 Welcome. Today is Thursday, February 16th. And this is a special school meeting. Last Thursday we were supposed to have our regular meeting and we were snowed out. But we felt it was pretty important to talk about the budget today. So we scheduled a special meeting for that. Unfortunately, Jeff Thielman couldn't make it. He has a work commitment and Len Cardin is traveling and can't make it. Just as a reminder to the public, we have a public budget meeting on the 2nd of March, starting at 6.30. So we welcome people who are interested in asking questions or giving comments to come to that at 6.30 on the 2nd. Sorry. Dr. Allison Ami. Can I just clarify? What it is on the 2nd, it's the budget hearing which is a legally required part of our budgeting process. So people can come to any of our meetings and ask questions about the budget. But this is the budget hearing on which we have to. Okay, great. Thanks. So I wanted to comment that one of the things that we were supposed to do at our last meeting was to say goodbye to Diane Johnson who was our CFO earlier and we had a cake planned and some fruit and unfortunately we can't do that. But I do want to publicly thank her for her years of service and her dedication to the district and say that we wish you luck on your next venture. So we have a public participation, I see none. Really? You sure? I'm pretty sure. I do want to welcome Jason Levy who is our AEA rep and also to say this is going to be a fairly short meeting. So let's get right on to the budget presentation by Dr. Burley. All right. Thank you. Again, this was something that we were going to present last week. Most of the information in this PowerPoint is information. Sorry? The clicker. We wanted to make sure you had it. Just wanted to make sure you had it. Thank you. Is information that the committee is aware of? But I think that since we're going to be having a hearing, this would be helpful, I think it's sort of in general comments about the revenue that we have and expenses we're expecting for the FY18. The entire budget that's being proposed by the superintendent is on our website. So anyone can go there and look up any information you want. I think we're finding a few typos as we've gone along and we will be correcting those as soon as possible. So as we look at, one of the things we always do when we look at our budget going forward is we want to know really what are our budget priorities. That informs what we're going to do with any additional money that we might have by way of whatever source. So in looking at our budget priorities, the first priority is the retention and compensation of our faculty and staff. FY18, by the way, for a lot of people don't know what the FY18 means. It is the last, it's the year of June in a school calendar year. So next year is the 17-18 school year and we will say that the budget for next year is the FY18 budget because the school year ends in 18. So next year is going to be the third and final year of the contract and we have already begun talking about beginning negotiations. As you know, we're going to be doing some planning work this year, actually more research work with regard to the negotiations. What we have done in our multiple year projections is that 2% has been the increase for all staff, both contractual, satisfying contracts as well as staff that are not covered by a contract. The other priority is increased pay for substitute teachers. Arlington is probably, it is the lowest, I think, in this entire area. Maybe not the lowest, not the lowest, but we are close to the lowest. And one of the challenges we're finding this year, and last year as well, is that we're having a hard time always finding substitutes and we're thinking that increasing it somewhat will make a difference in that. Another budget priority as a category is to address enrollment growth and class size mitigation. And every year we are having to add classroom staff as well as all of the support staff that is necessary. And in general, one of the things we have looked at in terms of ratios, once you add a classroom, it's really not a 1.0 FTE, it's more like a 1.6 or 1.8 in terms of all of the other supporting staff that's required. We also are going to have a budget priority as our two reserve teachers. Most likely we already know where those teachers will go, but it would be subject to what happens with enrollment this summer. Another budget priority is support for our high need students. As you're aware, this past year we have seen an increase in excess of $700,000 in out-of-district costs. Those costs actually need to be incorporated for FY 18, but even more recently we have incurred some other out-of-district costs which would be probably putting that number around 800,000. Now, because this is January, actually it's February now, but still about halfway through the year, one proposal which we will probably want to discuss somewhat is whether we should actually set aside a million dollars for any additional out-of-district placements because as we found that the differential between where we were last February and where we actually ended up this fall was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're also looking for two FTE elementary learning specialists, a social worker at the high school, a .5 social worker at the high school, and a .5 social worker at the Addison Middle School. The .5 FTE social worker at Addison is to satisfy contractual obligations. Administrative support is a broad category. You heard in December our elementary principals talking about the fact that they've come to a point where they really need some support. And one proposal, of course, would be to have seven assistant principals in our elementary school, but that's fiscally not possible. So what we're proposing is a more modest expansion there, and that is to have a half-time assistant principal in a few schools. And possibly giving these schools that do not have an assistant principal some extra administrative support. Another administrative addition is the director of social-emotional learning guidance. For many years Arlington had a director of guidance, and we have not had that position for a number of years. In fact, one of the things you'll see when we get to some charts later on in this presentation, we've seen enrollment growth over a number of years, and we've seen increases in staffing in general education and special education. But the one category that has been relatively flat through all of this growth has been administration. When we've had administrators who have retired, we haven't filled those positions. So as we have more of a focus on social-emotional learning in our schools and the culture of our schools, this is a position that we feel is very important. So those are our major categories, though there's one that's not on here and that is desktop support. As we expand our number of devices that we're supporting and the number of teachers that are using them regularly in the classroom, we need another desktop support person, and even that really doesn't meet the true needs. So looking at the budget. So last year our budget for FY17, the one we're currently in, in total was $63 million, and that comes from three major sources of revenue. One is the town appropriation, which is the main source, grants, and revolving accounts. So these represent fees and reimbursements, and you have in your budget book a list of all of the ones that we have. There'd be instrumental music, athletic fees, bus fees, preschool tuitions. All of those are sources of revenue. Now this year, when we're looking at town appropriation going into the FY18, our appropriation from the town is matching a formula that has been agreed upon and has been operational for the last couple of years, and that is the operating budget will increase 3.5 percent, special education budget will increase 7 percent, and there's a formula for funding for increased enrollment growth. When we went from last year to this year, we had an increase of 220 students. Actually I was looking back from FY12, since FY12, I think we've had an increase of well over 700 students, closer to 750 students. So we've been experiencing tremendous growth over these last few years. So in terms of town appropriation, this represents a 6.6 percent increase when you combine those various percentages and the enrollment growth factor. However, that's not the only source of revenue for the school system. Another source are grants, and if you look at the grant amount for FY17, it's essentially 2.4, and then you look at the assumption for FY18, and that's $2.2 million. We're expecting a decrease, and in fact we're fairly certain of this decrease. Primarily it's in Title I funding. Our Title I monies that come in actually sort of oscillate between two numbers, and it's totally dependent upon what the poverty level is in Arlington, and given the latest numbers we have, we're pretty sure that we're going to see a decrease. So that's pretty much of a definite. Then in terms of revolving, another source of the revolving fees and reimbursements, one of the major reimbursements is Circuit Breaker. What we're going to see next year is a decrease of $185,000. That's because of the process that we have. It's what expenses were incurred in a year where there wasn't a lot of growth, and so the Circuit Breaker number is down. Another reduction in terms of income here is last year, if you recall, we took $250,000 from community education and moved it into a one-time cost of curriculum materials. That is no longer a source of revenue. We are not going to be reducing the community education budget this year for that purpose. So in total, for the revolving and reimbursements were down about 12.1 percent. For grants were down 6.3 percent. So when you then combine that with the increase in town revenue, the overall increase is really 5 percent. And that 5 percent increase represents about $3.16 million, which is a considerable amount of money until you look at what needs to be covered with that amount of money. So our first priority is the retention and salaries of our staff. And if we're going to take everyone that is employed here for level service, all of our teachers, TAs, secretaries, support people, enroll over their salaries next year through the contractual agreements and add longevity for those that are now getting longevity or are moving between longevity levels, that increases slightly over $2 million. We also have the assumption that we're going to need $1 million to address the known out of district expenses we have, which will be around $800,000. And what we might, and some cushion for possible increases. All right, so if we were to look at that and looked at all of our