Welcome to the Arlington School Committee. This is our special meeting. Today is Thursday, March 2nd. And we are having a special meeting on the budget. Is there any public participation? OK, so can I have a, yes, Dr. Alice Nampi? Just to clarify, it's the legally mandated public hearing for the budget. Right, right, right. It is actually not the only opportunity for the public to hear about the budget. The budget subcommittee is doing a series of community events at PTOs to talk about the budget process, which I think people have really found very valuable. OK, so can I have a motion to close the special meeting? Move to adjourn the budget hearing. Motion by Mr. Heiner, seconded by Ms. Starks. All in favor? Aye. Aye. OK, it's unanimous. OK, so we are opening the regular school committee meeting. Welcome. We have a new art today, so I want to just talk about those. We're going to start over here. This is the Dallin artwork. Students looked at the work of contemporary printmaker Rosemary Farrar and noticed the texture she achieved by carving her print plates. Both foam and soft cut rubber were utilized by students as printing plates to create the detail and color for art you see in this exhibit. It's hard to see, but you have to get a chance to look at it up close. It's really pretty cool. Over here are parrot paintings by Wilson Lau, his contemporary painter in China. He uses oil paint applied thickly with a palette knife to achieve texture. Students utilized oil pastels and wax crayons and resists painted over them with temperates to create their textured and colorful paintings of parrots inspired by the contemporary artist. And that is over there. Moving to the back wall, we have Carol Nelson. Students looked at many paintings by Carol Nelson were especially inspired by her square paintings. We noticed how often there was a square broken up by black weekly lines that resemble cracks and how different sections are often painted in various colors that are subtly blended. Students created their own paintings into tempura inspired by Carol Nelson's square paintings. They tried to create a point of interest that would draw the viewer's eye and then keep that interest by guiding the viewer around the painting. The resulting paintings are bold and colorful works that made a statement even from across the room. And that is true. You've got to see these. These are really, really colorful and cool. Over here, I'm sure students were super excited about this. This is a Minecraft inspired pixel art. Students looked at the complex art of two contemporary pixel artists both from the United Kingdom before planning out their artwork created with colorful square blocks. The app called Minecraft Pocket Edition Light was used to create these images. Students generated a flat creative and peaceful world in which to build and take screenshots of their designs. Some of the finished pieces are accompanied by the students' original plan and graph paper. Some of the plans exhibited here are not completely built in the app yet but show a strong design and planful thinking. And then over here, drawings inspired by Kandinsky, who I have to say is one of my favorite artists. Students read the award-winning children's book, The Noisy Paint Box by Barbara Rosenstock about the Russian artist Kandinsky as a boy. Kandinsky brought the art worlds of his time by painting abstract art, concentrating on shapes and colors as paintings were often inspired by music. Students then created their own colorful drawings of shapes inspired by Kandinsky's works. Very cool. There's lots of really cool colorful things in here. So the next item on our agenda is the public participation. No public participation. Next item is approval of the Arlington High School trip to Rome, Italy by Cassandra Mia. And just to remind the public, if we've had a trip before, we put that in the consent agenda. But if it's a new trip, then we have to formally approve that and hear about the trip. Yes, welcome. Cassandra, could you please come to the microphone up here? Yes, great. Since I began at Arlington several years ago, the very first year students started asking me, are we ever going to go to Italy? Are we ever going to go to C. Pompeii? Our textbook, the stories of our textbook take place in the city of Pompeii just before the eruption. And then they continue to move on to Britain. And then they move on finally to Rome. So the kids have a really wonderful understanding of how the city worked in ancient times. And I'm really excited at the opportunity to be able to take them to these places and show them the character houses. One of our main characters in our textbook is actually based on a real guy. And we can actually see his house. And I've spent a lot of time discussing with the company Explorica, trying to create the perfect trip, making sure we get to all of the places. And I'm hoping that we're able to do that. Cool. Questions and comments? Yes, Mr. Heiner. Have you ever used Macaulay's book, The City? I have, actually. Yes. It's a wonderful book. Yes. Yes, especially when talking about architecture and stuff. It's a fictitious book, but it's including speed traps on the main road. Yes. Are there questions and comments? Nope. I just want to say you're one of my son's favorite teachers. Trying to get into this trip, I don't know if he's going to. But there's going to be a lot of happening in junior year. Yes, Mr. Heiner. I move to approve the trip that's presented. Second. By Mr. Schlickman. All in favor? Aye. Aye. It's unanimous. Great. Thank you very much for coming to us. Have fun. Thank you. Thank you. OK, so next item on agenda are the monthly financial reports. Is that right? Yes, it is, Dr. Buddy. I would like to introduce, more formally to everyone, Tony Merz, who has been our consultant. And we'll remain our consultant until we hire a new CFO. She also helped us as early this fall. So I'm going to actually let her talk about the month reports. But what we've done in the past is also people can ask them questions. But I know you'd like to give some overview of where we stand right now with the FY17. OK. So with the FY17, what we looked at, instead of just doing base projections, we actually looked at actuals for the teacher salaries. I didn't get a chance to look at all the other salaries, but teachers make up the bulk of the salaries.  So we feel pretty confident that the teacher salary line item should be fairly, it should stay within this number. There are some moving parts with grants and people coming off grants maybe going on to these numbers that could slightly change. But we should be OK with the teacher salaries. All the other numbers, again, is making an assumption that they're going to use 100% of what's in their line items or their budget. Again, that's being not sure whether or not that happens here or not. But at the end of the day, it looks like we are going to have a little bit of a shortfall. But wait to see where that shortfall lands in June. Let's take questions, comments about the general staff first, and then we'll get to specifics. Dr. Alice Nampi. I had specifics I can wait. But OK. Yes, so big picture first. Mr. Cardin. We can't wait till June because if we have a deficit, we need to do that. We also are discussing considering whether to tap the special education reserve fund, which we need to do in April at the end of April at town meeting. So do we have a sense by mid-April of how much to request from that? Sure. We should have a better sense of what to request from that as I start to get my arms around your full budget and seeing where we're at. Right now, we're projecting about a $282,000 shortfall. So maybe $300,000. We might have to tap your stabilization fund, which I know needs town meeting approval to tap that if we need to do that. So we would at a minimum at least request it. We might not end up using the whole $300 if things come into our favor. But we definitely would plan on requesting something for sure. Thanks. Mr. Hainer. I don't know which one. The student activity stipends. If I'm reading this right, 81205, there was no budget item. And we're looking at expanding $110,000. And when I say I don't know who to address it, I don't know if it goes to the superintendent. Since there was nothing in the budget initially for it, and we're expanding $110,000, if we don't have an answer tonight, I'd like an answer by the next meeting. Why? That's an awful lot of money to not have budgeted for and to be expanding. Do you think you can? She had them in a different line item. I mean, I believe she had them in a different line item. Well, so Johnson had them in a different line item. Now they've been moved. Is that our feeling? I don't want to make any comments about anybody. This is what's there. This is what the public is looking at. This is what we're looking at. And we've got to keep things. We've got to keep apples and apples and oranges and oranges. Is that your sense? And that's what happened? Or is it something you need to look at, Kathy? Both of you. Well, let's just take a look at it. OK. So hopefully to come back next meeting. Yeah. Thank you. Would you be able to join us if there are next meetings? When is there our next meeting? 16th. Of March? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it will be necessary, but I'm just curious if it is. I'll have to take a look at my calendar. Great. Thank you. OK, so Dr. Alice Nampi. Following what Mr. Heiner said, can we also look at the leadership stipends? A couple of items down. It's minus $76,000. And again, if it is somewhere else, it's not clear where it is. And the administration stipends. It's like all the stipends are somewhere, but I don't know where. He says, yeah. It used to be that all the stipends were put into one pool. And I think there was an attempt this year to start pulling them out into categories. So I think we'd have to take a look as to what the pool was in last year's budget. Because what you're seeing here is the pullout. And you wouldn't put the FY17 amount in there because it would look like it was over-inflating what those would be if all of them were together. Right. I just can't see where they are, I can't see something that was clearly the pool where they were pulled out of. And the one other question, I think you sort of may have answered it. I was looking at both the budget tracking that we got for $131.17 and then comparing it to $2.21.17. And there's a big jump in the clerical salaries and wages. It goes from an overage of $34,000 to being under by $70,000, almost $80,000. And I'm wondering if it's because you looked at people and projected things forward, as you were saying. So again, I'm not sure how it was done in the past. I like to work on actuals. So I like to see exactly who's there and project out exactly what they're going to make as if they're going to be there through the end of the year. So my projections could be totally different than the way they were done in the past. And maybe that's why you're seeing such a fluctuation. But again, I don't know how it was done in the past. I can only go by what I've done and the way I do my projections. Yeah, but that's what you did for the clerical. OK, so I bet that's what it was. Thank you. Any other questions and comments? So I just wanted to clarify. So a couple months ago or a month ago, we were looking at about an $800,000 deficit. And now it's significantly not quite as bad, right? We're looking at less than $300,000. OK, so that's a significant improvement from what we thought we were, position we thought we were in a month ago. Good job. Going into the actuals. But I will say that one of those sources, we had several sources of money we would draw from. One was the tuition in and then, of course, the stabilization. It looks like we probably will only need to go to the stabilization and not the tuition in. I think Dr. Esthanipe has more info. Well, I had one other wine item. Oh, OK, I'm sorry. So at the bottom of the chart, 8.7.202, Training Education Conferences and Attendance, that one's gone $80,000 under. And that seems really high. And I'm wondering just what happened over budget. So again, it's how I estimate it might be, again, different than how somebody else might have estimated it. But again, I'm looking at what's in the system, what we have for purchase orders that we've already committed. So something that could have been committed, but maybe there's not a purchase order before that I just don't know about. So my predecessor could have predicted knowing that there was some stuff that was going to happen in the spring. But because there's no purchase order in the system, there's no way for me to know what's going to be happening in the spring. So it's no way for me to know to project it or account for that expenditure, since it's not in the system yet. Dr. Odi, do you know if there is more information we can get on that? Well, let's see actuals. Do you know if there's a particular conference to grow up the cost or something that was unexpected? Well, I think it's how the money, there's different ways that can be looked at. The budget can be looked at. Ms. Merz is looking at it through Munis and the purchase orders. But you can also look at it in terms of district PD and the professional development offerings in any of the schools. And it could just be all lumped together in Munis. So it's something we would just have to look at. OK, maybe if we could find out more about that item if possible, just because it's $80,000 over what it was supposed to be. And that seems like a lot for that particular item. Mr. Heiner. I'm not trying to beat it, but this is an example. The way it's presented, it looks like something that we could have said, if we're going to go on a deficit, we're not going to continue going with this and realizing that it would be negative to this extent. And I'm not questioning it isn't. But if it's this way, the presentation has to be in a format that doesn't give that impression. That's all. Thank you. So I just have a question also about snow removal. This season has not been that bad, and yet we have significantly over budget in that. We do have a couple of bad times. In total, it hasn't been that bad. We've only had two storms. Yeah, we had two storms, yeah. Do you know which line item it is? Oh, I'm sorry. It is 62415. 62415. Where are you looking? You on the track? Oh, not 6, I'm sorry. My eyesight's not that good anymore. My readers? 82415. 