good evening welcome everyone to the first school committee meeting of the sixteen seventeen academic year i will stir the meeting as we always do with the pledge of allegiance after calling toward seventy two tremendous success last week or not quite through first full week tomorrow will be that day so that's fantastic and i would encourage everyone to visit the belmont public school's website to lose the app on too many smartphones you haven't your fingertips because i've been using it multiple times since last week to look for information and emails and so forth but it's a wealth of information for you to keep on top of the many happenings that we have in the district so a few items that i have taken note of that i just want to share and i know some will be repeated in the weeks ahead in future meetings but just to call attention to folks we've got the dan sharp memorial run it's our first fourth to kenya live event that the foundation for going to education facilitates that's taking place on sunday october series has an opportunity with a consultant named kim tenney coming up with legion of her second on september twenty first at the high school on the topic is on athletic recruiting for college bound students and so again that september twenty first at the high school one of their teen from six to seven thirty pm and more information is available on the web saturday morning music school begins here at the general middle school on october first if anyone's interested in hasn't already signed up for their children you can contact john mclelland and his e mails on the web just j mcclellan that's so much better and then the other item i just want to point out because we're looking further ahead hurley october october seventh there's a broadway night at the high when you can read them yourself on the web so whoever manages and updates that we have i would really like to express appreciation because it's a lot of information to be found and so that's all for me there's no student representative here th she's been a mentor teacher appeal teacher active in the s c l committee editions or her part time was assistant principal she will continue teaching to push classes at the high school so as a as a speaker of each of these folks individually i have to say that no one  put in more time in july and august in the von maur public schools in the three these folks the commitment to their work to their their positions into the town that they hadn't even gotten to know you had the envious communication with one public schools so i feel as if if you would like to ask me questions about their start we are very excited to have them on this team not only do they add create value to their individual positions at their schools but our leadership team of twenty seven folks and i'm twenty nine folks that make up that we should commit consul here and belmont they are great value to that discussion into that team as well we look forward to that work for the school in the room it felt very good to be back with teachers who are excited to get very dark children the back to school words that i had for staff was really about making sure remember to take care of all the children that we serve and also say thank you to the staff that you work with each day that have been here year round so i recognize jane o'brien who's a custodian here at the middle school i recognized her frazier had to still be in the high school tremendous job with a very hard task especially at the beginning of the year we're always juggling the dillies and waiting to make sure that pick up every child can get them home safely our daughter does this work amazingly well are and still smiles every hundred fifty three students very large number and at the high school we are a plus twenty eight students with a total of twelve hundred seventy four students that brings out toward the world two k to twelve forty four hundred five students exclusive preschool essentially that's an increase of one hundred two students from october of last year to september more of this year we will not make these numbers final until the october one numbers come in and the reason why we use our towards that's the states reporting timeline that's when they take a snapshot of your every district and woman across the state and they use that for all their reporting purposes so for us to compare apples to apples with all the forecasting that we've done over the last few years and students to schools outside their home neighborhood district to try to keep the size of the line sometimes when there's a little bit of a discrepancy usually as a result of families that have more than one child at that school so it's very hard as you can see from this chart if you had someone who is both in third grade and fourth grade of the wellington will those class sizes of twenty four's and twenty three so we might look to another school to see if we can take those students but if you look at the burbank  twenty five and twenty five's at the burbank so sometimes we're trying to match up to students in two separate grades and that means that we may need to have class sizes that are a little higher at one school the one they like and also try to be respectful of not sheet shows that you have part of you that we have on the table for the public and then we post on the web that after our meetings three hundred fifty students in kindergarten three twenty six in first grade three hundred eighty eight in first and second grade three hundred  sixty five in third grade three forty nine in fourth grade three fifty one in fifth grade three thirty nine and six create three thirty nine and seventy three twenty four an eighth three twenty nine to ninety grade three fourteen and ten three thirty five eleven into ninety six and twelve and just by that view you can see that heavier numbers for a quarter grades are at the lower levels of our district and the only sub three hundred greatest the twelfth grade so the wave is moving itself through the district in