other increases, what we would find, if we just took those two numbers together, were over $3 million. So it would not be very much money, probably about $130,000 that we would be able to fund beyond these two major categories. So what central staff did is we went through the budget, not quite the same way that you have it here. We went through different categories. For example, teaching assistants. We looked at all the teaching assistants in every single building compared to looking at the enrollments, looking at what we have as sort of a formula for teaching assistants in terms of what everybody gets in the district and looked at ways that we could reduce. For example, some of the reductions, and you have that sheet, might be a full-time kindergarten teaching assistant going back down to a half-time because we have, half-time is the foundation for all of our kindergartens. They may have had a full-time this year because of the class size. But since we don't know what the class sizes will be next year in the kindergarten, we made that reduction. That's just one of several. But at any rate, we went through and found reductions of $730,000 from the FY17, which, in combination with roughly $130,000, we were able to add in about $838,000 worth of increases. Now, much more explanation of all of these numbers is in the detailed budget that you can find on the website. Alright, so this is a graphic you've seen before. It's just been updated to the numbers for FY18. It just shows graphically how our revenue sources relate to each other in terms of a pie. And you can see clearly the town appropriation is the major source of revenue. When you look at this next graph, you have major categories in terms of what is spent in those categories. One thing I would bring your attention to, because some people say, well, Central Administration, is that just salaries? It's not. It's actually a lot of things that sort of get put together in the central office. So, for example, I think a lot of our subs, I believe, are in there. We do central professional development. A lot of things that are district level will go into that. It is not all salaries. So, these are the major categories. And I think that one of the things that strikes everybody, and rightly so, is that instruction in regular ed, which is the light green, is slightly larger, not significantly larger, but for instruction for special education. Another thing that has changed in the last few years, incrementally, is there is an area here where it's right above the green. It's sort of at 3 o'clock where you see red. Perhaps a little hard to see. But that's where instruction interventions. So, what we have been doing incrementally, and I think that we're seeing, and I know we're seeing, the positive effect of it, is providing more support for students that need extra support in a variety of ways, whether it would be extra math, reading, ELL services, that you're going to see more increase in this amount of money. And I believe, and I think that this is a shared belief among all administrators, that this is money very well spent in terms of, one, helping all students be able to access the curriculum, but also reducing potential special education costs. All right, this next diagram looks at the actuals in different categories from FY12 to the projected, well, to the superintendent's FY18 budget. And you can see with elementary, which is the first set of bar graphs, that each year that that has gone up. Likewise for secondary, special education hasn't had the same even steppiness as the other two. We've seen a little bit of a spike in the 17 and 18 there. The next, the lowest set of bar graphs is curriculum instruction. You can see that's pretty flat. And that's basically all of our instructional materials. And I think there's some professional development in that as well. Yeah. Administration. Again, you can see that it's been fairly relatively flat and it has actually come down a little bit, again, as we look at this. And then we have our other categories of IT, facilities, and transportation, again, remaining flat. Now, one of our concerns, and I think it's something we really do need to look at in the years ahead, if we're doing a little bit this next year, is the kind of support for technology that we have. We have one instructional education specialist, technology specialist for all of elementary schools, one. I mentioned that actually at a meeting the other day, and they said, you have many? How many? So that is something we need to take a look at. And we've had a part-time one at the middle school and a full-time person at the high school. But that's given the usage of technology that is going on in this district that is woefully inadequate. So that gives you just sort of a visual on the budget transfer categories. And then going on right here, we have, I think it's one of the things that's important to talk about when we look at special education. One of the things is what do we consider special education costs? We are trying to, and we have done, I think, a pretty good job of being consistent with defining what special education costs are and staying with that so we would have year-to-year comparisons. And these include grant-funded costs, legal and transportation costs, which directly support a student's IEP. It does not include any of the interventions that we do. So when you see an increase in special education that is not due to interventions, it's not due to guidance or social work or unless there's a particular assignment of that social worker to special education classes. So special education is legally mandated for eligible students. Interventions are not. However, while they're not, they're essential as we help struggling learners. And I think that the data we have shows that it's certainly making a difference. But I do want to point that out because we're very pristine about how we compare special education costs from year to year. And in fact, in the diagram, it's not in this particular PowerPoint, but it is in the budget book. The thing that you will see, which we have seen over many more years than just from FY12 to FY18, the percent increases in special education looks like a jagged line graph. I mean, we have increased one year 14 percent and another year 1 percent. And that is the nature of special education. So as you look at a six-year look at intervention expenses, there has been a slight increase every year and not huge, but certainly not at the same rate as we would see the increase in general ed, which is the gray bars there. And as you can see, all of them increase a little bit, except for, I know, you have a different color than yours. Yeah. So it didn't show up very well, but it's actually sort of a light blue. The blue is the general education. The red in the diagram you have are your interventions. And the green are special education. So general education, special education are increasing. General education at a slightly higher rate than special ed interventions, it's increasing only slightly in comparison. So the last slide here for people listening, you can just go to the APS website and go to budget information, which is in the left quick links, and it'll take you right to the superintendent's budget. And it'll take you back many years if you're interested in past years as well. So that's just an overview of this, of where we are with the budget for FY 18. And the purpose of tonight is to have a discussion about all of this. All right. Great. Mr. Heiner. First off, I'd just like to say the figures that I gave you a copy of, and I'm going to be talking tonight, based on the book that we have. I didn't bring the book, so I downloaded the, what we have on the webpage. So these numbers are in conflict right now. The budget, I would suggest that we update that on a regular basis because the numbers have changed. The FY 17 budget is as of 12, 15, 16 on the webpage. The book that we have is January 31st, 17. So the numbers have dramatically changed. The other thing before I start into specifics, and I don't mean to beat this horse, but looking back six years under the longevity, we've shown a negative on longevity, five out of the six years. So I would ask the superintendent to look into that very, very carefully going forward. We've talked about that in the past. Well, not necessarily over the history. Whatever has happened each year, this is, we've talked about it. It should be a fixed figure. We know who it is. The numbers should not be a difficult thing. But in our history, on the budget history in, on our webpage, five out of the six years have shown a negative. And one year was even greater than what we have this year, which is tight. I don't necessarily expect answers for all these tonight. I just want to share them with everybody. In the budget book we have, we see a difference, an increase of 285,000, close to 286,000 under the teacher aid and salary. In part of the presentation of the book, it showed that we were not going to fully fund it. We talked a little bit about it. But that 285,000, even with a 2% salary increase with the, based on their figure from 17, translates into at least, I think, 7.5, I'm sorry, 11 more positions or plus. So, I'd just like to get that straightened out. The summer program, the question I guess, is that summer program related to our special education? Yes. Okay, so that $12,000 increase would be expected from year to year. That's understood. Administrative stipends has a close to a $48,000 increase in the budget. Could you talk about that? Well, we have some, we have, for example, let's give you a couple examples. We have one administrator that is covering for supervision of guidance, which we, we have two administrators doing that. We have three administrators covering for performing arts. And so any stipend that is in that area, we have a stipend for additional work around. Those are existing positions. I mean, this is a $48,000 increase over what we currently have. So are you adding more? I don't think any administrative stipends have changed. That's something I need to look at. Okay. I'm just bringing that to your attention. So the administrative stipend is up by $48,000. The teacher moving allowance, it's still a fixed rate that we're in the current contract. So that piece hasn't changed. There's a $3,000. It's not a fixed rate. It's a per diem rate. Thank you. That solves that. In anticipation, we're just looking to have the stratton people move back. We're not looking to have anything. Maybe one or two might move in a transfer, but no massive change. Thompson. Thank you. Solves that. Okay. Mass teachers' retirement pensions. It's the exact same for the past three years. Salaries increase and our part