5, right. Yes. OK, so again, these expenditures of what's hit the ledgers as of 221, so they could pretty much be from overtime, is what my guess is. Most of it's probably budgeted from expenditures that have hit from overtime that have hit that account. We can go through all those expenditures to verify that it did, in fact, be three storms. I believe there were three snow storms. So we can take a look at that. OK. Kathy, correct me if I'm wrong. The whole crew was working at one time at like 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, prepping ice and stuff like that. They worked through the night, which should be all the time. So even though there weren't that many, they hit it at bad times. We had a couple of icy days. One was worse than predicted, and one didn't make the prediction. OK. Yeah, if we have a delayed opening, or we end up opening after clearing over the weekend, we'd have the expense of it wouldn't be noted as a lost snow day. Right, right, right. Anything else? I want to recognize I often forget this at the beginning, but Mr. Leevy, Jason Leevy is AA. He's with us here tonight. Thank you. OK, so I think we're moving right now into the budget discussion. So how do we actually, how do we want to handle this?  We had a presentation at our last meeting, which some of us could make it to and others couldn't. We have, I know the budget subcommittee met yesterday, and they have some things that they want to present to us. Do we want to give an overview again quickly, or? I just had that one question left over there. That question on transportation, $500,000 that wasn't spent, it was in the superintendent's budget. And we agreed that Minuteman has its own transportation. It goes to the town. It's not part of our budget. So were you able to find out what that? Not yet. OK. Since the last meeting, we had school vacation, and Ms. Mertz is only here on Thursdays. Just for your, it was in the budget book, the superintendent's budget book. There was a line item. I apologize. I don't know exactly where, but it said transportation, $500,000 going forward. And it wasn't for special education. And so that's an awful lot of busing or transportation. It wasn't for the Bishop bus that was going to be evolving. If it is $500,000, they must be driving them in Cadillacs then. I apologize. I shouldn't be sarcastic. It's still a very high number. I accept that we have transportation for Bishop. We have transportation expenses for special teachers going from building to building. And we have people on professional development. But I think if you add it all up, it still doesn't come to $500,000. I think our spend transportation is somewhere around that number. That's a sixth grade transportation. So actually, we don't have clarity on that yet. We can have clarity on it next time. So why don't you, Dr. Buddy, if you can present sort of an overview of what you presented at our last meeting and what the upcoming budget. I know much of it is not different. We don't have a lot of money to add additional programs or staff, but just sort of the highlights. I'd be happy to do that. In terms of giving a quick overview in very round numbers in terms of where we stand with respect to monies for next year, we have an increase from the town appropriations through the formula that we have appropriations. 3 and 1 half percent on the operating budget, 7% on special education. And then there's the enrollment growth factor. If we look at the town appropriation for FY 18, it is nearly $61 million. It's over $60 million. And that represents those percentages taken to last year's FY 17 budget. So if you were simply looking at the increase from town revenues, you would look as though you had a 6.6% increase. However, what we know looking at our grants and looking at our revolving counts and fees, that we're going to have a decrease from last year. We know that for sure. We know we have a decrease both in Title I and Circuit Breaker. So the total increase in revenue for FY 18 is going to be 5%. Roughly $3.1 million, $3.2 million. Now, of that money right now, we approximately need 2 million of that to meet the contractual obligations and the salary increases of all of our staff district-wide. In addition to that, we have set aside $1 million to meet out-of-district special education costs. At the moment, we know that we have for sure around $850,000, somewhere between $800,000 and $850,000 that we know that we would have additional costs next year. Now, that number can fluctuate a little bit. In fact, I know that we've had a couple changes in just this last week. But nonetheless, that's roughly where we are. So this $1 million represents anticipated money. Now, I just want to remind you on how we've budgeted it in past years with respect to out-of-district. We've usually just budgeted the actuals at that moment in time. Now, it can go up, it rarely goes down, but it does go down sometimes. But it's a snapshot at that moment in time what our obligations would be. This is a bit of a departure from how we've handled it in the past in that we're anticipating that we might have more costs than we currently know for sure. So when you combine those two, you're almost at $3 million. The asks from the department heads and principals, if you look at a combination from last year and even the ones from this year and you have all that documentation, is close to $4 million. So what we did several weeks ago was take a look at our current FY17 budget, look to see where we could make some reductions in order to create some revenue for additional priorities. So essentially, that's what we did. So we had about another 100,000 from the appropriations that we were going to have new for FY18. We made another set of reductions of over 700,000 for a total of $836,000 that we could apply toward priorities. The priorities that we've talked about among all of those asks would be, there's the list here. We're looking to have a director of guidance and social-emotional learning. We are looking for some part-time assistance, assistant principals at some elementary schools, and that is really thinking about as money to support our elementary principals in the form of an assistant principal or perhaps an administrative support of another type. We're looking at an increase in special education learning specialists, part-time, half-time social worker at the high school, at Odesson. We also have desktop support for next year. So these are our primary asks with respect to that. Plus we would have reserve positions, two reserve positions that we would, the fact of the matter is probably they're already spoken for. They're not really quite reserved. We also have in the budget five reserve positions for teaching assistants. So that essentially, when you combine all that is roughly coming to the amount. Oh, one other thing, and that is two point FTEs for the high school, and that will be distributed based on student choices. So it might, for example, might be point four going to social studies or point two to another department because the sections that we offer is based on student choice. But that's, again, a pool of money for the high school. So those were the priorities that we have. There's, as I said, many other ones that have been listed. So that's essentially where we are right now in terms of these priorities and your task tonight, and certainly by the time you vote on this budget when it becomes your budget, is to either affirm these priorities or substitute or identify other revenue so we would add something else. So that's where we are right now in terms of the process for this committee. Okay. Mr. Haynor, is this general or? It's concerning the question. Revolving, you said is it more than fees or is it just fees in the revolving accounts? My question goes, why are we anticipating a decrease in fees? Are people aren't going to be using the facilities and stuff? Well, one is a decrease in circuit breaker. Okay. So is that the part that we can't predict and it usually doesn't? Well, no, we know what the amount is because our process of budgeting. So, but I mean, you're showing a decrease in the revolving part. Decrease of about $400,000 from 17 to 18. Let me pull that out. Okay. I'm looking at the presentation that you gave us today. On our anticipated revenues for 18. Yeah, the anticipated revenues. So there's a decrease there, hopefully. Right. But I mean, so is that the fees that you're anticipating a decrease in? I'm just trying to understand because. It's all of it. It's broken out in another document of all of the different, in fact, it's on. I think Dr. Allison at Bacon. Okay, thank you. It's circuit breaker. It's most circuit breaker, right? Well, she just said the circuit breaker, we know what it is. We know it's going down. So it's a circuit breaker, fine. It's a decrease in circuit breaker. It's not the fees. Thank you. I think $2 million is circuit breaker. Okay, the other questions I have. Positions that you talked about, if we approve it, director of guidance and emotional and the assistant principals for the elementary. Those are new positions. So have we got job descriptions yet for it or will you be resending those to us? We would have to present those job descriptions to you. We've had a director of guidance in the past. So it would be really just updating that job description. But you, it's a deal. But no, it would have to come to you. Right. It would be, and before we actually do the job descriptions, we would need to know that you're. Yeah, we approve it and the assistant principals as well because we haven't had them at the elementary level for as far as I know, as long as I've been here. No. Do we have to wait until the term meeting vote or before we? No. We don't. Once we pass the budget. How we go ahead, Rob. So what we've done in the past, once you've approved your budget and the positions are in your approved budget, we post anticipated openings and we, with the understanding that we don't usually finalize the hires until after town meeting though, but we want to start advertising. Right. Yeah, okay, great. Thank you. Okay, so that's a general presentation. I know the budget subcommittee has a presentation as well, is that or has a proposal? We have a motion. We have a discussion. Okay, so I'm gonna turn it over to Dr. Allison Ampe. Okay, so we met yesterday, just a sec, I've been pulling up too many things I have to find. We met yesterday and we discussed again the use, the potential use of the circuit breaker and what the impact would be in future years. We were able to get an estimate of what the circuit breaker amount will be from Andrea, I don't know her last name. Campbell. Campbell. And she did a very detailed estimate of how much we're going to expect and that was very helpful. And I had Karen put that in Novus so you can look at it. It's around 2.1 something million that's going to be that we expect to collect assuming 70% payment on the amount that we've spent spending this year for FY17. Because of that, we felt that there was enough money that we could take $300,000 of that, using $300,000 of FY17 circuit breaker and use it in FY18. This starts getting really confusing because, okay, so you get paid for circuit breaker in a rear. So right now we're receiving payments for FY16's circuit breaker. And we're going to spend that money in FY18. Next year we'll get paid for FY17 circuit breaker and then we expect to spend it in FY19. This year, since we had so much higher expenses in special education out of district costs, we're going to have a higher, correspondingly higher collection next year. And the amount is going to be approximately $400,000 more than FY16's circuit breaker. We felt that we could conservatively spend $300,000 of that and then we would pay it back to ourselves over three years, the following three years by essentially paying off $100,000 each year from the circuit breakers. And that's, Lynn did a nice chart and graph. Is this, this chart is not available in Novus yet, right? No, it is now. It is, okay, I didn't see it earlier. She just cut it in. Yeah. No, okay, it's not available. Okay, so we can just make sure we put it up there. Yeah, so those will be put up, but. Do you want to talk about the number? Yeah, do you want to talk about the... So the easiest way to look at it is to assume that our special education costs are level from now on. They won't be, they bounce around, but they might go up, they might go down, they might bounce around for years. Looking at it, it's easiest if you keep it level. So in the spreadsheet, you'll see that in FY 2018, in FY 2018, that's fiscal year 2018, instead of spending the 1.7 million that we are receiving this year, we've bumped it up by 300,000 to 2 million. That leaves us at the end of the year with 1.8 million in the budget, in the fund, rather than the full almost 2.2 million that we're actually going to receive. So our normal practice would be to have 2.2 million at the end of the year instead of 1.8 million. So we're taking 300,000 and spending it rather than leaving it in that fund. But you'll see that the fund progressively grows. It's not, it's going to be more at the end of next year than it is at the end of this year. So it's not like we're depleting the fund. It's just not growing as fast as it would otherwise. So then to catch up again, what we do in 2019 is instead of spending 2.2 million, we only spend 2.1 million. So we're shorting ourselves a little bit each of the following three years. The effect of that is seen best on the graph and I'll describe it very nicely as smoothing. What we're doing is we're smoothing out, assumption spending, yeah. We're smoothing out the amount we're spending. And instead of having a decrease in spending next year, which is unfortunate because we've had an increase in our costs, we're smoothing it out. We'll have a slight increase in spending from Circuit Breaker next year and then level off and spend slightly lower in 2019 through 21 as a result. The reason why, again, you can see on the graph, the red line mirrors the blue line but it's two years apart. And that's because of the way both the state does Circuit Breaker by paying a year and a rears and we've budgeted for Circuit Breaker by waiting a whole another year to spend it. So basically we're catching up a little bit with our spending, not completely mirroring it, but we're catching up a little bit and then leveling out. The other two spreadsheets show just very briefly what would happen if our out-of-district costs continue to go up. But we continue to be behind and we're really not any worse off by spending the 300,000. It's just that we will continue to be behind and we will continue to face the issue. Do we continue to take more or do we continue to fall behind? And that's sort of another discussion for another year. If they continue to skyrocket. If they go down, then we have a nice problem. We can decide whether to pay ourselves back faster or continue it out for three years and we'll have basically extra money to spend. So all in all, given the nature of the cuts that the administration found to try to fund things and the stuff that's unfunded, it's only $300,000. It's not gonna resolve all our problems. It's not going to buy us a whole lot, but given the dire needs, three of us felt as a subcommittee that this smoothing effect was something that we would recommend to the whole committee. Does the budget subcommittee have a recommendation as to how that money is spent? Is that? We discussed this with the superintendent yesterday and she felt that she would like to talk with her staff and get input from her advisory council, but we could fairly quickly come up with really high priority items that would take care of 300,000. Sure, I mean, obviously. Including a dean, more reserve positions, more TAs. I mean, these were things that we were talking with the superintendent. And some other positions. And, but we, she wanted additional time to think about it and come back to us. Could I have a clarification, please? Yeah. I thought this money was being used to cover a deficit, not to buy new things. We have to cover the deficit, either or. Oh, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not doing. No, we're doing, we're doing with the superintendent. I hear that, but I just heard the question, what are we going to do with the money? How are we going to spend this money? I thought this was next year. It is. FYE announced. Yeah, yeah. It's 300,000 adding to next year's budget. Because we can either cover the deficit by not spending any money, or we can partially cover the deficit. What should we do with the deficit this next year? No, no, I, but the next year's budget, we can cover that. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Mr. So, so, is there a formal motion? Yes. That's in Novus. Okay. So, do you want to read it out, please? Sure. Okay. And I'm making an administrative change because we wrote the wrong, one of the wrong dates in. So Karen, I'll, I'll fix it with you. The budget subcommittee recommends to the full committee that in order to address the spike in out of district spending that occurred in 2017, $300,000 from the FY 17, FY 2017 circuit breaker funding be included in revenues to be spent in FY 18 with that amount being paid back by spending $100,000 less than a normal amount of circuit breaker each year from FY 19 through FY 2021. Second, for the purpose of the discussion. Okay, seconded by Mr. Heyner. Okay, let's go up into discussion. Mr. Slipman. Yeah, the important point here is that at the same, because we're, the circuit breaker lags a year and being delivered to us and then we wait another year to spend it. So the, the circuit breaker that we will have available to us next year is from a low sped year. And now we're having two high sped years in a row. So in order to cover the increase in special ed costs next year, we'd either have to take money away from other services and move it over to the special ed account to account for the increase in out of district expenditures. Much of this is going to be reimbursed the following year. Or what we can do is we can sort of smooth the curve a little. So instead of funding a very high year next year after a high year this year on a low circuit breaker number from two years ago, we spend a little more from the circuit breaker next year and spend a little less the following three years, which instead of going like this, it just sort of smooths out. So we're not really projecting ourselves to be in a different position three years out than we are right now in terms of withholding a year of a circuit breaker is a reserve, but it just smooths the conflict between the revenue that we were planning on spending next year, which is down and the expenditures that we have to meet in terms of a higher out of district special ed cost, which are up. So as a result of this, as a result of funding that $300,000 of special ed cost at a circuit breaker, rather than taking money out of the regular ed budget, we can then go and say, okay, we now have $300,000 more to spend in the regular education program. And I think that's a reasonable thing to do. I think it's also a very reasonable thing. I mean, we all had in our head things that we thought we should be doing with it. Reserve positions is sort of an important thing because I'm very nervous in the superintendent is as well about the lack of reserve positions in a district with a rapidly increasing enrollment. But I think it's unfair for us to go to the superintendent. If we vote this motion tonight, we expect her to have the spending plan for $300,000. So we decided in the budget subcommittee, okay, we'll see if we get this vote. And if this is approved, ask the superintendent to come back in two weeks with their recommendation for what to do with the 300,000. And so just to clarify, the recommendation would come back to us before we voted on the budget. Is that their understanding? Well, yeah. Okay, great. If this were approved tonight, then the superintendent will come back to us for a recommendation before we vote on the final budget, which is happening in two weeks. Right. We could even have it come to budget subcommittee first so that we could discuss a little bit in advance of the meeting. Okay. All right, Mr. Heiner. The first off, I'd like to thank the members of the budget committee for the time and the effort that they put in. And I really sincerely appreciate it even though I'm going to oppose it. Saying that, I'd like you to take a look at the circuit breaker reimbursement chart that was first put up there. The figure that you used was the 70%. That has been decreasing. I just chucked in 68%. That's a $40,000 more decrease. If this was a year from now, and I'm not trying to get into politics or anything, but the federal government may not be giving us money, giving the state money. Circuit breaker is discretionary on part of the legislature. And I am a year from now, we'd know how this legislature, the federal government's going to treat the states and the state how they're going to treat us. I think I could swallow this a little bit better. But I am very, very fearful that with this president, with the state, and trying to juggle, take actual money from the state and cover the things that may or may not be there, this is, we're gambling. The probability is high that we will be successful. But I'm very, very nervous of this and so I'm going to oppose this motion. Mr. Thielen. So the question I have is, are we, if this passes tonight, the superintendent comes back and says, this is how I'm going to spend the $300,000, but the school committee's not directing the superintendent to spend $300,000 on X, Y, and Z. Not this time, okay, so. She's just going to make a proposal. Yeah, she's going to make a proposal. Okay, fair enough. I mean, we just, to get the history here, we do pass budgets and we talk about different positions and then sometimes over the course of the summer, reality sets in and we hire other people than we say, which is, I think everyone needs to be aware that that's going to happen, right, someone's aware of it. Okay, do you have an opinion on this? I do, and also like Ms. Mertz to talk to it as well. Okay, because I would love to hear your thoughts if I could, while I have the floor. While I have the floor. All right, go ahead, you first. Okay. Again, we are projecting that that's what we're going to get for reimbursement. It's not an actual number. So we're gambling on exactly 2.1 coming in and it may not. So it may come in at 1.9 because not every expense that we're going to submit could be reimbursable to us. So again, we're using a projection that could not come to fruition. So again, being fiscally responsible, I think we should wait and make sure that that's what you're going to get. And based on past practice, have that full one year reserve because if it doesn't come to that, now you've created a deficit because you're using it for operations that might not be there year after year. And then how are you going to fill that gap if you can't pay it back without having cuts? So that's how I see it. But again, that's it. I've been, can I? Yeah. I've been on record saying the budget subcommittee knows how I feel about it. First of all, I will say I really appreciate the thought behind this because we aren't getting all we need. But I feel very uncomfortable for the same reason Ms. Merz had talked about in using Circuit Breaker. What my suggestion had been and is to really just do the budget differently and do it to actuals right now. And I think we would come up with about 150,000 possibly that would be there, it's embedded in that million dollars and use that money. Or even if everybody's still insisting on using Circuit Breaker, at least bring that down. Because hopefully we're going to end this year a little bit better than we thought because if we still keep the one of our revolving accounts, we have a little bit of cushion there. It's always the uncertainty of special education. And as I said the last time, I'm also concerned about sustainability. If you put this money into general education operating, I fully understand that by having these increased costs we do take away from general education. But we have a whole system we have to look at in terms of trying to be really sure that the people we hire we're going to be able to continue hiring. And that's another commitment we try to make to our staff that we, unless it's clearly a one year position. So sub the floor, right? Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, because you got to clarify that. So Dr. Bodie is saying there could be 150, we're talking about less than one half of one percent of the budget, but and so do you have any reaction to that, any cursor you had, Lynn? Okay, Mr. Cardin. Thanks. So it doesn't matter a great deal where that comes from. If next year we find that special education, we don't need that 150 in special education, we don't have to spend this circuit breaker money. We're just budgeting for it. We're just planning. We're just saying we need to increase the budget by 300,000. If that ends up coming out of lower spending in special education or lower spending on curriculum, we added 250,000 in curriculum materials last year, which we're rolling over. So if you are uncomfortable next year, spending money until we're certain about it, then don't make the curriculum commitments, do something else. But we're saying that for budgeting purposes, we need to plan on spending $300,000 more because of this special education spike that we've had. In your budget, special education is pulling away from regular education. It is. And we need that corrected. So how it's done, this is my opinion, how it's done, I don't care, we're suggesting one way to do it because of the very, very, very conservative budgeting structure that we have with circuit breaker. Not all towns have it, many don't. So again, either way you do it, I don't care, but I wanna see $300,000 more spending come to the table. I just have a clarification question. Is the budgets of committee recommending any change to the million dollar increase in special education expenses, which has a little cushion in it? Right. And that's part of my point is that, yes we're doing this, yes there's a risk, but we're also, we're not bringing everything else down. As Mr. Cardin says, we've already got 250 for curriculum. We've got 250 to 200 for additional special ed, which is not an actual yet. We feel this is, in the light of that, if either of those, preferably the special ed spending didn't become actuals, we don't have to dip into circuit breaker anymore. But this is a point where we can identify monies which with a not perfect, but reasonable degree of certainty are going to be coming to us. And we can see them coming going forward. And yes, it's possible that everything's gonna go totally haywire because of the administration that we're living with now, but we can't budget so conservatively that we're hurting our students. And we feel it's a reasonable risk. Okay, I just want to clarify one thing that Mr. Cardin said. Dr. Cardin, right? You got a JD.  I got it. You got it. No, no, I mean, it was great. So the, you, we want $300,000 more in the budget and you said Dr. Bode might not spend it all. Is that right? No. Is that, you're expecting it all to be spent, yeah. She has, there's a plan to spend every dollar that's in the budget. Right, but there might be savings. We're gonna plan to spend the additional $300,000, but we know there's lots of places where spending might not occur. There's also lots of places like the heating system at Audison that might come next year that we have to spend on. That's, a budget is always based on estimates. Yeah, I just want to clarify. I just want to understand a couple. Okay, I mean, I think there's enough back and forth here. I think, you know, we got 150, 300. I'm gonna support the budget subcommittees proposal and I think there's been good work done and lots of good discussion and there's enough good management of the budget over the course of the year that I don't think we're gonna get into a deficit. Mr. Slickman. I want to say two things. First of all, the chart and the explanation that's before you was done by Mr. Cardin and I thought he did a masterful job of it. I thought it was an excellent presentation. Comes with tremendous clarity and it really does a good job of explaining what's happening. But on the other end, I want to address the fact that we're at risk and we're not really because right now we're making the expenditures for the money we're gonna receive in two years and this is a high year. The budget has already been submitted for fiscal 17 to the state. The governor's numbers have come in. We don't know what districts will claim. We also don't know what the legislature's gonna do with the governor's budget but historically, the legislature has added circuit breaker money to the governor's budget after the governor's presented it. So we now have a situation. We've got a track record in history of how the governor looks at circuit breaker. We have a long standing history of what the legislature does with the governor's recommendation. Right now we're looking at a fiscal situation in the state where revenues are increasing. While there are other expenditures that are increasing, the projection right now is that we're not going to have a train record the economy over the course of the next year. Now everything might crash, who knows. But that's why we're putting the circuit breaker in reserve long term. And we have a very constructive plan to go and put the $100,000 into reserve from the following three years to get us back to the point we're at right now. This isn't about being aggressive or more risky with the circuit breaker. We're being very conservative with it but it really is a smoothing