that hundred two new students that we have welcomed to the realm of public schools is more than one hundred two new students because we've actually have a net effect that one hundred two is the net number of folks that have left and also come into that's just not one hundred two new that's the net number the net increase to the district for the community to understand  so that's just a quick initial enroll that updates that we like to give out of our first meeting and we will address a woman or two other occasions once in october when we will board the official numbers and then we will also provide the projection numbers that we many districts that's the bubble that's the three eighty eight you know the kindergarten teacher that we're going to add which we held because we we were we knew that we needed a special educator to generate it we also did in the l l teacher but those those demands from the state to provide staffing levels so we took one of those positions and we utilized it towards one of those needs so we had just one new classroom right at the elementary level and we have one more to be able to use next year as well but it's just i mean you said anyone can probably do the math but you know one hundred new students of which a significant number actually coming at the elementary level of only adding one new classroom teacher that essentially means that we're going to have to take the students and push them out into each individual classroom which continues to push that average class size number up and up and then i think it's i don't know it's going to be one of the challenges we certainly have got some options as relates to the high school in terms of thinking about how we allocate space and how maybe we leverage the high school to help address some of our space challenges perhaps broadly across the district want to think that through the community but i think the other big piece here that's going to be a challenge is the budget and having not only space for the students but also in having teachers that push the classroom you talk about it more in the coming coming weeks and months but definitely a challenging trend but i think in the end if we put a teacher at every grade level and made an actual class in each grade level you would see those numbers will go down by one or two students one teacher that would be that's that's the dilemma that we have when do we put a minute how do we want to organize that work in terms of trying to reduce secular size so next year will decide when the teacher goes in with eyes class sizes year to the burbank we do have one other space that we could use to burbank next year that we did not occupy this year that will be utilized to burbank for a utility caution but we could occupy that if needed for next year the middle school which is the biggest story we have procured six marginal classrooms they will be delivered on september seventeenth here earlier than we thought a lot of the infrastructure work has taken place over the summer and will be ready to receive  that those classrooms over the weekend and then that work will begin to tie them into our electrical data water emergency infrastructure and be ready for students later in the fall  e mcallister's working with the staff to identify and i think believe has identified which teachers will be using those classrooms and will start to work that the traffic patterns of how we get students in and out which also may come with an added resource needed for the middle school  the back we have all the sins of the holidays that we want to be able to communicate and express our respect for we did utilize the entire defamation league calendar of observances as a source to make sure that we try to do you suppose it's possible and we want to make sure our teachers and i feel we should know what the with the expectations are on homework we do provide some text for guidance to that but it was pointed out very very clearly that we might want to give the the real homework policy t to the families so i would be sending home the stock it would be email or attachment to the parents actually have the homework policy i think this paragraph right here is the best explanation of what the expectations are why we doing what we're doing as a group along with know but she actually very much enjoyed looking at the holidays noticed that the holidays that began at sundown were identified with the asterisk and so it's already opening conversation and we did ask in the in the on the document that if we did miss any thought it was as inclusive as possible that's what it was intended ok i just want to quickly go over the hiring and say i think the viewing public should know that our staff transition from the fifteenth sixteenth school year to the start of the school year  has got smoothly and this is a report from mary peterson of human resources director sixty four out of five hundred twenty employees have left the district by the end of the year of the sixty four thirty two or  educators in unit and twenty five a paraprofessionals in classroom assistance we had a handful of late departures and principals and directors worked very hard at filling those vacancies we can't say enough that the  the override in the funding is a gift that keeps giving not just to the financial support of the schools but i think it's important for the community to know that it helps the school poverty as an organization advertis early to get the you know the the best and the brightest to be able to know that we have openings and recruit and go to outer recruiting seminars and brings in staff in that that we were hiring in april and may and some districts who have town meeting in may and june are hiring until the end of june early july and there were times i think in belmont where that's where we were doing the hiring so we were absolutely benefiting by the support of knowing where our dollars through our budget process in advance and i think that is putting out a very high quality teacher in front of