Good evening everybody. This is January 14th, 2016. Regular meeting of the Arlington School Committee. Welcome. We begin with a moment of silence for Christopher Landford who worked with us with Metco, who unfortunately lost his life over the weekend. Thank you. We have a lot of very impressive art around the room. There is, from the AP Studio Art Drawing, the large charcoal observational figure drawings displayed, demonstrate the advanced placement art students pushing their boundaries about what a drawing can be and how to create it. Then from the AP Studio Art Design, the photographs we see, are from Digital Photography and AP Design students. Contour and Zentangle portraits from Ms. Muse. We have a Muse in the Art Department. That's inspiring. Students explore the ability of lying to communicate exaggeration, expression, and form through a mixed media portrait project. Then there's nose, eye, mouth, and ear paintings similarly from Ms. Muse. As students studied elements of portraiture, including eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and brought them to life in paint. Then there's pixelated portraits again, Ms. Muse. Students began this project by experimenting with monochromatic value paintings with smoothed and stippled variations and hand paintings again, Ms. Muse. Throughout art history, artists have explored the possibility of hands as a vehicle to convey personal emotions. Color symbolism and embroidery from Ms. Rebola Thompson. Students created an original line drawing that was then heat transferred onto canvas, painted, embroidered, and framed. Silhouette and symbols of self-portrait using personal identity webs is inspiration. Students created silhouettes of self-portraits that were filled with visual symbols that define them in some way. Personality, interest, talent, streams, goals, values, etc. And the zentangles, again by Mrs. Rebola Thompson, students created zentangle drawings one line at a time, expanding each drawing square by combining several tangles or patterns in an unplanned way. So that's what we've got around the room. It's very impressive. We now go to public participation. By our policy, public participation sessions are limited to three minutes. We are happy to listen to you. We do not respond back in public session. We may ask you to come back for a subcommittee meeting or regularly scheduled meeting if that necessitates an agenda item, but we don't discuss things presented here. First is Jane Morgan. Welcome. Thank you. Hi, my name is Jane Morgan. I'm a Stratton parent of a third grader, two first graders at a two-year-old. And last week at our PTO meeting, Mr. Hainer came and talked us through some of the work that the Budget Subcommittee is doing and making some decisions about all of the proposals, all of which look great, obviously. And I recognize that this is a group that would fund all of them, were they able to, but you guys need to make some choices about which pieces you're going to be able to do for next year. And he suggested that if there were pieces that were compelling for us, that we share that with you so that you knew that. For me, the biggest piece for my family, I'm not a budget, school budget expert at all. I'm a kindergarten parent expert, I'd like to think, because I've had three kindergartners in the last three years. So I've been a kindergarten parent a lot of times. And for my family, of course, it's the biggest item, it's the biggest money piece, but would be the full time kindergarten aides. My daughter was in kindergarten, she's in third grade at Stratton when Thompson was there. She had a phenomenal, incredible aid in her kindergarten class who has gone on to become a full time kindergarten teacher at Thompson. She was outstanding. The value by divided by salary that was received for her would have been extraordinary because she was so good. Last year, my twins were in kindergarten at Stratton. They definitely, it happens sometimes in kindergarten where you just get a mix of kids because you don't know who you're going to get. And there definitely were a group of them that shouldn't have been together. And that happens. And they're in first grade now and everybody's been split up and everything is great. So it's all fine. But I think they would have benefited so much from having a full time aid in their classroom. Because so much of what went wrong there happened at the end of the day, because five and six year olds get really tired. And it's hard when you're in school and doing hard academic work all day to make it to now 230 and keep yourself together. And having another body in the room until 230 would be fantastic. So anyway, thank you. Thank you very much. Next will be Juliet Moore. Hello, and thank you so much for taking my comments. And I want to say thank you all for all of your all the time that you spend. I've been trying to keep up with you at some of your meetings and I'm exhausted. So I've been going to a lot of things. But I wanted to come tonight first to give an update. A bit of an update on the survey that an Arlington parent enrollment group developed to gather data to help shape the conversation around enrollment issues at the middle school on Tuesday night at the task force meeting. Steve Liggett updated in real time. And we wanted to take this opportunity to share some very preliminary results that the survey still open, but to share some preliminary results with the greater school committee. We've had 768 respondents, which was really pleased that we had such a wide representation. And it's really nicely distributed across town at this point. And we're still trying to push it out into different places, different people that might not have had a voice yet. And just to be brief, because I know I have a very short period of time. But in terms of what people felt in favor of or strongly in favor of, and some of the options that we gave, permanent or temper temporary modules, 20 at the oddison 22% were in favor or strongly in favor, having Gibbs as an East Arlington middle school, 74% of the respondents were in favor. Using Gibbs as a townwide sixth grade, 41% strongly in favor or in favor. Using Gibbs as an eighth grade, 23% bringing the eighth grade to a renovated high school, 17% were in favor or strongly in favor. To change the the school year in terms of like the time trying to make an all to change the time like go through the summer things like that, 4% in favor or strongly in favor, permanent building on the crusher lot was 42% in favor or strongly in favor. And I realized that this is a snapshot and one moment of time that as information comes out, people's opinions may change. But I think it's very important when you have such large proportions of people stating their opinions that we that that should be acknowledged. So that was one. That was my primary preliminary. My first thing that I want to talk about the second thing I want to talk about I may be running out of time. But I just wanted to make a mention of our case for the East Arlington neighborhood middle school and all the benefits that can come from that. I'm putting together some data. So what I'll do and a lot of people are contributing it to it is share it with you as a document so that way you'll have an opportunity to read it. But it includes things like making a walkable middle school will allow better school accessibility for students on IEPs. Parents of those students meet annually at least and very often more than that. And significant differences are found between students who parents students whose parents participate in their IEP meetings and those who don't with higher overall grade point averages and for students whose parents can participate when you bring a school into a neighborhood you're better able to allow parents who don't have access to cars who don't have access to transportation better access to the school. I have so many things to talk about and about how proximity at school to can have a positive effect on attendance how placing a middle school closer to the majority of Arlington's low income housing will decrease the likelihood of absences and tiredness due to transportation issues. Low income students are four times more likely to be chronically absent than others often for reasons beyond their control including transportation. So I have so many different points and I don't want to take up too much time of this over over three minutes now. So we're all well over three minutes now. So I'll send that out to you but I just want to share some of the highlights. Please share it with us in writing especially when you get when you close the survey so we can see the number. Absolutely. Thanks very much. Thank you. Mara Vats. You think we're cousins maybe. Yeah I think probably. So my name is Mara Vats and I'm here to basically I'm seconding what Jane said about the kindergarten aids. We just bought a house in Arlington. This fall we moved from North Cambridge. I have two kids. The oldest one is four and she'll start kindergarten at the Thompson School in 2017 and the public schools was the major reason why we decided to move to Arlington and buy a house. I watched all of my friends struggling with the with the Cambridge Kindergarten lottery. We wanted nothing to do with that. We loved the neighborhood schools in Arlington. But now that we're here and I have seen the enrollment studies. I'm a little bit nervous about kindergarten. They're going to be big classes. My daughter's not used to that. She's in a preschool class of 20 right now and there are often four adults in the room and it is still chaos. I mean it's a great we're very happy with it. But you know 24 and five year olds is it's chaos. So it would be very important just to my peace of mind and to my daughter's peace of mind to have more adults in the room throughout the day. And as Jane said afternoons are extremely difficult for young children. My daughter still naps often in the afternoon.  And any kind of transition of personnel is also difficult for small children. They feel particularly attached to an aide who then has to leave during the day. That's an emotional disruption that would happen every day. Those are my main points. Thank you. Thank you very much. We now come to the review and approval of the AHS program of studies for the 2016-17 school year. Dr. Brody. I'd like to ask Dr. Janger and Mr. McCarthy to come up. Mr. McCarthy is the assistant principal of the school and he does a lot of the work on the program of studies as well as scheduling of the high school. Dr. Janger our high school principal. Welcome to both of you. Good evening. Thank you. I'm just going to grab yours because mine seemed to have fallen into my stack. Thank you very much for having us here. So what we've distributed to the school committee at this point is a two page list of changes in the program of studies not typos and clarifications of language but substantive changes and then the new program of studies itself. As you can see there were not envisioning a wide range of changes this year in part because given staffing levels and the anticipated non-large increases in staffing we don't really have a lot of flexibility in terms of what it is we're doing and a lot of what we're going to do will be within the context of classes that we already have. There are a couple of things I just wanted to direct people's attention to. The first is a policy update and if you look at the top there's a statement there. Our past practice has been to allow students six weeks to decide whether or not to take an honors or a curriculum a level class in what are called heterogeneous classes or to drop a class without there being anything on their transcripts on reviewing this with students and guidance. We've come to the determination that that six week wait period isn't doing the teachers or the students any favor. It tends to put students in a position of being behind the eight ball if they wait six weeks to make a final choice on classes. So we're looking at for next year putting that to a three week change period. Hopefully that will mean that we can settle our classes and get students focused more quickly and we're focusing on having guidance do a lot more talking to people beforehand about making those choices right in the start. As you'll see again the list of classes the one thing I particularly wanted to note was that a number of these classes are 2.5 credit classes. One of the things we use these classes for is to find out if there's interest but also to see whether we can shift the way classes are structured. So sometimes we'll float a class out there to see which students enroll in them. The reason we switched over to try and create more half credit class half I'm sorry half year classes. There are 2.5 credit classes is in order to give students more flexibility in their schedule both to avoid having unnecessary study halls but also to try a lot of things earlier on in their program. We have a wide range of options but we don't have a lot of slots early on in the students career for them to be able to try a lot of things. So those are the main things if you look at courses that we've removed most of those are courses that did not have high levels of interest or have been consolidated into other programs. Questions or comments? Mr. Heiner? I apologize for not asking it earlier. The change from the three to six weeks how are you going to go about publicizing this so I don't turn around and say I didn't know in the fourth week. So we end up putting the program of studies it's sent out in the guidance newsletter. We send multiple reminders through email and we do post it on our website as well. Is your handbook electronic or is it paper? So would you be making the change at least on the electronic? Oh yes. Thank you. We reprint it every summer so we would have new updated copies for next year. Thank you. Mr. Thielman? The curriculum instruction assessment and accountability subcommittee met beforehand to meet with Bill and Matt to go through the changes and we voted 3-0 and endorse them. Okay. Any other questions or comments on this? Hearing none I'll entertain a motion to approve. Motion by Mr. Thielman. So moved. Seconded by Mr. Pierce. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That's the unanimous vote. Thank you very much. I don't know if the committee would like to hear anything about some of the changes that have happened at the high school this year one of which is the advisory program and this was a funding issue as well as our budget last year. And contractual. Yes. But it's an opportunity they're here. I just saw Senator Donnelly come in but we could have a few minutes if there's any questions. Also for parents that are listening I think the high school has been doing a lot of innovative work particularly around the internship program and if you want to talk a little bit about that as well. How long do we have? So first the advisory so backing up from the advisory this year we switched from a seven-day rotating schedule which many people felt difficult to follow to a five-day rotating schedule in gaining a little bit of time around less passing time and sort of more efficient use of time. We were able to create two periods as we call an X block. On Tuesdays that X block is an opportunity for students to sort of de-stress to meet with student to meet with teachers for support to meet with clubs for support and then on Thursday we have a committee of teachers it's a teacher led committee developing advisory programs and the goal of advisory is to build relationships to be an efficient conduit for communicating things to students without pulling people out of class time to minimize interruptions in the school day and the school routine and to build a positive climate and culture and we've been working with a consultant over the last year developing trainings for the staff and doing this and working with the students around a whole curriculum of activities. One of the wonderful things about it actually as a professional development tool is fun is that it's a rare opportunity that in high school all of our specialists are doing the same thing and so when we're learning things about questioning students or working with groups or classroom management those tools become tools that translated the kind of teaching and learning we want in the regular classroom because you could do it in this coaching environment but in the end coaching and building relationships and conversational practice and discourse is what we want to be seeing in the regular classroom as well. We started to work a lot more in internships which last year we I think at 15 this year we were up to about 25 or 30 we're hoping to have about 70 to 80 next year in terms of placements. So the internships are now a relatively structured curriculum opportunity for students to have job experiences during the junior and senior year and the placements range from MGH working in hospitals to working in labs to working with lawyers to working doing culinary work. It's really a wide range of opportunities and I hope that's something that really grows I think it's something we might consider really expanding something that becomes a common experience for all students. So that's what we have and other things that are my head list. I think the other thing that's worth noting also while I've got a moment at the microphone is where we've been going with technology in terms of the high school. Just two years ago the high school teachers had XP computers that would take a fairly long time to boot up. Last year we were able to give everybody new MacBooks and begin to make sure that everybody had projection in every classroom and experiment with Chromebooks and iPads. This year with support from the A.F. and the capital committee we have a laptop cart with instrumentation and science. We have nine Chromebook carts which are being piloted by groups of teachers in terms of a connected classroom environment. We have Chromebooks sort of in small supplies all throughout the school and it's really been remarkable. I was sort of figuring that the level of participation and impact on classrooms would take two or three years more than where we are now but many of the students are already even without having gone anywhere near what's called a bring your own device or a one-to-one sort of environment. Classrooms are already really working on Google Classroom and other connected things to be largely paperless and doing large levels of interactive work. So we're hoping in the next year to really move as I've said if you looked at digital devices in the high school about three years ago our policy was do not bring them to school. In the last two years we switched to you can bring them to school and I would assume that over the next years after that we will be switching to please bring them to school and the idea is that I think we're getting to the point now where we have enough within reach of having enough devices so the teachers know they can get their hands on what they need to do instruction and we can supplement that with devices that the kids are able to bring from home. I think at this point things like Chrome books can be gotten for 110 to 250 dollars and they have a huge educational impact and once students know that that's something that's useful to have in class they'll bring them. The other thing that's remarkable right now is that most kids have one of these and although they can be distractions manageable in the classroom they're great instructional devices as well. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Any other questions? Hearing none what we're going to do is we're going to take some things out of order. In there are a couple of housekeeping things. I did not mention that Dr. Allison Amby is homesick today. She's recovering from the virus. It seems to be going around as affected a couple of the other members. I want to welcome a Bishop Baird of the table. Liz Higgins is a grade one teacher at the Bishop's School. She's the second vice president of AEA and won the right to come sit in the AEA rep seat for the school committee meeting and we're happy to have you. The website design item on the agenda will be postponed because there are going to be some changes as a result of some discussion. We don't have the legislators here so we'll move on to the draft calendar item. We have one. We're going to wait for the other two. We're going to wait for the other two. We have them scheduled for 7.15 and we have one. So to give them a full group we'll move down the agenda to the review draft calendar for 2016-17, Dr. Bodie. What I would like to have happen tonight is that the committee take this as a first read and we would have a vote on the draft calendar for next year at the next meeting. I think parents right now would very much like to know what the first day of school will be next year and what will be the last. As we've done in the past, we will not have on here where the parent conferences are but I would hope to be able to give you that information sometime in the spring and publicize it. So the first day of school has not changed in terms of structure. We are going to begin on the Tuesday after Labor Day next year which puts our school on the agenda. So the last day, I believe at the 27th? Day 185 is the 27th. Yes. If we have no snow, day 180 is June 20th. Yes. I know that the AEA is interested and as I am as well of trying to set some calendars up this spring that show the start date for September 18 as well as the year after. But for right now, what we need to do is to get this publicized so parents know they can plan their summer plans and any major vacations next year during school vacations to know exactly when they are occurring. Yes. Cursy has sent me some questions for the meeting which I'll read and her one was partially answered right now. When are we going to get ahead and plan out in advance? So I guess that is what we'll be making with AEA to try to establish calendars for another couple of years. And when might we have a point where we can start talking to that with AEA? There have been conversations with the idea that it would not change next year and, you know, in the future. It's on the radar. The commitment that we made was that if we're going to make a structural change we'd give people at least a year's notification so that if in 2017 we wanted to start before Labor Day that we'd make that decision before the end of the school year so the people had more than a year to plan it out. Agreed. Yeah. Mr. Heiner. Last year we got real close to the end of the year and as seasons change I think we have a list of holidays and religious observances and we have added, we have three days in our calendar right now that in my mind should be eliminated and respected within this list and give us a little bit more of a buffer. Not for next year. It's part of the conversation going forward. We have in the teachers and staff contracts and everything else the recognition that if it's not part of the regular calendar and some person has an observance they have a right to go to their supervisor through the superintendent everything and as far as I know it's always been respected. I'm not looking for this just on a matter of squeaking three more days for our calendar but as you look at this list it's quite comprehensive and there's no one of these days. So in my mind going forward I'd like us to look at this as a factor observe the individuals beliefs and things of that nature and respect them and the students but everyone get treated the same thank you. Dr. Seuss. So Linda Hans and I brought before the community relations of committee the possibility of doing sort of a joint parent teacher survey to ask some of these questions for example about religious holidays about Labor Day and we would like to we're talking sort of at the end of January we think that's a good thing to do now we still have enough time to gather that input to help us inform about future decisions and we agree that it would be wrong to make any changes for next year. I think people's lives I know mine is that that crazy as it is you sort of plan out a year or a half in advance and so we just really need to give people the opportunity to it needs to take a while to make those changes but we do want to ask the community we want to talk to teachers and want to get their insight in what their preferences are. It could be that it's even that there's no clear answer but I think that's a good point to make. Thank you. Mr. Thielman. In last year's calendar we put in the school committee meeting dates. So I think it was maybe as a policy procedure subcommittee or so we should probably make sure that's in here. Yeah. I'd like to make a motion. Okay, Dr. Seuss. I'd actually like to make a very common for middle school and high school events to happen on Thursday and so last year for example the athletic parent student night the freshman orientation the open house of the high school we have a big something coming up on mental health and suicide awareness all happening on Thursday during school committee meetings. There were other events that happened on Thursday that didn't happen it seems easier to change our calendar than to ask high school and middle school to change their approach which I think they've chosen Thursday as for a reason that I think we should respect. So that is my motion my motion is so I actually don't care. So either Tuesday or Wednesday I think it would be a better date. I'll second it for the purpose of discussion. Okay. Well, hold on. Not entertain a vote on this but I will entertain a discussion. Okay. And entertain a motion to send that question to the appropriate subcommittee. Mr. Thielman. Yeah, so it's there's a policy that we would have to amend. That goes to policies. So what I would do is I would I'd like to amend your motion to direct the policies and procedures subcommittee to study. Okay. This issue and also recommend the meeting dates for next year. Okay. Okay. That sounds great. Okay. And report back by when Paul, what do you think? Do we don't currently do we currently have a policy? Why don't we ask them to report back by the first meeting in February by the first meeting in February and no pressure. I mean, it's seven of us. I mean, this isn't that difficult. Very difficult last time we did it. I understand. But I mean, it is seven of us. The other thing I'd like the subcommittee to look at as well as the meeting date is the meeting time. I would be very grateful to have an extra half hour before we start. Cindy's going ick. You know, by the time I get home, I could barely run through the house, feed the cat, turn around and come here. So, you know, there are three or four or five or six years ago, right? When you first came out, there was a lot of debate on this. So, we have, there's a history. I think you might have been taken. You took your your leave. When I left the committee in 2007, we were meeting 730 on Tuesdays, and I came back to 630 on Thursdays. Because, one, it was running too late at 11 o'clock on a Friday night at 5 a.m., I am never going to move away from Thursday. So, no matter what you suggest, I will vote against it. We all voted. I can't be cratered for a whole week.  