of the pensions should increase. We're budgeting $127,428. That's for $16,000, $17,000, and $18,000. So I'd ask you to look at that. That might show as a deficit. It's state static. I can't understand. I know we have plus and minus as teachers, but it shouldn't be the exact number every year. I'll look into that. It's not looking to that. Tuitions to other schools. I assume that's special education, but we're looking at a $2.2 million increase. Are these all IEP right at the line item? By the way, I'm sorry, I should give you 83201 is what it is. Tuition to other schools. Right. And we're looking at the budget book that we have. We're looking at a $2.2 million increase. That's pretty steep. When later on, we're looking at out of district tuition, a decrease of $186,000. One of the things that came up today, and I'm not speaking to this particular one, but it has to do in the lens that you look at a particular item. In fact, this came up. Tony Mertz is helping as she did in the fall as we look for a new CFO. And a question had come up and she looked at it. It really depends on which lens you look at it, whether it's object or program. And it may really be due to the lens than it is to the actual increase. But we don't have any tuition to other programs unless you're special ed. They're tied to an IEP. This is in the budget. It goes from $5.7 million to $7.9 million. That's a pretty steep increase. Which section is it? The line number is section 2. Isn't it 6-3? No. The one I'm talking about, in the book, was section 2, line 8-3-2-0-1. Tuitions to other schools. And I do expect that to be 8-3-2-0-1. Title, Tuitions to other schools. In section 2? Section 2 doesn't have anything. Doesn't have anything. In my book it was section 2. So look in section 7 then. Try that. Well see, that's the thing that gets confused. That's the object summary. That's what Ms. Mertz was saying, is that you can get confused about what's in which of these categories just by going from one lens to another. 8-3-2-0-1. Actually, it's 7. But that can't be the total tuition to other schools. No. That's much too small of a number. All I'm saying is that line increased by $2.2 million. And I'm concerned about that increase. That's all. It doesn't show in this section. I think we're talking... 8-3-2-0-1. Just second. It does. It is in section 7. It actually is 8. No, no. It's a... It's like a $700 increase. You're looking at the... Between the FY17 and the FY18 budget, it only goes up about $800,000. Yeah, exactly. I looked at the wrong section. Section 6. Section 6, not section 7. I'm in 7. Section 6. It's in all of these. But this is where Bill's seen the discrepancy. Thank you. It's section 6, page 3 of 3. Thank you. 6-8-4-8 and 6-8-5-1 are both weird. Thank you. No, both of them. Okay, right. I don't see either one of those numbers in my section. 8-6. What is it again, Kassie? It's section 6, page 3 of 3. Yep. And I think... It looks like it's going down. 6-8-4-8 and 6-8-5-1. To a strict tuition residential? No, that's not the number he's looking at. Those are not the numbers he's looking at. It's in section 7. I found it there. 8-3-2-0-1. It's on page 2 of 3. Okay. I'll look at that again. I'll look at those again. They're very similar to the other numbers. So maybe it's just moving of somebody. Let me go back. 8-3-3-0-1. It might help. I've asked Miss Merz if she would come to the March 2nd meeting. I think it might be helpful for her to also just sort of re-explain all these different lenses. All right. Because they do get confusing as you try to get a handle on different things because it's just, as I said, different lens. And different things can be put into different categories. I'll wait for that part and I'll get my figures correct. One last one. Vocational transportation. Is that why is that not part of their budget? Well, let me... Okay. Because it's an increase of $105,000. Yes. We've had some increases in students going to other-than-minute man vocational. And actually, we did for a while and then last year we had some for example, the agricultural school. Yes. Well, here's the challenging part. The town has a vocational budget. It's called the Minuteman vocational budget. And so, only monies that are expended at Minuteman come out of that. The last couple of years is vocational education and transportation have come out of our operating budget. Including Minuteman? No. But going forward, we're going to have a warrant article this year that is more generally stated for vocational education. Our FY 18 budget is $5 million. No. For vocational? Maybe I'm looking at the- Go ahead. Okay. Under Massachusetts law if a child wants to do a vocational program that's not offered at Minuteman or offered in the town of Arlington they have a right to attend another vocational school that has that program. This is called chapter 74 student. So that when a student moves under or that has nothing to do with Minuteman that is a town expenditure that comes out of the town budget. Now the question here is how we're accounting for it locally but that- and that transportation line item here is for those chapter 74 students going to another vocational school. And which is a town responsibility- an Arlington responsibility as opposed to a Minuteman responsibility. But $5.3 million. We don't have other than- we have several and we got the agricultural school and we may have one other unique one. They go to- the other place we have a student I believe this year is at Cambridge, Wynch and Latin to their vocational school. Okay. Let me see. In the current fork. So let's get clarity on the number. Let's get clarity on the numbers next time I think. Okay. Going forward again I'd just like to repeat the current FY18 thing that's on our webpage is already out of sync. Numbers change in the month period. So we need to keep that updated if we're going to keep that on the webpage. It's going to have to change almost monthly. I just have to get an updated version. Because it's- the current line is FY17 budget as well on this page it was 1115 and our book has 131 17. So if people are going to look at numbers the pages are not current. That's all I'm saying on the webpage for that one. We should have the same dated pages as what we should have. I'm not sure that- we've never updated our online budgets. First of all this is a proposed budget. It's not the school committee's budget yet. And so that's what you'll be voting on the 16th. Right. But going forward to the finance committee and the town meeting and stuff whatever's presented to the two groups should match what we have on the webpage. That's all I'm saying. Going forward. Yes. We should make sure that the final- the budget that goes to finance committee and- I made the mistake thinking tonight. I didn't bring the book. I downloaded from our webpage and that's why my- thank you. I can definitely take a look at that. Have somebody look at that. No, no. I'm done. I'll go back in. Okay. You're good? For now. Okay. Other comments? Mr. Shepin? Yeah, I think one of the compelling things that are going on here in the discussion that we're having at the last meeting involved what's the appropriate rate of circuit breaker use next year. And if we follow past practice our circuit breaker revenue will decrease in spite of two years of drastically increased special ed expenditures for out of district placement. In the budget book coming into about page eight- seven and eight where we're making a special ed argument, we go through the actual expenditures from fiscal 11 to fiscal 16 and have fiscal 17 projected with the big spike in our projected expenditure. But the real story is not just that but where our fiscal 17 budgeted number was because the projected in 17 is was about 600,000 more than we anticipated in the budget. And that if we're looking at 17 projected to 18 budgeted it doesn't look like a huge jump but compared to the 16 actual and the 17 budgeted both the 17 actual and this 18 budget are pretty substantive increases and that's an important story that we first of all we need to be able to tell effectively when we go to finance committee. Secondly, I think that in terms of making a persuasive argument for at least the position that I hold is that we should be a little more aggressive in taking circuit breaker money to see those big jumps there particularly above the budgeted number for 17. We should at least hold ourselves harmless on the circuit breaker to take less money in a circuit breaker for next year's budget even though we've had significant increases in special aid costs for two years in a row I think that there's merit in terms of the discussion to plot that out and I think that graphing out the special aid with the anticipated the budget and the anticipated expenditures compared to the fiscal 18 budget would sort of be an important tool for us in terms of making a decision whether we're going to take zero additional money out of the circuit breaker we're receiving in fiscal 18 or whether we want to go and be a little more aggressive in taking money out of that. Other than that I mean the budget is pretty tight it is what it is it aligns to previous years budgets the priorities are clearly laid out we're not fulfilling many needs or wishes the real action in this thing is going to be preparing for fiscal 19 as we open the Gibbs and look to new classrooms that we need to be staffing. Does a budget committee want to do a motion at this time? No. Okay. I just wanted to know that was on the table. Dr. I have some questions. I sent them on last week as we were requested but I guess the timing was such that there wasn't time for many answers. So my first question was actually addressing the same thing that was talking about thinking about the circuit breaker that we're going to receive for fiscal 17 comparing it to what we received for fiscal 16 we're actually going to see approximately $1.55 million spent more in 17 than we did in 16 and that's going to translate into some additional amount of circuit breaker and we hadn't actually discussed that before at this table that the difference isn't just what's different between the budgets, actually what's different between fiscal 16 spending and fiscal 17 spending. And that's a whole lot bigger difference than just the addition over the budgeted to try and estimate what our circuit breaker might be. I was wondering if we could find out how many children there are in out of district day residential programs this year and in fiscal 16 and with that information we should be able to at least roughly calculate what the magnitude of the circuit breaker will be. I can find the information for 16 because it's online with the chapter 70 stuff but I don't have the information