your child because we don't want it we're getting veteran teachers who are coming from other dishes because they want to be in belmont it when they know the job is available really enough they feel respectful enough to be able to give notice and move over to beaumont so we're very very excited that we have the in thankful that we have the opportunity to be at the higher in that manner doesn't help diversity hiring to correct by being only technically it should but i don't think it did i don't think our our diversity hiring in mary would say the same thing that we have some diversity in some of our positions and we did attended full force in the diversity hiring fair that goes on each year i think there were two of them that we attended not just mary but we had teachers choose someone who's the best that would be a diverse candidate but in the end after the number settled out i think that we sort of work to do but that is one of the polls ok i know we've talked a little bit about transportation but i'd love to read to be able to get your body up on the work that he and daughter have been doing actually since last june to get ready for the opening of school on transportation thank you so last spring  with tremendous support from the don't public schools technology office the business office was able to launch an online registration process for busing prior to that parents had filled up numbers of the role that actually show up in the higher the participation of busing there we need to just improve our operations that the area so we did that and we were very happy with the results that it did make the process so much more efficient information that they'll know which students are just through bussing which bus each store takes it so that that will be a great help to the visual schools proud of that they would have to communicate with the business office which we have to do with this this this is just better off for other of the schools and ultimately for the students we've added a seventh bus this year which was budgeted as you know most of you folks recall we had six buses for many many years and we're at the point we're just really it's just a new scale of operations this year as of right now we have seven hundred ninety six students reach to take the bus and i'm sure up between now and the next few weeks that will be up to over the eight  hundred we ended last year the last school year with seven hundred forty six students so it's fifty students one it's about a six and a quarter percent increase when you think of seven hundred ninety six students based on the september all that that's about one out of every five y but also the need to commission a bus to transport a number elementary students to schools outside of the neighborhood school to support dallas in the class size the superintendent failing had indicat earlier and so these these are almost base changes been happening for a number of years and we had to deal with it and now we're able to deal with it better with the seven bus i will i will make one other comment typically when we start school busing his new for some students every year of course the traffic patterns change when school opens and we've received calls from parents some of the buses only some of the days  appreciate that feedback we're in communication with the school buildings themselves collecting arrival time information had a contact with the bus company through the manager of the bus drivers to collect that information we would love that from day parents to know that we're looking at the routes we're buses arriving late what they're sort of just once in a while so we look at that to look at perhaps tweaking some other routes maybe starting some other bus routes a little bit earlier so we are well we are of of our some of us is being tardy we appreciate the feedback from parents and it's and it's an important issue and i just want folks to know that we're looking at that and will institute have a nice to correct that so all in his entire staff to an amazing job they do it all in house but we have a lot of e mails that come from vendors who want to do this work for steve has an amazing job with his staff and when you give them a challenge they can figure it out and they make it work so now we have full day k registering online we have transportation on line we will put grades one through twelve registration all online hopefully by the first the year we have a meeting in october to learn from how can the guard went to see what went well what didn't work what needs to be applied they will be doing the same with rentals all of our rental facilities will be available to folks online pretty soon where again we're making the the information available to the public and also having the public do that and use the work of putting in the information this is increasing decrease the amount of hours of work that are clerical and secretarial and technology stuff it has to do by replicating things on paper and to two years ago that was all happening on paper so we're very happy that you can go on the billboard public schools app you can press it you can find out information you can type of things alone and implication is being shared through our technology that working at a is twenty sixteen seventeen strategic plan missions how much you'll recognize as the information that we have continued with the mission statement for beliefs and vision and then as you turn to page two you see on the left hand column the three goals and on the right hand column in your ships that are the focus of our work for this year this document comes out of work that the leadership team does over  several days in june and then again in august to look at and take stock of where we are with each of the initiatives that we have set for ourselves to be here before and determine is there anything that talks set that we can take off the list are similar to last year's focus there is only until the order has switched so the first one now is implementing short term