They run too long, and I just, I can't do it. So, okay. So, hold on. This is taking control of the committee. You may be sorry. In retrospect of this chair, putting forward a later time to start, I think it may fail because of the record of this chair's ending meetings. There you go. I can take a shot at the member who's complaining about how long he talks in a meeting, but obviously, this is the, the constraint is this and understand under the open agreement. The only time we really can talk to each other is here in an official meeting. So that I've endeavored to give everybody a chance to have a conversation and put out the points and not stifle the conversation as long as you want to talk, I tend to let you talk. It's who I am. And that's my style now. If Dr. Seuss is going to run a heavier gavel next year, so be it. But you're stuck with me until April. Okay, so we have a motion to refer this whole matter to the policies and procedures committee. Any other conversation on the motion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? That's a unanimous vote. Whatever is, excuse me. Oh, so we're, so I don't think that we have anything else to say on the committee. I have a question. So this is first read. When do you want to do second read? I think parents do want to know. I would like to do second read at the next committee meeting. What we can do is take the results of your policy and we will look at our early release days and parent days. Now for elementary, the early release days are going to continue next year on Tuesdays. So that's not going to be a very early release days. So I would expect to come back with an updated more detail later this spring. But what's really important right now is for parents to know the major start dates, vacation times and all of that for next year. So just we can approve a calendar and then put the school committee dates. That's exactly what we did last year. We set the primary release dates last year. So we can change the dates. And I think that our policy was amended the last time to set it on Thursdays, but give us discretion on which Thursdays going through. And if we do stay on Thursdays, I would ask our staff, our principals to not schedule major events and conflict with our meetings. I mean, there are 180 school days and we're going to have 14 of them. Mr. Hayner. I hear what you're saying, but I think I agree with Jennifer in the fact that it's much easier for us to adjust than them. It's even difficult having two schools not compete with each other for sets of parents. There are several meetings that I've wanted to attend. One of the ones you mentioned tonight, because my commitment is here, I'm not going to go into detail. I don't know if they have a big event like open house that you can't find a part of. No, but the program that she just mentioned about suicide prevention. Any other conversation on the issues of calendars? None. We now have our three legislators in the room and we'd like to welcome you to come forward to the table of questions. Thank you. Finally, representative Dave Rogers and former school committee member, former student rep and current state rep, Sean Garber. I was sitting here. I was here through both of them. Somebody's old, Paul. I'm not sure who it is. Somebody's moved on. I don't know if we have a meeting age so we could go out after a meeting. We don't anymore. Is that a violation of the meeting law? We don't talk about business. We know when LOL, they immediately adjourned to the bar across the street after they completed the meeting. If only we had one right across the street. They so could be the dispensary. Okay. We're just in a good mood tonight. I have a feeling as we get to chapter 70. Anyway, I will start off by asking our esteemed senator to start the conversation. Thank you so much. Members of the committee, thank you so much for having us here. And we're here to hear from the school committee on what their questions are on both for the foundation budget and how we're going to handle that in the legislature and any other questions you have on the budget issue and what we see on Beacon Hill on how we're going to address, I think a very good report. I think that's the process of what you think is going to happen between now and June. Yeah, I'd be glad to. We're going to do the budget. The governor will be putting out his budget. And I can't figure out his math, even though we've had somewhere around $115 million in new revenue. He's saying that we're looking at a billion-dollar structural that will do the numbers. I'm not A&F. I think that he is not going to have additional. Again, I disagree with the governor and with all due respect to my colleagues, the speaker of the house and the chairman of the ways and means committee in the house, that we have a we don't have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem. If you look at all the last 15 years, including schools, they've been cut and real inflationary dollars they've been cut. And so in the senate I'm looking forward to and I would love to see a budget come out of the house that has actually taxes in it, or revenues in it, so that we can address, I think, a very, very important issue in making sure that we fund our budget. And what I see throughout the my district, I have five communities. And it's consistent throughout those communities when talking to businessmen and talking to people that are in those communities, one of the most important decisions companies make when they come into our area is the school system for the people they're trying to attract to these companies. We have a GE come into Boston, and one of the first things they ask is when they recruit people with families, they want to make sure that their children go to really top quality schools. So I fully support and would be looking forward to supporting funding for both Chapter 70 and to address this foundation budget. And if looking at a 25% phasen, I believe the dollars on the first part of the phasen, you'd be looking at $95 million. And when it was totally phased in, you'd be looking at $431 million approximately over four-year cycle. And as much as I support making sure that we got the revenues to do that, that has to be generated and constitutionally has to be generated in the House of Representatives. So we need to get to the Governor to urge them that this is a very important issue in order to do what we need the revenues. Mr. Garibaldi. Thank you. So I'll speak and maybe Representative Rogers will speak and then we'll open up to questions and whatever format the Chairman wants to go in. Mr. Chairman, Superintendent Bode, members of the committee, thank you so much for having us here. It's great to have the House budget and later in May, the Senate budget. So this obviously is a huge issue for Arlington. When I was on the school committee here as Chairman Schlickman raised, this was an issue that we really wanted to see. We wanted to see a report that showed not just how much we're investing in education in the Commonwealth, but what the gap is and how much we're underinvesting in our kids in all 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth. So I want to answer the amendment that got us the foundation budget review commission started along with my colleagues. And it's pretty stark. It's pretty, as Senator Donnelly mentioned, and I agree with everything he stated, it's a pretty damning report. It's a great report. It's a comprehensive report, but it really shows that we have been underinvesting in education. We have to wrap our minds around it and our hands around it and raise the necessary revenue to implement the recommendations. But the truth is, to implement all the recommendations, it would be about Senator Donnelly said $400 million. I think that's right. And to do all of it, probably about a half a billion dollars. We spend in Chapter 70 about $500 million right now. Chapter 70, when it was completely implemented, took about seven years to get fully implemented. I'm hoping that's not how long this foundation budget review commission goals get fully implemented, but they will happen over a few years, maybe three to four years. And so I think as legislators, and especially legislators representing the commission on which areas of the commission's report, we try to implement first. And I would have one recommendation that I would kind of an action step that I would recommend the committee really wrap their hand around it and really try to focus it. Obviously we want the whole commission implemented right away. I do as well, and I would vote for the necessary revenue. That's not going to happen. I'd be surprised if it happened. I'm certainly going to fight for it. But the specific area within the commission's recommendation is really around special education, both out of district and in district. There's a number of recommendations that would increase the amount of revenue, amount of support to school districts across the Commonwealth for out of district. And the necessary revenue to implement these recommendations, it's pretty low level stuff. Obviously it's money, it's a lot of money, but not in comparison to the rest of the recommendation. So I think that's a piece the legislature should tackle first. Other pieces in the commission's report around health care costs, the question of free and reduced lunch, the whole host of issues that I think we really need to wrap our mind around it. And you know, I will say, as Senator Donley said and I agree wholeheartedly with him, we need the revenue to do it. But the way chapter 70 was implemented over a seven year period in the 90s was economic growth. Because as you remember in the 90s we made the unwise decision in the Commonwealth to do a number of things that hurt our kids. We were able to use that economic growth to invest in our kids through chapter 70. We know it's an old formula, we know it doesn't work for the town of Arlington, that's what I've been saying on Beacon Hill for the past four terms. But my hope is with the budget, with the review commission that we can really get serious. Senator Donley mentioned there seems to be a disconnect with the projections and the amount of revenue that's coming in. Our revenues are strong. You know, despite some concerns, maybe in the future over to capital gains tax revenue, but our revenue projections are strong. And I think we should use some of that economic growth for this purpose. And I think if we really want to be serious, this term, this year, that the House and the Senate will enact the changes in district policies that just mean more revenue for you. But I seriously want to do all the phases of the commission report. If you have recommendations that you'd like to see us tackle specific pieces beyond special education that you'd like to see us prioritize, please let us know. We work very closely together, you know, and we are very ideologically similar, but we, you know, our priority is education.  Then it was Tuesday nights, but I remember being on the committee with Jeff and Paul and Kathy was here as the assistant superintendent and just looking around and saying, you know, our hands are tied. We need the state to step up. And so that's one of the reasons I ran. And this is an opportunity to do that and an opportunity to bring some of you to continue this dialogue here and on Beacon Hill on how we can get some of these recommendations passed. So, Representative Rogers. Well, thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, Superintendent Bode, it's nice to be here. I would really echo what Sean and Ken said, the senator and the rep, and I benefit from their wisdom and their having gone first. I assume most of you are familiar with reports, so I won't go too deep into that. I'd say the methodology was pretty sound. I mean, there were a lot of experts, a lot of advisors. I think there were six hearings held around the state. So I think this was done professionally. I think it's a very sound work product.  I think there, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds on numbers, but it's worth saying, I think health care costs is 140% higher. That's more than double. Think of that. That's eye-popping. And not to go off on a tangent, but the legislature passed a health care cost control bill, containment bill, 2011-2012. 40% of the state budget goes to health care and Medicaid. Think of that. Four out of every $10 at the state level goes to health care. So one of the riddles is solving the explosion in the cost of health care. That's a longer problem, a longer-term problem. That health care cost containment bill, we'll see how it works over some number of years. Special education costs another big driver. English language learners, those are the two biggies. And then there's a series of other ones, English language learners and other things that are driving these costs. And so how will this be implemented? You know, I think Representative Garbley and Senator Donnelly make a good point. It will happen over time. As Sean pointed out, the original 1993 law was about seven years in being implemented. I think this will be similar. I think the consensus revenue just was announced at 4.3% this year. I think the governor made a pledge to always keep local aid growing at least as fast as that number. I believe that's his stated position. And to Ken's point, last year he came into office saying, oh, Deval Patrick, the former governor left me a huge $768 billion deficit. That turned out to not be true. Not be accurate. Now, to be fair, to try to be fair to the governor, revenue at the state level is a moving thing. Like at the federal level you can issue treasury bills, treasury bonds and run a deficit. That's what we do at the federal level. We run big deficits. At the state level, you're always making changes through supplemental budgets throughout the year. But I think as Ken said, it's roughly $430 million to fully implement all of these changes. And that's a big number. I mean, that's a lot of money. So I think it is going to take I kind of was curious, so I thought, well, what's $430 million? What does that mean? And that's almost the exact same amount as we budgeted for all of adult mental health services in the state for this fiscal year. It's more than twice what we spend on environment and recreation programs. Department of Environmental Protection, Department of Conservation and Recreation. So I was trying to put that $430 million in perspective. It's a lot of money and there are other things that are critical spending. Obviously, we care hugely about education spending. So I was proud to cosponsor as did my colleagues, the amendment to get this study done. I think it is a sound work product. I think it's a lot of money that we've participated. What a lot of us have wondered about for a long time. I will be fighting along with my colleagues to push for implementation. I think, you know, in the interest of being candid, it's not going to happen quickly. But I do think it will happen over time. And many of you came to the forum. I think it was at the Thompson School where we all participated. And I think it's important to allow for progressive income taxation that the highest, the ballot question reads those with a million of income or more could be taxed at a higher rate. And that would bring in about $1.9 billion of revenue targeted to education and transportation. And to be candid, I just don't know how we're going to get there unless something like money bills have to emanate or originate in the house. That's the law. And the speaker said no new taxes that's in fitting with what the governor has said. You know, I disagree. I wish we would look at revenue. The speaker has twice raised revenue during his tenure in 2009 when the recession hit and closed, we raised state tax revenues. We did it again last year, or I should say in 