all so in terms of our opening business we have citizens concerns on the agenda is there any citizen in attendance who wishes to share any concerns with this scene and no adjustments to the agenda so i'll just move to my chair for centerport as usual going through all of the happenings and goings on in the community it's tough deciding how much to include what not to include so i broke it down into some categories for us starting off wanted to acknowledge the foundation for bellman education save the date has been going around for march eighteenth for their annual dinner and cocktail party it's their biggest fundraiser of the year so just to mention again i think i've already said it once or more before march eighteenth from seven to ten thirty pm and there is information available on their website ways to donate items for the auction ways to get involved either volunteering for that event or numerous other acts so just simply wanted to mention the event tonight because they are such a strong and wonderful partner in our education efforts and belmont so then moving into music performances there are so many music performances so you know for the millionth time want to encourage people to look at our website either school by school or the town the schools as a whole so trying to break it down it just going to mention a few notable events there's the middle school chamber music concert coming up on february second in the auditorium here from seven to nine and this will feature performances by the chamber orchestra the chamber school and the high school jazz ensembles performing alongside a professional guest artist i thought was really interesting and exciting and that will be feb ninth from seven to nine pm so this is looking ahead a bit but i wanted to make note of some music performances so people could mark their calendars then coming up this week on thursday there's the middle school talent show thursday evening from seven to nine pm in the middle school auditorium and i believe tickets are on sale at mousie's are you know neighborhood ice cream shop if people wish and some students have already purchased tickets through packets social wonderful packets that leon dyer helped organise a thank you to him for always keeping us going actively here at the middle school with many acting there is also an improv show coming up in february february third from seven to eight pm at the belmont high school a little theater so that's a night of improv comedy for folks who wish to engage with that there and get some good laughs and then looking at each school the elementary wind group families so just literally i could go on and on so i will stop there i'm in terms of events but just to emphasize again the rich activities that our community members can engage in so thank you to everybody who's involved there and then finally just a last little tidbit i have been asked by a couple of people how to learn more about the nominee for the secretary of education and what that position even means and how does that impact us here on a local level so all i want to say there's so much information to be found online so i would encourage anybody who is interested and i say this in spirit of lifelong learning and civic engagement we have two senators ed markey and elizabeth warren national senators who are very active in communications about this there's the senate health committee which stands for the health i'm speaking very fast education labor and pensions group and there is a list of individuals there if you wish to learn who is on that committee and how to contact them  the vote will be taken next week a week from today on january thirty first so simply to figure out how this role impacts us in the community i think the best way to be involved is to learn more so go online at home at work at the public library  volunteer in fund raising is amazing in the town of beaumont last week we had a concerted burbank school with the crossing guard being hit by the car he is ok he was taken by ambulance but returned home that evening he is someone who works very tireless for the community and he has to sometimes like to thank the burbank p t o for reaching out and supporting that individual as well as holding a meeting last week on the issue of traffic and safety around the tough quarter there you know what that looks like it's a it's a hard corner to navigate so we always want to make sure that we reiterate to all of our students staff community members parents drive safely we're approaching a school there's always children passing  paying attention to sidewalks or folks crossing biking or walking you also have to pay attention to what you're doing each day especially as a stocker at night or doctor in the morning is unclear whether that's that's a part of this here in the wintertime so thank you a lot of dialogue and we get updates on the weather days leading up to any snow event and then the morning of snow events starting between four thirty and five am we have dialogue with the d p w makes it to our own i text each other this morning at five night and i say this so our staff and our community and our parents know that we have these conversations behind the scenes leading up to these events and we always want to make sure that we have a safe day of school for everybody to arrive they leave each day  from the districts of lexington arlington some of all cambridge woburn in winchester we all get together to figure out what's going on until this can use to to use our collective knowledge as well so it's not something that we just do in a way if anybody's wondering hopefully we don't have to have this conversation soon but very very well online registration is happening for our kindergarten students starting february eighth last year we've highlighted online registration for kindergarten it were extremely well we will extend that online registration for grades one through twelve for the