plans and developing a long term vision to address student achievement gaps and the second one is continue district w implementation of the social emotional learning framework those will be our primary focus for this year and you'll be hearing more about that both here at the school committee table as well as through newsletters and are actually hoping to get web presence about arse learning work as well so much more to come about that below that you can see under goal a which i really think of as the sort of teaching and learning goal we have some important ongoing operational work around aligning to the new state framers for science continuing to improve the use of common assessment data at the middle and high schools and continuing our implementation of the state model for supporting our english language learners  and coming up probably in december we'll ask lindsay rinder our director to come back and give us an update on that but i will tell you now that they are no longer english language learners the state now calls them english learners so we'll need to change the e initiatives were things that we began work on last year and made some progress on better things that we are continuing to to focus on and then finally go see speaks to our work around hiring and supporting through professional development highly trained and highly qualified professional staff and as you can see as was already mentioned by superintendent fail and we need to still continue to work on increasing our professional personnel recruitment to include a more deserving diverse staff and the other goal in that area initiative is around developing a sustainable substitute system for when teachers are out on the final page of this three page document you see the working groups go after determining what were the areas that we're going to focus on we asked all of our members of leadership team to respond to well what where do you want to be in this list of working groups and we took all of that information by the and to bring continue their work in both of those areas and then below you can see the names of our leadership council members who are working on all of the other areas many names you'll see multiple times a lot of people had a lot of interest and in some cases we said that's too many we're going to we're going to restrict you to just a few and not seven but we appreciate all of the work that the leadership team brought to thinking deeply about our strategic focus for the year but this is for the year end and look forward to being a share with you as we go through the year to work  a super tennis association and they a c which is the school committee association the elementary principals association the secondary principals association and other research groups within the commonwealth of all team together to provide access to resources in one website you know making you know this topic to be the lead issue that they have in the state around education in public schools i think it's fantastic and i think it's great that the town of belmont before i arrived in the garden tried to make it part of what they felt should be in their schools and i think janice and all the teachers we had to go to high school today to look at the fieldhouse or something and we asked it to well this good for all children the whole child which again i think is it's the best route to take and feel that pendulum swinging back from you know the true test driven to making sure that our children are having all they need to trust in planning because that's one of the big things that will be taking on the share of the other big things that will be taking on this year will be the wind in my eyes that my big work is implementing the strategic plan for this year and supporting the work of all the work that's happening in that you know document out when i review the high school project to make sure we're hoping to parlay that work while we ask for input from the community and teachers and staff and students that we use that work as part of russia to to put in work so my goals might center on prophecies are the same for the superintendent as they are the principals the teachers and they're all going to the process by october by november first when the goals are finalized meetings take place with committee john herzog was a gentleman the community member who spoke of behalf of the minuteman here yes campaign my role superintended is just to say out loud what we will do with the voters yes and what believe what will we do as a district if the voters you know i would urge the public to look at any of the documents that outline the financial aspects that i've been brought to light by other folks in the work committee and in  students who are belmont helping students what happens in eighth grade minutemen will come in and save the cherry students this is what our school looks like if you're looking for are interested in this pathway instead of going to your traditional high school you can come to the state has set up with many vocational regional schools that have basically a role of providing a very strong program vocationally technically that quote regular high schools can afford to have because they're only servicing a small cohort of students and it would and doesn't make sense for every traditional high school to have all these things and each one so we regionalize for vocational services we regionalize for special education services we regionalize for transportation services we regionalize for professional development so in a lot of ways these are all good ideas to be able to collaborate perforations the reason why this became an issue where we having a towns that along to the regional district have four of the funding listened to her twentieth so you will be asked as a community member will you support the expenditure of a new high school and being a part of that process in all towns will vote individually vote yes then we stay a member of the mid be a regional program and we have right now