty five kids and eight are absent you still need an educator in that classroom right so know i think it's useful to me break this out by building level when you look at each building and how many staff of the in each building and that's helpful information for each of those principles to have to have some sense of not just who's going to be out but across their issues that come with having a high degree of behind number of staff out of it and so it's useful and i think it's great that we have this information this early in the year so that we can think about it does it impact anything from your point of view  us from a district perspective what kinds of things can we do you know if we are in session on that day and we have this number of staff and this number of subjects remember when i said that it happens to be the friday before a publication that will impact some of our subs also it's a it's a they may be celebrating so our usual number of subs who work for us also starts to go down on these days so once we have a little bit better picture of that we start to think about how to how does teaching and learning happen on those days and maybe a different way than it does every other day or what have you gives us time to think about it showed you from around the metropolitan boston area a couple of counties that were kind had a few that said closed for religious holiday and due to staff attendance they did they just called it that they knew that they would have staff attendance that was low that day and so i suspect that that is some to consider i think the difficult part of the time in this year is that we we promised i feel was that we would go to the calendar earlier than later because we did stretched their patience last year  by the dialogue over time and that we we would probably want to vote the calendar before the to when the recess and we were experience good friday which is really the one of concern until april so we really won't have a boots on the ground view of what that day looks like until we get to that friday in april but if we dialogue with the principals the administrators and we we look at the numbers coming in and we look at some of the training numbers of folks beyond religious but if we do have concerns about it will bring back this table and let you know that we're concerned about it and and that discussion may influence the counter conversation for the following year but the timing unfortunately isn't such that we could make that decision dates fall with some of the dynamics and into also when i don't know if one year is really a good indicator but it is a question as to whether or not it is something we should consider especially if i think the first year wouldn't necessarily be the best and you on the high school library project and then discuss the remaining capital projects of the department public works police department consider a site and they also put their rank on the the discussion about it work we all be at different times in this information comes to the times when we did our presentation to the school committee last week or two weeks ago on the m s p a process that we were in the process we did that all as well for the staff on the opening day clarity in essence the letters was provided as a closure and will be discussed on thursday with the building high school building committee as well we basically asked some questions that they were responding to and some dialogue we were able to kind of get some clarity on the answers so in general the community should know that we did ask whether or not the library the public library could be part of the building project in any way with use of the space in part of the planning and in short the answer was no it to says a high school building project that was singular to the school and they did not encourage other buildings being part of that process there's probably some stretch that it could be on the land if needed but a separate project that separate architect successor but the general guidance was to say no the next question we asked this can we have a separate project on the  structure that was separate from the high school initial project would have to be considered as a different construction project and it would have to pipe for that separately they did say that in general if you wanted to put a preschool in the building or there was a good educational reason to do so we could do that another time so a preschool is different from an integrated preschool and i think that that should be clarified for the public because a lot of folks have come up and said geez in my high school there was a smaller preschool a couple of rooms and there was a child study class for my juniors and seniors to take advantage of their classes and elective that wasn't the preschool that we were talking about we don't have one of those preschools in the more public schools what we were talking about was the integrated integrated preschool in the kindergarten cohort which would be above four hundred  twenty students which basically is bigger than the butler and bigger than the burbank they were purposeful in that because you were trying to alleviate the pressure until mitchell also that question was clearly a no that's a separate building project i think later on if anybody questions one of which included if we had any part of the building that could be renovated that was existing good space for example if you wanted to and hits the field house or hits the pool could we do so during this project the answer that is yes but you would have to do so with no reimbursable funds that's something that we anticipated but we want to get clarity on it and that is something that happens throughout a lot of building projects when there's word of asians you know just build buildings of new schools and the last one was do we have to abide by the committee a guideline to run how many classrooms we can have in this project to the size of those classrooms and there was talk that if there was some need for us to build another wing or more rooms if we wanted to could we do so even if it was at our expense and the answer to that is no that we're engaging in a must be a relation ship with rules and perimeters around how rooms work and how they are allocated and we would need to partner with them through their guidelines so so with that said in after several phone calls back before they must be a who are always very helpful when you call we wanted to make sure we knew what the next steps were so this letter that we about an eight to twelve school we asked about a seven through twelve school with their guidance through the answers to the questions in the letter dated on september eighth they have basically narrow the scope of configurations to nine through