operation. We have expenses going up in a year where two years ago the special aid costs were down and thus the circuit breaker's going to be down. So it's like filling a pothole. And we know that in three years it'll glide out and if our costs go up, it'll trend up. If our costs go down, we'll have more money to deal with. It's not very risky. But I think that filling this $300,000 hole in the budget is a bigger priority than holding $300,000 in reserve based on the fluctuation of the years in receipts. Yeah, Ms. Starks. So again, my issue is that I don't know what we're spending it on. As I said before, if we know what we think we would spend it on, that would help significantly in understanding whether or not we should do this. So I would rather consider this a first read and vote on it next time because I think it needs to come with here's what we would spend $300,000 on. Not just, we'd like $300,000 more in the budget and we have no idea what we're gonna do with it. So people help me with what I do procedurally. Is that an additional motion to wait? Well, it's a request by. It's a request to amend it, a request to amend. Or delay it. Delay it for two weeks. Okay, Dr. Allison-Empie. Can I ask Dr. Boddy what would be more helpful to you for us to pass or not pass the motion now so that you know what to happen or to wait until next meeting? From my point of view, it wouldn't matter. You've committed, you'd be committing the 300,000 but for Ms. Starks or anybody else, they'd wanna know what would be the priorities. And actually I would ask you this evening so I can take this back to administrators and teachers as well that these are some things that the school committee has expressed some preference in terms of additional priority spendings. I can give you one right now. So I think that thinking of this in terms of consumption smoothing is really helpful because that's something that households and individuals do and I think that that's a helpful way to look at it and I appreciate that clarification. I can tell you that my worry about the budget as of now is how much we've cut with restructuring the TA positions and the what's called the substitute teachers, building subs, which are not the same kind of a commitment as a regular teacher so that those are things that go up and down each year. So I think if we were to add that to this year's budget and we had to make a cut of those positions that would be something that would be possible. So that's what I worry about in this budget. Of course we have to wait to hear your recommendation and the curriculum leaders recommendations but from my perspective that's what I think we need to add back to this year's to this budget. And I have to say I am inclined to vote for this so I think just counting it's likely to pass. Just to give you some feedback of where the committee is going. Mr. Hayner. Hi, since day one of support of the idea of the AIDS, especially at the primary level of kindergarten because I value those, I think that's where you write the diagnosis for the, create the prescription for the next 12 years and I think that can cut, save money in the long run for special ed and remediating issues right at the beginning. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think you asked us possibly to, for us. I think hearing what Mr. Cardin said and going on, knowing, getting an idea of where you're going. You all, the superintendent always has a lot of latitude during the year and things come up. All the things that you say we're gonna use it for us, all it takes is an elevator to break and we're looking at the whole system differently. We're breaking it again. We only got one. But well, half of one. But anyway, I would have a tendency, and I'm not trying to persuade you with the other, to vote for this if we have an idea and the possibility of it not being used and protecting it for things like that. I'm glad, I heard that tonight. Thank you. Yes, Dr. Wray. Last night we did have a little discussion on, and I truly do wanna hear the thoughts of administrators and I'm sure Mr. Levy will give you some feedback from teachers. But I do think that if I was to say, I totally agree with you that we don't have enough in reserve for teaching assistants and the building subs at the middle and high school. And we don't have enough reserve positions. It's sort of a misnomer to say that we have reserve positions right now because truly they are almost identified unless something drastic changes in our enrollment projections. So having some more ability there, another place where we need some additional FTEs most likely would be the high school. Because the original which was pared down to start with was 2.7 FTEs and we were down to 2.0. So that will have its own rollout as we see where student selections go. But it's those kinds of things. And I think there's a little piece in the elementary to free up for specialists, to free up the schedule. So it's going to be in parts like that. Those are the things we nibble the way at in order to get the numbers down. And I don't disagree that, you mentioned the curriculum materials. There's about a little over 200,000 and this is not really, I mean it's discretionary yes, but not really because of the rollout of the science curriculum and the math curriculum. We've had a multi year plan for this and it's to keep that rollout going. I understand, right? Well we always look for online parts of it too. But it's the rollout of those curriculums that we've been doing. We often do that. We just don't do it completely at one time for a number of reasons. One is financial, but two, when you roll out curriculum you have to provide enough professional development for that to be successful. And you can't do it all at one time at any given. So those are the thoughts right now as to where we, where I would be leaning toward and I will certainly get everybody else's thoughts on this. Sorry Dr. Allison Evie. Can I ask Mr. Schwickman if he could speak to having, adding an additional dean that you spoke to yesterday? My strategy would be add an additional dean this year because next year we would not be in a position to do it because the focus is going to be on adding staffing for the split of the Gibbs Odyssey. And we're gonna need to make significant additions just to match our infrastructure. Subsequently we're gonna be running into years in which we're going to have this site under construction and we're a couple of years out from a major construction project which is gonna put immense strain on the administration and the building. If we're not in a position to add a dean next year two years from now might be too late so that if this is something we're planning on doing in this cycle I would say it's worth considering. Now obviously that's my opinion. I express the opinion of the superintendent budget subcommittee and it's for them to think strategically of how they're gonna meet that need but I see this as a huge need that's gonna be increasing as we get closer to rebuilding this high school and that's getting closer and closer and I think this is the year that we should be doing it. My opinion. Other members wanna talk about their budget priorities? Dr. House-Nampy? I spoke to this last night. I'm concerned about the kindergarten TAs and whether we can, I understand we want it to be equitable but we can be equitable and raise the amount for everyone potentially and also I'm concerned about reserve teachers. I don't think we have enough. Yeah. I have to say I'm not convinced yet that the dean is as necessary because I understand that there's a plan to relieve the current deans, some of the workload that they have and so that I guess there's a possibility that that plan would alleviate the need that we have right now and then we wouldn't necessitate the addition of an extra dean so I just obviously a lot of people know a lot more about this than me but I've heard varying positions on this, on the need. Mr. Thielen? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, we heard principals advocate for what they felt was best. We heard teachers advocate for what they felt was best. I'm not in the high school running it every day so I don't know if a dean, I don't know. It's hard judgment to make based because I'm not there running the thing every day so I would, you know, I always kind of wanna hear what the people running the district want and think is important and high priority based on the needs of the district. I do think, you know, one big thing happening next year, a major goal for the year is gonna be the successful, you know, the preparation of the new Gibbs 6th grade and so I would just wanna make sure that we have all the resources and all of the support needed to make that happen because that's probably the biggest change. Well, that's the biggest change that's happened in this district in the 15 years I've been on the committee which creating a new school, sixth graders in one place and I just wanna make sure there's enough support to make that happen well and smoothly. So, but that's a high level look at things and again, I'm not running this high school so I don't know, I can't really make a judgment if the dean's the best thing. Matt said it was, I take him at his word but I'm not in an every day run of the place. Mr. Slickman. Yeah, I think the one thing that impresses me about the high school dean and the administrative support we were asked for is the teachers who are asking for it and it's unusual enough that when the teachers show up to say we need more administrative support in the building, it doesn't happen very often and when it does happen it's something to take very seriously. Well, I'm gonna tell you a little story. So, you know, I ran a school many years and so people kept saying we need more administrative support, then I found someone really good. And they're like, you know what, that one guy you got is really good. You don't need two. So, I don't know, I don't, and that's not, it's not at all. You're not implying that anybody is, isn't it? I'm not at all disparaging the town and the building, I just am saying I'm not in the place and I can't make a good recommendation. That's why we said, you know, it was a budget subcommittee meeting, what are we gonna do with the money? I think the best thing to do is to send the superintendent off to talk to the people in the district who are actually have to live with this and then listen to what they're telling us back again. I was issuing my opinion, that's it. But I think that the two things that resonated for me in terms of priorities were reserved teachers in the high school team. Mr. Hinner. Mr. Chair, I'd ask Dr. Bodie, is there any problem postponing the vote for two weeks? In your mind. No, I think. No, I will do the work and send it to you ahead of time. So that's an amendment to the proposal as a friendly amendment? No, it's a withdrawal. A withdrawal, we're withdrawing it. So Bill is asking that Kirstie withdraw the motion. Oh, okay. Well, either that or just postpone the vote. Yeah, Ms. Starks. Well, I kind of would like to just get it done. Okay. Yeah, let's just get it done. I think, I mean, and if it gets voted down, then it gets voted down, but I feel like we've had a lot, we've been tinkering with it for a while. We've had a lot of discussion now. So I would prefer not to withdraw the motion and you'll have to figure out what to do. Okay, sounds good. Okay, so let's vote on it. And if people want to vote no, because they just don't have enough information, they feel they can't affirm the vote or if they want to abstain, that's at the discretion of committee. Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And I'm an aye. Opposed? Mr. Hainer, there's no abstention, that's it. Okay, so it is... No, you voted no. She's voted yes. Yes. I voted no. It's six to one, right? No, we need the money. I just wanted to know where it's gonna go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so then, so I think that concludes this budget discussion. We will be voting on the budget and we'll be hearing the proposal at our next meeting. Two weeks from now. Okay. Yes, Senator. I think there were other budget questions like line items and stuff. Yeah, that we still need answers. Right. Will we hear about those by email or how will we get the additional questions answered? Dr. Buddy, what do you think? Well, we'll work on these and try to get these answers to you maybe toward the end of next week. We'll have a chance to next Thursday and take a look at some of those. So many of these were questions that were asked in our last budget meeting on camera. So ideally we should get, right? Is that? No. These were ones that the members sent to Ms. Johnson. Right. Yeah, okay. Right, these are more line-specific items. Yeah, just detailed questions. Yeah, just detailed things. Do, Dr. Buddy, do you want a reminder of what the questions are? Do you have a list? I have them. He knows exactly what they are. Okay, so. Unless there's, I have your questions. Mm-hmm, that's just, yeah. Okay. And I didn't know if anyone else had questions that. Yeah, I think most of mine were answered. I have to go back and look at my list. Okay. Yeah. Just when you first started your response, you were referring to the ones we were asked tonight on the budget presentation. Ms. Perz presented, am I correct? I have those written down. We have those written down. Those are separate from. So those are the additional questions. These are the additional. So I'd say if anyone has additional questions, I mean, now's the time to get them in because if we wait too long, it's really unfair, right? Right. So I think you feel. This is only so much time. So if anybody after reviewing stuff has additional questions, ideally tomorrow. That's a, yeah, okay. No pressure. No, I mean, we've had some time to look at it and we've all had time to present questions. So if there's any additions. Before 8 a.m., 8 a.m. tomorrow, you'll get. Midnight tomorrow, how's that? Okay. Okay, so let's move on to the superintendantry report. All right. Well, the first thing on this is the update on school building projects. And let me just go down the list. Yeah. That's a lot. Yes. Yes. Well today, talking about Gibbs, we had a meeting today. Ms. Stark's the representative to the Gibbs Advisory Committee. Talking with our architects about the, really the design of the building. Not the floor plan of the building, but what the floors are gonna look like, the color schemes, and we had a lot of great discussion and it's gonna take a little bit of time, but I think we'll get there. It was a good discussion. I'm a big committee, which makes it challenging. We have a big group, but that's okay. The, for Thompson. Thank you, Ms. Mertz. Thank you so much. Thank you. For Thompson, it looks like this deal will be here next week. That's the plan. And if the deal is here, I think we're gonna be able to stay on a schedule. It's going to mean some Saturdays. And the commitment I've made and the contractor have made is that when we need a Saturday, we will let the neighbors know. And we have done that sending notices to each mailbox. The Arlington High School, we're going to have a meeting next week on Tuesday prior to the Permanent Town Building Committee meeting for the, first of all, an overview of where we are, but there's two major topics. One is the next phase of this project is to get the owner's project manager. And there is a process that we have to go through. Some of the committee will be on that subcommittee. Then there will be another subcommittee for beginning the communication plan. I think it's important when we go through a project of this magnitude that we have a very user-friendly way that we communicate with the public about what's going on.  