for the school year seventeen eighteen later in the spring if you are a parent or guardian or rising five year old to kindergarten you will be use even a card in the mail we've got your address from the census in the clerk's office to let you know how to apply online like to thank the technology department for providing all the infrastructure this is a custom made homemade don't want to the schools process that we were lucky enough to have steve was older and his crew generate to support our online registration last year just with kindergarten being online received about four thousand inputs that our staff along i had to do that were generated by the end user and the communication i think was very stained grade eleven for course we have a sacco government grade twelve for trombone allies or jones grade eleven for french horn all of our lead grade twelve course alex park grade ten for jazz trumpeter calvin perkins grade eleven for trumpet edward stafford grade twelve for chorus grade ten for oboe and he has a grade nine for bass clarinet so congratulations all the folks who are working so hard these students and for all the staff to work with them great stuff thank you right right we have no unfinished business today so our first item of major business will be to have a community path bit about the status of the community path if we know that there is a meeting tomorrow as well during the day because of the time department had to talk about your department the yes and the school committee truly appreciate your presence tonight giving us a quick go when the report was done whether or not any of these options are really feasible it's you know what something when you look on it going on a piece of paper when you get out of the real world and you see the t this connection how do you get from the north to this house that looks them so in all of these different options there are north side options and there are south side options and with that if you choose for example if you choose  the central it's much more difficult because i don't know if you can see this or not but there are a lot of different options here how do you get through the commute you get through the community one option is to other side was for the horse and buggy so what this does is this goes back to that sort of idea if you will one side be going from the west bound side from actually roughly from the high school t lots of different ways you can do it the another option is that the this is on the south side and part of the problem with all of this is that the path as a whole has to be any  switch back this thing right here in order to make the to meet him that it's as ability and finally if you go with the out what sticks and ok and step now all these are so one of the ways that the consultants have gone about will be going about this in working and in the interest of time i don't know if anyone has any questions or comments that they wish to share at this moment but i mean this is such a wonderful overview and bring this certainly has been for us up to date on many things so i appreciate that very much but otherwise we can funnel questions through andrea or moping to suggestions whatever through that process we get there by several areas with the end of the music department in visual art army here department where we have some some room for growth and one of those areas was within the grades three to five instrumental music program where we found some and how we schedule it especially in grades three and five and the other issue that came up with dr work until last year actually by a group of parents was an equity issue in grade five were students who were not taking instrumental music were basically sitting in  exciting i think for everyone our current model i'll show you exactly what we're doing for grades three to five instrumental music we're trying to teach we have six hundred we have over six hundred students currently enrolled in grades three through five intro which time it's more than we've ever had and we're trying to teach them with two point five f t e we just spread amongst six six individual teachers so we've got a lot of folks a lot of individual folks spending a very little amount of time trying to teach a lot of kids that we are teaching intermountain using in grades three and four in only sixty minutes per week like a one sixty minute block of time each buildings are trying to cram all six hundred of those kids into a little window of time we require five teaching spaces in each elementary school which you know through our work in the space task force committee and there is no space and so in five years the teachers invade and require five suitable teaching spaces is really hard to come by  and another issue we have is that students don't really get a band or orchestra experience in our program until they're in the sixth grade unless they go saturday morning music school so it's all very convoluted way every time you go we have some issues that we like to recall so this is what we're currently doing that we have been doing for the last several years in grade three in terms of instrumental music that's when we would start beginning string instruction and those students get one thirty minute less each week very large groups and when i say very large groups i mean and some of them are over thirty and so typically in a school setting where you teach beginning instrument lessons you'd like there to be six or eight kids in a group and we have over thirty in most of the third grade views especially in grade four the string string players can continue or they can begin to be and instrument and they still get one thirty minute lesson a week in a smaller group then they would get third graders are still very large and in fifth grade where they would be currently in their second year of being at over thirty years of streams they're getting one fifty minute lesson per six day cycle in a