2013, we raised the gas tax, raised cigarette taxes. But if you're talking about a big income tax raise, which is frankly, that's where the money is in the income tax. I just don't see it. And so I would vote for it. But a lot of my colleagues, it's funny, it's been a revelation for me as I've gotten to know that many of them are deathly afraid of a revenue vote. And just to finish that thought, in 2009, and Sean was there, Ken were there, there were members who lost. Lost their seats because of their revenue vote. I was out to dinner last night with a friend who I said, tell me about your career in politics and Representative Ash from yeah. He said, Dave, when I voted for that, I got beat up and I almost lost. So in this district I think most of my constituents would support a revenue vote. There are colleagues I have who are hardworking public servants. They really want to do the right thing. They care about these issues. But a revenue vote for them is their career on the line. And I just have to say that because we have to be candid about the realities of the politics. So thanks for listening and look forward to your questions. So on top of what Representative Rogers said and I think this is important I don't disagree with anything he said except you know on this political will is important. And to back up Representative Rogers mentioned the issue of the tax increase last session I voted against it so did Dave Senator Rogers. I think they should know that and the reason we voted against it were two-fold. One it was completely inadequate and very much aggressive. So I believe people in our Commonwealth want to pay for essential services. But when they see us take a tax vote and then we find out it's not enough to cover what they believe in, what they have a passion for as an education. They get upset. We need to take a vote through our vote of voting no because it was too aggressive. We need to take a vote that's progressive and adequate. And so that's an important internal conversation that's happening in the State House that's constantly happening and will continue to. So another quick thing in terms of what we will be battling we battle one's priorities, equal priorities and my goal is to try to get at least a special education recommendations on the commission report implemented. But another aspect that's a true passion for a lot of us is early ed and we have not invested in pre-K in a number of years. And so there are a lot of people on Beacon Hill that want to focus on pre-K because we focused on higher ed two years ago. And so we find ourselves balancing all great things which is why I think the needed revenue is just so important and they can go for helping our economy and helping all of our cities and towns. So thanks for having us. Mr. Chairman, I just want to make another few comments. One, I won't support any of these proposals unless the money goes with it. I will not support any more unfunded mandates to the schools. And two, I will be strongly opposing as we debate. I don't see this being as part of the debate coming up in the next several months. I do see the expansion of charter schools as being part of the debate. I will not support increasing charter schools and taking money out of the school systems that we're trying to fight for now. We don't have enough money to as you could see in this foundation report. There isn't enough money to educate our children in the public schools now. Taking more money out is not productive. So I will be opposing any proposal in charter schools and I know that that's a debate that we will be having from, you know, I think before the end of this session. So it's, I think it's one that we should take a hard look at. I'm thankful for the Senate's leadership on that issue over the past year. There's, I'm going to open this up to the members, but I do want to throw something on the table right now. There's a piece of paper on our table that arrived tonight. And the reason why I bring it up is the context is relevant to the conversation with the representatives. The town manager has come up with a number in his budget of 57 million $1,333 for fiscal 17. Which represents the fiscal 16 numbers plus a 3.5 percent increase for the remainder of the fiscal plan years of fiscal 17 through fiscal 22. That's not regular. That's the regular. 35 percent of per pupil going forward for elementary growth. In fact, has been at 25. A 10 percent differential applied to the past three years. And the reason why I'm bringing this up now, we'll discuss it as the next agenda item. And the proposal to give the schools any extra chapter 70 money that comes in over the projections for the next few years. And the fiscal 17 projected increase is $126,000. So any money above $126,000 this increase in the chapter 70 budget will fall to the schools rather than stay in the reserves for the stability plan. So understand that that constraint and offer is before us right now which we will discuss. But if this becomes the way we will be going forward, the chapter 70 revenues become even more relevant. Mr. Hayner. I appreciate you talking about the unfunded mandates. The foundation budget formula did not take any account for the unfunded mandates. I would ask both houses to strongly consider legislation controlling the department of education. They seem to be out of control. They come up with the unfunded mandates and dare you to oppose them. We are not a united front. If the 351 school departments and the individual communities stood up to the state or the department of education said no, fund it, we will do it. But every time, and you know this, I don't want to beat it, but I would ask you you are doing a heck of a job and I really appreciate you coming here. But you got, I don't mean to tell you your job, but you are in control of these people. Well, it may be easy for me to say, I appreciate that. You seem to come off the mountain and after the fact ask permission. That is the perception that we get. And they expect these to implement. I think the auditor caught them on one. I appreciate every one of your support on that. But that is one. And we get buried in these. You know that. I am preaching to the choir. Thank you. I think many of you know that we have a lot of questions. I filed a bill in the house to stop unfunded mandates and to look at all unfunded mandates and to not bestow any more until that complete report is done. And we all supported that. In addition to that was the mandate fingerprint for the background check. Both of those were, you know, big issues for us. Most of them are under the governor. And it is very frustrating when we see regulations done by the administrative agencies. Because even though you say we have control, we do not. And there are areas where, you know, to administer regulations are law, by the way, once they are implemented. And so it makes it very difficult for us as a legislature when I was the chairman of state administration and regulatory oversight was extremely frustrating when we see some of the decisions made by these administration agencies, including Jesse, that, you know, it becomes a piece that we have to change that regulation. Yes, let me just follow up. Don't you control the funding of those agencies? Well, not really because that is under the governor. The regulation does come true. The legislature doesn't like it. You still hold the purse strings. Again, easy decision. We won't get into debate. A&F does control the fund. That's okay. Okay, that's all right. Good. Well, I don't know if we all appreciate or how lucky we are to have a delegation who stands behind what we do here and what our students are doing every day in the classroom. So thank you all for coming and sharing what's going on at the state house with us. I wanted to echo something that Representative Garberley said about the pre-K and how some parents here in our community are different than in other communities, like Cambridge, like Somerville, in that they have to really fund an extra year of pre-K and there's no pre-K offered by the town for them. So I think that's a disservice to some of the residents in our community. And it would be great if the state could acknowledge that and try to do something about that. But that's all I have to say tonight. Thank you very much. Ms. Starks. So I have a question of a different sort. On the 2016 ballot we know that marijuana legalization is on there as well and looking at what's happened in Colorado and the amount of money that they've been bringing in just on the taxes alone. I'm interested in understanding best because I feel like it's kind of a done deal what we could do with that money where are people starting to think about how we can direct the monies from that because that I feel like is probably some short-term money or at least it's shorter than the constitutional amendment because if it passes which looks like it probably is going to that money is coming in sooner rather than even the constitutional amendment. So interested in kind of understanding if there have been discussions about where that might go how that might be remarked and of course if education could get a piece of that. Cindy, thank you for the question. I'm on the senate committee to look at what happens if the constitutional amendment passes and there's a group of colleagues in Colorado right now I passed on the trip but I'm on that committee and what we're going to look at is all of the aspects of how and what will happen and part of that will be the funds, the monies and where the monies will go so we'll be looking at that we'll be doing a report and I will make sure that we specifically look at what type of revenue has been brought in in Colorado and what we do with that revenue. Yeah, because I would love to know what they're doing with it and how they're dealing with it but my understanding is it's been quite a lot of money quite a boost to their state coffers so interesting to see what happens. So thank you for coming always good to see you guys here the I just, you know this but I want to say this, the enrollment in the town of Arlington is increasing substantially over the next several years and we're in a dialogue that's the best way to describe it with the town manager and town leaders about how much money is going to be in the school department budget for next year. We ask for quite a bit of an increase and I'm not sure that we're going to get as much as we'd like and so I appreciate the fact that it took seven years to implement the Chapter 70 formula the last time and I know you know this but I just want to say this publicly while we're all here together it's important that you advocate because your role in trying to help us respond to this enrollment increase is to try to get that Chapter 70 money up into the town of Arlington as fast as possible because when you're advocating at the state level I know you represent other cities and towns but they're seeing actually enrollment increases too I think and so this area this region of the state is seeing enrollment increases and we need to see that Chapter 70 money get to us sooner rather than later so I just want to emphasize that I want you to just be reminded of that the next thing to come I'll probably say the same thing because not getting that money as quickly as we'd like it hurts us and it's going to impact some of the things that we probably aren't going to be able to do next year in the school district I'll leave it at that I think as I said earlier in my statement that I'm seeing it in all my districts all my communities that people decide to move to Arlington for a reason because it's really good quality school same as Lexington and I think in an economic development aspect of it we need to make sure that we can attract good quality you know employees to a new area and the way to do that is to invest in our school system with you 100% yeah I would just say Jeff I think you're absolutely right it's kind of sad because we've been saying the same things for a long time but now it really matters because we're facing such a conversation that's really going to end up hurting our schools of Chapter 70 increases don't come in so we're all on board advocacy is something to this delegation I think does very very well certainly one of the reasons the MSBA staff recommended to the board that we rebuild Arlington High School very shortly after MSBA in the town of Arlington a committee were on Jeff to redo the Thompson so you know we'll continue to advocate and try to make it a priority for not just this budget but for next budget too and try to get it done quicker than seven years but I think implementing it like doing special ed and trying to do it in the next couple of years but trying to get it done as quickly as possible is something that's important but the revenue needs to be behind it and you know you have that support but you also have the advocacy too so thank you very much for your comments and for your leadership and I'd also quickly add that you know and yeah thanks for the question as Sean and I know every year and I probably have mentioned this to you before each of the members are invited to meet one on one with the chairman of Ways and Means happens to be Brian Dempsey right now and we're allowed to pick three line items or three things that we would advocate for to be fair to him you can imagine if 160 members each had 10 or 15 priorities that would get out of control pretty quickly and I'm in my fourth year now in each of my first three years as I sit admiring the office of the chair of Ways and Means and his fireplace his working fireplace I one of my three is always chapter 70 education always it always has been unless things change radically it always will be so I am fighting fighting fighting for more money for our schools they are so important as both Ken and Sean have said to this community these outstanding schools it's why people move here it's perhaps a cliche to say so but I'll say it anyway education is our future particularly as the world grows more competitive not just competing with other states but really with in a global economy so it's always going to be my priority are we only supposed to do three is that true? I've never kept that rule actually I thought I just started to step back and talk about why you guys are here just for the benefit of the viewers at home 1993 education