for 17. So if we could get that I think budget subcommittee would like to have it doesn't have to be down to the absolute, you know, single student and stuff but we need a good sense of it so that we can do some kind of estimation. That number I gave you at the last meeting that was the estimation but, you know, we could have all that information has been done. The special ed department has gone through every single student and what the costs were and what the expectation would be. So we definitely have that analysis already done and would be happy to share it with you. One of the things that I know the issue of circuit breaker is a big one as we think about it because you incur it in a year where you have heavy expenses and then you don't use it so later so you have this mismatch so to speak. So we're going to not have nearly 200,000, 185,000 next year that we have this year. That's a circuit breaker because of the way we budget. That's why I said that putting a million dollars aside I think is something we can look at. I'm not sure that we should look at circuit breaker. In fact if you go to the website on circuit breaker you'll see at the very bottom what they strongly suggest is best practice and best practice is to do what we're doing. You incur the cost, you get the money, you bank it for a year next year's budget because it gives you consistency. Now one of the ways that has helped us as a district is that we've been able to in those years where we have more money than we might need in special education is we've been able to put it into a stabilization account. In fact that stabilization account we're going to use this year to help us with these overages and about five years ago when we had a year like this that's when we were able to break the cycle and it was exactly that that allows us to handle these just tremendous ups and downs that we experience and I think we need to make sure that we always budget fiscally prudently so that we have some buffers to those kind of years and that's my concern of not staying with what we're doing. So respectfully I understand what you're saying and I argued for it that's why I argued that we'd go into this to begin back five years ago but I think even though Desi doesn't have it written in the small print they would also think it's best practice to have a flat or very minimally increasing out of district tuition budget year to year but that's not what our district is seeing. We're seeing ups and downs and I on for my part would not recommend and would strongly counsel against us heavily into circuit breaker but I think to consider using some of the excess that we're seeing this year versus fiscal 16 to basically flatten out some of the revenue you know the revenue shortfall that we're seeing I think is not an imprudent thing to do I think that to not do it is effectively shorting all of our students for the purposes of maintaining a big pile of money. The reason I would not counsel us to dip further into it is that that big pile of money is helpful if we have another year next year like we did this year where our tuition to go up another 700. That's our kind of our second pot reserve that so that we don't go totally short but I think that we could dip into it a little bit but to be able to calculate that there's numbers that we need so can I go on to my other question do we want to keep going actually let's stick to this question first and then we'll do Dr. Ruddy and then I know Mr. Haney. One of my other concerns about using circuit breaker money for reoccurring costs is sustainability because it's not in the base budget really you're using that excess and what if the next year you don't have that excess so in that respect we would go into it knowing that we had done this and if we don't have the excess in the next year it's because we didn't incur the costs so we have to know if we have another year where costs go way down that we need to take some of that money and put it into our reserve or whatever to pass it forward so that we aren't totally short the year after but it's very doable one question how much money have we got so far on circuit breaker they give it to us in periods and then whatever is left over we get it in June no how much have we got already this year on circuit breaker I think they've been coming in chunks of around 450,000 the other thing that I just like to share circuit breaker is not always a guarantee we're at the whim of the state if we use it and I understand where you're coming from and I think I'm beginning to understand the the rationale for doing it but with our luck all of a sudden the state decides to only fund it for 50% in the following year and we really get hurt that's part of I don't trust Boston that's my fear going forward and I guess budgeting looking for the hurricanes in the worst case scenario is somewhat safe I don't know I have mixed feelings for it I'm slowly being persuaded to US side the rationale for it and I understand that but I don't trust Boston at all I mean the one thing about the circuit breaker is that we do have part of the crystal ball showing right now because when the governor files his budget we have a bottom line figure of what the minimum is going to be so at this point we can project out to some degree of certainty that we're going to get X number of dollars put into that pot we don't know what the denominator is in terms of the number of claims throughout the state but you know it's not going to get down by 30% it's close to this year's number the House and Senate are likely to put some more money in that pot I may need another raise but the thing is that if we have an extraordinary increase in the circuit breaker that is generated by this year's enrollment if we go into fiscal 18 and we're using the circuit breaker money generated in fiscal 16 it's a very low number so that we'll have two years of highs while we're taking money from a low now I'm not saying spend out all the circuit breaker I think that there is prudence in maintaining some of the circuit breaker revenue because in a situation where there's a big crash and it goes way down but historically the lowest numbers were in the 30s and so if we're used to getting around 70 half the circuit breakers unless the state totally abolished a circuit breaker we're going to get the subsequent year and we'll get the heads up in the next January of what the situation is going to be and because there's such an increase in expenditures over two years and we're heading into a decrease year on circuit breaker we should at least fill that hole plus a little and the reason why I was talking about getting more numbers surrounding budget actual in these years and why Dr. Allison Ampey has been talking about honing in on what a realistic number for the number of students and the claimable expenses are is for us to be able to put a picture together visually so that either I can advocate for drawing down some of that money and make a rational decision and how much of that money you might want to come down or I might be persuaded by the superintendent's argument based on the numbers that I see and my mind is open on this I have a position I think we should go after it and if looking at all the numbers and all the combinations lead me to a different conclusion that's fine but I think we really need to be explicit in these numbers and we need to be presented out visually as sort of the center point of this budget presentation because that's where the heart and soul is discussion is that's what we talked about last time we're going to be talking about it again and we make our best decisions when we have our best information so I just want to ask you do you have clarity about what budget is asking for in terms of information is that I have clarity and let me repeat it so I make sure that I have that clarity what you really want as an analysis is what we think will be what we'll bill out for Circuit Breaker which is a function of the students in both residential and out of district I wasn't when you say what we want as an analysis I'm not even I'm looking for a good a real good estimate when I think analysis I'm thinking down to the a good estimate we have we actually have that done so maybe we should have a budget subcommittee meeting after vacation I will say this that I can understand where people are coming from on this but I do know that there's two things that potentially could be very positive and that is there is a chance this year believe it or not that we may actually get a little bit of a bump in the fourth quarter on Circuit Breaker that's possible and in fact there's been hints about that nobody's saying anything definite the second is that extraordinary relief I'm not quite sure when we'll hear about it but I think it will probably be by April or May because it has to be in this fiscal year if that's the case then what's going to happen is that money that we might have taken out of this revolving account to tuition in we don't have to so there's a little bit more cushion there too now the thing about it is there's so many things that we could fund that some of these things could even wait until later in the you know in the summer even for that matter but there is one area which I think is a good chance we're going to get the extraordinary relief at least some and we may get a little bump and to your arguments we have higher numbers is I feel comfortable budgeting out of district to actual costs right now this moment in time it's built in and the expectation of more expenses and yet and there probably will be but we don't know what that will be and but we have cushion for those and I don't know what that will be I just wanted to say I do continue to worry about this budget that it is so tight with the increase in enrollment that we will continue to expect as you mentioned yourself every time we hire a teacher we don't just hire one person we hire some other things and that's not built into this budget what's also not in this budget now is that you can quit TAs to handle potentially very large classrooms and the good thing about maybe creating cushion for TAs is that that's not as much of a commitment as hiring another teacher you have a few TAs and there's a budget problems later on you can make different choices next year so those are the things that I worry about with this budget and I would I would like to see a cushion last time I mentioned that 200,000 if we were going to touch it might be a better number than 300 it's certainly we're talking about going down this year by close to 200,000 and so that feels like a more comfortable number so I'm going to throw that out just to point out when we were talking the two or three hundred thousand dollars