responsible for that long investment in being part of that new capital program in building a new high school i believe it's one hundred forty four million dollar project is we will then be part of that that group of communities that will be responsible to pay that debt which will be somewhere on the hundred million dollars give or take to have no high school they're moving to side if we could withdraw our i'm not sure if we could at that point if all the dishes vote yes and we vote no it says that as our own community we would then have the right to withdraw from the district ye students to attend that's their role and that's their school to mark it but that's the volume the students that we're we're talking about what is the plan b if well what does withdraw from the district this is been asked several times  month students can continue to attend minute me and for three years as member districts and then that would actually extend to seven years because all those students who are actually in will be able to finish out their schooling at the school so that's  it's nice to be able to have a good one stop and get a beer but we would be able to look at our options with some of the financial savings potentially from not being members but quite frankly we would look to try to continue to atten so that is part of their remit and part of our original be with them is that if we do with drop in we did get concerned that maybe the classes were filling up and there might not be room for nonmembers we do have the right to  ask to go back into the district per our agreement that we have currently so this is a three year period where we will wait and watch and learn in to look at options and in this so if we do it for our there's definitely a grace period where we can kind of collect ourselves to give you options and do what we think is best for the student which was said many times last night that type of dog wanted it myself as a superintendent of the schools of all the children  tional education this is a pretty pathway for for many students who find great value in it and i'm glad we can provide it it's the law and you know it would be my expectation that we make sure that we continue to provide quality options  conversation and again there's a lot of there's a very big financial conversation going on right now in this arena of media and whether or not you should vote yes or both no as a citizen for this new school to terrify one thing sixteen member districts several have already voted to leave correct but the vote is occurring in all the districts including the ones that have decided to leave because they are still currently members is that correct i believe that's correct so i think it's important to say that and that's why i hesitated using the full sixteen but they will be voting but the community should be aware that there are already five or six districts that have withdrawn from the regional agreement prior to the state is there a minimum number of member districts that need to still be members in order to actually have a sustainable you know sort of collaborative i mean what if we're just techs are left standing or something like you know is there we know that is there i don't know that the answer that question i know that we are the only other district looking to withdraw the other nine  and looking at a bunch the work committee meeting last week and then also read a memo that jim gamble wrote about sort of highlighting our old man to man the changes that have been made to the regional agreement will have more authority and the voting system is going to change and two idea i think his his memo gave sort of an ideal picture as to how things can change within the district essentially that as you said we'd be renting versus tony and as tenants of the district or as renters we aren't going to have a voice we are going to and these aren't things that i necessarily cable a lot of thought to i don't think before because it was more about the building whether or not people were focusing on how things were in the past how the finance were in the past and not looking necessarily at the changes that this agreement was going to put forward so i'm sort of i think the more i think about it the more thing financially it would make sense for us to vote no and leave the district but i think that mr hamel put up some very good points about our benefits our staying and voting at school too so i would strongly recommend that everybody look at this and then read it and have a clear picture about where everything is going forward i think to those that we would have three years to rejoin i don't see that there would be a problem with us rejoining because all these other towns of laughter but i just want i think one thing that jim did point out his memo that the capital cost now and anybody can correct me if i'm right that the capital cost now wouldn't necessarily have to have put under this new agreement under the changes to the regulations that as a not member account that cost could go up and possibly ideally would equate to being a member town now there was also planned out by senator brown berger and that's not likely that the state would do that but i think that can get most being thinking out of the glass as half full side of things that that could happen and so if we laugh we lose that place and but we stuck to pay the same amount or maybe a little less but not so i think i think it's yeah i think it's a maybe even clear right i think that a lot hangs in the balance my understanding is a bunch of work is going to gone into trying to work with them in district to figure out ways to get more evenly balanced the financial burden paid by member districts and the number just ticks does sound like there's a kind of consensus that ideally they should be equated a bit more i think the sense i had yesterday from talking to people is there's a fair bit of skepticism that that's going to happen in the very near term at least at this stage the delta that somebody would be