 you know, to our like-up students, etc. So I'm not sure when the date is, but Libby and I will set a near-term date to just really spend most of the two-hour meeting talking about those issues and kind of next steps for the district. And I also want to acknowledge that this all comes with COVID and a lot of work the administration is doing around just getting figuring out what we have to do for next year. So I know that's a that's a resource challenge, but I just feel this topic is too important to the district and too timely right now to push it off. So I wanted to acknowledge that early on. So the agenda amended and no public comment. Let's move to the consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I move to approve the consent agenda. Second. I don't think so since we're in person, but I don't know what we're kind of in a hybrid now. I mean this is an in-person meeting with Zoom Collins, so I don't think we do. Yeah, I don't think we do. We do want to acknowledge though that Bridget is participating via Zoom, but other than that, everyone here except Ryan. And what if what if a member of the public came? Would they just have to observe social distancing? Our seating is not set up in a social distancing manner. Okay, but if they came we will we'll figure out something. I'm not expecting a flood of people, but they're not allowed in the building. Okay, so that's not an issue. Good to know. All right, so consent agenda. Yes, I think we're on the same page that we do not need a roll call. So consent agenda. I got a motion approving. It's under down from Andrew. I need a second. Second it. All those in favor? And Bridget was that an aye? Yes. Okay. Any opposed? The consent agenda approved. Now on to board discussion. Policy monitoring reports. We have tobacco prohibition and the board superintendent relationship policy. And yeah, any discussion? Anything you want to say, Libby? motion to approve the policy monitoring reports? I move to approve the policy monitoring reports. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And now diversity equity inclusion and also note just so we can stick to schedule that we will have a deeper dive meeting on this later. So let's try to kind of relatively stick to the timeframe on this knowing that we'll have opportunity to talk about it further. But Libby? I didn't know what we wanted to dive into with this. I have a policy here that we can pull up and talk about what we've been doing just recently. Yep. Yes, I think it'd be great to get an overview of what the district is doing, what efforts we have in place, and then maybe just brainstorm ideas about things we want to talk about in more depth at another meeting and some of the areas where we feel the board can be helpful. Jim, as part of this discussion, you and I just let folks know you and I talked the other day about an email I received in regard to demands for schools from Black Lives Matter. Do we want to talk about that today or do we want to hold off a week or so until we meet about this next? Why don't we put out the ideas today and kind of let them sit and we can dive into them in more depth later. But again, I think just registering those would be an opportunity for everyone to kind of maybe go around the room quickly and just register things you're hearing from the community and concerns you have and then we can organize it and dive in later. Do we want to do that maybe after we hear from Libby about what's going on? Yes, I think. And Libby, could you link the diversity policy in the chat? So the district has a district-wide equity committee on it has I want to get the exact, has our administrators on it, director of procurement instruction, director of special education, special educator, two special educators, one SLP, two classroom teachers, library and technology integrationists, Amanda Garsis from our community who's a parent at UES and Sarika Tandon who's a parent high school? Oh, yeah, should I have another one? Little, I'll touch on another one for some reason. And then we've been facilitated by Mia Moore who's also a parent of students at UES, but we actually hired Mia on, so not as a community member, but she is a professional facilitator. So she's been facilitating the group for the last few, like the last three quarters of the year. We had an equity grant from the state that we received and worked in conjunction with two other SUs, Rutland and one of the Rutland SUs and Bennington. And I can tell you honestly that that as soon as COVID hit, that kind of had a hard time as well. But through that grant, the district leadership team went to a very intensive training called courageous conversations. Who's that? Do you know the company who puts that out, Mara? It's all about leading in this time period. And it was a very in-depth conversation that focused mostly on race. The leadership did that. We also... It starts and stops because we've had it getting away like Christies. And we've been trying to really find footing as to where to start because the topic of equity is so broad and huge. And struggling a little bit with what we can control and what we can't control and what we can influence and what we can't influence versus what we want to influence. And I recognized pretty early that as the title superintendent influences what other people react when I'm at the table. So when I speak, then the conversation stops sometimes just because it's like, well, Libby, what's your opinion? And then if I give my opinion, then that's the right answer, right? So I've had to learn myself of how to not and really put my head down. So when people look to me, I don't talk, which you all know me well enough. It's hard to do. No, it is important, Mara, because it is a big... Who makes the decisions is a big conversation in this group, right? Absolutely. So yeah, a lot of times in those facilitated discussions, they will take... Sometimes they'll take like superintendents or leaders or CEOs or whatever and put them in your room together to brainstorm and like so that you get a chance to talk more freely without being the leadership voice inadvertently. Yeah, yeah. But not everybody takes that way. Yeah, it's been... That's definitely been a struggle. And I also learned or recognized very early on that I simply don't have the capacity to facilitate this work because of all the other polls on my world that somebody needs to be dedicated to making the agendas and facilitating in that way. And I didn't have... I recognized I didn't have the capacity, which is why we went out and found Mia to help us with that conversation. So since then, we've taken the board's equity diversity and inclusion policy. We did a lot of work around defining exactly what equity... Educational equity means to us. We're still kind of in that squishy spot of not having nailed down the exact definition, but have a good start on one that we keep bringing back. We let it sit for a while and then we keep bringing it back. We also have been talking about... So the last couple of meetings have been framed into the policy as like what's the professional development? What's... Ideally, it's professional development, recruitment and curriculum as three different spots for people to focus in because those were kind of the big themes in the policy. And we haven't hit on the recruitment piece yet. I keep looking at Amanda and saying, hey, Amanda, you and I got to team up on that. I got to use your smarts. If you haven't met Amanda Garza yet, she works at the Human Rights Commission and she's a leader in the ethnic studies work in Vermont. So she's a firecracker and knows so much about this. So I lean on her quite a bit actually as to the next direction and she's very willing to help us out in any way we can. So we had really good conversations around the professional development in the curricular piece in our last meeting, which was Tuesday, maybe this week. It seems like two weeks ago. It was Wednesday this week. I had to work from home. It was Wednesday from this week and started digging in a little bit. The one thing we've really gotten to is that when we bring new people into our districts, the very first thing we will do when they're all together, and we started this last year, was welcome to Mount Paleo Roxbury. This is what we believe. And give them tools right when they walk in the door of what do you do and how do you respond to racist homophobic kids saying stupid things. How do you respond to that so that we're not just ignoring it or we're not just saying that's not the right thing to say or we're not, you know, but how do we respond in a way that is supportive and comes from a teaching stance and that kind of thing. Our teacher leaders do that work. Amanda this year has volunteered to do some unconscious bias training for our new teachers and it was brought to the group's attention that none of our teachers have had full-fledged unconscious bias training. So that's something that we probably need to do as a full staff around professional development. In the curriculum conversations, this is where I actually think we have the most control over what we do. As you know, I'm a former curriculum director. So this is my world, right? And so I this actually this morning, I can share with you my state of the state this morning and where I think we can make the most difference immediately. And we have the most control over is that when you're thinking about curriculum, excuse me, I'm going to geek out for a second. Curriculum really is the standards that we teach, right? Standards are mandated from the state and we get to choose within those standards because there's too many of them to do all of them. We'll choose the most the priority ones that we've talked about that before formalized essential learning, right? So that those prioritize standards, that's the tight teachers don't have a choice in that Jill couldn't say as a first grade teacher. Yeah, I don't think that's right. I'm going to teach something else. No, the first grade team has decided what the prioritize standards are. That's tight. What's loose is our teachers using their expertise to bring in story perspective, which history they're telling, which lens they're telling it through, which authors they're using, which books they're using, all of those, that's loose. That's a teacher's prerogative, right? And it's a piece of the curriculum, but it's not what I would call curriculum that those are the units of study teachers do. And so just this morning, actually, this is where I think we have the most work and equity. Sorry, I'm just going to bring up what I did with the teacher so you can see the message here. I'm going to share my screen. Yeah, I'm going to share my screen. My drive's not working. What is going on? Is it? Okay. Yeah, I've gotten it unstable. I'm having a hard time like bringing things up. There it goes. So I'm going to share my screen. You all can see this. And this came out, this didn't, this is, it's been on my mind for a while, but it really pushed it from this week with my conversation. I'll bring some of these other things back later, but let me get to the right thing. Just so you know why I'm using the term brutal