reform they established sort of a picture of what a school looked like and how much it would cost to fund such a school a lot changed since 1993 and I know that you guys are partly instrumental in pushing for this foundation budget review that we got last year to say wait a second it doesn't cost what it costs in 1983 but let's see what it really does cost and as I understand that review was a very careful process lots of committees lots of meetings they came up with actually fairly conservative numbers there's more that they could have put in that they left out but then what we all saw is okay now we know that the old numbers were wrong and those are what chapter 70 money is based on and the new numbers are really this what are we going to do about it we know that we are not getting the new numbers and so what do we as school committee members what should we push for and so I think one of the reasons we want to invite you here is to figure out what should our role be two competing proposals and I actually want to throw out maybe a third one is to push for particular pieces of that and another is maybe to push for percentages of the amount 25% or some other number rolled out each year or something and I wonder and let me throw out a third idea which may not be practical I wonder I know you guys have mentioned a few times that the governor has some numbers that don't quite pan out when everything comes in revenue actually is better than he anticipated and I wonder if there is any way to sort of constrain that so that when we do get the real numbers and if as we expect they look better than the predictions that the governor is making right now if some portion of that could be set aside to fund this gap in the chapter 70 funding I don't know if that's a realistic we're going to have the governor come out with his proposal then it goes to the house and then the senate we won't get into if there's a real difference we won't get into that until we do the year-end closing which will be next year and it's when you start getting at that point we need to get the money up front we need to start the debate what we need to do is we need to let the governor know let the speaker know and the senate president the big three that we need to make sure that we raise the revenues needed to fund chapter 7 properly we need to do that politically until enough people get on that and start saying that we don't mind paying more revenue to make sure that we invest in our future we're not going to be able to do it it's plain and simple if you look at our budget and if you look at how we balance it we've already gone through an early retirement incentive where a lot of agencies right now are depleted we know what happened with DCF we know what happened with some of the other agencies your criminal justice system I can get on the whole list and so that if anybody can tell you that by getting rid of waste abuse that you probably hear the same thing if we get rid of all the abuse in the school system we'll be fine I'm still looking to see that list of where we have wasted money where we have extra money it really comes down to we have to make sure that we do a good job of letting the people know we have to make sure that we have enough revenue to do what we need to do and until we do that we won't get them there's no magic formula actually can I ask a question I know Sean wants to say something I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the timeline of the ballot proposal to change the Constitution to allow for differentiated income that has to come up at a constitutional convention which is the House and the Senate and we need I think a 50 votes 50 votes to push it to next session so we have to do it in two successive sessions so we do it hopefully we do it this spring then next year we do it we have two years to do it in that next session and then it would be on the ballot for 2018 and then if it's on the ballot for 2018 and it passes you can start raising revenue in 2019 is that right is that sort of what fiscal 2020 right thanks so to answer your question you know in terms of what our collective priorities should be coming up with this next budget debate so the governor will be coming out with his budget very shortly and then the House prepares their budget to be debated usually on school you know the week after school vacation in April and then the Senate follows suit in May and so the process of advocacy as our project stated you know will be happening very very soon for the House we will be going in very soon I'm on ways and means so is Senator Donnelly and this will certainly be our top priority but you asked a very specific question you know should be advocating for the whole thing pieces percentages I certainly will be advocating for the whole thing as Jeff had mentioned this is money that our district needs now so we'll be advocating for the whole thing I would not prepare as a policy maker for the town of Arlington that the whole thing will get implemented this year so you know part of our partnership with you is you know through your superintendent assistant superintendent CFO sitting over here is what do you think our priorities should be in moving forward in terms of implementing this obviously you want it implemented at once but if we can't would you like us to implement the special ed which you know and this is a conversation we don't need any answers now because there probably aren't any but we'll have to come back to this table when the revenue pictures are a little more clearer and we know what the governor budget looks like because he may have a couple of recommendations for the budget review commission suggested I don't know but you know our conversation will articulate as the budget season goes on and we'll have our priorities to implement this thing as quickly and as comprehensively as possible but I hope our you know relationship and our working partnership you know we can you know come up with a path of advocacy that you think as elected leaders of Arlington will help your school system in the town the most so we do you know we have a shared priority and have to have a shared vision in terms of the advocacy role to get implemented as quickly as possible that's why we co-sponsored it because we want this to happen so I have to say that as much as I love the idea of funding pre-k that scares me because I think where on earth would we put kids you know because Arlington is stretched to the gills yeah so you know I think that's a great idea educationally but right now for Arlington I don't know how we'd make it work first I want to thank all of you for the work you're doing to talk to SBA regarding Arlington High School they've been in the building they've seen the critical need you've been very effective at communicating that the community needs to know that you've been working on this behind the scenes David Driscoll has mentioned you guys specifically because of your frequent mentions of Arlington High School so that's a good thing I said Arlington he said oh yeah your high school project the story is we talk about how it took 7 years to implement fully implement chapter 70 but when we got to that 7 year point around 2000-2001 this is when it started to erode and it was a very sneaky erosion because what they did was they under inflated the cost of delivering the service and the way the formula is calculated they calculate how much the community can afford relative to that foundation budget and then the state funds the rest and if you underestimate the cost of providing the education what gets reduced is the mandatory state contribution so they're saying they're fully funding chapter 70 by the formula but if you're under inflating the cost of providing the education it's just technical and this erosion was constant except for fiscal 2004 I believe Mr. Garberley was on the committee that year when Governor Romney cut our chapter 78 20% it took us like about 8 years to recover from that point to get where we were in fiscal 03 which was level funded from 02 so there's been many years since we were fully funded of erosion of chapter 70 funding and we need to get back and for that reason I'm very frustrated when the House leadership is saying that revenue is off the table because last Thursday we had a meeting in Town Hall ably led by Dr. Seuss because we have some really critical issues facing us as a community and she organized this big beautiful event because we want everything on the table including one suggestion to build in the middle of spy pond we're willing to entertain every solution and when push comes to shove if the legislature is not making the hard decisions it gets pushed down to the local level and I know you guys understand this but I really would like you to take back from this room tonight that local officials who are faced with the prospect of not being able to meet the expectations in terms of services from the community because we don't have the authority to raise revenue you do you could vote tomorrow to raise revenue what it is we can't do that we're constrained by all the revenue restrictions imposed by prop two and a half within the state law municipalities in this commonwealth are more restricted than municipalities I think in any other state in terms of our ability to raise revenue locally so we're stuck we can't raise the revenue the state won't and that needs to be fixed somehow either give us the authority to do the work that the state doesn't want to do or have the state step in and do the right thing in terms of raising revenue one of the things we had when we went to see Barney Frank when we were lobbying for schools from MASC first thing out of his mouth are you supporting increased revenue don't talk to me unless you're willing to stand with me for more taxes and I think that the message that we've had in conversations is that we'll stand behind you if you are doing the difficult task of making sure that we have adequate revenue to provide services because the choice is either we raise it through the income tax or we have to go and raise it through property taxes which are far more regressive a couple of other things to mention park we're going to park electronic next and paper this year we're going to do this 2.0 all electronic in a couple of years the criticism that was coming back on park through the whole consortium is Massachusetts lag behind every other state in terms of the technology available in the schools to implement electronic testing we're supposed to be the high tech state and we're lagging behind everybody else and we cannot afford to do this on a local basis to infuse the schools of technology if the state is making initiatives which is a good initiative to go to electronic testing that's the way we should be going the state needs to fund this because we may have trouble doing it there are a lot of other districts that are going to have a lot more trouble there needs to be a constant technology initiative in terms of education funding because the foundation budget was established in 1993 when there was no technology in the schools that's another essential thank you for your discussion on charter schools because that is an unfunded mandate the state goes and places them in communities and garnishes our chapter 70 account for them I have no problem with charter schools I have problems with funding and I thank you for standing tall I could go on forever I won't thank you for coming you have an open invitation for coming back anytime you have something to say to us anytime you want the cameras in this meeting and the conversation with us we are happy to have you here and we appreciate the work you're doing and it's likewise too I certainly appreciate all the hard work that each all seven of you and staff that have done I appreciate it thank you I can get on a rant on that pretty easily so now we get to that piece of paper I referenced earlier which is the offer from the town manager and what he is thinking about for his budget and I'm going to pass this over to Superintendent Vody I do want to mention I just received these numbers late this afternoon the town manager has been working very hard in preparing his budget which is due tomorrow the one thing though I failed to put in this because it wasn't a change but I do want to mention it we are still going to have the 7% increase with special education so I will amend this but this really sort of represents a difference in what our current funding will be and the reason why the 3.5% increase for the remainder of the plan years from 17 to 22 is different is that what the plan had been is that this year we would go down to 3.25% and then next year 3% so this represents a change to the positive for our budget as I think Dr. Seuss mentioned Mr. Starks this year we have had actually the last 3 years in the way of funding we have had 25% of per pupil to recognize the cost of additional enrollment in the schools and that percent change is going to go up 10% to 35% this year and out years of the plan but there will be the difference between the 25 and 35 the 20% differential will be applied to the pupils that we have gained over the last 3 years and lastly the issue of having some recognition that this isn't what we wanted in the way of a budget increase but should Chapter 70 go up beyond the predictions that we have for the FY 17 budget that those monies would come directly to the schools so the net increase for FY 17 is $973 $500 $973,000 sorry about that $973,000 $524 that represents a 10% increase over this year but as you know the work we have been doing as an administration team is really looking at what it is that we feel is necessary to provide the services that this community has continued and expects from the school system we did a very careful analysis of this in terms of the different ways that we have had in terms of how it affected enrollment growth or the needs of closing the achievement gap and you have a copy of that the last time as well as and curriculum materials as well as the rationale for every single increase that we have been looking for that total is we are going to be offered for next year and that total was $3,872,980 sorry oh you have the number I have the number I can tell you how much I got it by email I was able to do some quick calculations we will be able including $250,000 coming out of ours we