paying as a member  into that equation we might pay or a couple of cautious relates to being a member dysart for three years but it wouldn't be we wouldn't be responsible for the new building that is part of our tuition there food possibly be more capital do that as a recommendation for the community from our vantage point and as superintendent feel and said we're representing the educational interests and of course the financial interests play a role in the education that we're able to provide citizens of belmont so it's interesting you know we don't oversee the finances in the same manner that the selectmen work committee would but our knowledge of policy and educational practices i think are impacted  just just wanted to sort of it's been the obvious and obvious issue underlying whether we as a town want to take on the debt and the responsibility to build a high school for the the minuteman district when we have just begun the process of building a high school for our own town and not that we want to prioritise wonder for the other but you know we're talking about a building that will serve our whole town not at the expense of students who need and want to focus knowledge of kishan which we would still be committed to providing but i would i would hate to see  and a debt exclusion for our own town's high school fail because we've had taken on the debt by regional vocational school or that we can still send our kids to who we want to go there so i just want to be really sure that we don't put stumbling blocks in the way of our own high school project which we've been working towards for a really really long time and so i just wanted to bring that up to the top of sort of the conversation that it's not just about sort of the dollars and cents of members and nonmembers and capital expenses but it's also sort of the larger issue of of our own high school project i just wanted to make the point that i feel very very strongly in favor of having strong vocational programs both for you know our belmont students and for the towns around i think that's critically important for  any number of students passionate occasions students is one group that are well served in that particular marman i would love to see this new school but i just don't see the current funding model just i don't know where to go from there because i've heard a lot of people criticize the size of the school i do think that's the size of the school as well size because they have seven hundred students right now but they're aiming for six hundred twenty eight but the problem with the size is that you know can we get that many students from member districts that's the problem so is to me is the funding model that is the want to do is to give the impression that we are not in favor of or not supportive strongly supportive of educational training and i think we need to be very careful not to that i attended last night and and found it actually very good discussion and i would encourage anyone who's sort of struggling with the complexities to either kind of watch the recording or take a look at some the information that will be on the web because i do think it's a complex issue and there was sort of a good presentation i did also i think agree with a bunch of sentiments have been expressed which is one i do think that vocational education is critical to kind of the belmont experience and we have to make sure we're delivering a very high quality vocational experience i think we can and i think we can also sort of vote no in this in this particular case and for me this feels like it's not about a kind of a question of ok szell education it's not even really a question on minimum and i think you know there's a lot of people have had great experiences in a man and think that it provides a very good vocational education it really does come down the question of you know how do we want to finance our students participation in a great location program and the way the model is set up it's just fundamentally broke and hopefully over time you know the state gets involved in other efforts can be made to rationalize that financing model right now it just doesn't make sense for belmont there is an alternative where we vote no and we can alternately you know choose this town meeting today to get out there i think herself in a position where you know first and foremost we can very likely continue to send our students to minuteman it what is very likely to significantly reduce costs but you know plan a plan b of sending our students there because a plan c of rejoining and i think is even a plan d ultimately if you know we can't do minuteman to look at other programs that exist that provide good vocational education  just on the information you all have had an opportunity to read or hear or explore in your own do you feel comfortable taking a vote to make a recommendation to the community overview of that you must be able to process first of all in blue you have the work that is done by districts which is us in the building video and the staff and the teachers of the school who do the course like been in the green you have the work that's done by the construction professionals whether that be or project managers architects and in construction companies so that if you look at the first period that we are marshall that we have there are eight of them the eligibility period that's the period that we're in right now that's all the district which means if we're doing the work of getting materials and documents in the ports presented to this to the you know this be a the next march will be for me the project team which will have been during the school year we are after certain junctures met we move into marshall t will be choosing a on a project manager into an initial architect to support the work of the third phase of the feasibility study which will we will add to that phase somewhere at the end of the school year at the beginning of the next  hear from that work which will be a lengthy period of time