that's when we were just looking at the amount above the FY budget FY 17 budget so that number should actually be significantly more it's the difference and the problem is I don't know how much because I know the numbers for the extra above the budget but I don't know it for the difference between FY 16 and FY 17 right now I'm talking about the decrease that we know that we're getting less than we got last year for Circuit Breaker is closer to 200,000 when we talk about the revolving that we know what Fiscal 16 Circuit Breaker is going to be they've already put that out is that what you mean because that's what's going into we're getting right now we're getting paid for Fiscal 16 Circuit Breaker each quarter we get chunks and we expect FY 17 put those into and that money it's all going into a pot and that money goes plunk into the FY 18 budget right and so we expect that the FY 17 money that we'll be getting the expectation seemed like was closer to 200,000 less than we're getting that's what Dr. Ray mentioned tonight for what we're using in our budget next year will be 200,000 less than what we're using in our budget this year exactly that's what I meant right because the FY 16 Circuit Breaker is less than the amount that was budgeted into I mean the amount that's going at the FY 18 which is what we incurred in FY 16 right is less than the 15 15 yes exactly we spent less that's how I understand it okay so I actually had a question about the extraordinary expenses relief money if we get that does that count against our Circuit Breaker for next year so it's just extra extra and we can still claim all of that for Circuit Breaker so we get like double pay ooh sweet okay it's not related to Circuit Breaker at all and it's money for FY 17 so money is that we have to take out of that revolving account we wouldn't have to take assuming we got equivalent okay and it doesn't have any effect on there's no effect on Circuit Breaker they're not just saying oh here we're forwarding it to you sounds like there's a catch somewhere no I'm serious it doesn't sound like the state's practice the state has only $5 million to be spread across okay so it's not going to be a lot of money okay so I'll move on from this topic so we still would like to say something about this topic so I think that again I think that the important part is what are we going to use the money for so I still don't know one way or the other how much I'm for against it but it totally depends on what the money is for and you know how much money it is so I think that you know if all of that comes together and we can say you know I really want to I'm just pulling this out of you know the list you know we really want that dean at the high school or we really want to give another head of a teacher to the high school or whatever and we all agree that that should be something that we should fund this year and the only way to fund it is through this method that's you know that's I'm kind of looking for that coming together of you know we really think that this should be a priority for it otherwise you know I mean I know there's a lot of things on this list that we would like but I mean I think that we really have to think about which of those that aren't making it are so important that we should push them over and we should find the funding so oh can I yeah go in going with this doctor okay so last year there was a big push to have additional TAs do the principals understand that we would essentially be funding principal assistants whether it's assistant principals or administrative help or whatever at the cost of having more TAs in the classroom yes they definitely understand big discussion and they're okay with well okay they're not okay they're just willing to pay that price but they that's the price they understand that what's happening increasingly is that we want our building principals to be instructional leaders we want them in the classroom you know we don't have a formula you have to be 40% 20% but on the other hand they want to do that and they want to be there to support teachers and yet there are lots of administrative tasks not to mention discipline and having a social worker helps but the social worker isn't expected to do the disciplinary piece of it so they really get pulled a lot and the more students you have in a building you have 450 students 470 students a lot of kids so that's the issue no they understand that and actually if we had more money you know that comes our way this year I fully support having more support TA support in the building that's one of the things teachers feel they need totally support that we also have to be able to get teacher teaching assistants and Spiegel can talk to that issue it's not that easy actually it's not easy especially for special ed teaching assistants for special programs that can be more challenging I think if for kindergarten teaching assistants if we hired full time I think it would be a little bit easier only because there are so many candidates who are looking for teaching positions in the elementary level or in grad school for elementary teaching or early education positions and see it and it has been a way in our district and other districts for teachers to get into the system and get to know people and get jobs once they become available so I think there's a little bit easier to get in the kindergarten teaching assistants rather than the special program special ed teaching assistants can I add a comment to that to fully fund full time kindergarten TAs would be about 200,000 I think if they were going to put more TAs into an elementary building I think a better way of doing it is building subs or a building not a building, yeah a building TA because then that person can be moved where there's a need we have some kindergarten that have 19 in them and having a half time TA works well we try to do all of the literacy part of our curriculum in the morning and do the out of cluster the out of the specialist in the afternoon so there's handling some of that with scheduling as well but having more assistance in the building would be terrific particularly when getting a sub you know, it's hard and philosophically one of the things we struggle with is we know that embedded professional development is the most important and what that means is you want teachers to be able to go to other classrooms we have a lab program you've heard a lot about and we're doing courses for instructional leadership for teachers but that means that there are other classrooms and so we need to have competent people that can go in and it's probably better to have somebody you know in the building that is a really top notch rather than be going on the sub pool and ASOP all the time we know that's what really enhances and makes us move forward on the other hand we still have to cover classes so that's where I think we would prefer to put extra teaching assistance okay that kind of feeds into my next question which was looking at decreasing building subs as a way of freeing up money we've heard as we just did now that schools are having very difficult defining substitute teachers so I'm asking how can we justify decreasing the building subs and what effect is that going to have on the schools and what is the true cost because it seems to me we would just end up hiring more temporary substitutes or kids would be in the equivalent of long haul or old haul or something so it's a great point that suggestion was not an elementary suggestion that was a secondary I understand and I would say that would be actually one of the things at the top of my list to get back because when we had three here at the high school it was woefully inadequate you've heard about security issues we actually could use more because we really should be having somebody just literally walking these corridors which stretch into miles and watching doors it's important so you know if we had extra money that would be a top of my list anyway okay I'm just concerned about freeing up money by getting rid of these people and that's actually a significant hit but at the end that's the whole thing that's the dilemma of these budget sides like how do you balance the other things that you need to I also have various line item things but I've sent them to you before right so we can go over those maybe a budget subcommittee or something like that but those were my bigger picture questions yes so my first question I still would like I would like a clear plan for how we're gonna divvy up those assistant principals you know before we just blanket fund some amount of people somewhere I really want a clear plan of what school who it is or you know what the job expectations are that kind of thing is I really want to and I guess for the schools that we want to put it in I just want to make sure that those are you know obviously you know the numbers kind of bear that out so I still want to really see something like that I have a question about the music director so we currently have a .5 music director no we have no music director when did that happen because I thought we had had a half a one or a quarter of one or something no and Mr. Tussoni retired the second we haven't had one for a couple of years a couple of years ago when we actually did have money in the budget we looked for somebody but it was .5 we found that that would not work people were not we just basically had no candidates to speak of so going forward we realize that it has to be a full time position we give an option of having .5 or a full but the full will be a combination of the administrative piece and some teaching in fact we've AEA and AAA we've all talked about this and we've come to an agreement that this could work so that would be what we would be looking to do now in terms of we would we already have a .2 equivalent of money sometimes I look at these as money it's just money that we could put toward that and then we also have some needs in the elementary that we've we've added a few FTEs here and they're just a patch holes we could pull those together and in some ways a director working with elementary works better having people across secondary and elementary because just how different the schedules are but I think that we could have a full time position and it fits in our budget we just would have to find the right person that's why there's only half one that you're recommending because the teaching piece is already embedded in the budget okay I guess I know this is not going to be popular with anybody in music but I still have a question as to how we prioritize that over a dean at the high school or so I guess I still want to see some idea like I know how hard this is I know how many things are requested but I