will be able to take $1,529,278 of the $3.8 million worth of things we need $1,529,278 that is including all of our revenue projections from our prior sheets the uptick from the town the difference between what we were expecting and what they are now offering is $786,497 so that was on top of what they had previously planned in the long range plan so the $973 is the uptick that is a difference from the prior year so our previous expectation increased plus the uptick it is the total difference between what we are getting this year and what they are going to give us next year what Diana is saying is that in vetted in our revenue projections we had expected 3.25% so this is a slight change even though this is the differential it really doesn't represent the true difference in terms of what we expected in terms of what we can apply to next year Mr. Chairman Mr. Hayner before we get started let me just say because we are not going to vote tonight we are not going to vote anything on this but this is a first discussion and we will have this on the agenda for the next meeting and we will get more documentation Mr. Hayner from what was just said Ms. Johnson indicated a figure that with the increased revenue we are going to be able to put in more of the requests that we have had for a while back am I overstating it we made $3.8 million roughly speaking and requests that we felt were essential services and of that based on what the town manager has offered according to my calculations we will be able to afford $1,529,000 of the $3.8 million prior to this offer it would have been less $500,000 we picked up about $800,000 that is the information I want the discussion and vote later, thank you Mr. Pierce I am sorry why we are picking up $800,000 but they are saying we are picking up $973,000 the difference is that some of the money there was a former long range plan where they were going to give us some uptick from the prior year the $900,000 total uptick from the prior year to this year with the new offer the $786,000 is the difference from what they were already offering us this is on top sorry to be a bummer Mr. Thielman Mr. Starks my questions were as I was doing the math $800,000 so we are somewhere around basically able to fund 39% of the asks that we have it's about 39% it was a third before I found out it was 1.5 when it was only 1.279 it was exactly a third but that was like 39% so my concern is kind of is there other monies in the revolving accounts that we can use to bolster this do we simply go back to everyone who asked and tell them they have to trim it down to a third of their asks so that they can prioritize Dr. Bode we have $3.8 million in asks and $1.5 million to right we had started to begin that process because we were confident that we were not going to be able to have the dollar amounts that we requested and from work yesterday we were able to identify roughly about $800,000 my suggestion is that you task us with going back and really looking at this over the next two weeks but I also want to hear this evening what are priorities that you have as a committee and is there anything that wasn't represented in what we had but I think it's helpful to know your thoughts as we go through this process as we look at this there are some things that are absolutely essential the curriculum materials have been somewhat neglected over the last few years in order to maintain funding of classrooms teachers in classrooms teachers in support services but we have reached a critical stage where we have to do that so that is a high priority and I think that with taking money out of the revolving account that is one time revenue and that would be an appropriate place to use that I think our revenues have grown sufficiently that we feel comfortable perhaps a tiny bit more but also the issue for us is enrollment growth and we have we don't know exactly what how many new teachers we're going to need and where they're going to be except in one place and that's at Thompson and we can talk about the decision that was made at the task force in terms of recommendation Tom meeting this evening but talking a little bit ahead on that the recommendation was that we fund two modular classrooms at Thompson next year and if you fund two modular classrooms you have to staff those classrooms so that would be two teachers that for sure would be on our list of reserve teachers but there's going to be other increases when we look at Thompson next year while the number of students coming in comparing the fifth to sixth grade probably we'll get another 20 or 30 students but the class that's leaving in the eighth grade is in the mid threes so we're going to be seeing in terms of servicing service to our students next year a lot more students in the building and in the neighborhood of 80 because that's a lot of students that we're going to have to address so that is another area we feel that we're going to have to put some of this money and those are the big ones we also have a few positions we need to look at and partial positions in the high school but then we're going to have to take a really hard look one of the things that I know you're very well aware of and we've talked about here at the table many times is that one of our goals as a district in it is to close the achievement cap it certainly not only our goal it is also a mandate and the state judges in terms of levels whether we are level of the school and the level of the school district how well we are able to meet the targets for performance not only for all of our students but for our students in high needs group and those are students that have learning disabilities our low socioeconomic students and ELL students and in order to provide the kind of support they need to achieve well it requires interventions and it requires interventions on many fronts not only academic but social emotional special education special education supports and a lot of in fact if you look at the list we had and we went through each one of the ass and looked to see whether they're addressing enrollment growth closing achievement gap the curriculum everything on there is at least one most of them are two or even three in terms of what we're using the money to address we're going to the lens that we will look at a recommendation back to you will be the lens of closing achievement gap but having said that there are enrollment pressures that we are going to have to address you know we have to look at the staffing at the middle school for sure next year that is and in past years frankly we have put more of the reserve positions at the elementary level to keep class sizes down then we have put money into the secondary level and I think next year the most pressing area of our school system is the middle school so it's going to be it's going to take a lot of discussion a lot of thought and some very very hard decisions as we go forward and I love to hear and I know the rest of us would like to hear very much your thinking on all of this as well if I might just before we go on I just want to clarify because if it was just a matter of taking 30 asking people to take their ass down 33% it might not be as painful as this process is going to be but I need to call to your attention the things about enrollment pressures that Dr. Johnson and the teachers the two teachers at Thompson and the teachers that we absolutely have to add at the middle school because of those 80 new students basically the amount of money that's left is significantly less than asking people to cut theirs down 33% because you know you're only left with a couple hundred thousand dollars once you start looking at five reserve positions plus the positions that are necessary at the middle school so I just wanted to call that to your attention. I don't know if we were going back to people and asking them to cut it by 33% but once we take out the money that we know we have to spend on reserve positions and the positions at the middle school it's significantly less than that so thank you. Thank you. Mr. Thielman. Thank you. So when we talked about the 3.8 $72 million increase will we talking about that's really what we talked about didn't we talk about that? So the fact of the matter is that it's $2.34 million less than we would like so we're not going to be maintaining the services we have. I think that's the first thing and we have to just acknowledge unless we want to take a different political tax and the first thing you have to do is you have to staff to enrollment I mean it's like you know fundamental responsibility of you have to you have to staff to enrollment there's a legal mandate to close the achievement gap and we've had a lot of conversations here about 20 year old curriculum materials and wanted to update them so when you do those 3 things I don't have budget in front of me I just got this number tonight. That's about $2.7 million. So to do that it's not a question of priorities I don't think it's being framed in the right way here. I think the question is after you do what we're supposed to do staffing to enrollment achievement gap curriculum materials what's left? In order to do those 3 things we would need significantly more money than we've been given. So we're not even going to do that. So we can't have a priority discussion. I can't frame it that way. So I think it's a So I think it's a What can we absolutely least live without? And there's no question that this will put upward pressure on class size. There's absolutely no different in terms of maintaining the kind of interventionist services we need for the struggling students that's not going to be as rich we're not going to be able to do what we've done this year. So I guess the other question I have is there any other I mean are there other options politically besides accepting this decision? Mr. I think there is one. We are responsible for the education in this town. I've said it before. We don't accept it. I appreciate everything they've done. I think it's a good faith effort. But from what I'm hearing from our administration we have no right to do anything but support the budget that they brought in if it's maintaining. If it's asking for something new that's my position. The cut may have to happen but it should not come from us because we've been elected to represent education. The town tells us to cut and they're not going to give us all the money. They're going to cut us by the difference then we have to do it. We should be prepared for it. I understand that and I'm not suggesting wait until that time. But I do appreciate what they've done. And I do appreciate the increase but at the same time that's enough. Thank you. Dr. Seuss. I just wanted to give a shout out to Dr. Alice Ampe who's not here who was instrumental in getting the ball rolling to start this conversation. If we have to accept these numbers it's very dire. But the numbers we had before were beyond dire. They were absolutely devastating. I hope there's ways to push for more but I just wanted to give a shout out to her. Her efforts to make this conversation possible. Dr. Bode. I think that the conversation you had this evening with our representatives was important. Because one of the offers in this is that any money that comes in for Chapter 70 will come directly to the schools above what the projection number was. So the work that they're doing in the State House is going to affect us very directly. Unfortunately the way the State sets up their budget process they don't come to a budget number until sometimes May. I've known years where they've gone into June or even July. And of course for a school district in terms of getting money you then have to sort of think about when and if it looks like it's going to come how you manage all that. But having said that if we were to get extra Chapter 70 money even that late we certainly could use it to support both interventions supporting our students that most need it and addressing class sizes. And one way we may only be able to address some large class sizes next year is through more teaching assistant help. But that is something that we could do in the summer as well. Mr. Heiner again. Dr. Ampey asked me, I was going to save this for the committee reports, but I think it's to remain now, request from committee members to develop a list of concerns for the budget subcommittee to use in setting the priorities. So she asked me to pass that on to all of us. Anyone else? Okay, thank you. We go to next slide. We are going to put that off. We are going to put that off. I'm calling it just to get the explanation on the table of why we're putting it off. Well, we had a recent resignation in the business office that is impacted just getting the work done. And so we just need a little bit more time on that. Okay, superintendent's report. All right. A few things. I'd like to talk a little bit about the task force. And I know that we have three members of the task force here as well this evening. And of course, Dr. Seuss has been attending these as well. This is the building task force. This is the school enrollment task force that has been meeting on developing recommendations for space options for our schools. The conversation at the task force has really been focused on the last couple meetings as to the immediate decisions about for Thompson for next year. And the task force had requested a number of reports from me relative to thinking about is the only option that we have for Thompson to add modular classrooms next year. Could there be other ways that we could address the issue? And they range from could be bus a class from Thompson to another school that had some capacity and looked at the cost there. If you had two buses and you did the monitors and the support that would be needed, it would be around 183,000. You could get a lesser amount if you did two runs, but then that creates a lot of time issues as well. We looked at the possibility of doing redistricting of the whole basically five out of the seven. But even if you did redistricting it would not affect next year because that's a process. It's a process that we would have to engage in that would take at least a year if we're going to get input. So that would be off the table at least for looking at next year. And then we also looked at the possibility could we create one Thompson Hardy school district in which basically we