reality. We started with, can you all see that leading in uncertainty, right? So one of them is face brutal realities. So when I was talking, so I said, let's talk about some of the brutal realities we're facing. And these are the brutal realities we brought up that we are facing a situation where we need to redesign school in the context of COVID-19. And we have to redesign a majority white school system to do our part in ending these things, right? So we talked about that at length this morning as a staff. Well, I talked, it's weird giving a presentation over Zoom because you're just talking to yourself, but they were all there, I promise. And so we talked about this question. Well, I've been reading this book upstream. If you haven't read it, read it. Mara, you'd love it. Read it. It's all about solving problems before they happen, rather than being in reaction mode. And this is one question that Dan Heath talks about in here that literally stopped me in my tracks. And a lot of things, what harms do we accept that we're capable of changing? And when we're thinking about this equity work and curriculum, we are capable of changing the stories that we bring to our kids. We're capable of that. That's in our control, right? So we just need to go out and do the research and do the learning ourselves so we can bring a different lens to the kids that we teach. So we talked about that a bit and when we're thinking about high quality instruction for all kids that we get to decide which case studies we use, which history we bring, which books we bring, which authors, which perspective. That's what equity work we can control immediately as we're planning units of study for the fall. So this is the kind of thing that we're talking about right now is a district in the curriculum lens of the policy. And what do we choose to bring to our students? The other thing that we've been talking about in the equity team is what traditions are we holding on to? So we talked at length about Thanksgiving and Christmas, for instance. Christmas was a big deal this past year because I nixed Christmas decorations, right? And I had to do that because our community members who are Jewish were talking to me saying you've messed up quite a bit here, right? So we had to come back and really put some thought into that, particularly the middle school had a lot of challenges with that. So in the elementary schools. So we've had to have a lot of talk around traditions. It's tradition in Montpelier-Roxbury and all four schools have a Thanksgiving dinner, like a Thanksgiving lunch, which in and of itself is not necessarily bad coming together to have a good meal together. Everybody loves a good turkey, right? But the history of Thanksgiving and how we have traditionally told that story is a very biased perspective from the historical white majority. And so do we want to do that as a school system anymore? And how do we have that conversation with our community and how do we have that conversation with our kids? The equity team is grappling with all of those things right now. So that's the big news from my side of how we're bringing this equity policy to light. We have not really hit upon the recruitment piece yet. I don't know how to do that. So I'll be looking to work if we do know how to do that to get some advice and help and direction on that piece. No, I think that all sounds good. Another piece maybe to add to that could be culture change, which I think comes with curriculum, but how do you actually change the war culture, the perspective of the employees working to get people to realize their implicit biases and hammering that in? I know National Wildlife Federation is doing that constantly, just making people read books and have that be part of staff meetings and talk about uncomfortable things. And it's hard at the beginning, but I think it's very valuable. Yeah, we haven't gotten to that level of focusing right now on what we know, right? For the next six days or for the next five days, our teachers are going to be designing units to study. So we put that equity. If you click through that a little bit more, we're using UD backwards design template, and then we have an equity overlay on top of that. So once they've designed their units of study, they'll go to the equity overlay and ask themselves these questions. Whose perspective am I telling, so that they're doing it in teams, so they can challenge each other on it. Let me ask you a more specific question. When you're talking about some of the concerns you heard from the community, they're going to go around the room. Okay, yeah. So, Libby, when you're talking about training and support for staff, one area that I think where we have a lot of adults that can have a lot of influential contact with kids, but they're not, they're not our teachers, are our coaches. And I just wanted to ask whether there's a plan to wrap the non-faculty coaches into training and education? Good question. Our coaches mean our district-wide coaches? Like our SCF? Athletic coaches. I mean, sorry, sports, sports teams. We've not found that yet. And I have a similar question about, like, another question about bus drivers. We don't actually employ districts, but they're also in the places where we are often thinking about those places. I like to think a lot about where youth are the most vulnerable to each other without any grown-ups structuring or observing the space. We have lots of control over the structure, and then I'm going to end up working alone because so much less control over changing the locker. Yeah, no, I think those are both great points. And I mean, I've heard a lot of anecd... I think, I think kids are very attuned to the messages that they feel people are being instructed to tell them and the messages they get a lot of times. Yeah, if they're getting something in the classroom, they're like, well, I have to teach that. And then they go to their sports where they're very, you know, that's identity forming. That's often times some of their closest peers and they get a coach who's sending signals that totally undermines those. Those might be the ones that internalize. Yeah, I didn't talk about the athletic coaches quite honestly. It's a big turnover, a huge turnover in athletic coaches every year. Some of them, not all of them. But I hadn't thought about them. And Libby, you mentioned about the hiring practices. Would that include any contractors or any work? Is that something that should be looked at in terms of bringing diversity into the firms or firms that we hire or contract with? Keep talking. What do you mean? Keep talking. I was reading, you know, there's so many articles coming out. So one of the things that was mentioned was not only the employees, but when we, any organization contracts out are hired somebody to do work. Kind of putting that implicit bias and thinking in that terms of who are we hiring, who are we bringing on, even not just a long-term hire, but even short-term Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the difficulties that any place of business, which we could call school as place of business, faces in Vermont with things like that is that there aren't that many choices. That's where the difficulty comes in, even the hiring, right? Yeah. So hiring practices might include advertising out of state and not just school spring. School spring's international. Right. But maybe seeing where do Massachusetts educators look for jobs, you know, like are they looking at school spring or is there some other platform that they're looking at that we could advertise on? Yeah. But it's the challenges. Is that like, so I've hired now or administrators in two years, three out of the four come from a different state or country. So it's the, so we are reaching out of state people, especially for leadership positions through things like school spring, LinkedIn, MySpace, you know, we do all of those places for the bigger positions. It's still they're moving to Vermont. Yeah. You know, that's still a challenge. So I think we have to be even more intentional about where exactly we're going, but that would just be my hunch. You could reach out to alumni networks of school, like Howard University, for example, and I'm aware of some organizations that take that approach. I know the Management Center offers training in this area. So that might be that might be one organization we might look to for improving those recruitment practices and learning more about different approaches to represent. I have a question. You were talking about an equity professional and I was having computer issues trying to make sure that I was still on here. The equity professional that you were talking about, I believe Mia, is that the person? She's our facilitator. She's our facilitator. Okay. And is she, she's a facilitator across numerous districts, vice reunions? No, she's not based in schools. Oh, she's not? No. No, we had a few to choose from. Mia was the local gal and we went with Mia. So she's with an outside organization. She's independent contractor. Independent contractor. Okay. Andrew, you want to? Yep. Perfect. Yeah. So I was at, I was at the Gathering Protest demonstration last week. Last weekend, the Black Lives Matter demonstration. And I didn't hear this part, but somebody sent the written demands to schools to me that came out of that demonstration. And I talked with Jim about these demands the other day. And I think, you know, we are working to address many of these things, but I think it's worth reading these. Do you want me to just read through each one? Do we want to talk about each one? Let's just put them up. I mean, it's already 1.15 and I do want us to conclude by four. So why don't we just read them all and then we can share them. I can share them via the internet as well. Yeah. So, yeah, just read through them and then we can, we can just set them in more detail when we take this up at a, at a near future. Yep. Okay. So the first demand is immediately remove all police officers from every school and instead add several positions for mental health counselors. Support restorative justice practices in all schools, which I really view those as kind of three separate items, removing police officers, adding several positions for mental health counselors, which we've done and support restorative justice practices in all schools. And the second line item is immediately stop all suspensions and expulsions of children in favor of a restorative process that is centered around uprooting white supremacy principles. Three, institute book audits at all grade levels and ensure that all books have centered QT BIPOC communities and those with disabilities, QT BIPOC, meaning queer, trans, black, indigenous, and people of color. We demand that every school develops a curriculum that includes our histories and realities, not just in Black History Month. Then finally fund equity officers in the school and give them the power to make changes. This position must have the level of power of superintendent and curriculum directors. And on this last one, I really do believe, I just want to comment on this last one, I really do believe that our superintendent, that