The committee itself will, as a whole, will probably not meet that frequently until we, at least we get through the owner's project stage. But that is a very important, very, very important part of the project because the owner's project manager is the one that represents the interests of the town and really helps push the project along, keeps track of the budget very carefully. So the time given to that is really important. Hardy, we are, that proposal will go, there is a warrant for the town meeting to talk about that. And we have, having had a peer review, I think that we are satisfied with the amount of money that has been budgeted by capital will be sufficient for what we need. So I think we're in good shape there. And Stratton is moving along, great. Perfectly on schedule for opening in September. And I'm hoping that maybe as we get to a point, sometime in the spring, I'm sure, this whole committee wants to maybe take a walk through. That'd be great. That'd be great. We'll work on that. All right, one of the things that we're gonna be doing in March is by the end of March, completing sort of an overview of where we are on all the different district goals. Many of them you've been hearing about, in fact, you're hearing about some of our district goals and they do the building updates every week. But one of the goals that we have, and we get a brief, Ms. Elmer gave a brief overview of it last time, was the goal is goal one four, which is a planning year to look at a social emotional learning in our school, the cultures and possibly even curriculum as we go forward. And we have more of an update on that tonight. And I'd like Ms. Elmer, if you would, to just give an overview of that. Sure, so I mentioned last time that we have nine schools participating in the Safe and Supportive Schools self-assessment and we're working with consultants from the Aspet Valley Collaborative, the two consultants who are working with us, also work on the state task force for developing the self-assessment. So they really know the tool very well and know what the design was intended to elicit. And so we have groups meeting between now and June so that they'll have complete action plans by the end of June going forward. But the design right now is five meetings for each of the groups. We've completed the first round over the last three weeks before vacation and now this week, where we're beginning by using a cultural proficiency model to lay the groundwork for the self-assessment and exploring individual and collective beliefs and attitudes about students, behaviors and families and how that looks at exploring implicit bias and some of those things that kind of lay the groundwork for how we're going to move forward in creating Safe and Supportive Schools because we can't really do it till we look internally. And so the first two sessions are really focused around exploring that cultural proficiency model and then we'll move into the self-assessment. Which is a tool created by the state. It's pretty lengthy tool so that's gonna be a considerable amount of time mainly through the month of March that the teams will be meeting going through that and collecting data to also support the self-assessment. And then in doing that in April and May we'll move into looking at that data collection, looking at the results of the self-assessment and looking at current school initiatives and whatnot and aligning those to move forward into draft action plans. And as I said, by the end of June you should have finalized school action plans that will link to our school improvement plans and district improvement plans. Okay, I don't know if anybody has any questions about that. Does anybody have any questions or comments? Okay. Okay. One thing you should be aware of, Mr. Cardin mentioned it earlier, the OMS heater on the building. Yep. That is going to be a very large expense. It's gonna be about 250,000. I don't think that's what they had in mind. So I will be back to you in terms of how that will be financed. We have to do it. It's essential that it be done. We've jerry-rigged a fairly adequate but not long-term adequate way to keep the music room heated and ventilated. So the ideal would be to replace it during the summer and we have a six to eight week order time. So I'll be working with the smarts and the town to see how we're gonna move forward on this.  Is there only one? Sorry. Fall under the facilities. Yeah. Well, our facility's revolving account annually. I think it means the combined town, school, facilities department. Well, they don't really have a big cap. We haven't given them money. No, for the repairs in the schools, they pretty much rely on our revolving account. So you should understand this. Our revolving account usually takes in, has a revenue of about 350,000 a year, of which around 100,000 is custodial over time. So 250,000 is what we use for repairs and painting in the summer. And so that is the entire amount that's there. I thought that when we did this combination and we may be in that first year or second year, the whole thing was going to the town, including that piece of our budget and the town would be covering all these expenses going forward. That was the plan. It's not quite on that plan right now. The, the... Will we be getting there at some point? Well, it's even if, it's really a shell game. I mean, if we can give the full amount of money, I think of that facility's budget as facilities money for them to use in repair. I understand that. But the agreement, when we took that vote a year or so ago was that we wouldn't have the duplicate town facility and school facility. We did be have an overlap for a year or so. And, but we would give up out part of the budget. They would take over the whole thing. And it was a good deal for us because if that was in place for an incident like this, it's granted. It comes out of the tax assessment. It comes out of the town money, but it doesn't come out of our budget. And we don't have to go looking for it in an emergency. That's my opinion. Normally this would be a capital expense. If we knew that we're gonna need a new heater on Oddson, that would go into the capital rotation. That's how that would work. It's these big surprise repairs. Now, to the facility's credit, one of the things that they're working on and they've actually completed one of our schools already is looking at all of the parts and heating units and anything that would require any kind of maintenance, putting it into a database so that you can be proactive. That is happening. In fact, I'd like to have them spend a come some evening and give us a... I understand that. So yeah. Part of the selling feature to us to give this up was that emergency expenditures would not be tapped. We wouldn't have to be looking for money. I'm not knocking you right now, Dr. Boyd. I'm just saying. Excuse me, I said that. But right now we're looking for $200,000 that we weren't planning on spending. Even if all the money was in the town side, we would be in the same boat. They would be... My understanding when we voted it, they would not be coming to us. They would be looking forward on the town side. That's... Let's put this way, we're all looking for it right now. No, I think we haven't implemented the plan. I think Mr. Carton can talk to that. Yeah, yeah. So we aren't there yet? We aren't doing it yet, yeah. I think the idea is, and it's not gonna happen next year because they haven't talked to us about it. So maybe some, maybe 19. The idea is there would be a central budget. The revenue that we receive for building rentals would go into that central budget, along with other funds from other... So if there's a repair needed at the DPW building, some of our funds might go to that one year. And then the following year, if there's a repair needed in the school building, an emergency repair, some of the funds would come to that. So I think you're right. Right, I thought that was our plan. We're not there yet. It's not clear that we're gonna even move there. When it was presented to us, they said it was a one-year overlap. Yeah, it was. Then the second year would start. And it was even things like heating costs and stuff like that was supposed to be part of this budget. But it has not been rolled out for it. But if we have, I mean, Ruthie Bennett coming to us and talking to us about it, maybe can clarify some of the plan for what the future is. And so that is an agenda item. I know that people want, and I'm gonna pass it on to Mr. Thielman, because we won't be able to do it under my tenure, but just keep a note of that. Okay, thank you. Well, we will. I think we all have to look at this. It's not town and school side. We really work together quite closely in trying to make these. It's just that we have this big expense. It came out of the blue. Maybe, and I'm not even sure that I've even had any maintenance plan would have predicted the total failure of it. Things happen. It happens in our own houses. How old is it? At the age of Otteson. So it's when Otteson was done, which was back in the 90s. When they're renovated. Okay, so. Ooh, 19. Yeah. I got one of those. Right. 94 year old born in 94s. Is your point that we could have predicted it? I think we could have started having some pretty good guesses. Yeah, I think we're getting into a better, planning process than we had. I mean, that's also what's supposed to be part of this, right? Is that they weren't gonna start owning, knowing the age and putting this in. A 23 year old thing, we should know anything over 20 years. Yeah. That's going. You know, it's gonna go. The plan is there in place. In fact, one of the things that's going on right now is that the contractors on the Stratton, the Thompson, Gibbs, are putting everything on an express sheet so it's uploaded into this software we're using now. So in about a year, maybe a little more, but that's sort of the timeframe. We probably will have all the buildings, all of the mechanical systems with their manufacturer, their year they were installed, their serial number, all of that information into this data bank. And then he can start rolling out projections. So, I mean, it's happening. It's just that this happened. So I'll let you know how, but I didn't want to be surprised on the road when you heard this number. Understand that we have to figure this out and we will because it needs to be ordered. It's not a, this can be deferred. I think Dr. Altsnampy. So I'm just, I understand that she's working on the Pierce and stuff, but I'm wondering if it doesn't make more sense to do, to go to Otteson, which is one of the largest oldest school that we've got and has other systems, I bet that are going to be in need. So either hit that first or hit the really big ticket item, just go around the district, hit the really big ticket items first and get them into the thing.  We better get that on capital list. Right now, things like that, rather than do a building, then come back and finish the whole work. So it sounds like when we get Ms. Bennett in here, we will have a lot of questions and hopefully get some clarification from her. How are we? Someone else, no? One last thing and that is after, oh, a couple of things actually. Actually, I'll talk about the searches. Yes, please. And there's a few things actually that we still have. They're not in the list, but we've talked about it. Go ahead. Okay. We have two searches going on right now, the OMS principle. And interviews will be next week. We have a fairly large committee, parent representative teachers, administrators, principal. So it's a fairly representative group of people. And in that process, because of all, whenever we've done a principal search after this initial, the interviews, we need to have three finals moving forward because our process after that is first of all an announcement of the candidates. And they'll go through obviously reference checks, but then they also meet with teachers. They meet with parents. And we don't want to be in a position where we would have somebody drop out, taking another position because there are other searches going on right now. And have the last person standing type of thing. So it's important that we have strong candidates coming out. If we do not, after this first round, we will keep it open. And we'll see where we are. So I know the parent wrap hasn't yet been chosen. Do you know when that happened? When the plan is? Mr. Spiegel's been in contact with the OPAC president. I think OPAC has requested that parents contact them by this Saturday. Yeah, they sent it out today. I mean, I talked to him last week about having, choosing the parents and what we, I had told him the date of the interviews and everything, and I think they're gonna, so they have a couple days to get back to him. And so I think by Monday we would know who the parents are. But they know, if they're gonna do it, they know they have to be available next Wednesday. Okay, great. Okay. Mr. Heiner. Can you tell us how many applications you got or approximate number? I can tell you we've got more than 10, more than 50. More than 50. Thank you. That's good. But you have to understand that. But they're not all. No, no, I understand. There's a lot of people who apply that are not even certified for the role. Right. So. It takes a lot of guts. We got a cert song. Yeah. All right, and then we have a CFO search. We have a fairly large committee that is, again, very representative. Obviously people from here in the school district, but also our controller, director of facilities, director of IT, representative from finance committee, our deputy town manager. So we have a very broad range of people that are gonna be part of this process. This one's a little different in that it's possible even to come out of this with