don't have a really good sense of why we picked the things we did why those were prioritized I think that that's still something I'm struggling with and I'm not saying that music isn't important it's very important it's vital to some children but again they all are way up there and at some point we just have to make the decision that one is higher than the other well as far as the high school goes there are ways that we're helping with that dean need you think about it in terms of what you needs are in terms of what needs to get done and by having the director of SEL and guidance we're taking some work off of a dean a heavy load off one of the deans which is going to be very freeing we're also going to what I would like to do and I think this would be the choice of the high school principal is to have a point for assistant and then move it into a 1.0 maybe the following year ease it in to do not necessarily evaluations but to do a lot of the assistant principal pieces there's a lot of things that Bill McCarthy just gets buried with with facilities following that leak and so there's been some things that he had in his job which actually he has in his job because we don't have a director of guidance and that is like running MCAS so we took that out this year and took it and Mary Volano is doing it as a project so we're trying to get some of the tasks done but not in different ways it's not like we're not addressing it okay and wait I think I had one more so then the other question I had was about the so I asked a question about the interventions I wanted to know if the 4 million was teachers curriculum or both and Ms. Johnson pointed me to the fact that section 11 is all about interventions and it kind of lays all of that out and my question about the interventions is that I'm a little bit confused as to why things like ELL are in interventions because ELL is required I mean we have to do this whereas to me the difference would be that interventions are things that we know are the right thing to do and that we do them to mitigate and help students not kind of go into special ed or to you know beef up support that students need and so and yet in here are a lot of things like for example I think that things like intervention that obviously is obviously an intervention math RTI but there's a lot of ELL in here and I feel like I don't know how much of that is an intervention so much as it's something we have to do by law we have to have those we have we do there's regulations in terms of number of hours I'm gonna give you an answer and I'll ask Dr. Chester if she wants to add anything in the one could argue it should be a separate category or in interventions actually students as they were level one and level two they could actually be in a classroom if the teacher was dual certified so the fact that you have a school where somebody's not dual certified and you have you have to have your level ones and level twos have an ELL pull out for two hours three hours is that an intervention or is that what's required is the service what's not specified is how you do it and so actually one of the things we've been looking at is trying to get more dual certified people so we can have our students in a classroom and then you don't have to do any pull outs so I hear what you're saying and if you'd like we could pull ELL it's just a little confusing because I was like wow this is awesome you know to see this and then as I was looking at it I was just like I want to put ELL in there my guess would be it's not I know it's kind of on that weird you know but the amount of service that you have to give is very broad in terms of what the description is and so you know it reflects the choices that we've made regarding services you could, as Dr. Bording has said you could argue to put it into a different category but it is not something that's offered to everyone and so therefore in our way of thinking it's an intervention because it's additional assistance that a student needs because of that student's particular challenges that's how I just wanted to understand because like I said special ed is very clearly you know its own category and in some ways is almost like an ELL category even though it would be very small it would be weird right so in the sense to put it into it we don't write ELL plans what we'd like to do for special education plans so in special education plans we write it up and we give a very specific commitment which is signed you know has a very specific process that we have to follow and ELL our commitment is to the student but there's not anything specifically that's written up as like a team meeting and so that's why it would be more like an intervention to me. Alright, cool, thanks. That was it. Yeah, Dr. Allison. I wanted, I'm sorry I did have one more question and it is a line item thing it's what I was trying to talk about earlier in section 6 page 3 of 3 find 6848 and 6851 find it myself 68 68 what? 6848 it's out of district tuition day and out of district tuition residential okay so 6848 there the numbers are just weird and I don't understand why. Oh yeah that is weird yeah that's that big jump yeah and that's what I thought I thought that's what he was talking about in fact that was the question I gave Ms. Burns today but what she really needs is um, Andrea Campbell okay and she's on vacation okay so we're going to get that straight we're confused about this as well and it's different in section 4 3 of 3 um if you flip back to section 4 I think these should be the same numbers I think that's what we'll have to find out from getting clarification we'll have to double cross check all those numbers that have to do with out of district placement and whether it be residential or day and see where it appears in the budget in the different places just anyway it's weird so what we do know is if it's there I don't want people to think that maybe that's right what we do know is how much we're paying for out of district day, how much we're paying for out of district residential and it shows up in the bottom line right and that's what the numbers look it looks to me like it just some of the some of the balance shifted from day to residential today and I'm not sure it was intended for for actual purposes so if one goes up and one goes down right and it's about by about the same amount again I want to assure you that Allison Elmar's not here tonight but I know that working with them very closely and Dr. Bordi as well that they know exactly who the students are exactly where they're going to school and at this point in the year exactly what the cost is going to be right but it just if it was actually reflecting changes in student things there's other questions I would have but until we get it better balanced out I'm not going to go there so maybe if we could have an update it at the the second meeting on the second or something because then this is we just need to know what's going on right so we hope to get some of the more detailed questions answered on the second and I encourage actually if anyone has more detailed questions to get them in really soon so that there's no long period of time for next Thursday because the will be here next Thursday working with our new accountant and so that would be a good day for them to delve into this it could in fact be the only day they will be together before the second okay that was that was my only one well I just have a couple of big picture things I just want to say that one thing I'm particularly excited about in this budget I know it's a sad budget but is the director of health and wellness guidance yeah I think that's been this year's been a major initiative to look at this issues of social emotional and with a director with with real leadership in that position with a dedicated person we will hopefully get you know even better sort of processes in place and hopefully improve the situation and it's a situation that has gotten worse for us as it's gotten worse for many many districts we are not alone in dealing with increased social and emotional issues in our school system but these are very vulnerable kids and we've got to pay attention to this and I'm really really excited about this position yeah just to go along with that I support the aspect of the director of the health and wellness I think that is extremely important I've suggested this to Dr. Buddy outside the meeting the idea of making that alone a full-time position and the director of guidance make that a stipend position with one of the social workers or something for the idea of organization to split these to have one person do both I'm just concerned that the health and wellness may be watered down we're all in agreement of it I'm not suggesting I mean if part of the issue with the guidance director is organization and communication and things of that nature I think it might be better served I'm not the expert in this I defer to that but I'm sure that the health and wellness person may be distracted or taken away I agree so we haven't had director of guidance for a number of years and how it has evolved is that there are organizational parts of guidance that are stipended in some cases it's paid for from monies that come in for you know fees and guidance I would propose not changing that because it's a well well machine in that way but the person who is director of guidance has to do all of the evaluations that's the thing when I said for the dean one dean is doing all of the evaluations as is one assistant principal so we've got that piece of it happening as well as somebody else does you know music so no I would say try to keep the organizational pieces down as much as possible to focus on because this is going to be a K-12 guidance is always before 6-12 and we want to expand it then just to go forward I'd ask us as a group to ask the superintendent and the curriculum coordinator to look at this on a yearly basis because I mean we've all accepted and we're all in agreement the need the health and wellness aspect of that just an evaluation of the position we might need to look at supporting this position with more money and going forward we've done that I remember just coming on to the committee we saw the value of part-time social workers a few social workers at the beginning it was an exciting night that night we thought we might some of us thought we might take a couple years to get it and we voted unanimously to go with social workers and that I think has been very beneficial absolutely this health and wellness thing I think is going to go with a similar track and I'm just concerned and I'd like to be proven wrong rather than proven right well that's one of the reasons why we really look closely at not overburdening