our curriculum director, that our principals and assistant principals, all of them should be acting as equity officers. And I think our equity policy gets at that. Thanks. So I've got a ton of this. Why don't we just kind of go around the room and people, there's no need to share, but if you're, if you want to share what you're hearing from the community or things that you want to discuss, when we discuss a similar we haven't talked about, you'll let us know and then we'll have the facilities come at 130. So why don't we just start with Jerry and go kind of how it was. Well, I agree with Andrew on the last point that everyone should take on that role. I'm not sure that, you know, one person should be in charge of this, that should be something everybody does. In terms of the rest of them, I mean, I'm awfully restorative. Just from my own background, I didn't see a big benefit in some of the punitive things that happened in school. It never turned anyone around that I remember. The bad people stayed bad pretty much. On the police officers, it's been interesting, because I've been looking this up lately. And Montpelier has a new chief of police who seems extremely progressive. And I think even if that part of it happens, I think the school could form some kind of a relationship with the Montpelier police department and start some kind of ongoing dialogue. So kids aren't, you know, the police officers know the kids and the kids know the police officers. I think that could go along. So I'm actually not, since I've been on the board almost two years now, I don't think we've ever received an update with regard to the role that our local police force plays in our schools. So I think understanding what the situation is is something that would help the board, especially in light of the conversations surrounding law enforcement in this country right now. So I think that would be a good place for the board to start. With regard to adding several positions for mental health counselors, that's something that the board has been very sensitive to. And we have added some positions the past couple of years with regard to supporting, with regard to supporting some of those needs. Can I ask you a question? I don't mean to interrupt you. That list you just, I've never seen that list. So that came out of the Montpelier protest or a national protest? It came out of Montpelier, apparently. It might be from a national, it might be from a national it might be a national statement. It sounds more like a national statement than a little bit. That's what I just want to clarify. Fair enough. I haven't done a ton of research into this specific statement. Somebody who helped with some of the organizational activities sent this along to say, hey, in case you didn't hear this part, I wanted you to be aware. Right. Because a perspective from Urban New York City or Chicago is very different from Montpelier. Yeah, I will say I have received some second hand complaints, which doesn't mean that they're less credible in any way about the role of police in our schools from some community members. So and we heard from a group of students and teachers earlier this year that there's a lot, a lot of room for improvement in our schools with regard to restorative justice practices and that many teachers are very resistant. While some teachers are very much in favor and doing a lot of progressive work on this front, many there are some staff that are very resistant to these practices. I'd add on families to that too. Yeah, and I think we also need to be careful about saying we're too different because I think it can become an excuse for either a work or progressive community to get it or on that. When you're talking about police in schools, I'm talking about just in general. It's very different. I know there are differences, but I also know that that's a place that people can go. I mean, it can be it can be anything, it can be recruitment. Well, for a very white state, it's hard to give people of color. We're a progressive community. We don't need the type of education of a community. And I just say one more thing on that. Now that I mean, I've been talking to executives the last couple weeks, people are really embracing the virtual world. They had no idea that it would work. They said, had you told me this a year ago, we would have hired a big team of consultants paid $100 million and decided it wouldn't work. But here we are humbled. And so one of the ways you could bring diversity in is, I mean, Vermont's very white state, but virtual, it removes all those lines. So you could bring people in for virtual sessions, people of color, all kinds of, you could bring diversity in that way. On the note of the police presence too, like I recognize that it's obviously different in larger cities. You know, I've seen it firsthand with with metal detectors and that sort of thing. But police presence is still police presence. And we do have a police presence in our schools. And, you know, different people relate to the police differently. And what we're hearing now, I mean, which we should all know is that people of color have a different relationship to the police. And that that presence, just the mere presence of even one officer in a building could really make some students feel unsafe. And I think that's and I think that's a really important thing to take note of and to take seriously. I don't know if we want to go around the room. I have lots of things to say. Let's go to Mara and then work our way around. The one thing I will say is I agree with Andrew that we definitely need to know what our current connections to police are. Specifically, I'm curious about Roxbury, since Roxbury is not in the municipality of Montpelier Police Department, but is in our district. So things to think about there. Also, police are a trauma for more than just people of color. They are a trauma for queer and trans youth. They're a trauma with students who have high A scores. So students who have adverse childhood experiences often have encountered an officer, even if it was in a good context, even if it was a good experience with an officer. I know a student who's in the high school who had a desperately horrific over the summer experience, where an officer is present. And that experience, the officers were very supportive. And every time that kid sees an officer now, it's a flashback to that being in that presence. So it's just worth thinking is what does it mean to have police presence in a school? And what does the mere seeing or knowing that they're there due to learning of kids who are already the most vulnerable kids? So stuff to think about there. I also just wanted to say that I've been hearing that a lot from the community, particularly because I have a lot of connections with LGBT folks and with folks of color. So that's a thing that I'm hearing come out of not just adults, but also youth. They're saying I feel scared about the fact that there is a person in the space. So that I think that's worth thinking about. The only other thing I will say is that I would like to offer all of my training services for $0 as much as we need them as long as we need them as long as I'm on the board. So as many sessions as we need for whichever different groups or teachers or whoever, if you can find the time to get people in a space or on call, I will do work. And I'm obviously happy to let other people who are more experts in different stuff do things, but I just want to make it clear that I want to offer that. Joel. Thanks, Mark. I would add just a couple of quick things. I do think that if there was some virtual or otherwise available opportunity for coaches, I think they would probably be happy to take advantage of that. If there was something, even if it was a recorded webinar that we wanted to have them watch at some point, I'm sure they'd be happy to do that. Report out that the new principal and the new vice principal at Main Street Middle School had a town hall the other night. And it was such sort of beautiful timing to be able to meet these new faces and hear that energy and their equity and excellence. They shared their backgrounds and about their families and they have these beautiful diverse children coming into our community and they sent a message to the kids on the call about being a welcoming space and that really resonated on our household because my daughter was like they actually said they wanted that we could go see them and talk to them. I mean, she was really floored. So I think that and then the fact that this school was the first school in the country to fly the Black Lives Matter flag and then yeah, we had this sort of lovely announcement in Montpellier. Police were coming from another state not feeling that same sense of community and value of diversity. Just makes me very hopeful that we're sort of able to ride a bit of a wave here in our district of some good news and change. And sometimes change feels really scary, but I feel like this is sort of Mother Nature giving us an opportunity to hit the reset. So I do think there's some good things happening right now that are going to bring us into the fall in a better position. And if you haven't read the statement from both the current Chief of Police and the new one, you should read that. It's very progressive and very unlike I haven't seen that elsewhere through that way because I've looked. I've looked at union pages and I haven't seen it. It's like silence. So I've definitely heard from several members of the community in the wake of recent protests and just a refocusing of energy around what can we do in schools. I've heard from a couple of parents of students of color in the district that have you know, personal stories that they would like to share with the board and in our consideration of the policy and how it might be changed. I also heard from another person in the district, I think their parents about some suggested edits to the actual policy language, which I thought, you know, like right away when I started reading it, I was, you know, agreeing with almost everything that they suggested. So I don't know if that's something that we could potentially look at at our longer meeting about the policy if we could look at rewarding it. I think, you know, I'm really proud to be from Vermont, a progressive state and a progressive city like Montlear, but I just think, you know, we can always do better and we should always be pushing ourselves to do better to reflect the values of our community and, you know, break new ground about rethinking how schools can support equity and diversity and inclusion. So I'm glad to be a part of that wave. I agree with most of the stuff that we talked about, especially I'd like to know what the police department's involvement is in our schools. That's something I'd like to look at and see because I honestly, I don't have any idea what the services that they're providing. One other point I'd like to make is we talked about the kids getting the punitive punishment or getting spelled or whatever. And then I agree with the fact that, you know, that doesn't help them. That doesn't change their behavior in most, if not all cases. But in