one candidate in reference checking. And then we would have another series of another interview after that in which Dr. Allison Ampe is on the committee as well. So the school committee is on the search committee. We would have a smaller group doing another interview. So it's because it doesn't is public in terms of parent and teachers. It's not as crucial that we have more than one candidate coming out. But hopefully we have more than one. We'll see. We're right now in a doodle to get this huge group together to do some interviews. So I think there was a question about, I know Dr. Allison Ampe hasn't yet been involved in it because it hasn't gone that far. What stage she comes in as the school committee rep in terms of looking at resumes and how many, I've had questions about that. So I just wanted to direct that to you. You're gonna come in and look at the resumes that we have. Yeah, that's the plan. Okay, so that I think we, some people want to clarification about the process. Yeah, great. Mr. Hayner. You and I had a conversation about the public interviewing and stuff. And I'd like to ask Mr. Spiegel about the issue of nervousness of people declaring that they're looking for a job. He and I had a discussion about that. I mean, I think it depends on the public sector people. It depends on the individual. There are public sector, it's very common in thinking the public sector for people to look for jobs in other districts. It's not unusual. We know that sometimes other districts have more, sometimes they're public about it and have to declare. I mean, especially when they get to the finalist stage and it's understandable for some positions that someone who is working for one district might be interviewing in a finalist stage in another district and may not get that job. And if that happens, that's okay. They stay in their current district. That's not unusual. Other people may have different circumstances in their job where they might be more reticent to declare that they're looking. But usually when we get to a finalist stage for a principal position or a high-level administrator position, we inform the candidates that we're gonna make that public, that that part of the process. When there's only one candidate, is it? No, when there would be three. When there would be three, okay. Yeah, if there would be multiple candidates, they could be public in that case. But usually in the initial interview stage, they might not be telling their superiors that they're interviewing. Yeah, because they're not in the running yet. Generally, if you're applying to be a superintendent, assistant superintendent or principal, there's an expectation that at some stage, you're gonna have your name released. It's not necessarily the same with other positions. It's just not. And that's just sort of the culture of how these work. So there'll be a strong vetting process, but you are the appointing authority for the CFO. And so the candidate that would come to you, you would have a chance. In fact, you have to in public interview. And at that stage, that person is going to have to let, in fact, they're coming from another district, let that district know. Also, can you talk publicly about the trip that you were invited to? That's in our consent agenda. Yes, well, you did want to make the consent agenda, pull it out, but I wanted to. At one point, we talked about you sort of mention it briefly in your superintendent's remarks, and then we will. Well, I was invited to attend a national superintendent's conference and became sort of out of the blue. And for the reason of the innovations that we do in our district. So they invited and will give, it's a free of charge to come to the conference and then give me some stipend for the travel. So what you have, because this exceeds a $50 gift, clearly, you have a disclosure statement that I filled out and it's up to you whether you approve it or not. And obviously I'm not going to attend unless you want to approve this, but it's toward the end of March. If I may, I was going to ask for this to be pulled out of the consent only for the purpose, because when I read the regulation, it requires us to give written approval. And I don't think it should belong in one group. Oh, okay. Because you probably need to authorize her test, but okay. No, no, until I had to go all the way through the. Great, I didn't do that. It's found that one little piece that says it requires us to give written approval. So if we make that as a separate motion, that would should suffice. Great, okay, thanks. Yes, Dr. Allison and Anthony. So I think this is really cool. Yes, yes. And that's great that you're going. I had one question about the finances. I couldn't tell, I know you say it's free of charge to attend for you, but are they like waiving a fee? And if so, does that need to be listed on the disclosure form also? Well, I gave on the disclosure form what the expenses are that they said they are covering. And I can't answer that because they didn't give me what the conference cost would be. They're just saying it's that amount of money each night. Yeah, I wasn't saying, I wasn't bringing this up to suggest not approving it. I just wanted to be sure the paperwork was correct. I gave you what I know. That's all I could give you. And yeah, that's all I know in terms of that. But I've already had a request came in the other day of asking what roundtables want to be at. And they're all very much consistent with what we're doing in terms of personalized instruction and blended learning. It's really very consistent with the kind of work that we're doing. And in fact, that may be the reason why. Because as you know, we were invited, identified by the Consortium of Learn Launch and the Department of Education as being a leader in this area. Now, we think that we're beginning this work, but relative to where other districts are, I think that we're much further along than we give ourselves credit for. Well, I just say kudos to you. And that's a real comment on your leadership and on our district, so thank you. We've got a great district here. I just want to give the athletics. Yes. Talk about kudos. Yes. I don't know what's happened tonight. The game is still on. But our boys' basketball are in the state tourney. And because of their record, which was outstanding, there were the undisputed league champion. They were undefeated in the league this year. They have home field advantage for tonight's game. Should they win, they'll have another home advantage. So they did very well. They're doing very well. It's going on right now. It's going on right now, right now as we speak. The girls hockey team also made it to the tourney level. And they are moving on. They won yesterday. And their game is this coming Saturday for game number two. And it's going to be Saturday at 5 o'clock in Wuburn. So they're doing excellent. Our boys hockey team also. This is the first time in decades that the boys hockey team made the super eight, which is a, for those in hockey, you know how prestigious that is. So they've made the super eight. And the first game for this tournament is Sunday at Songas Arena at 4 o'clock. Anybody forgets these times? It's on the athletic website. So you can just, you can get it. So there are, our students are doing extraordinarily well this year in athletics. And that's my report. Great. Thank you. Before we're going to extend it, Zanya, I want to also welcome Kudos to Karen Fitzgerald, who is sick, I know, tonight. And so thank you so much for being here. But if you feel you need to go home, we will understand. Bill will take the minutes.  And I think it's still sick today. So thank you very much. So consent agenda, all items listed within asterisks are considered to be routine and will be enacted with one motion. Though we know separate discussion of these items, unless a member of the committee so requests, in which event the item will be considered a normal sequence. Proof of warrant, approved warrant number 17129, total warrant amount $571,599.37, dated February 9, 2017. Approval of minutes, approval of school committee regular meeting Thursday, February 14, and February 16, 2017. Proof of Arlington High School Italy trip presented. Oh, right. That's what I'm presented tonight. And we can do that. We can keep that in the sense that, OK. Well, we already approved it. Right, because we didn't have it last. I remember there was a problem last time. Approval of model United Nations March 10, 2017, New York City. And that's a previous trip. Approval of travel expenses for the superintendent. And I know Mr. Hainor wanted to pull the one on the superintendent vote that separate. So we're going to move in that separately. I remember the two minutes. OK, and Mr. Thielman, although we have talked about that, you could vote on it. I could still vote on it. OK, then don't pull. So that's come up before. All right. 16th, I'm in there. And the 16th isn't in there. So we can keep those. Yeah, OK, so it's only right. I forgot if you had mentioned that. Yes. All right. OK. So don't pull it. Don't pull. Pull the others. OK, so all in favor of the other ones? Aye. Aye. Aye. Post? OK, I didn't hear. OK, so that's unanimous. So the approval of trial expenses for the superintendent for the move to approve. Thank you, Mr. Dr. Alcinambi, seconded by Mr. Thielman. All in favor? Aye. Aye. So just a question. We have to sign this so that no, not sign it. The chair has to sign it. And that's it. OK, great. Excellent. OK, so policy. There's none subcommittee and liaison reports. Budget, I assume, has been exhausted, but it's not. So budget's also going to do outreach sessions. Oh, yes, absolutely. And we've had Ms. Fitzgerald sent an email announcement of all of our things that are online right now. Next week, we have one on the 8th at Stratton. On the 10th, we're at Addison in the morning. In April, we'll be at Thompson on the 12th. And there may be some other ones coming. We still have schools inquiring. Great. And I know you referred last time that the presentation that you gave was very well received and that the public really, and this is by Mr. Slickman, and I heard that people really appreciated a really valuable addition that the budget subcommittee is doing. I think it's really well received by the public. I had fun. They were engaged. It was a good time. Mr. Hainer had also done one for us at Dowland. Great. Way before we even started listing this. Yes, I remember that, yes. We had a budget. Community Relations, Ms. Starks. All right, so we had a meeting on Monday. We talked a lot about the Reimagining Education Forum that's going to happen on March 9th. That's next Thursday. That will be here, right? Is it here? No, it's Town Hall. No, it's Town Hall. Town Hall, 645. 645. Wow, all right. Next Thursday, Town Hall. 645. And we just talked about a lot of logistics about that. We spoke about how ways that the Vision 2020 education group and we can work more closely. And there were a bunch of ideas thrown around on that. Nothing definitive. We'll keep talking with them. Then we also talked about Human Rights Commission. We had three resumes for people who are interested in being on the committee. And then so we had some discussion about how we go about choosing and what is the purpose of us having a choice. And so we did some of that discussion. And we're going to follow up with some more interviews with those people and talking to those people and figuring that out. Ms. Rainer? Monday night, the selectmen approved. I don't know whether you'd call it a subdivision or a Pride Commission. Yes, we also talked about that. And we agreed that we were amenable to taking part on that and that we would like to also be part of making an appointment to that commission as well. Right, so we're actually going to talk about that next time. We're going to talk about three warrant articles that are relevant, and that's one of them. But we did agree that we were OK and happy to make an appointment. Yeah. And then we also talked a little bit about buffer zones. We know that they were brought up when we were going through a lot of our growing pains as to whether that could help us with some of what we're doing. We basically realized that at this point, there's nothing we would probably do that would happen next year anyway. So that we are going to kind of, there were a couple of, we're going to go off and kind of do some more thinking. But I think that timing-wise, we're looking at probably taking that back up in the fall and then kind of working through it in the fall and making some recommendations for the following year. So there would be no action on that at this time. Yeah. Dr. Ross-Nampy. Are you talking about getting rid of the buffer zones? No. Mostly, we were talking about kind of growing the buffer zones so that they had, there was a little bit more wiggle room and space. And just kind of making sure that we look at over all the ground rules and make sure that we're still OK with all of those and that those are all still working and kind of a review of how it's going and all of that. But at this point, like I said, we're certainly not going to make any changes for next year, which I think is important for people to understand. And what we'll do is we'll start looking at it in the fall again and with more data. So we kind of sent everybody off to kind of gather some data and then come back and start talking about it next fall in hopes that if there is any necessary changes made, it would be for whatever the next school year is. But the point would be to try to make any recommendations of any changes kind of January for the following September so that everybody has enough time to work through it. There was actually even some discussion that we could delay even an additional year for implementation if we felt that was necessary. But I mean, I think now we're talking about tweaks, not radical. Yeah, it's nothing. I don't think we're looking at anything radical. It would be more like, can we make it for the schools that are really feeling the effect, which are we're building at Thompson and Hardy, so it's not going to be there, but places like Bishop, they need a little bit more to be able to push off to some of the other schools and kind of looking at all of that. And we just decided we needed more data and we needed to kind of think about some of those things. And we're actually looking at how some other districts have also done these and some of the rules and regulations they have just to kind of compare them and see how they're doing and how it's all going. So just kind of an update almost, you can call it. If you're gathering that, it'd be great to see how they do their reporting out also of effectiveness and stuff. Yeah, to the community. Yes. So any other questions on