where we get a lot of feedback from our parents and our staff and faculty and students in this party of what we want our schools the obvious connect design drawn up then after design i've drawn up by the architect of the funding is approved and will be get will be construction i'm new to building so that's the big overview and that is over a longer period of time and you can see where some of the work is shared some of the work is done independently for each group and at the end we complete the project which means that as students enter there are usually a several years after of accounting and reimburse a were they say this is how many students we feel this building will serve through the projection of enrollment that they haven't explained a little bit about our work with them with that process and also are they going to ask us what kind of  great configurations that we want to consider for our district talk a little alluded to the fact that we have all been talking openly about whether or not you should utilize this high school building project to alleviate pressure on either the elementary of the middle school level of our district as we feel like overcrowding is happening at each level of our district we could get creative in some options if you've been asking this the ever speciate to give us some guidance on whether the options that we're presenting are even feasible or within their reimbursement process so those two tasks are still undone at this point in time but we're still on target to finish by november seventh which is the mission so what does it mean when the roman you just want to stay with a knife you twelve building or are you interested in any other configuration that supports any pressure that you have entire on roman remembered our towns out west and asked looking to consolidate reconfiguration because they don't have enough students in their buildings towns in the area of metro boston are looking to get creative because they have students and increasing inroads into trouble so we did ask as many questions i found them to be very welcoming of our of our requests so although we are visual occasion was for nine through twelve we asked if we could do different things nice to see if we could remedy some of our challenges keep in mind that the initial application was ni time that we had to think of different options we obviously presented things that we thought would be helpful to the town or the town and the community would want us to ask on their behalf so do twelve obviously was one that we asked about as usual of patients we asked  it back to the only true relieving the pressure on the generally school so we had thoughts in mind that we asked if we could build in time to twelve schools and just add an elementary school because when you think about it a kindergarten plus and integrated preschools about four hundred ten students that's because of both the popular and the burbank and essentially would be big enough to house school we did ask that question of they were very welcoming of that and they also told us that that could actually be another have application process because it would be a separate large institutional initiative and that it may be considered another after another application we did ask about crazy through twelve and we did ask about grades seven through twelve are great eight through twelve  alleviate the pressure from the middle school that would allow us to have five six and seven which is only three grades instead of four they would reduce the school population chervin from around fourteen hundred to around eleven hundred and that would be a be for this building but it really would not remedy our elementary issue but at least from the one section of our district and then we asked if we could build a seven through twelve schools push essentially would eliminate or  pressures on both the elementary in the chattering because should be able to reconfigure those grades to support how many students will be in this building which we can accept the level of three grades and alleviate pressure at the elementary now the question will become which of these do they want us to explore and then with days and sitter feasible to explore and other work from here would be up to they give us the guidance on which ones are explored both it would be up for us to get together as a community and talk about whichever of these great any other configurations that would be considered and that was a big part of the bill so we're awaiting that final letter from the us be a we did receive a communication on september eighth and some guidance on some of these requests you will be communicating back of them from that final document as to what those options would be we will still be aligned to find out what those perimeters are and be prepared to sign that letter for november seventh we will have to submit those documents sometime in early october because they have to go to the board to be reviewed and then be prepared to be signed on the seven so our deadline is really to be backed up a little bit more like mid october and november seventh so the next step don't have to have that whole conversation about different regulations and when they meet with him it looks like we are going to engage the services of an education facilitator who works in the building programs not only in massachusetts but throughout the country and throughout study to try to form conversations with the community and the staff about what we want to see in those three configurations we're going to look like generally and what would be that educational program i mean if we had those configurations in place you know if it was a through twelve would be have an eight nine school and then some sort of a shared space in the ten to twelve school you know what with those things look like someone puts a meter on that phone in preparation for when that or the project manager is hired and when that  looking at a financial perspective in my opinion to looking at it more of a