the flip side of it, I do want to keep in mind that keeping them in the school, not necessarily in the school, as in in the class, may affect the others that have experienced the other side of it. And so those kids might feel unsafe that nothing's happening to these kids and they're just getting a pass from this. So just keeping that in mind. And Bridget. Thanks. This has been a really great and thoughtful discussion and I'm looking forward to our deeper dive in coming months. I wanted to go back to the recruitment piece because something I'd really like to see on the table is an effort by Montpelier to be a leader in Vermont, but trying to lead a larger group of districts and school boards in trying to be more proactive in how we recruit. And as Emma said, trying to figure out what the best strategies are for reaching a wider and more diverse audience and making our communities more appealing, more inclusive so that we can really change the way that our hiring practices work. And I think Andrew mentioned, you know, a potential consultant, the ability to work with someone like that. I think if we could leverage resources at the school board association or the superintendents associations that was a broader effort might be more successful. So that's something I would like to see on the agenda. Great. Thank you. Yeah, all our, how are the facilities in person or virtually? Okay. Great. Let's make a quick comment. The thing that I want to most remember is how hard this is and how much effort it's going to take. And I think it really takes thinking not just about some of the surface things we can do, but a lot of the stories we tell and the messages we send. And I think your Christmas and Thanksgiving example is perfect. If we have, I mean, a lot of the things that systematic racism are about are the things we're least willing to challenge and sometimes the least willing to even see. And it takes a lot of time. You can get people to agree to shift books around in a curriculum, but take your Thanksgiving feast or put a different spin on it or, you know, stop acting as if Christmas is a holiday. Everybody celebrates and feels the same about those things can be a lot tougher. But that's where systematic racism comes in, because that's a certain power structure imposing their system upon others who don't fit into that structure. And those, those are going to be tough. And those are the things we need to really talk about. And even thinking about the fact that we structure school to benefit white middle class, landed men three, like 300 years ago, that's the way that school is structured. So the way we do school, Robert's rules of order are designed for a very specific set of people. So like the underpinning of how we organize things even. So I think it's understanding that it's going to be huge is important and understanding that we can't change it all in one second is also really. Yeah. Great, you want to introduce the Sorry. So with us, and I think we need headphones on so we can hear them. Sorry, we're doing like this hybrid Sue and Keisha. So it's like, so we have summa cormick. So you want to wave your hand? And Keisha rain, they say it right. Rom with us. I haven't had the chance to work with Keisha before but I have worked with Sue and they are facilitators and come to us to present a plan or present some ideas and hear from the board about what they truly are looking for in terms of a visioning process. So I will let you ladies take it away. Yes. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having us. Well, I'll just do a quick introduction and then I'll turn it over to Keisha to introduce herself and first I have to say that Keisha and I a lot of our work is completely aligned with the conversation that you were just having. And we do a lot of racial equity work with school districts and municipalities and this is our passion. We're, well, I'll speak for myself. I'm really excited because I think we're in a moment of transformation and we don't get those too often, you know, and here we are. So I'm just really happy to hear you all having the conversation we're having and to let you know that no matter what topic we are helping people engage their community around, we approach every topic with that racial equity lens and, you know, making sure that everybody's voice is heard in a meaningful way, including people who are often not at the table or underrepresented is a real cornerstone of how we think about our work. And so I don't think I'll say anymore about my experience. You can look me up, but we're really happy to be with you and I'll turn it over to Keisha so she can introduce herself. Thanks Sue. And I got up just because my little dog hair vacuum just started right by where I was. So yeah, I think, you know, some folks may know me, I see some familiar faces. I wanted to start by saying happy loving day. This is a holiday that celebrates interracial marriage and love and I'm the product of interracial marriage, so I just wanted to say that. Second, you know, I think it is really relevant, especially when I think about what's going on in the White House, I went to a high school of about 5000 kids in Los Angeles, very, very racially diverse and also very segregated and Stephen Miller was the year ahead of me in school and we have a lot of arguments about what the country should look like. So, you know, just bring my background with really wanting to empower and focus on youth and you have some really incredible young people in your school district. And so I think anything that you're envisioning would be great to have them at the table. I also led a couple of the sessions and trips for the partnership for change in Burlington and Winooski. We went to look at Met schools in Providence, Rhode Island, which are done very differently in terms of a lot of your school time is off campus. So anyhow, lots of, you know, thoughts to share, but I hope that's helpful as an introduction. Thank you, Kasia. And I want to just let you all know Kasia can be with us for about a half hour today. She has another commitment at two, but I wanted you all to meet her because she's part of the team that we would bring to the work. So what we wanted to do is begin by hearing from all of you. We talked with Libby and I had one conversation. She gave me a little bit of a background about how Roxbury and Montpelier came to be this March school district. And I know that you're approaching this kind of milestone in terms of there becoming a moment where it's time maybe to talk about the future of the district. And so anyway, we have some ideas about what an engagement process could look like. But before we share those, we really want to hear from you. Why do you think this matters? Why is it a time that you think is important to have this conversation about the future of the Roxbury school and what are your hopes for an engagement process? What are some outcomes you'd like to see? I hate to put Ryan or Jerry on the spot, but do you want to start maybe and kind of give some perspectives from the Roxbury community? Ryan's, I see his name. Yes, I am here. No video today, but I am here to talk. And you know, soon you've kind of talked a little about the history and the districts coming together and when we had gone through the study process to figure out whether or not it made sense for our districts to merge, an increase in diversity was one of the things that we had talked about. There are differences in the Roxbury and Montpelier communities in several capacities and we had felt like a more rural and a more urban environment would be producing a district that was encompassing the ideas of more diversity and equity with across the district. So from the beginnings of our time as a district, this has been part of the conversation, concerns that I would have, hopes for what we should like to get out of this process. I know on the Roxbury side and I get the impression it's probably not that different from Montpelier because it's more of a national trend, but we hear from the same people all the time. It's the same families, it's the same kids that we hear from the same families all the time. If we are really going to be talking about more big value changes and addressing the values that we would like to see in the future, we really need to do a good job of engaging everybody. And so that would be the real hope is that whatever we're able to prepare to come together as a study or a facilitation process to really do a nice job of reaching and engaging more than our usual suspects. Ryan, you had a concern that you wanted to share as well? So was it a concern for? I just, you had mentioned hopes and concerns, I wanted to make sure I heard the hope, but I didn't hear the concern. I think my concern would be earlier in our discussion that we could just concluded, you know, Libby had talked about how our faculty, our staff, aren't necessarily versed and trained in how we have discussions on these sensitive topics and that's one of the things that we're going to do. I would be concerned that we somehow overlook teaching our kids those same skills from an early age, making sure that we're not just assuming that they're going to pick it up by osmosis in a sense, that this is how we talk about these sensitive things, or that it's even okay to talk about these things. So I would be concerned that we would somehow, when we're talking about system, system, system, we overlook that the important part of the system is the kiddos. So that might be the concern that I've had listening to our discussion so far. Great, thank you. I have a question for Jim and Libby. When you guys put this agenda item on here, were you really thinking about what is the future, what role does the current building play in having a school and Roxbury play within our school district? Is that what you were thinking? I think we're thinking about what we can do to make sure that we successfully envision a future for the Roxbury school in the context of advancing the overall district's values, which obviously the conversation we've been having plays a big role in that, but I think there's other concerns that we need to think about as well. And I think part of that right now is thinking about a process to have a community engaged in facilitation over the next couple of years so we end up in a good place. So that both Roxbury and Montpelier feel that the future of RBS is just sat in a direction that's advancing the district's values, that's sustainable, that's benefiting both communities. And yeah, I think we wanted to start that conversation now because we feel it's going to be a process and a process that's going to take a while, especially to make sure we get the community input we need. With COVID, it's probably going to be a little harder to get off the ground. For a couple reasons, one, it's just harder to get people together right now to talk about that. And second, we're going to have an economic situation and a budget situation over the next probably two, maybe three years that is not the one we envisioned four or five months ago. So yeah, I think we want to try to make sure we have a process that that ensures that that lens doesn't interfere with the water term vision. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I want to make sure that the Roxbury perspective gets out early and maybe talk a little about what you're hearing from people in Roxbury and what people in Roxbury want for the school and want for the long-term vision of the school. Well, before all of this happened, I think people want to make sure they understand if people are leaving the Roxbury school, why are they leaving, looping back around with those parents and trying to get them back if say it was a staff situation or that is now no longer a problem. So that kind of conversation, just making sure that we're keeping the students in the school. For this, for diversity, and I mean you have the same, you have a more rural area, I think it's going to be important to engage like Ryan said, maybe different parents. You're going to have to, I feel like kids are very adaptable and maybe parents are less so sometimes. So I think that's something that just engaging all the stakeholders and my hope for the school is just that it would be a new side. I mean that's part of the reason we wanted to merge with Montpeliers to get that something that you can't get in Roxbury. I mean we have some diversity in Roxbury, surprisingly, but to get that exposure to the kids, for the kids. So they have exposure to different types of people and more learning opportunities. Can I say a quick hint? I don't want to take it away from the facilitators for too long, but just for both Ryan and you, like we're a couple years into the merger. Howard, what's the sentiment in the community about how the merger is working for Roxbury? Are people happy? Do they feel RVS is a better school than it was two years ago? About the same, happy with the middle school. I haven't, yeah, I haven't heard complaints. Like I said, a lot of people seem okay with it, but you know, I talked to maybe a dozen people in the past six months about this and the only concern was just, you know, gazebo and then we're just making sure that we keep our kids in school and if they're going somewhere, let's find out why. So. Did I miss a reference to it? Yeah, but a lot of people are happy with it. Is the gazebo a bigger one? Sorry. Go ahead. I was just wondering if there's a big question about a gazebo right now. The gazebo was sorry, it's very echoey. The gazebo is just something and like the outdoor classroom that Roxbury was looking into. It's on hold given all the crazy stuff going on. Yeah, I know basically with there's a project to build an outdoor classroom gazebo as Jerry just said, but just given uncertainty over COVID funding, we've kind of taken every project we don't need to do that we don't feel is directly needed for the educational benefit of our kids and put it on hold until we've got a clearer situation of what funding is going to look like. Brian, do you want to give your perspective on that question? Sure, and I think I would share that people have felt like what we had presented to the community in 2016-2017 as what the future district might be and what it could provide and where we would go. I think overall people have felt satisfied that yes, we have produced a district that's been supportive of our students. It's been responsive to the community and it's offered good things for the children of Roxbury. I was thinking about the question of how people have felt overall. I think thinking about having this conversation again in the community and beginning another intensive process of asking it where the what will be the future of the village school, the children of Roxbury, the new district. I think we might have some people in Roxbury, some family members and community members who are surprised that we're going down this road again because from the Roxbury side, it wasn't that long ago that we did go through some big change. We did kind of go through this, not necessarily soul searching, but in essence, you know, visioning for where we might go. If we merge with this district it would be like this. If we merge with that district it might be like this. What would we like to see happen for us going through Act 46? My gut reaction is going to be there's going to be some people who are just going to be confused when they start getting letters to participate in discussions and surveys. Didn't we just do this a couple years ago? Didn't we kind of pick this path already? Besides the usual grumblings of public school system, not happy with this teacher because of this test score or whatever, just the usual grumblings, I think overall the community and the family members have been more than pleased with the responsiveness, the opportunities and the support that the district is providing. So I think, yes, I mean you could find people who would be upset about this or that just like any school anywhere, but overall the outcome of the merger to date has been positive. Is there anything that hasn't been said yet that people would like to say about what your hopes are or why it matters to revisit this conversation that, as Ryan said, some people are going to be surprised because you all just did this merger not too long ago? If I can jump in, one of my hopes would be that the process creates stronger community bonds between the two communities because I think the geographic barrier is a real issue and that really, in really feeling like the communities have joined together in a meaningful way. And as a Montpelier board member, I wish that I felt more of a connection to Roxbury and felt confident that the communities were really functioning as one educational learning community even though we're two different towns. So that's a hope I would have for the process. And I'm sorry if it's in the note somewhere and I missed it, but what is your governance structure look like? Do you keep a certain number of seats on the board for Roxbury folks and how do you? Yeah, we were a nine-member board. Montpelier elects seven board members and Roxbury elects two, but to, and this doesn't actually ever really become an issue, at least it hasn't yet, but to even out the population numbers instead of having a huge board, each Montpelier rep actually has effectively two votes and the Roxbury reps have one, but pretty much everything we do is unanimous. So it's, and that's weighted roughly proportional to population. So yeah, it would be like having, you know, it's 14, 14 Montpelier votes, two Roxbury votes. I think part of the idea was that instead of Roxbury having one member who was sort of an equal voting power to the Montpelier members, it was better to have more voice from Roxbury, but you have to have the numbers come out the way the population works. Yeah, and it really adds more perspective from Roxbury to the work that we do. We do so much work in subcommittees because there's a lot of work to do. So I guess I'll just ask a Demmel's advocate question. So it sounds like at least from the folks we've heard from from Roxbury and others as well that things are going pretty well. People are pretty pleased with the impact of the coming together and that it's met people's expectations. So why is it important to talk about options for the Roxbury school? What are the things that are driving the need for that conversation? I mean, I can put it on the table. I mean, I think it's a bit of an uncomfortable conversation. I think it's the economics of a small school. Right now, I think they work. And also, I think making sure that that school has the same opportunities that the larger schools in Montpelier do. Both of those are challenges. With a smaller school, the opportunities are potentially going to be more limited. So we want to make sure there's true equity there in terms of the education that people through both schools are getting. The second is the reality of RBS on a per student basis is the most expensive school we have by pretty large numbers. I think as long as budgets are flush and people are feeling like there's plenty of funds to support that, I think that's not an issue. If we get to a place where we might have to make some tougher choices, there may be some slippage of support, particularly in Montpelier, for sustaining the type of school that frankly is closing a lot of places in Vermont right now. So we want to make sure, and Libby and I have talked about this, I've talked with other board members, that we really have a model for that school that the entire district can support on a long-term basis, both from a perspective of this is an investment that we need to make and this is an investment that's working for the entire district. I could see it, if there's a serious budget crunch, I could see a fair amount of people in Montpelier saying, why are we paying for a very expensive school when we could bring everyone to UES or use the Montpelier schools, etc. I think that's a tough thing to put on the table and a tough conversation, but I think if we don't get out ahead of it and react to it when it happens, we could make a poor decision for both communities. Thank you. Yeah, and I'll just add that part of the reason, sorry, so the very little kids in Roxbury, the issue is no one wants to put them on buses, they're tiny kids so they want to try to keep them in the village as much as possible so they're not commuting and then the community just really, the school is sort of the heart of the community, so there's always that, but the other issue is just not putting those little kids on buses. Thank you. I know that Keisha has to run, so Keisha, I just wanted to see if there's anything you wanted to say after listening to the board reflect, or I can take it from here, just let me know though. So Keisha did, sorry that she had to leave a little bit early, but it was great for her to be able to hear your reflections. Is there anything else that we didn't get on the table that is important to know about the possibility of bringing the communities together for a conversation about the future, and in particular the future of the Roxbury school? I think there are some other opportunities here that we've at least had kind of side conversations about at least since the merger occurred that I've heard throughout the community, and you know there are conversations about, I don't want to even call them aspirational conversations, but there are conversations about the potential of that space because my understanding is that it is underutilized compared to our middle and elementary school, and even our high school is going to be at near capacity in the next several years, whereas this is a building that is from a budget perspective, it's a quality asset, it's in good shape, and I think there are some questions about what other enhanced programming can we offer? We were in the process, I don't know where we are right now, of exploring immersion language programs. I've also heard ideas about more alternative education models floated that maybe we could implement in a school like that that's separate, and so I think those are conversations that have been occurring over the past several years, and if we're going to be talking about everything and kind of putting everything on the table in a