that? Mr. Hayner, I think Mr. Hayner. I was just going to say, you might consider annexing a piece of Medford in Lexington and you don't want to spread out room. Yeah, because they don't have a lot of kids in their school systems. No, no, land. Land, not people. I just also want to remind everybody that we have, again, this weekend, is the community chat. And Mr. Hayner and Mr. Cardin are going to be there this Saturday. And I went, that's it. That's all I have for that. Do we have notes? Did we? I'm sorry, I don't remember. Yeah, I haven't seen the previous one. I owe you notes. OK, excellent. That's what I thought. We did our notes. We did such an amazing job that everyone is cowed, I think, by how. In the bar. It's a high bar. That's what I suspect is happening. That's what I got. OK, so district accountability curriculum instruction and assessment. No report? But we do have. And we have, actually, this is. We do have the item on the second read. Yeah, this is a discussion. So we defer the discussion because Mr. Thielman was not here last time. Well, OK. But I mean, no, it made sense. So this is a sort of second read. I actually have a suggested change. But do other people have changes to this? Well, there's a question. Mr. Schlickman, were there amendments sent to you? Would anyone send any? Nobody sent an amendment. I didn't. I just came up with it today. Oh, so now you just came up with it now. Oh, there was a firm deadline for amendments. There was, to Mr. Schlickman. Which was a week from the time that we requested them at the last meeting I mentioned that we had no. It is a vote, right, so declare it. Well, can I just? Until next month. So I'm happy. No, no, go ahead. Let me just tell you what my thinking is. And so the student learning goal, which is the written, refined vision and program for Arlington High School, ready for submission to Massachusetts School of Building Authority. Now that I think we understand maybe Dr. Roy can talk about this, more how slow the timing is right now of what's happening so that right now we have a few months that we're just coming up with the owner's project manager. And we don't really get into the details of the vision of the Arlington High School. So it felt like the wrong. And I think a few months ago, we thought the spring we'd be doing this kind of work. And now our understanding is that it won't happen until the fall. So it feels premature. And what I wanted to replace it with is something, and I'm sorry I didn't get you that earlier, is something about the safe support of schools, social and emotional. Yeah, or the social emotion. Yeah. And I do have some language if you want to consider it. If you think it's an order. It's so way laid over the transom and pounds upon us. If we want to delay it another two weeks to consider it, I would not. I would go to tonight. OK, that's fine. So let me tell you my suggest language, but I will send it to you. Report on the planning committee to assess the district's strengths and challenges in creating safe and supportive school environments for all students. And present a preliminary plan as to how the Arlington Public School System plans to roll out the recommendations of this planning committee. Something like that. Is there a committee meeting right now? So it'll be based on the report of the committee? The understanding we got from Ms. Elmer tonight was that it was going to be in July, that we get an idea of what the recommendation is. Yeah, the plan. The recommendation will be completed by June. By June. By June. By June. Right. They won't be district level, though. They'll be school action plans, right? They're school action plans. They're all tied to the district improvement plan. OK, yes. So don't forget that we're doing this for FY17. Yes. This year that ends on June 30th. OK. But it can also go forward, too. You're right. Well, you'll be at a point where you can have a report by June 30th. A report in the sense that we will have executed the action planning phase that we outlined for this year. So the meeting, the self-assessment, the goal, creation of teams, the meeting, the self-assessment, and then the drawing of action plans that should be completed by June 30th. OK, so we can have a report. OK. And then so just the other thing is that the action I think if you want to wait, we can wait. But keep in mind that in March, we're supposed to have a report on this. Yes. And so we sort of got the late. We're sort of limited on March. Yes. Well, I'm OK. So I'm OK not. No, no, no. I mean, I think. Wait too long, and that's fine. But I do think we want to consider that the goal is written isn't. Isn't practical. Isn't practical. So it needs to be amended. Absolutely. Right. At the same time, I think it's fine to wait two weeks. So April. I mean, until March 16th. But it seems to me like we still going to stay to the superintendent. There's got to be some schedule. So the meeting on the March 30th, is that it? Is that where we're going to have a presentation on these? I think we're going to have two presentations. Are you talking about the MSBA? No. No, the FY17. The goals. That's what we're doing. That's your goals and some of the goals as well. We have been having reports all along. I mean, I could probably go through all the goals and maybe we can give you the dates that this happened. But by the end of March, you will have heard of a preliminary report on all of the different goals. So that would be good to have sort of some document. Right. So it's sort of a halftime report. I don't think some of these things we haven't yet seen. So then the question is just looking through this and figuring out what. Actually, you have on just everything, but the goal one is really the ones that we have. And then, of course, the PD, too. We'll get that for you. Yes, Ms. Rainer. But the intent was that on a specific date in the spring, you'll pull them together and do a presentation on the. On the superintendent goals. On the superintendent goals. But specifically, not just the superintendent goals. And that's what this is right here. Can I make a comment on that? I actually appreciate the potential change. We did find out this is going to go slower than we thought it was going to go. Well, we have submitted. And you actually have a copy of it. There is a preliminary document along these lines, which is looking at the existing programs at the high school. But in almost every single department, they were looking to the future. So that is in that document. And what they will be doing in the next phase of this is building on that. So you have the preliminary. But it isn't exactly what I had in mind. I had in mind the report that goes as part of the feasibility study. But that now is not going to go to MSBA until the fall sometime. It's been an interesting discussion on the MASC list about who does their superintendent of valuations in the fall. I saw your response, but there have been a bunch of them. And that was very interesting about who does it in the fall, who does it in the spring. Mr. Gilbert saying that nobody does it in the fall. Yeah, nobody does it in the fall. Wait a minute. Here we go. He knows we do. Every time he said it, I say, excuse me, Allington does. So do we want to delay this vote, then? Is that?  Yeah, so I think maybe you and Dr. Boat should talk. If you guys have a different way to modify this. But then at the same time, we need to have in March, that's what the policy says. It says there needs to be an interim report. So I think the interim report could simply be you receive reports on the following on these dates. And there's kind of a quick one-page bullet summary of memo what we're at. And there's definitely some things that we haven't received yet. And that's fine. That's fine. We know we're going to get them. Couldn't we pass all but the student learning goal? We can. And that way at least she knows what it is. And it's done. Sure. OK. OK, so is that a motion? Moved. Mr. Shulman has a. I mean the question is, is that let's say that we did this at a meeting or two ago, or we did this in December. Here we are in March with something that we wouldn't be amending it at this point. I'm just saying that if we had this as a solid document and it came out to this point of the year, turning out to be, well, the state slowing it down so maybe it's not as good a goal, we'd be living with it. We wouldn't be making a substitution on March 2nd. So I don't know that I'm really inclined to making amendment to this because we hashed this out. It retreated. This has been out there for a month. I'd rather pass it the way it is and live with the ambiguity of the goal that may not be as good a shape as it could be. Ms. Jackson. I think that the amended goal is a much better student learning goal. I actually think that this student learning goal is not a student learning goal. It's a building goal. It has nothing to do with student learning. So I really like your amended student learning goal. Much better. OK. Mr. Hinner. I agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Stark said. I think the issue that is behind this is that we have all become very lax in getting things done on time when we set dates, especially for Ms. Fitzgerald. No shot on you, Mr. Gardner, but that I would have loved to have seen all your documents earlier today. No, I understand. But it's not just us. We give, by example, administration and stuff slowly gets slack. We have to be reminded to get things in on time, all of us. Administration's good tonight. Tonight. So what are we voting on then? Well, I'm just going to make a motion. Motion to approve. Motion to approve this as is. Yeah. OK. Any further discussion on that motion? Yes, Ms. Dr. Allison. I would like to make a motion to amend the student learning goal with what Dr. Seuss has. OK, so how does that? You vote the motion and then the amendment. No, you can do that. You can discuss it. I don't understand the motion. What? So you're voting, you're making a motion to amend. I'm voting, I'm making a motion to amend the student learning goal to substitute the written language here with what you talked about. And I understand that. I'll second it. A report on the committee that Dr. Elmer talked about earlier today. Right, safe and supportive schools. That's correct, yes. I second it. So how do we? I already objected to the motion. What? Yeah, help me out, Mr. Harden. You're dueling amendments, not an amendment of a motion. You have to vote, you have to vote Paul's motion now first. OK, if that's what we want. It's a replacement. OK. It's amending the language that's existing. OK, so let's take up. Lenny, would you? He made a motion to approve the policy. She's making a motion to change. She can make a motion to amend it. I thought it was an motion to amend it. It's an amendment to amend the document. I'm saying I've moved to approve the document. She's moving to amend the document. She's moving to amend. I mean, that's sort of what we do in town meetings, right? Yes. Similar that we amend the motion. We don't amend the motion. Right, so we're amending the motion, which is that we're not going to approve this document as is. We are going to change. We're approving all but the. I think that makes sense. OK, so let's vote on the amendment right now. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. Any abstentions? OK. But I do want to say, Paul made a very good point. It's oftentimes you make goals, you set goals, then you're very important to the world. I absolutely agree with the goal. Yeah, absolutely great. Life changed. At some point, we have to just put our foot down. Yeah, that's fine. Vote in the corner. And next year, we will. Yeah, absolutely. Both in motion. Dr. Bodie, Dr. Bodie wanted to comment first. Just to put it in perspective. Yes. Both these goals are part of the district goals. Yeah. And I feel responsible, as does my whole team, of accomplishing what we set out to do. Now, we may not be, we may not completely accomplish everything, but certainly it is our intent always to do this. We lay this out for the year. So it's sort of an artificial thing to sort of say, well, I'm going to call that the learning goal. I'm going to call that the, because we're doing them all. Yep, I know. Vote in the motion. OK. All in favor of the motion as amended, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? OK. One thing I want to say, because I think it's appropriate is the policy's procedures. That's unanimous. That's the 7-0. That was unanimous. That was unanimous. So, first and second. Oh. Paul, I seconded the main motion. OK. And I seconded KSC's amendment. So, you know, we, there is this back forth the MASC list. And we did say that if the policy, if we were concerned about the timeline, the policies and procedures subcommittee would go back and take a look at this.  OK. So, you know, it's not like it's the only way to do it. We have come to this agreement in our committee, but there may be a better way to do it. And that's your committee's responsibility. Think about it. So, actually, I want to suggest something. So I know that in the preamble of this document, it talks about how the policy and procedures subcommittee is going to make some changes. And I know that was our discussion. Recommended policy. I know that was our discussion in January. I think it might make sense for Mr. Steele and Mr. Heynard to remind. Talk to each other. Talk to each other. And just to clarify what changes we talked about in January. Yes. Because I think there was, it's been so long that things haven't been forgotten. So, yes. OK. Great. OK. So what are we up to now? So, so we voted that as amended. Yes. I'm sorry. That was 7-0. 