medium large group meanwhile those who are not going through music are staying in their classroom waiting his kids to come back i will also point out that all of these students are paying two hundred fifty dollars participation fee for instrumental music in grades three through five and that in addition to this instrumental music program they are attending to general music classes so that's what they're currently doing the provos model what we've what we plan to do next year is sort of like if you are if you've ever played the game risk and you get your arm is spread too far on the board and you can't really effectively defend or attack anywhere at a certain point your only remaining strategy is to kind of retreat to consolidate and just kind of focus on one area half and that's really what we need to do i think right now we were trying to do too much were spread out to far so we need to sort of back up in and make sure we can do what we do really well so the plan is to actually delay the start of instrumental music instruction so beginning where we would typically begin strings in grade three we would push that start back to grade four and we were  typically begin banding ready for we would push that back to grade five the impact of this is is huge actually because instead of sending five instrumental music teachers to each elementary school we would only need to send one string teacher to teach elementary school it would mean that our meals and records in our high school band director no longer have to travel to elementary schools every day to teach sixty minutes of lessons having the beginning band instruction all start here at cherry middle school under one roof with a five will be  much simpler process for the teachers to manage so there are a lot of benefits there so the fourth graders would still get one thirty min that lesson a week will last in groups will be smaller because by sending one teacher to teach in one space we can have th teachers spend more of their day in that elementary school and take it one classroom at a time instead of an hour they're taking three classrooms at a time struction and in grade five the proposal is to have students select the an orchestra or chorus if you are selecting band you would get two fifty minute lessons a week to two fifty minute lessons per cycle as you say as well as two band or orchestra persons per cycle so we are vastly improving the gr three and four will still get to general music lessons currently there so the big changes that really would come from grade five and there are exciting changes for the music program it solves the equity issue where you would have some kids count going to music lessons some kid sitting there classroom so this is hardly what happens if you're an instrumental music student grade five on the left you get two general music classes per week one of them is spent in a classroom and the other is combined into what we call a course for her so  you also get one fifteen minute group lesson for six days cycle and you currently get no band or orchestra experience unless you come to school on saturday mornings which is great for those that do not every family can send their  student to school on saturdays a nonissue l music kids on the right get to general music classes per week and then they get the study hall while the others go to instrumental music for the new model on the left the instrumental music students will get two lessons which would replace their general music classes and then they would get to be an orchestra rehearsals so they're going to get four walks of music instruction during the six days i took the non instrumental music classes are going to get to   it hurts a little bit to give out that that year of instruction and it and we you know there's some hesitancy because it's great to start students young but there's also a lot of evidence that shows us that while a lot of students are successful in grades three on a string instrument there are also a lot of students who are not successful just because they're not quite ready yet so our belief is that the ones who would be successful in grade three are also going to be successful in grade four and then they do some of the ones about those changes that's so it's get slightly easier for the teachers to differentiate instruction if they have a small group if there are eight or ten kids in a lesson group and a couple of them are a little bit more experience you can utilize them differently and you can visualize your instruction for them a little bit in a group of thirty it's really hard to do that so i think that in this scenario where we're pushing it back a year we'll probably see more kids who might start privately on their own but i think the teachers will be better equipped to work with those students and challenge those students like i said in a smaller group than they would in these massive massive let's just comment i assume that the fifth grade teachers who are currently overseeing the study halls will now find opportunities to utilize that time to we give them that given time so it's a it's a win win i would like to think our know all of our department heads in various departments go through the curriculum review process and some of the suggestions were powerful in the meetings that we had last year with the parent group that were just concerned about the equity or was a very powerful meeting and so i applaud your innovative approach to not only solving the equity issue but also providing a higher quality experience although it's agreed later for most of these folks smaller class size all the students under one roof the middle school that highest quality experience is  generate a lot of good success and maintain the high success that you have and i appreciate you listening to the feedback and responding with options for her students have been speeches and there's a lot of good things here and i know some folks might