visioning process, those are probably worth bringing into the fray as well. Yeah, and I think it's adding on to that, I think it's worth noting that that space, in addition to being an underutilized building, offers access to some things that I think are more clear values that our other schools don't give access to, namely I think some really good outdoor experiences and some experiences that require more outdoor interaction and outdoor space. We have a lot of parents who spend like 10, $12,000 a year sending their kids to Orchard Valley, or I know it's immobiliar to Riverrock to get somewhat of an alternative education. Are there opportunities to use that space to expand enrollment there and to maybe bring some of those families back to Montpelier and give them the type of educational experience that they're now paying money out of district to get, Jill? Yeah, thank you. That's actually what I was going to ask. I'm not familiar with the campus at Roxbury, but one of the things we heard a lot the other night from parents, and I think this is, COVID has really sort of opened people's eyes that the traditional school day is not as locked and concrete as it used to be. The combination of that and how we can offer different programs for kids differently and use a good building and a good space that has that outdoor space because that is a huge detriment here in Montpelier that we don't have, we don't even have the fields to have all the software practices happen at the same time. So many of the parents at the middle school, when they were talking about their hopes and dreams, was about outdoor space and outdoor opportunities. So like, is there a way that we could have like Thursday and Friday afternoons are Roxbury days where the middle schoolers go over and do some outdoor activities? I mean, it seems like this might have sort of changed our perspective a little bit. I'm like, nope, this is how it works. And this is where the kids go and neither the trains shall meet. But I also think there might be something we will contend with for the next few years about families wanting to keep their kids close and not wanting to send kids either way for at least a couple years. But I'd love to have that conversation about how can we use this space differently for more kids too. Thanks. Great. This is so helpful. Is there anything else that hasn't been said that you think is really important to get out on the table? I do. So two things. One, I would say that yes, paper and logistically, the merger with Roxbury has gone well. But there are some overlaying cultural pieces that have not gone well that we didn't expect. And Sue, I mentioned those to you. But just to put that, I mean, when we have a snow day, Roxbury is blamed regardless of whether that's true or not, Roxbury is blamed. And when parents say at home, we're closing school because of Roxbury again, their middle school or kid hears that and goes into school and says, why did we close school because of you? I mean, that's a basic one. But we didn't anticipate some challenges that we definitely have with this merger. They are different communities. And that comes out with kids and with families and how we talk about the different communities. So that just needs to be put on the table. We have a lot of work to do around how do we bring these two communities together, regardless of the school building, right? We have a lot of work to do community-wide, not just in school-wide. And then the other piece that I know I've talked about with Bridget, and I think I've talked about it with Andrew a bunch, is the larger just this is what we believe statement. We did a tiny bit of work when I first came out around what the statement is, we're putting on our letterhead. But that was like a bored thing, right? We've never actually had that community conversation since this merger. And I don't know when the last time either districts did it. When I win the Powerball and I leave, who is the superintendent you're bringing in, who values what you value and do you know that, right? So a lot of times when we're having hard conversations, we talk about what the district values, but we haven't ever actually put that on paper. So informalized it. So I think the work, this work is bigger than just visioning for Roxbury. It's visioning for Montpelier Roxbury public schools and going forward. So you're not just hearing from what I think we should do, but you're telling me this is what we need to do. Because that's important, right? So I think Andrew, we've had that conversation, Bridget and I had that conversation last year, that portrait of the graduate kind of thing. I agree. That's really important. So great. Well, maybe I can just reflect back a little of what I heard and share, share some observations and some ideas. So first my first reflection is that I just really appreciate the thoughtfulness of this board. And it just sounds like you're being very proactive and oftentimes communities call us when, you know, they've had three failed bond votes in a row and, you know, they don't know what to do or there's, you know, something really kind of urgent happening. And that's a very hard time to do the hard work of building community and trust and relationships. And I would say that's at the core of what our work is about. It is about building relationships and trust and shared understanding. And when we do the work of doing those things, and we get a clear sense of what people's values are, and this kind of goes back to what Livy was saying, then the community is positioned to make much better decisions. And it also becomes more possible to do some of the aspirational creative thinking that some of you mentioned. It's very hard to do that when people feel threatened and fearful about what they might lose. And so I also really resonated with what I heard, I think it was Jim say about, you know, we have a couple of years to have this conversation. And that's actually a really wonderful thing, right? Because you can take the time to build a shared understanding about what is possible. And so one of the things that occurs to me about a possible starting point for this work is usually for this work to go well, we like to work with a diverse organizing group that includes young people and board members, community members, educators, staff, so that when we're trying to reach those people who often aren't around the table, we have people around the table from the very beginning who can help trusted friends, right, who can invite people. And so we would probably recommend creating at least one of those groups. We could recommend creating one for Montpelier and one for Roxbury. That's a conversation we could have once we got into the work. But I think it would be very important to start this with a conversation among Roxbury residents and a conversation among Montpelier residents so that each community can have their own conversation about what matters most to them. If you all did some work, I'm not exactly clear what Montpelier did, but it sounds like Roxbury did do some visioning work. So we can definitely bring those themes back out. So we're not starting from scratch and so people aren't confused and kind of revisit those. And what that will do is it will give each community a chance to kind of articulate their values. And then we can look at those values across the two communities and see where there's alignment. And often what we find is when we come down to core values, there's often tremendous alignment. And some of the cultural differences are a little more surface. And so that can be very valuable. I've been working with the Mount Abraham Unified School District. They have five towns that came together. And we did this process where we first started talking in each of the five towns. And it was really an amazing amount of alignment across all of those towns. And it really positioned them to have some really difficult conversations knowing that everybody really wanted the same things for their students. So and then if there are differences, that's really important to surface as well. So a first step would be to have those conversations in each place and then bring people together across the towns, look at the shared values. And then I think you're in a really great position to share some options with people so that they can deliberate about them and have a conversation about, you know, which of these options is really aligned with what we said matters most to us. So if outdoor education is really important to people, and one of the options on the table is to enhance the Roxbury School as a place for outdoor education, then they can weigh that against some of the values that they've articulated. And then once the community has had a chance to deliberate about those different options, then they can bring their work to the board and then you all can decide on some next steps. So that's just one approach. And of course, there's lots of ways to engage with people and usually we like to do a combination of things. So I try never to use any jargon at all about this work, but I will share something that I think is helpful. So we talk about bringing people together through a combination of thin and thick engagement. So thin engagement is really easy stuff like answering a survey or going to a table at a fair and answering a question or having a, you know, very brief kind of interaction with someone. And then thick engagement, we used to do mostly face to face with doing lots of it on Zoom now, which also works, but that's bringing people together for more in-depth conversations. And the thin engagement is about people saying what they want. This is what I want. This is what I care about. The thicker engagement is about people saying this is what we care about. One reason we like to combine those is that there are some people who just are never going to be able to put aside the time or whatever they need to participate in the thick engagement. So you really want to do a combination of those two things. And so, you know, that can be a whole bunch of different things. It can be surveys, it can be face to face dialogues or Zoom dialogues. It can include, you know, young people doing art projects and pictures of what they think is important to them about their school. So there's lots of different strategies that we can talk about once the organizing committee is clear on what the goals of the engagement are. So those are just a couple of ideas about how we would approach this. And one of the things, too, I want to say is that our work is not cookie cutter at all. We don't come in with a preset idea of what should happen. So I just wanted to throw out some ideas so that you could understand what a process could look like. And we really try to work very closely side by side with the communities we work with so that they're really partners in the design of what we do and partners in setting the goals and the outcomes that they want to see. And partners in establishing what kind of participation do you need and who do you need to participate for this to be a credible process for the community? So all of those conversations, our conversations we have with the community, so