that position that's why I said what you said yeah hopefully this person can be a real thought leader in terms of and PV leader too I have another big picture of what I wanted to make I know parents are often trying to help out financially with the public school system there's a very nice easy way to do that the Arlington education foundation is a source of many many great new initiatives in the district we rely on them very heavily to support some really fabulous things so if parents feel that they have the extra money and they want to support education Arlington that is a terrific place to do it totally agree okay anything else on budget so we're going to have a lot more obviously in the next two meetings as well okay so we have our superintendent's report we have some very big news we do I have two things both of which actually have had press releases this week but the really great news is that we've been invited by the MSBA board to move into the feasibility study and that is great Dr. Seuss and Dr. Allison Ampey and Mr. Thielman were all able to be there with Tom Manager and myself yesterday our state reps would have loved to have been there but it was a really busy day on Beacon Hill yesterday so they had to cancel at the last minute but really it's very exciting where we're going the process is going to take a little bit more time than we thought and so early stages because we have had the experience recently of hiring OPMs and designers we know what our pace is of doing that in Arlington and it's a little bit different pace because of the process they put in place which is they're entrusted in making sure that the money that taxpayers pay is well spent and so they've had a great track record and what will end up happening is that our first our first task will be to get an owner's project manager and the earliest that we would be able to actually have the appointment of that would be June 5th and that's that's an MSB that's marching along do we have the money to hire someone that early has that already been established? last June that won't be an impediment then we had a $2 million override for the feasibility study and so then once the owner's project manager is selected then the owner's project manager actually does a lot of the work in hiring the designer so we would anticipate if we can stick to that pace I mean we could also have it early July but I think we're aiming for the earliest possible the fifth of June because you have to go before they only meet on Monday's first Monday of the month and that's when you come and present you know all of your documentation but as a result the summer will be spent on finding the designer and then probably by the fall we'll be ready to actually do the public input teachers have already been working on this and they've been doing this for a while but I think that all of their interest in this is accelerating and I know that there's a number of trips planned to other schools to look at schools I know that planning is going on right now so they'll be well positioned for when we have an educational facilitator come in next year to do these intensive conversations to be ready to go I think people had an idea what that was like in a mini version when we did that with the Gibbs but we will have more of that next year which I think in some ways better I was concerned of this could we get this the designer everything done by June but by June you know the energy isn't quite there for it I think having it in the early fall would be good so I think we're moving along that's great and the other thing is that as you know we and not just Arlington but lots of schools are testing for lead in their water and last spring we already I reported that out to everyone we did test the water it's not every faucet but it's a sample size that is recommended at all of the elementary and oddison and we found levels well below any action which says that first of all the water is fine that's coming into people's homes what's the issue is what the age of the pipes are and what condition they're in because the age isn't even necessarily the issue because you can get these linings that protect the water so at any rate we began the process for the very end of June of starting to get samples from the high school to test when schools in session and then we were able to get some of that through MWRA and then we got the grant and then we're able to do more testing in the fall and we just got the results so it's we put this out right away but even during the fall when we knew we were doing the testing we decided that was going to be the findings to start putting some reverse osmosis systems in we have one in the preschool the nurses office and daycare and I think we're going to think about some other ones as well but right now the situation is that we had five fixtures that had actionable levels so if you're over 15 parts per billion and there was a little bit over and then there was one sink that was considerably over but the interesting thing about that particular sink is that in the 30 second flush the draw they do two drawings as soon as they turn the faucet on and then after 30 seconds there was nothing in the third one so what actually happens in the high school is that people like to have colder water so they end up letting the water run anyway but right now we're going into the next phase of testing is just let the water run for 30 seconds but anyway we're moving on we're doing what we can do all of those fixtures have been replaced so we'll just keep the testing going Dr. Allison was this a sample or were all fixtures tested in the high school 28 in total not all so given that we were finding positives in that 28 are we going to go back and test all of them? Yes, we're going to retest the ones we replaced just to make sure it was fine and then we're testing the other ones as well and then we're going to start a new batch as well so we'll keep rolling through until we've tested everything and then when we find one we replace the fixture and that's it that's it? Okay any other building updates? Building updates well Thompson is moving along they're just I just asked permission today they could work on Monday on the holiday just to keep it going we have we're moving forward with Hardy and think in we're going to be moving forward in terms of moving to have the construction Tom meeting to support the addition of six classrooms but part of that we'll also be looking at how we're going to handle cafeteria core space as we go forward and we've had some estimates and I'm not quite sure what's the best solution is going to be but it will be part of the project Gibbs is humming along we will have our first Gibbs advisory meeting coming up it will be actually right before this meeting it gives advisory we have the new we have all the teachers we have a very big advisory group so we're going to meet in here and so we have an agenda so I'm going to get that out now we have the teachers and I'm sure that people will be able not everybody will be able to come and I think we'll have a good group and I know I was asked about the Audison principle search committee if that was when that was going to be formed well let me let you two speak about that so it is basically formed I mean we've asked the union the AEA conducting an election of their members at Audison and they've selected four members who are going to be on the committee we have a couple AAA administrators that will be there and we're going to look for a parent or two parents okay and there was talk about fifth grade parents as well at one point that would be for Gibbs no no for Audison well no no was it for Gibbs definitely for Gibbs just like we go for the representative on the selection committee I thought probably the easiest thing to do would be to have OPAC so this is a standard type of committee where we have members of the teachers who were selected by the union members of the administrators who would participate some parents some central office administrators I mean that's really our interviewing right now we're tentatively scheduling the first round of interviews on March 8th so we need to get the parents together soon yes we do yes Mr. Slickman and consequently the CFO search we are still collecting applications we have not scheduled the first set of interviews yet we will hopefully do that soon after break and would put together there are several people I know who who have requested to be on the committee from 6-4 in townside too on controller deputy town manager Julie probably a director facilities so we want to have this be a broad spectrum of people that are going to be working with the CFO what's going to be oh and we have Dr. Allison Ampe from budget and we're getting a reasonable flow of applicants we're getting some applicants I'm not sure we have several I'm not sure what reasonable did we have a deadline for the it was pretty open in the post I think in school spring it was the end of February but it can always be extended if we need to try to keep it out for a while when you go through the applications and stuff do people sometimes apply and not meet the criteria yes I think for any position we have people that happens we sort of screen them out usually we let them know that this position people need to know the CFO of the school system has to be certified with department of education so that in itself is one of the big screens right away and one would say well could they be certifiable but you can't begin the position without being certified depending on where they are in the licensure process if they're very close and they could have a license by July 1 of 2017 that would be okay it's like a teacher as long as they have it by the first day of school just have it then they don't have much experience well they don't have much experience in a public school system they may have other budget experience other CFO type of experience maybe other municipal experience it's possible without that license okay subcommittee and liys and reports budget so budget is going to meet hopefully sometime between now and March 2 depending on availability of our subcommittee members and also we've been scheduling budget outreach Mr. Schlickman conducted one last week on the 8th was it hardy? no it was Bishop oh Bishop sorry and we have multiple other ones in the process of being scheduled and we're going to be sending out an announcement tomorrow and then again after vacation so people can put them on the calendars but we've got one scheduled for Stratton, Thompson, Bishop Audison and now Brackett just came in and wants one too so what kind of questions are you getting or what kind of comments? we went through the power point and it was basically what