balancing the needs of the tower and trying to balance our overall issues of the roman challenges with the second part of this which is just because you want a school the teachers in the community etc so it's not about money thankfully they are restricting it but they do have very clear regulations on here you can't go to classes that are that are really big at the u s science classes have a certain square foot expectation you know standard core classes have a certain standard school for its critics so they do have kind of rules around that type of square footage issues that will we'll find more find out more about as we go to the process talk about what those three models of four morals or however many we use what it looked like for the town and then at some point we'll be deciding which one of those we want to move forward but to me that the scotian with the community and the  staff and the students about where you warm the school that's where it will really start to take shape and in my conversations with the superintendents who are in the middle of or have just finished building programs for high schools and middle schools  they have been advising don't go in with any preconceptions of what you want to let the people talk of the teachers talk us find out what the end user wants and needs in order to parents feel they want their child to experience in a public school setting and in let's let that design take hol from what those conversations are like so to me that's very exciting work it will we would like to do is use that dialogue that we have this year with teachers and parents as the beginning of what are the actual teacher plitt we were ready to read as a teacher plan for this year but it felt like we would be ready now to head up all the feedback that we're going to want to get to this building process so we are in my opinion getting a twofer out of this process we're using this tulum give us b a in this high school building project it will be probably twofold what's to go through with the configurations will look like and then after one is chosen i envision that they'll be a whole nother round of conversations about getting really into the detail of whatever water we choose getting really  to have contact with other gentlemen does facilitation work it would be professionally done this is how he mixes living he's very good at it and so i look forward to being a person go to those meetings and can contribute as opposed to having to we look forward to that if the teachers are very excited to hear about us for the first day i think there's a lot of conversations out there that have questions being asked though so what is going on with the project so because the way that we started in january  we will be working with so it to be taken at site if you look at towns like winchester another some of all there beautiful sites that are sponsored by either the building committee or the tower on the schools or a partnership there for india it's already resulted in one sort of adjustment up current of those numbers here and i'll see how it alternately shakes out but it has been good i think everybody or many folks in the building community and that's an experience either as providing the town with more information and more about the next thirty years and where we need to be because i've said this more than once that i wanted was a school with i was a town with six elementary schools and middle school and high school and now we have four and now are facing the same problems that you know if there were only four thirty years ago the in roman would be the same and so i think this project is going to be and listening to the community and having them be more engaged about the school and you know looking at the different configurations of the school but also the bigger picture of what we might need in the future in the near future it's something that people need to think about and that you have the issue of the teachers and all that so i mean it's a big question but i think that the work being done here would maybe session and due process and having a public vote so we do not need to discuss the details of as the school committee members for the viewing public have already discussed vetted voted this represents a process that has taken place over several weeks we're delighted so i think it was a lovely process where we got to discuss many different things and we'll be having a future conversations about a new contract later in this academic year but actually would like to state that superintendent f chose to draft a contract items for staff for delving into his own contract work which i think is just an admirable quality its own sort of flimsy but i  when we go to the state and we say we have four thousand students pathetically three hundred of them are only given that point five rating for funding back if we didn't charge are parents for tuition would you how those as f students and then they would we would give more back to the state so we don't wonder is that people might say well why don't you just do that because because the state uses the previous year's data it's going to one fiscal year of funding that station and looking at those and discussing to the high school and the library and all the work that's being and informations going around town about committee passed going through the back of the high school between the schools the tracks was a concern of mine because of safety issues were working really hard to what i would call hardening the boundary of all of our schools to make the little harder to get into would keep folks with the schools who don't belong to the school so that is a concern of mine but other parts of their questions revolved around the path we were on the need to further building more potentially around the playing fields to provide walking i would think it would just be from one department and it means county land just be from one department to another i mean it's a school department's land but it would be the town's pa