7-0. OK. So, facilities. Mr. Thielman. There's really, I mean, while the school and task force met, and we endorsed the plan for the Hardy School, which is really going to be presented by town meeting, and to town meeting by the Capital Planning Committee. And so, I mean, hopefully it will pass. And. Yeah, it's on the special. Yeah, it's on the special town meeting. And so, I, you know, hopefully it'll pass. Can I ask a question? So, is the, is there dealing with the cafeteria issue going to be covered under those plans? So, what we did, yes. So, what we said was that it was going to be addressed during the design phase. I mean, the committee talked about it. The school and task force talked about it at length. The, I mean, Adams Chaplain summed it up well on that. The committee could give an opinion now, and whether the hallway should be cut off or not. But at the end of the day, it would be resolved in the design phase in which the architects and the school administration would be done. We think the money is efficient. Yes, the money is sufficient. The money is sufficient to do interruption. Okay, got it. Okay. Mr. Hiner. Thank you. That's exactly how I remember it at enrollment. But at Permanent Town Building Committee, Mr. Chaplain said, no, the only thing going forward from that would be the possibility of using additional rooms and not touch the cafeteria. Being 71 years old, I figured I heard it wrong. I deferred to my young colleague here. He heard it. I heard it the same way. He heard it wrong, then. No, but I think I've heard different things at different times. So that's why I'm curious what it is. No, no, no, what I'm saying is, if it's the intent, what I understood the intent of the enrollment committee, we spent a lot of time discussing the three options and stuff, and I thought we landed on a recommendation. None of them. Right, well, a recommendation, but still to be considered. All he heard was repurposing, in other words, not doing any renovation, repurposing one of the other rooms. And so I would ask Dr. Bodhi to talk to him and make sure that Heidi gets the best thing going forward before we go to town meeting. That's the only thing. Well, I mean, you can't. You're going to get the money allocated. Yeah, we'll get the money allocated. You're going to get the money allocated, and then I thought. So it's not going to be determined in the design phase? It's not going to be determined in the design phase. OK, so the superintendent. OK, it's Adam that's having a problem remembering not us. OK, well, he's not here to defend himself. Four of us remember different things. Yeah, he's not in the room. Throw him under the desk. Mr. Shabbeling, I think what he also heard was that the building principal talking about other options that might actually work better than the demolition suggestions were made. She had concerns about the demolition of that hallway. Right. Yeah. She wanted to keep the whole floor of the building. And then there were different options for the elimination of the stage. So at the end of the day, if we wanted to make the cafeteria bigger, the design people and the educators have to try to figure out a solution. Mr. Cardin. So I guess the key is we have the second review of the costs. Are those added costs included in the plan? Yes. The demolition of the hallways that are included in that. Yeah, there's enough money in the end. Not to do any of these options. No, the third one wasn't. The third one was the massive one of taking out the stairwell and stuff like that. That was like $200. It's still only $100,000. It wasn't much. So if that's wrong, since I'm coming from the. I think that there was a peer review and they feel that the money that is allocated is sufficient. And because the cafeteria costs are not going to be. Not big. They're not huge. And she's not in favor of the eliminating that hallway. Or the stairs, which was the expensive part of a really expensive option. Because of the flow of traffic in the building. I have to say, having my kids having gone to that school, I totally get that. Yeah, so if anyone would know, I was like, you know. Totally, totally get that. But I hardly know it. Terrible, terrible.  Ms. Starks. Gibbs Committee met today as Ms. Bode. Dr. Bode talked about. We mostly talked about color schemes and floor tiles and, I don't know, it was interesting. I don't think we made any decisions. We kind of sent them back with some further thoughts. But I think we did. I think we didn't make specific. We gave them guidance. That's what they were looking for today. And there were some interesting thoughts brought up about how busy it should be in terms of sensory overload for some students. There was a lot of good discussion and points made about that. It was a very thoughtful discussion. While we're on the talk, I ran into a retired principal from Wayland who volunteers in Thompson. And she just said whoever designed the Thompson School made the most beautiful school she's ever seen from elementary school. So you were on that committee. I was you. So I would say the experts. I was, I didn't go to the design. It was on the show. But I didn't go to the design of picking up the colors. No, it's a beautiful school. But so that's a good. Right. But I think that the important thing to understand about Gibbs. Thompson was brand new school. We knocked it down, started over, built a sunny, wonderful, roundy kind of very modern building. Gibbs is a really old, dark square that we're trying to fix. And so that's what the architect was trying to point out, is we're going to need to bring in the outside by adding color because we're not going to have the windows. We can't, we're not building new. So we have to do a little bit more with color and ideas to really kind of give it that. And they're trying. I mean, some of their ideas for bringing light in and that kind of thing are really cool. Well, I'm saying the last color committee we had did a really good job. Yeah. We have a track record in this town, a good color. Good colors. Good colors. Yeah. Track committee? Track record? Track record. Good color committees, yeah. One school. All right. Legal services review. Is there any motion there? I plan on talking with Mr. Cardin to see where we are. And if we have any further recommendations for the committee going forward? Warrant committee. Sign the bills. Excuse me. I signed the payroll. Liaison reports. Yes, Mr. Cardin. Firm and sound building committee. On each one of the buildings, they understood. They're not letting me even ask the question. They all, first of all, start off with saying we're on schedule. So. Others? Dr. S&B. AF is having its trivia bee in a few weeks. And they're looking for teams. We are actually one of the few teams that are already listed. We are. We don't have a name yet. Yeah. Who are you? We need a name and we need costumes. It's Mr. Schlickman. Mr. Thielman and myself. And I think we had tasked Mr. Schlickman with naming because you're so good at that. I have not come up with a good name yet, but we also need costumes. I can think about costumes. I can do that. But I'm not going to get a name. You've got the costume I can name the costume. Oh, I should do that first. Well, I think that they have to coordinate because the name key has to align to the costume. Let me think about that. Maybe we can ask the color committee for somebody to talk. I think, however, that we're running into a problem here. If this qualifies for executive session because there's a competition involved for the costume, that if we start discussing costumes and names, we might be. The judge might, yeah. No, it's not the judge. It is the fact that other teams might hear this public item. Oh, we're on public right now. Negotiating this out in public might be detrimental to the best interests of the committee. I actually feel like open meeting law doesn't quite apply to choosing the name and the costume for the trivia bee because it's not something before the school committee. And I think we can coordinate. That is my opinion. But we can ask our lawyer. Yes, this is our. Figure it out. Let's go on. So we can do this. So we're all looking forward to it. It's always a lot of fun. OK, so to our wide viewing audience, they're looking for more teams. I would love more teams. Go to the A.F. website and sign up. And it could be your soccer club, your group from school, group from your alumni from college, anything. Great. And I understand there are going to be fifth graders there this year. Yes. Yeah, fifth graders. They're doing different. They're going to have real competition. The first swarm will be fifth graders. That's awesome. That's great. Now, we did win the costume contest last year. Did, without any coordination. OK, so other liaison reports. Announcements. I have a couple. This Saturday on the 11th, Beats for Eats is going to be having their friend riser. And this is to raise money for Arlington Eats, which is a program that provides food to families in need over the school breaks and weekends and vacations. So if a student is not unfree and reduced lunch, before this program was in place, there was no option for school vacation and weekends. And so this is a fabulous addition to our town. Really a good example of how caring our community is. And they're doing their friend raise, and they raise tons of money. And it's on Saturday the 11th. It's in town hall starting at 7.30. And the other announcement I want to make is that on Thursday we talked about this a little bit. The 9th, we are having a town hall imagining education forum. And so that's going to be a forum. It's going to be really exciting to talk about all the really cool, innovative stuff that the Arlington Public Schools has been doing.  I think there's something like 20 presentations now, or more? More, 24 more. And the format will be that it's going to be three presentations. So unfortunately, even though there's so many amazing things, each parent will only be able to go to three presentations. But we hope to have the materials from the other presentations available online. And we're going to try this thing where the presenters are going to have a recorder near them, where hopefully that can get captured on video and auditory so that hopefully we can make that if it works. It's new. We might have technical problems. But if it works, we can make those presentations available to people online as well. So it's going to be a really exciting evening. I encourage you to come. The 9th, it starts at 6.45. And it goes until 8. Yeah, Dr. Allison, maybe? I had one thing. It's not an announcement so much. But I'm going to go to the MASC's presentation on budgeting on Saturday. If anyone else is going, we get carpool. If not, I'll report back at our next meeting. Great. Where is it? Framingham. Any other announcements? OK, future agenda items. I'll start in the comment. Yes, Ms. Starks. So I was intrigued on the MASC list that I can't remember what it was, Amherst Pelham Regional Public Schools has come up with rights of undocumented students and protocols for ICE access to schools. I really like what they put together. I really like that they have laid out some protocol for the fact that how, if they were ever requested in, how that would work, how they would work with the superintendent, how that would all go down. And I want to recommend that maybe our policy people think about that as well. Because I really thought that that was interesting. So send it to everybody. Yes, so do you want the policy to bring forth to us in a couple of weeks a suggestion? Or do we want to just talk about whether that's something we want to do in two weeks? I would refer it to the policy and have them look at it and then have them think if they think that we should have such a policy, maybe we could talk about it. Great. We'll put it on the agenda to talk about nevertheless. I have no problem with that, but I'm assuming, I'm still trying to get hold of Mr. Gilbert to come to talk to the subcommittee for the procedure. But since this was one of their initiatives, I'm assuming in updating our book that it will be. Well, I think this is more time-critical than that. So I'm going to move quick on that. Yeah, this is really time-critical. Fine. Yeah, it's got to be done in those few weeks. Dr. Al-Sampi. Can we bounce things to legal without going through the whole committee as a member of policy? Because I just want to be sure if we're doing something like this that it passes legal muster. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We've done it in the past. Yeah. There was some discussion from Mike Gilbert about this motion on the right. So there was some on the list. Well, he got a lot of eggs thrown at him for what he said. Oh, I didn't read that part. Oh, yeah. A lot of people were like, no, none of those actually directly discuss any of the things that Amherst Pellum did. I see. None of those give anybody the rights that they should have. No, I don't think we need to go to outside council with this because Doug Hyam has been. Doug can help us. That's who we'll go. I just mean. OK. OK, so it'll be on the agenda in a couple of weeks and potentially we're the resolution to vote on. And if not, we'll have a discussion. So that sounds good. Well, I'll make that a priori. I'll make that a priori. What? It's a policy or a resolution? They did a resolution. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, but we want policy to take a look at it. Yes. OK. But this resolution stated a policy of the district. Right. Right. So that it is. It is a policy change. It is policy, even if we're not putting it in the manual, we're giving direction to the administration. Right. Right. Good. Yes, Mr. Heiner. You mentioned earlier we'll have a night to discuss warrant articles. Yes. I just want to just clarify or verify with you that Article 19 is one of those. Yes. Thank you. Yes, so this was a request by Mr. Schlickman. And I don't have the numbers in front of me, but there are articles. We're going to discuss three warrant articles that was requested to put on the agenda. Article 19 was one of them. One of them. And then the other one was the appointment for the Pride. The appointment for the Pride committee and the one on the big one on the sanctuary town. Yes, OK, right. There's people are talking about fiscal impact to schools as being a reason to support or oppose it. Right. As soon as that happens, we're brought into it, and I think we should discuss it and have a say. So that's going to be the agenda. Any other additional agenda item requests? Ms. Drainer? I asked you for one. We postponed it from tonight to the future. Yes, yes. And we're going to add that to Brighton. Thank you. Yes, OK. OK, so I think we're looking to adjourn and go into executive session. Oh, is that right? We don't adjourn. We don't adjourn because we're going to say sections. So we're looking to go into executive session. Sorry. To conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or nonunion personnel or contract negotiations with union and or nonunion in which have held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. To conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which have held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect. Collective bargaining may also be conducted to discuss safety and security, to discuss open meeting law of violation complaint, negotiations update, AEA MOA agreement for kindergarten teachers 2017 to 2018. Vote to approve the following executive session minutes, January 26, 2017. And I think we're coming back out for a vote. We are not. We actually decided that we can defer that. No, we'll do it next time. Yeah, we can defer that till later. OK, so roll call to go into executive session. No, is that right? Yes. OK, good. Thought I got it right. Mr. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. OK, great.