that we really come up with something that's very relevant for your situation. So I think I'll stop there and happy to answer questions or No, that all sounds great. And thank you very much. A question I have, and I think kind of a need as we move this process forward is not just to get a sense from the Montpelier community about what their values are, but I think just to educate them about what Roxbury provides, what RVS is like, what the resource out there is, what the benefits of the resource are. My guess is if you do a survey of Montpelier people, there's probably a pretty high percentage who have pretty limited knowledge about Roxbury as a community in general. And I bet the number of people who could even have visited or even know where Roxbury Village School is, is really low. So I think to a lot of people, Roxbury is kind of this thing out there that they don't think about much. And I don't know if you try to educate them on the resource or you find out their values and then say, okay, a lot of what you're talking about is kind of over here. Let us show it to you. Yeah, that's a great observation, Jim. So I think for when engagement processes work really well, it's a combination. We always start by people kind of sharing their stories and telling us what matters to them. Once we've done that, then we bring some data into the conversation because we don't want to have people have a conversation about something that isn't grounded in reality. So that's a really important step between the values piece and then the deliberation piece where we're sharing some options with people and giving them a chance to talk through them. So we definitely would be working with that committee and hopefully there would be board members on that group to identify what are the data points that people really need to have a very good conversation about what's possible. And so we don't want people to, we want people to know parameters, we want people to know the things that they can't control, and we also want people to understand what the assets are to the district has. So that data piece is very important. And we do a lot of work to help you kind of curate that data so that we're not overwhelming people, but we're really thinking carefully about what is it people really need to know to have the best possible conversation. I just wanted to share my thoughts because I'm new to the board, so this is I think my third meeting. And so I haven't been following this discussion about, you know, I wasn't even, I was sort of thinking the discussion today would be more about just sort of what are guiding values, you know, for this school year in general. And I didn't realize it was so focused on the Roxbury Village School and whether that merger has been successful or not. And I kind of share the sentiment that Ryan said earlier, which was that maybe people might be confused if we're, you know, because my gut feeling was like, oh, well, if we're reevaluating the merger and like what the success has been or hasn't been, does that mean we're considering, you know, not being merged with them anymore? And then that relates to what you said, Susan, about like the fear of losing something, like are we starting a conversation that's going to initiate fear in whoever about potentially dismantling the merger? And as far as I knew, just as a community member who's pretty involved, you know, I, we voted on this, they're part of the district, haven't heard any negative feedback about that and didn't realize that even the budget thing was, was a concern. So it's news to me. So, Emma, let me, I may have misunderstood, so let me ask you this and other people can help me with this. But I didn't believe that the merger was on the table. I didn't believe this was a conversation about whether to unmerge. My understanding was that it was a conversation about how do we proactively make sure that this little school in Roxbury continues to be viable and affordable and used in the best way possible now that it's part of the larger district. That was my understanding. So please let me know. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly what we want the conversation to be about. And yeah, when we agreed to merge, you know, there was a part of the agreement was that, you know, the school would stay open as is for a period of four years. So we're two years into that. You know, there, you know, there's some great things about the school, there's some challenging things about the school as well. And it's also that, you know, again, the type of school that that we're seeing struggle throughout Vermont, I mean, there's not a lot of there, there are a lot to RVS is now that there were two decades ago. And there's economic reasons for that. And we have, you know, a governor right now who, you know, and this has been the trend, I think, with other administrations to find ways to consolidate and reduce education costs as we have an aging population. As property taxes continued to be an issue as we have in most communities, fortunately, our community has been largely spared of this and is trending in a different direction. But, you know, the state as a whole is losing students. So I think the real goal here is to is to put a process in place where we can envision a future for that school beyond that four year commitment that's sustainable. Because otherwise, you know, we again, we might make reactive decisions, particularly in a time of downturn, you know, we may be heading into sooner than we think. I mean, if it's, you know, when you start talking cuts, you know, expense lines get exposed pretty quickly. Right. Let's just go ahead. I just wanted to add to what Jim was saying that I do think, as Libby was saying that it's, I would really hope that this process is not just let's think about the Roxbury Village School, but let's come together as communities to talk about our values and shared values for education and have the discussion about the Roxbury Village School in the context of a larger effort to come together and put down on paper, you know, what we think the district's values are. Yeah, I'm totally with you on that Bridget. I mean, I think the idea of identifying and I don't want to say establishing too much because they can grow, they can evolve, but establishing what our values are and being able to see what our values are and then seeing what our assets are because obviously Roxbury as a community presents us with many benefits as well as in terms of the facilities there. There are a lot of benefits. Then how would we align those assets with our values, with our vision for what we want our district to be? I would also add one other thing in addition to the economic elements that Jim brought up for many of those small towns and any of us who have lived in Vermont for a while have a lot of friends and family members in those small towns and many of those small towns where schools have closed. In some of those small towns, it's been as much about a lack of opportunity as it has been the economic cost and then when the two are paired together, that's an issue. This is obviously a unique situation compared to some of those because Roxbury is merged with Montpelier and they did that to gain access to some of the opportunities that this different place and this district provides. I think that broader conversation is very important and I think when we bring in the whole values, we can think of RBS not just as an RBS problem, but how could RBS open up Main Street Middle School for some different uses too? Could we open up opportunities for middle schoolers that don't exist? Are we making sure that the Roxbury student experience at Main Street Middle School and Main Street High School are what we want it to be? I think we've got a couple years to kind of think creatively about how we can use all our buildings to advance the district-wide goals, but I think if we don't have that conversation, we might make a decision about a particular building that's very reactive, very budget-specific and hurts both communities. So I mean I do hear a concern about the viability of Roxbury Village School just in this short conversation here and I just think we need to be careful about the psychology of fear that Susan brought up if we're going to initiate a big process to be careful how we frame that process and that what are the goals of this process and that you should not be entering this process thinking that the goal is to make a case to close the school. Yeah, it's definitely not the goal. I think the goal is to actually make a case to make sure all four buildings function for the district in a way that reflects the values and we can continue to have all four buildings work towards those values for both communities indefinitely. Yeah, and I really appreciate the points that you're bringing up and I agree that there's a lot of work around how you frame this that's very important that has to happen at the beginning of the process and even if you do a great job there will be people that have low trust right in public officials that will say they're framing it this way but this is really that they want to close our school and so that's something that you have to talk about from the beginning and you have to make commitments you know about what this really is about right so you have to be transparent about your goals and then follow through and and live up to what you're saying that you're trying to do. I also would say that you know it is scary to talk about these things just like it's scary to talk about racism but when we don't do it we're putting we're positioning ourselves to just deal with a crisis so for example if you do have some real budget pressures and you might have to consider some different configurations if you've done this ground work of building trust and relationships and giving people meaningful voice and showing them how their voice is influencing your decision-making you're just in a you're in a position where if your community is chasing facing a big challenge it can either drive the community apart or bring the community together and so when these processes are done well it creates allies for the board because people understand the complexity of the issue some of the challenges that you're navigating and they feel like they're with you trying to help you problem solve rather than against you trying to you know keep you from doing something that they don't want to have happened so yeah and I think that's why I'm trying to bring a level of honesty to this I mean I don't I want to make sure the frame is the correct frame too I mean I'm very committed to to keeping Roxbury Village School open and keeping it very viable but I think if we if we just say you know boy let's not talk about this all is fine that's when you get to that crisis situation where two three years down the road you know there's an unintended budget issue and then you know decisions are made on a completely numbers-based scenario and oftentimes quickly and yeah and in a way that that doesn't benefit either community so unless people have other questions for me I think my how I can serve you is to kind of leave you to yourselves and for