are the choices can we get a copy of the power point can we see the graphs how are we I spent a bit of time talking about how we're funded and why we have to make tough decisions they seem to enjoy it they said it was a highlight of the meeting so I guess I didn't want to go and bog down their meeting but they were very happy to be able to have the conversation and to ask questions about the process in the town community relations so community relations both of its meetings were cancelled due to snow and so both of them have now been combined and are moved to Monday the 27th from 5 to 7 here we're going to discuss buffer zones appointment to the Human Rights Commission and the parent forum on March 9th 5 to 7 it was two meetings it was two meetings for that reason the only other thing is I wondered how did the school committee chat go on February we had Kersi and I had a good time for about 15 minutes talking to each other about town meeting and financial issues and the price of coffee the fact that they were donating coffee revenue to the ACLU lots of good things and then about 1150 we had about 6 people show up and we ended up chatting until almost 1230 and they were asking a bunch of interesting questions some were really school based questions and others were really town issues that in other forms of governance would have been under our domain like for example why did we sell the Crosby school for $2 million and it was like it's not ours you know that's a town decision town meeting but you wanted to preserve the open space to maintain the function of that building rather than have it torn down and develop into housing so there's a preservation issue there that was part of the thinking but again stating firmly that we accessed that school many many years ago and it was under the control of the town in disposition was made by town meeting but really thoughtful things about the additional classrooms about the rebuilds we talked about high school conferences yes a timing of parent conferences the length of thumb especially at the onison described as speed dating it is and whether there's any way it's a good way we have a lot of kids as a problem so do you guys have notes we're going to send them in so we'll put them in the minutes for next time cool so we can we're talking about how we're going to publicize this we've put it on the Arlington list the paper but we can certainly publicize this as a regular even though it's not officially a meeting we might as well the more we post it I think we should do that so you have the dates it's the first Saturday of every month I can remember to send you an email Karen as well when I do my hey Kathy can you send out a parent email hey Jennifer can you post this hey advocate can you put this in your paper and then at the end of this year we'll discuss whether we want to continue this because this was sort of a trial thing do we know if you made a schedule for the rest of the months or who's up next that's a good question I might just post it with one oh wait yeah that sounds good that sounds good I wouldn't put the people because we yeah I could change so March 4th is right now Bill and Len good you wanted to switch dates with me you switched April March 4th March 4th will be the next one yeah March 4th April 1st May 6th and June 3rd April 1st is election day April 1st is election day yeah that's what I was going to say do you want to do it on election day there's not much to get to there's not going to be a big crowd at the polls so are the is it closed there's nobody running against us and nobody's running against us and nobody's running against us that's awesome oh that's really great that's really good to hear we should also make sure that we touch base with the owner of kickstand this is very busy time in the store we had trouble getting a table to begin with and the owner came by and said we love having you here but let's get this on the calendar and let's work around okay we should talk to be costing her absolutely right business or money and we want to be enhancing it bringing people in right right right we bought lots of coffee oh yeah presumably some people are showing up just to see you guys and so you know they're buying things so but yeah we should talk to them I was highly caffeinated when we got done yeah so I'm there when at least once a week so maybe you talked a little bit more than usual yeah I mean it's 10 o'clock I wasn't highly caffeinated but by the time or 11 o'clock I wasn't highly caffeinated but by 12 30 I was do you want to speak to facilities does anybody want to talk about district accountability curriculum okay oh district accountability did anyone yes district accountability sorry we received no feedback of modifications from the last meeting so I guess we're moving forward there we don't have plans for another meeting but I think we'll probably end the round after vacation okay and I know we still have it on the agenda to talk about the superintendent goals that was we were supposed to talk about last time Jeff Mr. Thielman asked that we defer that decision discussion until he was able to be at a meeting and so we're going to push it to the next one did I misunderstand part of the thing I thought the chair of Paul was going to start the process start a procedure with Kathy are we going to just do the discussion first that's for you for the next the next one yeah that will that will have to happen whoever's chair that committee right so that's okay so we're going to my only concern is that it goes father and father and yes basically the time behind the times last time and well but the time officially starts from the end of the last evaluation which is November we're already yeah three months into it now we're talking five months into it yep so it's gonna be it's gonna be awful hard for dr. yeah yeah well I mean if the goals for the upcoming the next year will be halfway through the year we want we want to try to get on the schedule yes that they're established by June that's all yeah because the goals for next year so whoever's a chair that committee has to charge that yep okay who's on first okay okay so facilities nothing policy and procedures we're waiting for Mike Gilbert from MASC to contact Karen to start the procedure of updating our policy book I will be connecting with him to have him come out and explain the procedure and the subcommittees role in this procedure going forward okay and you got the I know there was a email from Mr. Gilbert right material he's already connected but he's gotten it he hasn't said a date yet has he okay but he's coming out to talk to you right okay so and we do not we ended up canceling a meeting for today because we really weren't ready to go forward so and we do not have one schedule is yet once I contact Mr. Gilbert for him to come out and talk to us I'll set up a doodle with the subcommittee I mean there were several other things on policy procedures were there one of it was getting it clear where we are on the student activity fee and then the superintendent the evaluation we wanted to write but that's all interconnected with the goals and stuff like that so I mean okay school enrollment task force is anybody wants so the only I mean we had a meeting and the outcome of that meeting was that we agreed that we should include the cafeteria redo as part of redoing Hardy right we talked about three there were kind of three kind of first goes at what that might look like but we kind of sent them all back to the drawing board and said we'd like to see some other layouts and things so we didn't really you know agree that any of those were necessarily good but that we really did have to fix the size of the cafeteria in some way and that that should be rolled into the right but we may not have the budget we we also had bestie Francisco who's the principal a we asked her a lot of questions because she's the one that's going to have to live with it right and she was very responsive so I had to commend her to the superintendent okay legal services review nothing at this time okay Gibbs committee so we know we're having a meeting you're on the Gibbs committee the meeting right is that I have not heard of any okay so I guess so our head gives advisory meeting yes yes so miss Starks needs to be on that list because she is the school committee representation oh good the gifts that's what we discussed that last time March 2nd March 2nd that Thursday network can that can you get there so I can certainly try I will have to swap my after school but I will can see if I can do that um warrant committee very good other leads on reports yeah Dr. Allison Ampe and I went to the EDCO meeting there was no meeting because we were the only two that showed up it was it it snowed and it was the ice day but but Dr. Ampe and I trudged out we got there's snacks at least yeah we got the snacks okay good okay announcements I have to I asked Karen to sign out a notice to the rest of the committee medical lobby day will be March 4th 14th excuse me 9 a.m. we'll gather in the nurses hall and at 1045 we're going to speak to our representatives talking about increased funding and and getting Boston to pay a better share they get a bit they literally make money on us and the other thing the Polo Plunge was a success with over $55,000 raised it cost 60 cents for one polio inoculation so that translates into just from this district alone for Rotary's 91,000 inoculations three members from the Allington Rotary Plunge and we earned over $1,500 that money's matched with by the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation and for those that care the windshield was 29 degrees up 14 from last year but it really didn't matter but it was a fun time for good cause and future agenda items yes Mr. Hainer I would ask that the board discuss article 19 which is the appointment of the town treasurer that alone is not directly related to us but it may be tied we need to do a little bit more investigation I'll be happy to do it to see if it's related to the DOI report if it is that does have impact on us so I will bring that back for the next meeting to see if it does if it's just the town treasurer it doesn't impact us directly and I'll withdraw that but it's article 19 for the town meeting I mean I understand it doesn't directly yet we don't know where the article is leading we'd like to see some language that would be the vote under the article right see what the long-range plan would be if the articles adopted right right right okay great anything else that's it okay so motion to adjourn by Mr. Starks seconded by Mr. Hainer all in favor oh I'm sorry we don't need executive no no we don't need a session all there I I okay unanimous great thank you