hang their hat on why do we have to wait one year to start music and i'm very respectful of that but i'm also very respectful of the equity of folks who don't have the two hundred fifty dollars to spend on of music lessons sitting in fifth grade not being able to take a lesson is a very very striking so we will be moving into a presentation of the two thousand and seventeen eighteen bellman high school program study and this information was provided in our packets for our edification and discussion this evening and then we will be voting on it at our next meeting on the seven saw the program the studies i've done high school is focused on the mission the core values and beliefs that come up high school and what we do is lasts quite a while we start this in the fall looking at the program studies and what courses that we could offer so the process right now as far as implemented studies is first here and then  recall but this is really where the efficiency comes into play and then the master schedule is built feb through a brawl actually i should say february through july because then we take a look a everything landed with the sections that the directors create and then start hand scheduling students to make sure we don't have a lot of i d's one classroom or five all fours and to make sure it's balanced in the lowest of have offered it for several years though we don't offer any introductory courses to prepare students to take it and there's also there are students who are interested in just learning how to compose music and learning how to i may just wan invited implications are not really because we're moving teacher out of elementary music for over a year or two back back to the high school the second new horse that we would like to offer is chamber orchestra we currently do have a chamber orchestra at the high school but it meets before school once a week the teacher has traditionally just done it out of the kindness of their art because it's an important thing to do those students arrive at about six forty five or seven o'clock every morning to get ready or on tuesday morning you see a great program personal and they're performing all the richer concerts so this would put the orchestra program would give it a little bit of equity with  poorest program of the band program on high school return only offer three sections of chorus three sections of the band and they're all levels by experience and we offer only one academic section of work for us so this would provide an opportunity for the more advanced orchestra including for more of my students some students are actually doing it outside of school and i noticed when i arrived last year that this seems to be a bit of a hole in our curriculum and so i have a you have to have a pretty strong grasp of algebra to do in terms of your mathematical reasoning in order to take this course we have injured according which is their preferred prerequisite benet and well aware that strains are doing things on their own and pile and we have so many science electives this could cause a different elective to have a last section so that really the only sort of small domino effect of when you increase or you offer you course could be taken by seniors twelfth grade students it could count as their math credit we also offer three other semester courses in math so they could pair this one with one of the other three or they can take it as an elective just as they're interested in they have space in their schedule there is a big movement on financial literacy and it's important for everyone to know the value of their money and   work as groups in the presentation form and the instructor also helps also hopes to bring in people from industry and from business to the teacher who has volunteered to pull the course together is jennifer allard and she has worked together with the a p economics teachers at high school they are also very interested in offering this type of education to our students staffing wise again as liz was explaining if you only have so many sections to offer depending on what students choose to take that will drive what we offer at  responsible and different independent  course or have some yogurt experience on the green from the community and what the beauty of this is the fact that there would be some distance learning our instructor on  on that students can choose to become a certified yoga instructor at the two hundred hour level so that would be above and beyond what they're currently doing what they were currently doing within the semester and students can choose i believe we stipulated after the fourth week of the course so they get a feel for whether they want to do that and it would be similar to an independent study where they just want to fulfill the regular course requirements so that option would  require a little bit more additional work on your own on the also be some online work that they would do that would be some check in meetings with mr housekeeping and then you would also be some opportunities where they could use an internship she has created connections with and within the community and in the greater boston community so it's it's it's a really nice option if students so choose to do that and it also allows in the opportunity you don't have to make a decision when feedback that the instructors have received through the mine for movement course this past year has been a very very positive one nor coming back to february twenty eighth to talk about our two new courses and such so will be a lot of  course first semester the first quarter as well as in the second or so i just couldn't get enough of it and so the idea behind this is to develop those type of the students that are also help and not be the student leaders science classes and i noticed you didn't say aloud but the list of chemistry on your slides and i just wondered why chemistry and wouldn't it i mean when there just be a