looked at the total number of students at each grade and see if there was economy of scale of combining them and then breaking them apart into more even class sizes and actually turned out not to be the case. In fact, if you stayed at the average of 23 per class for the upper grades and 25 and 22 for the lower grades you would actually need another classroom. If you went to 24 across the board as your average class size then you could actually pick up three classrooms. But the level of disruption with all of this I think I think that it became very clear that all of these options were problematic the total disruption to families lives and separating a part of the community of Thompson out for the year because we don't simply know what the long-term solution is going to be there and that is something the committee has to address going forward. But anyway I can say to those listening and who haven't been able to be there the committee has looked at every possible option for thinking about how we do the short-term solution at Thompson. The process will be now is that that recommendation will go to town meeting there will be a finance committee next week to talk about what the the monies are involved in that. Right now we think that that cost could be around 400,000 but as we be looking at that over the next week see if we can fine-tune that a little bit more. So that is where we are with respect to the immediate issue with Thompson but the committee is going to take up the issue of Otterson which I think everyone feels is really the big issue facing us in terms of long-range planning and the next meeting the task force is February 23rd in the meantime we'll have some meetings with our facilities committee and I don't know if other members of the task force want to make any further comments about how we're proceeding. It's certainly the questions being asked the reports being asked for in terms of looking this are very comprehensive and I feel good about the recommendation that was made the other night for next year. I think Kathy summed up the whole process we're in so far. The committee voted for two classrooms at Thompson that addresses immediate need there for the 2016-2017 school year left open the question of the need for a permanent addition of five to six classrooms at Thompson school for the 2017-2018 school year and beyond. Some members of the committee don't want to revisit this until the fall until we have more definitive numbers from the actual enrollment in the fall of 2016. Some of us want to keep the conversation going and are hoping that we can introduce that we want to talk about it again with the enrollment task force and we're still hopeful that we can try to propose something at Tom meeting in April. The other thing that happened was that I think they want us to come back and see how much it would cost for an architect to do an assessment of the kind of preliminary analysis of the odison. So we're tasked with finding out what it cost and reporting back on February 2023 what it would cost to do an assessment of the odison. And just the odison. The other thing is that a member of the public got up at the end and said you still haven't made a decision about the Gibbs and the committee needs to talk about the Gibbs and come back and tell us what you're going to do with the Gibbs. So we need to do that at some point. What do you think the timeline is for coming back with the Gibbs? I know that they would like a decision much sooner than June. In fact, there's been an outreach with the town manager. The issue they face is one, finding alternative spaces and that's not easy in this area. Secondly, it's important for their families to know the long-range plan. So June, well, that is our... We have a legal right to wait until June. It's... They would prefer a decision much sooner than that and even February may be a little late. This is Leslie Alice. This is Leslie Alice. I'm sorry. I should have said that. So I think that certainly the other tenants would like to know too because in the same vein they have to find alternate space. One thing that we know from conversations and comments made at the January 7th meeting is that there's a strong desire on the part of parents and community members to know that if the arts council and if the theater has to be dislodged from Gibbs, what are we going to do about space for those books? Dr. Seuss. I have a couple of questions on the comment. Just one question is who's funding the furniture that we need for the two extra costumes? Is that something that we can... We're not sure including in that number because it has to come from our budget then we're even more constrained. So is there any ways that we can get when we go to town meeting on the 25th that we can roll in the furniture cost with all those the setting up the classroom cost with the rental or purchase of the modules? That is something that we certainly can do. We also could think about funding some of it out of our facilities and we could also take a look if it's a short term solution to see what furniture we have stored. We do have some still some furniture stored. Whatever we need. Not much. That building is also one to one building and we had not projected for that increased enrollment but we looked at what we were going to do with that building so while we have money going in there we replace it on a one third one third cycle. That cycle would be disrupted. So I don't know if there's some way to roll it into a town meeting vote that would help a lot. Another comment was I want to make a motion I'm not sure if it's appropriate right now that we have a subcommittee to start the process of shifting lines or spending buffer zones knowing that it's going to be a very long process and sort of giving ourselves enough time to do that. So your motion would be to refer to the community relations committee. Would that be the committee? The issue of buffer zones. Let me refer to the community relations committee. Motion by Dr. Seuss. Second by Ms. Starks. So we now have a motion on the floor. Mr. Heiner. Would you repeat the motion please? Sure. A motion to refer to the community relations committee the question of revisiting boundary lines between elementary schools and buffer zones of shifting. We're not doing the redistricting we're just looking into what it's going to take. We're maybe beginning that process with the understanding that it is a long process. Yes. We're not voting yet. I'm sorry. I'm referring. I'm giving you the floor to talk about I was going to talk about the motion. Okay, so we'll restrict the discussion out of the motion. Is there any discussion on that? Just to report on the task force. There were some members of the task force who would just like us to do this. And we should all know that there are people on the enrollment task force that would like this just passed by majority vote of the school committee. I know that. We have to involve the public. So community relation, if we pass this motion, community relations will look into it. All in favor say yes. A little more discussion. I was involved in it to some degree a few years ago. It was a very contentious process. It's something that should be taken seriously by this committee because you're disrupting a lot in doing this. So I would just put that out there as something to be not just say, oh, it's another toolbox that's going to fix our enrollment challenges. It won't. It'll be another tool. But 25% buffer zones will slowly grow to 40% to 50%. Where does it end? And I don't know if the town wants to be just gone. I just don't know. So I just want to caution the committee. Brookline had to do it. They had to expand a few years after they passed theirs. And like the legislators were mentioning little by little then the public, the public will for it and the political will might fall off. You do one change that you think it's going to cover you for a long time and you'd be done with it. Yeah, I understand that. In fact, when I came back on the committee we were at the peak of the discussion and I have not still, I'm still caffeinated. I spent in coffee shops talking to people about this and this is probably the thing I've spent more time talking about in terms of working with constituents than anything else that I've seen as a school committee member. Mr. Heiner. Just want to clarify for the public. We are not setting a committee up to redistrict yet. All we're doing is looking at it and getting the ground work whether it's needed or whatever. I'm just trying to forestall the conversation motion. I think that what we've heard at least what I've heard, my interpretation of what I'm hearing is that certainly the lines between Hardy and Thompson people in that part of town seem very open to opening those kinds of lines but the math that I did on the number of students and families that would be affected is that there's over 300 families and students that would be affected by any one of these massive shifts and so we really have to really have to watch what we're doing. Dr. Seuss. I just want to speak to it. The reason I'm recommending this is one thing I think that the School of Roman Task Force is interested in this but one of the insights that I got from the meeting that we had last Thursday, the public visioning meeting, is that parents were a lot more accepting of this than I would have thought and this of course is going to cause some anxiety. I think it may be an easier process than last time but it will be a hard process. I don't want to underestimate that but parents saw the pictures and saw that the town was changing and sort of understood that one way to address those changes is to shift a little bit to help the process a little bit. I don't think anybody, the ideas that came before the School of Roman Task Force that was the first time they had come. I'm not talking about those particular ideas I'm talking about looking at. The idea of shifting things. I'm talking about looking at population changes across town looking at the possibility of shifting the boundaries. I think that parents are open to this. I think it will be still painful. I had the benefit of not being on the committee during that last painful process. That's why she's so eager to take it out. We're so eager to get to you. But I do think that parents understand the need. I do think you'll get anxiety again. Okay. I did have conversations with some parents. It's unscientific. I had some conversations with parents that did surprise me where they said they're open to it. At the enrollment at the January 7th event last Thursday. On the motion to refer this to the community relations subcommittee which is chaired by the person who made the motion. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Unanimous vote. Back to the conversation. Mr. Hayner. I would like to thank publicly all the people that are part of the enrollment test especially our group. Some of the times it got a little heated and I was one of the ones that got heated on it. But I think we have a lot of discussion in the discussion like that. It gets tough. Each one comes from a perspective. I do applaud it. The parents came and I think slowly we're making progress. The vote the other night was very strong. Real quickly I'd like to talk about adding money to the Thompson and stuff like that. I would be very nervous to even consider that right. We have a thing going forward. Hopefully if Dr. Bode and stuff can cut down the money for the modular units the difference of that might be able to because right now we came up with a figure in discussion of $400,000 to go forward. The other subcommittees are meeting and to suggest that we need more money right now I think it would be a little hard to get through those subcommittees. That's all I'm saying. Any other discussion on the enrollment issue? Ah, yes. If I may, I just came from capital budget tonight and they authorized $600,000 for the modulars. At Thompson? For the two of Thompson, yes. Will that include soft costs? There was no specificity about it whatsoever. However, I should also add that the bids came in for the Stratton modulars and they were astronomically higher than we anticipated. We had budgeted $1.8 million and they came in at $3.3 million. It is there's an enormous demand. We're going to interview the candidates with their RFPs and try to press them for why. But what we think is going on is there's such an enormous demand for modular classrooms in the area right now that they're just taking it to us. So I'm concerned that the $600,000 could easily be gobbled up by the cost themselves. But at least there's some money there. Just the clarification on that. The number that was brought to us that it was coming from PTPC was $400,000. It changed that quick. Based on what happened with the Stratton modulars we got the $1.8 million estimate from the modular companies and then they came in with a bid that was so much higher. My understanding was the number that was brought to us came from PTPC after they had opened the bids. No. Before. Hold on. Superintendent Bode. This number came from what Belmont's experience has been this year in terms of getting modulars. They will be having the same issue. They're going to be able to get six modular classrooms for three years rental for about $1.2 million. We're looking for two for one year at the moment. I also know that there is I've been doing some internet searches in terms of what you can buy and I think that you can buy in fact I know you can buy a modular for $200,000. Now that still seems very high to underscore what Ms. Johnson was saying in Bedford their experience was in the summer of 2014 so the summer before last they had two modular classrooms they purchased actually for $125,000 two. This last summer they needed one $450,000. We're in a very hot market. All of the surrounding towns around us are looking for modular classrooms to deal with enrollment growth and while we did get this estimate from our company it was done last year but on the other hand time does make a difference. Why is this dramatic is beyond me but it's fairly dramatic. And the architects for the Stratton had confirmed with the modular companies their numbers so then the modular companies turned around and so. That's joyous. Ms. Starks. I also wanted to say that as a member of the enrollment task force I really appreciate the advocacy of all the parents who have sent mail made phone calls showed up at the meetings because I really do feel like that's making a big difference. A lot of the people who are not on the school committee and are on that enrollment task force have no idea what the, you know, what costs really are like so the other people are looking at the cost of the $20 and not really thinking about the mental costs and the educational costs and a lot of those things and I really feel like and both several members have specifically stated the number of emails and calls they got and I know for a fact that that made a difference. I mean it was a vast difference in their attitude just in what they said at the table and what they were pushing for and I feel like a lot of that is the advocacy of the parents and I really just want to make sure that we thank them and we ask them to continue their advocacy because that really is making a difference. All the people who show up at those meetings all of their individual voices I love their emails I want them to continue to tell us their stories those are really what's helping to help people understand what people go through in this that I kept trying to say is that we're talking about kids and we're talking about their education and I think it's so important that that comes across and that we can be there and say what's educationally sound but it's also very important that their voices are being heard and I just want to make sure we said thank you. Do we need a vote to endorse this recommendation? That would be nice. The two modulers. The two modulers. Mr. Thielman. I move that we endorse the recommendation of the task force and the capital planning committee to place two modulers modular classrooms at the Thompson School for 2016-17. Second. Okay, moved by Mr. Thielman, second by Ms. Starks. That's a motion before us. Any discussion on the motion? We've talked about it. Hearing none. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That's unanimous. Two small things. Two small things. Keep going. All right. I just want to give you an update on where we are with park. We'll get this all out to parents too. We did get an extension in order to know exactly what was going to happen in each one of the schools. We have two schools which are going to do the online version, the CBT and that will be Bishop Elementary and the middle school and I think this will be a great opportunity for us to test our infrastructure for this test. Dr. Cheson is going to meet with the PTO at Bishop in February, early February to talk about it. We're also planning to have but the date hasn't been set yet a curriculum, what? Oh, we did set it. February 24th is going to be we're going to have an open district-wide meeting for elementary parents to talk about Common Core and Park Exam and we'll get that all out to people. So that date is after February vacation and we've checked all of the evening meetings nothing's conflicting. So far no. But if there's a change we'll let everybody know. That is a challenge I have to say. We're trying to get around that by now having this district calendar that everybody can compare but having said that it still remains a challenge. 7 o'clock. It will be here in the auditorium. It is Science Night at the Bishop Elementary that night. Science at the Bishop Elementary? They will have already had a meeting on February 10th it's just for Bishop so I think that was the plot around that. 24th it's Wednesday. But they won't have had the Common Core. I've already been to Bishop and talked about the Common Core. Very good. It's the day after school enrollment test for us. And the day before our school committee meeting. It'll be a fun week. We will be certainly working with staff on this. Our intent has not changed at all. Our intent is that we're going to take the test. We really want to see how our curriculum stands up with this the new test. We've done a lot of work over the last few years to really align our curriculum with the standards and particularly in all areas for that matter. But I think that we're actually looking forward to this opportunity. We will do the training that may be necessary which I think is going to be fairly minimal and we'll also let students have the experience of taking the online. Just get familiar with the tools. Again, it's really more just the technical piece of this. Dr. Cheson. Yes. I'm sorry. Thank you. It's my understanding that you said that there should be a way to compare last year's MCAS or the current MCAS scores with the park. The Department of Education has a crosswalk which does that. You're comfortable with that? The Department of Education has a crosswalk that does. I mean, Mr. Schlickman and I have actually had this discussion and I think that they have a fairly substantial psychometric evidence for what they're doing. So yeah, I guess I do. Let me rephrase it. Is it something you think the committee members would be able to use? Yes. In that they will be calculating growth scores. Thank you. I still see how our subgroups and our students in general do vis-a-vis targets. The targets aren't changing for what we have to achieve. Thank you. And the last thing is just to invite the community and to remind everyone here that there is going to be a celebration for Martin Luther King's birthday this coming Monday. But it's a particularly special one because we're going to celebrate the 50 years of METCO in Arlington. Hard to believe it's that number of years, but it is. And three people will be recognized that evening, our current METCO director, Margaret Cretl-Thomas, as well as our previous METCO director, Steve Pereira, and then of course the icon of METCO, Jean McGuire. And as in past years, Pearl Morrison will be our moderator for the evening. And that concludes the superintendent's report. We now move to the consent agenda. Mr. Heiner. We need to separate it a bit. I did not make the motion to approve consent agenda or accept the 11-12 minutes. I was gone that night. I think it's in the minutes for 12-10. Oh, okay. I will be abstaining from that. We can't do it all in one vote. It's all I'm saying. 12-10. And the minutes have me making a motion. I wasn't there. Okay. Then for the minister of the 12-10, is that what's... Okay, so we won't vote that at all pending a correction. So the consent agenda will be for the 12-17 meeting and the warrant, okay? So the consent agenda, all items will be voted as one. The approval of minutes for the draft minutes dated December 17, 2015. An approval of a warrant dated December 17, 2015. Warrant number 16093. Total warrant $395,073. And 91 cents. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The consent agenda is adopted. We now go to subcommittee and liaison reports and announcements. Policies and procedures, Mr. Pierce. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We had a policies and procedures subcommittee meeting on Monday, January 11th, 8 in the morning. We discussed various policies dealing with professional staff salary bills, electronic signatures on warrants, which we still need to do a little research on whether or not we can develop a new policy that will allow us to do that. And I expect that we'll have something for first read at our next meeting concerning some changes pursuant to state law and student restraint policy. Background checks also were discussed briefly with the fingerprint policy that we discussed recently and whether or not we needed to do any updates or revision on that. And lastly, we'll be meeting, I would think, probably early February to deal with the charge of tonight, which was selecting possibly a new meeting date and time for the committee and any other business for the 15-16 calendar year. Thanks. Dr. Allison Ampe is absent. I had a question. Are you guys reviewing the principal appointment policies? Yeah. Budget, is somebody representing for budget? I shared the one your request to get input from you folks. Facilities, Ms. Starks. We have a meeting next Thursday, so a week from today at 5.30 we will be discussing thinking about Audison, how we put together options, timelines and costs, especially as we need to head into the school enrollment task force with those. We also are going to talk a little bit about a couple of updates. I want to also understand, I hope to talk to Mr. Liggett about his survey and when we can get information from that, when he's going to close it out and when we might be able to actually get some data from that. Thank you. District accountability, curriculum instruction and assessment. Thank you. We met today at 5.30 and we came to an agreement I think on the evidence we want the superintendent to present for her report on the goals for the year, for her evaluation and we noted in the policy that an interim report is due to us on March 31st. So, I'll put together what we agreed to should be the evidences and distributed to the committee and how do we want to get feedback? We want to talk about it at a school committee meeting, do you want to put it on the agenda? Do you want people to just kind of get back to me and then we can talk about it as a subcommittee? I think that we would at least need to reference it at the next meeting. Okay, so I'll have everything ready for this. Have a couple of reads. Have a read. That's an excellent idea. So we'll have it for first read for next week, two weeks from now. Next meeting. Community relations. Dr. Seuss, you ran a wonderful event last week. Thank you. So I finally, the advocate there didn't cover it. There's an article today. Yes, there was. Today? I was looking through the issue, but I couldn't find it. Okay, maybe I just missed it. Sorry about that. Thank you. I don't want to take too much time. I do want to take the opportunity that I didn't take before to thank a couple of people if I may. So a lot of people helped make the meeting a success. In fact, if I was on my own, it wouldn't have been a success. So I want to thank Joe Currow who worked very early with Stacy Smith who's an Arlington parent. I want to thank Dr. Bode. I want to thank Community Relations Committee, Jetson, and Cindy. I actually especially want to thank Cindy who was at the very, very long meeting and who has this amazing mind who sort of can get at the core of what's important and took a very complicated meeting and simplified it and it's much better for your input. Linda Hansen played a similar role in some earlier meetings and did an amazing job presenting people's values to the community. So she did a tremendous amount of work and again it would have been a much messier much less coherent meeting without her work on that. So I know I've been getting some praise for this and I want to say on my own it wouldn't have worked. But with all of you guys it worked. It was a preliminary report. It was very painful. I found myself doing my taxes to avoid doing this preliminary report. That's how painful it was. Because I had to take 30 pages of checks of various people and try to condense it into a much smaller report. There's going to have to be a lot more work on it but actually I think the report is less important frankly than the fact that everyone came together that we had over 200 people talking about issues that are important grappling with all the complications and there was a variety of views in that room and there's no way that the report would reflect all those views. And so even though I'm going to say this was mentioned a lot or something there's just no way to reflect everybody's views but it was good that we were talking and we really really value hearing from the community. That's it. Executive subcommittee. Executive session minute review subcommittee. I have a schedule meeting with the town council of Lamar reviewing the minutes. Warren committee everybody got paid? I think so. I signed the bill. School enrollment task force we've talked a lot about that. Announcements? Any announcements? I just have an interesting yeah Mr. Pierce. Lot of good theater going on this weekend. I know the Thielman children and the Pierce children are also acting again and there's not many musical theaters production of Little Mermaid Junior so you'll have the opportunities to see school committee children acting. It's unbelievable. It's unreal. It's a Sunday afternoon show too. Saturday evening seven. Saturday afternoon or two. Friday evening. Where are the Thielmans? Belmont town hall. Arlington group. We're invading Belmont. We'll be invading. We'll be invading that town hall. The Edco round table is meeting next Wednesday at 9 30 school committee round table. I realize a lot of you folks work but I represent us but it's open to everyone that can make it at 9 30. It's a group of school committee members that belong to Edco and sharing and it's very informative and good things. Kirstie's come with me a couple of times. Jennifer you're welcome if you can come up. I'll come too if you want to play hooky. Yeah. I don't know if any of you know Lauren Wu. I know that Jeff does. She is the liaison to the accountability and assistance advisory council for the state board of education and she's also the director of level 5 project implementation for desi. I saw her on Wednesday and she is celebrating the fact that after many bids and over bids she bought a condo in Marlington. She bought a condo around the corner from the hardy school and she fought to get into this condo. East Arlington yes. And this is relevant because she fought hard. About the fifth or sixth condo she tried to buy and was just overbid and overbid on them. Yes, the real estate market is hot out there. Did you say we are the 27th most competitive East Arlington, 27th most competitive area in the entire country? It's a wonderful place to live and with that I think we've exhaust Do we have another executive session? There's other towns but 27th in the country. Top 100 would all have been California. Nope. Eight or Massachusetts. Hearing none I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Executive session. We are not going to executive session. I just asked the chair for the next meeting to do a report because I assume you're in negotiations. We're scheduling a meeting and I hope to have a report out for the next meeting. Thank you. So a motion to adjourn from who wants to go home? So moved. Seconded by Ms. Starks to adjourn. All in favor? Opposed? We're done.