twelve  four and seven through twelve so we will present that that information to this group tonight we will present that information to the high school building committee on thursday which will mean that we will let them know that we're ok with those figuration says the next step to explore and they will send us a formal letter back here in general in the past designed capacity here's the three configurations that you're looking to explore and that will be how we will proceed into the next phase of the the forming the project team the reason why that's important is that that's the document that will then put out to bid so in our own order project manager will know this is the scope the general scope of the work and the design architect will know this is the general scope of them so that means that we as a community will start to talk about these three configurations in general terms said to lead the designer in the on a project manager know what we are thinking the those buildings could look like and how they'd be organized so parents of the community can get a sense of how would that be set up and what that looks like because at some point in time when we get to the feasibility study we're going to have to pick one of these to signed to truly move forward as the project scope of work and then we'll have another chance for the community to actually unpack what do we want that school to look like and what will the teaching learning look like and how the building be able to emphasize and enhanced that teaching and learning and that's how the architect will do the final draw so this this power point which is exactly the same except for one slide that i added the new configuration will be presented to the building committee on thursday of this war results because we don't know when we'll get that letter back our next meeting is an october eleventh but we very well could get a letter that i would have to sign a lease of you would have to sign a share and that mark polow would have the scientists to chair the board of selectmen stating that this is the this is the agreed upon and roman projection and these are the three agreed upon configurations moving forward so that letter will come somewhere between now and i next meeting they will have to sign that in the house submit it back to the  to you on friday to describe this almost terms to try to give you some pulmonary information about what this would look like and i think when the building committee gets to be meeting on a regular basis and we start to really engage the process tom will be the one that will report out of the meetings  the contract that was hired to do the study came and all these questions up on these walls about what people want a path where they wanted it and they showed different paths to that have already been developed by people in the town before they hired these consultants to see what people thought of that and to get opinions it was more just to find out from the community what they wanted so they can then propose ho different paths for and one of the things that they're doing next is having walking tours on the different paths that they're considering or that they've school and where possibly a path would go and believe from what i heard that there is an understanding that the high school is going to be you know there's a building project going on and so that's going to be part of what they're considering but it's still there in the works but they're thinking about it and thinking about that space so i think it's good for us to be aware of what's happening and there was a question too about what they would want from i didn't ask it from the school department or the school committee regarding that space as part of their study and they just  some point but haven't gotten there yet so to to describe that space that's the space to store really behind the high school is about a thirty foot buffer between the train tracks in the back of the high school begin with a new building project we don't know what that space will look like in the future it really depends on the work that we do in the next two years with the with the architect or the only person in i did full transparency get to meet with this group of the guy reported out to the school committee one of my weekly updates that my general concern is having a public pathway that really a button is very close to a school that we're trying to harden the boundary around for safety of our students during the school day but i would be open to and welcoming any pathway that goes between the fields that interest the doesn't feel with the fields in the it how the athletic field would be used or even something that would go around that would be a nice walking path for the community so really want to be flexible with  approach this but also want to be clear about our priority to keep our students safe during the school day and also not to limit the building program for the high school at this point yeah i mean there was discussion too about there going  past going in from the high school in on concord have and doing something like that while the high school is being built and then there is the question of whether or not if you did that maybe that would just stay and maybe it wouldn't be looking at the property behind the high school or on the tracks or as much if there's something carney in place you think you're going to make a library long range planning committee i don't teachers but there is the annual library book sale coming up in october and so just letting teachers know that they have access from two to four pm on friday october sixteenth this is before the public sale begins free books for their classrooms and this is a tremendous opportunity for teachers to receive wonderful resources for the classroom so any teachers who are watching anyone who knows a teacher and about my two would benefit from this we will get e mail communication out  here first that friday october sixteenth two to four pm so we're grateful for that opportunity so in terms of other business unless there's any other comments would be the approval of minutes which i'm thinking we should hold on to review and wait until we have more members present you may have comments and that is just noting the upcoming meeting  probably worthwhile to sit at the national teacher status reception from eleven or so before the school committee meaning six fifteen to six forty five or refreshments right in this right in this part of the cafeteria and then a starting at six forty five follow school camembert to be here will have the start the ceremony to recognize the teachers who are achieving have achieved professional teachers status in the district so six fifteen for refreshments six forty five for the ceremony