natural you would see fewer people sign up for something and then reduce is definitely going to be overflowing into the mindful marauder bill how many sections can we run i think we're going to run multiple sections there is a demand for the new glass the kids are so i would like to thank dan for organizing this work our job jim is how do you listen being here over time hearing the feedback from the community and from students and from teachers about different things that would be valuable to be ours department and the the the push to wellness right now in jim's department and the excitement of being created her own well this is and it's just exciting so when you can listen to feedback from students and provide courses that are of interest to them and tap the talents of the teachers that you rooms and one thing that's not always reported is there's an increase in demand in services with more students and so what i mean by that is an increase and the need for the services that guidance provide the nurse provides school psychologist provide so just those services are seeing a stretch on their demand and i want to point that out so i think that's important as we talk about numbers and class sizes but those folks are also seeing a stretch on their services an increase in demand for additional spaces one that you've heard over and over each year i've tried to steal a space combine a space collapse of whatever may be i can say that the magic in the hat is no law her there i think i grabbed every opportunity for space to either become an office or tutoring room or a classroom or computer lab but we have done that over the years in order to accommodate and i think that order to accommodate our students to treat the symptom we've purchased benches over the years always for students to sit on because there's times where the library is closed only because  we can't allow any more students in there the cafeteria is open and kids will be sitting in the hallways so my goal in getting those benches is to get them off the floor and sitting on those benches so here are beyond this fred she ask if there's any questions that i can answer before i go into a couple things that we are offering you don't want high school beyond the classes for students to be leaders yes i'm just curious if you have maybe you don't have this number student so that they may not seem like a lot but they're now able to meet with every kid more than they have in the past and also focus on for example the tenth grade or an adequate increase in all of the areas where we could use more staff at school and to me just guidance alone having having six guidance counselors for all you know twelve hundred sixty four students that means they have to go you know you can do that so it's a lot of students per per guidance counselor so i'm just pointing that out so you estimate you know roughly how many free periods the student would have i mean is it one a day to a day it's more than two but it varies on their schedules and what because of which class they were in freshman have fewer freeze than a twelfth grader because of all everything they need to meet all the graduation requirements along well this tenth grade the same thing and they have positive decision making in all the classes and then we get into the electives i know a lot of great in twelfth grade and students are required to take six point five classes so at that point it begins to but now even if we had that have to be the spaces now occupied because of so many morse kids and sections so that's occupied it's a there are many locations if any in belmont high school that remain stagnant during the school day there is something happening all day long in majority of the classes not that every class is full is being teachers or a teaching but it's be used for collaboration or kids or tutoring or so we've been creative in how to use all our classes but we are we are occupied most of the day and those classes are busy as in the want to brag a little bit about what students are doing at belmont high school to develop their team leadership skills and individual leadership skills we have speakers we have them going out and competition so i  visual and team leadership and i want to talk real briefly about a couple of things that we have going that you may or may not know individual leadership skill opportunities we have a couple of programs that come into the high school or we have a field trip for them and the first one is core training leadership training is a wonderful program that we bring into the school and we select students is currently armed and leadership roles that have the capacity to be leaders to go through a full day training and what the court leadership does is it creates a sense of community for students confidence and also develops their responsibility to a school culture and what they can do to impact their school culture we've also had some faculty members of sidon on the sessions as well and we run multiple sessions culture so really a positive program and we plan on bringing them back for next year school advisory council many of you know of the school advisory council that's made up of community leaders parents faculty staff and students what we've done is we've actually put students in the role as a co chair and this may sound like a minor adjustment but what the students get out of the meeting with me before the actual meeting on their role of explaining to the advisory committee is really exciting because they light up they're taking notes they're approving of minutes that introducing topics that are happening at the school what's going around the school so we this year using them as co chairs and we're rotating for each meeting and every student that's come out of it wants to do it again i told them they have to wait until next year because we want make sure we get everyone this is an easy one to do a big bang for the buck on this just putting him in that role and having them speak to adults and present really fine tune as those skills will continue with that there was an opportunity for students to go to pinkerton academy to hear mike smith which who is a student leadership conference he does a student leadership conference and we sent a bunch of students up there to more of a pep rally and vironment and what he focused on is your role in your school what are you capable of doing to change your culture what is it about your culture that you want to see shifted  school improvement plans contributing to them that i submit each year and also making sure that they have a role on with me and presenting out and also with  students for example this made me seem minor but again a big bang for the buck is whenever we have a guest speaker there's always a student that introduces the speaker and it's amazing how exciting to get but again they're speaking skills they're practicing in front of a large audience so he talks about that and he talks about motivating them to take these roles on so really that was our first event that we went to the sham we hope to go next  the team leadership opportunities there's a few of them model un science quiz show you may have heard the ten eighty which is new for us so the model un just came back from new york city and what they did is they competed against students from around the world in competitions competitions and debates they talked about world's problems and how to solve them and came back and debated about them they participated in interactive sessions with foreign diplomats it was really a true experience instead of our first year we've done this for several years and to give you an clark stuart who is there as well so we did very well at the model you went in that's something that we planned on participating in next year science quiz bowl is something we've participated in in the last few years thanks to stacey williams who coaches our students on how to compete in the science quiz bowl we made the final sixteen and we went up against a new north and that will air on march fourth and i've been sworn to secrecy on the results of that competition but you'll have to wait to march fourth and i'll be aired on g b h so the winner of that will go on to the governor's cup which is vs the winner in new hampshire so this is a great opportunity for our kids to come together learn these teams skills work off of each other's strengths and compete with other schools the ten eighty education's a new one for us that will be getting involved within i think it's february fifteenth will be going to boston ten eighty education is an organization that develops some published publishes science technology engineering and mathematics curriculum and trains educators in that field but at the same time allow students to compete in the vents and we'll be bringing a team to boston to actually participate in these events it bridges engineering designs in computer science with business models and real world applications and we'll see how that goes this is our first stab at it and that will be led by elizabeth baker and patti sileo z and we'll see how those kids do in this competition so again back to the what the happenings at belmont high school were teaching kids not only the courses that were described tonight but also developing the important leadership skills individually and how to work as a team and to be part of a collaborative team and these are opportunities for them to practice those skills and learn a lot and i can say that each student that has come of each one of these fill trips workshops has bragged about it and wants the next step and we take advantage of that excitement and we get them on a project to help cultivate the culture of belmont high school some open to any questions about any of the programs  working with so many students you know what's the best way for students to become involved in these activities and i was thinking of you know held also with community service opportunities that we have it seems like it's such a rich opportunity for students to get involved in help them do that guidance counselors have been key and identifying those kids who doesn't who show those abilities but haven't taken advantage of it so we're trying to reach the middle as best we can  those kids to boost them up there are many high school that can advocate for themselves very well and so we're trying to bring those who aren't necessarily comfortable to bring them up and put them in a program and have them come out of a program or seminar just energized and ready to go and to catapult them into advocating so we try to look for that group of kids that has that capacity and if anyone's interested the guidance counselors or assistant principals can is the state sponsored funding to help cover extraordinary special education expenses and tony took us through a deep dive around what that certainly looks like to the upcoming year as well as specific plans for the proposals for how we would look to maintain a ongoing amount of money in the circuit breaker fund you every year is really sort of a cushion against we think about our town and our budgetary needs and you know it is no small challenge to think about how to fund everything that requires funding so you're talking about bringing light to incidents so they weren't committee will be meeting february eighth and continued to discuss you community path update we were all treated to a wonderful rich up to her earlier library long range planning committee and word and ok terrific all right so then the next order of business will be approval of minutes we have is just fixative session for the purpose of discussing strategy with respect to collective bargaining with union personnel given that a discussion in open session may have a detrimental impact on the school committee's bargaining position to take a roll call vote with the transition