for Casey and I if you all you know feel like we might be a good fit for you we'd be happy to put together a proposal to do some work with you in my experience what I've been you know I was working nationally for a while and then regionally and now I'm trying to do most of my work in Vermont and what I'm finding is that working with communities over time has been really impactful just building relationships with the board in the community so that we can get work done together it takes time to to build trust and to build momentum and so we would want to have an opportunity to work with you over time and it sounds like you all have a little time right now which is fantastic and so our proposal would be to you know help you organize and then engage and then take the results of that engagement and help facilitate some conversations about how to turn that into action potential action great does anyone have any last questions for me before yeah those questions for Susan could you just ask a quick logistic question Sue have you started any processes like this post COVID-19 actually um well not started what's been very interested as I shifted and this is where we talk about relationship building so for example we were doing some work in Colchester we were just about to launch some pretty significant engagement around facilities but now because of COVID they really had to delay that project and so instead we shifted our work and we brought students and parents and school administrators together and really did some engagement around what graduation should look like this year in so I've been doing a lot of shifting I've also been in a project with as I said the Mount Aves school district and another school district in westbrook main and you know we've in westbrook main we're just tackling equity and racism issues and we've really been able to just shift all of our work online and have it go very well so we didn't change the content of the work but we changed the venue for the work um so it just has really depended on the district in mount ague we're in the middle of a facilities conversation that's going to be a really tough conversation and and because of the engagement work we did that team has shifted and they've done some really wonderful projects they interviewed students and administrators and teachers and there's a series of articles and the Addison independent about what it was like to be a student a teacher administrator in the post-COVID world so I think what how this work how COVID-19 has impacted the work for me is it has strengthened my idea that the topic we engage around is less important than the act of bringing people together giving people a meaningful voice in decisions that affect them and building trust and relationships so that is the underlying thread that doesn't change even when we have pandemics and george floyd and all of those things I don't know did that answer your question so that's fine I was just trying to understand the landscape for this work and kind of what it might look for us in the futures yeah thanks I think you know there's so much uncertainty right now so I probably didn't do a great job answering your question but I think that um you know we're just trying to be useful right now and and navigate each of our communities that we work with and try to do what's useful in the moment thank you okay well thank you Sue we uh we appreciate the offer and um we will talk and get back to you great thank you thank you for joining us all of you yes take care everyone yeah so we're at 230 we've got COVID do we want just want to do just quick um quick kind of debrief and thoughts on kind of next steps for this process or whether we want a process I was going to say take I was going to say give thoughts and then take a quick break and then do COVID do you need a break right now I think we should have a process quick thoughts and I'd love to hear okay Bridget oh I just said I think we should begin the process you know I think we should start it's going to we're going to have the advantage of time it's better to have the chance to be thoughtful and the what Libby was talking about the project graduation idea that that the BSBA had floated but that whole concept kind of got derailed of course by by COVID but that kind of work too I think is has so much value for the district regardless going forward but I think you know I think this makes sense yeah I agree just go around the room and yeah I agree it'll be tricky with COVID there are new students I mean they're little kids so yeah that part will be a little tricky but I guess there's groups things like that we started and frame it so as not to frame anybody else yes I think that's very important we have nearly 20 25 kids coming up through the middle school high school now so it's almost equal to the amount of kids in the element almost not quite but almost Andrew I think I think sorry I'll just restate that I think the visioning process is something that the board needs I joined this board like a couple months after I think the new board was formed and I think when when we reach points where we need to act quickly having done advanced planning so that we have identified what our community values and have charted out a general vision and you know have have done the hard task of figuring out the direction that we want to take our district it'll allow us to be strategic in those times rather than just reactionary and grasping for what seem like easy solutions maybe but might have some major adverse effect for our communities and so I I think I think it's it's I think we should begin this now yeah I agree with Richard Joel I I sort of want to echo what Emma had said just that I started Mark you know town meeting day at March and then Friday the 13th was our big meeting in here and then that was it all went COVID that I realize it might be retreading some ground for some of you who've been on the board for a while but I would really appreciate sort of some foundational big picture and I realize some of that's you know on me to do some research and background but I feel like I could provide a lot more value if I had just a little bit sort of more of that sort of I guys came to that decision well I I wasn't really you know I was coming at it as a community member the rock spray mob killer merger decision and with my like AOE hat I'm like small schools grants are going away like little school you know per people spending there's a lot more to that and I just I think I could provide a little more value if we're being you know and maybe that's what these folks can offer but just sort of getting back to basics about our values and our needs and our realities that parameters we're working within because we were on the we were on the middle school building committee also before COVID really kicked in and so like they're all we can't really have a conversation in isolation so I just I wouldn't mind just a little time of like all right what are the values that the board has and what are the realities and you know what got us to this point so that then I can be more helpful in the 5 10 20 year look ahead but I just don't feel like I had enough information about about rock spirit itself for the decision by the board to be helpful right now that's on me but I wouldn't mind a little time on that I almost picked up snacks and then I realized that I get reflections on just the the piece that I also was kind of like oh I didn't know that was the discussion so I never prepared for it and I think I think the visioning process will we'll set that out I mean there's I think we want to start at a level that really is district-wide and not rocks very specific sorry Bridget and anyone else who's listening something I'm realizing too especially being here and seeing everyone I don't think we have other than you Bridget and me I don't think we oh Ryan right it's largely a new board yeah right so most most of our board hasn't been on on here for even a year yet and so in terms of in some ways that's good that makes it all the more relevant for us to iron out you know some of these these visions for our district I mean I think visions and values is a really important conversation to keep having always and I think it's really good that we're doing it again I don't know when the last time that we did it or you were saying some of the stuff just has never really been written down with any clarity so I think that's great I'm still a little muddied on it almost sounds like there's two conversations to be had like visions and values of our district and where we want to go and what we hope and dream for our students and our graduates and that type of thing and then and then like I don't know if it almost doesn't seem like it maybe there's a separate conversation to be had that happens at a different time or with a different group of people that's about how can we make rocks very feel more included and how can we utilize the facility better and that sort of thing it almost in my brain I'm like compartmentalized like they're not locking together for me it feels like hopes and dreams and visions would be a shared thing with everybody in the district and that would be we would want voices from all schools being represented to in that conversation and then this whole thing that I was sort of new to about you know how has the merger been going how can we improve the merger how can we better utilize the rocks very village school as a facility in our district how can we make rocks very students feel more welcome or engaged or not leave their own school so those I don't know I'm just not quite it's not quite clicking with me it almost seems like a muddying of the waters to introduce that part of the conversation into the hopes dreams and visions and statements and stuff like that yeah yeah I go um what what uh what everybody has to say I I agree with the fact that proceeding with these guys and talking about it and um uh formalizing the vision and and that discussion is important we should go with it I also feel like uh I mean being new on the board I I do agree with um getting us at least a new board um in the process and getting up getting a little bit of background is important so we can contribute more um especially you know what what was the vision behind um what was the vision we started out with bringing the districts together I get getting back on the mat and then we can contribute to okay well going forward do we need to make any changes to that or how we can utilize the uh collective assets that we have better and have um in my mind I'm thinking well that'd be great if we do end up with a crisis where we're you know looking at the budget that'll help us identify uh what we what's important and what uh aligns with that vision that we have laid out so we can make informed decisions rather than reacting to it when the crisis so I I feel like that's that's important uh Bridget um I just wanted to return to the idea that I think that the because I was hearing what Emma was saying which is and is making a really good point that it can be hard to see how these things fit together but um I guess I really think that it is one there is one level of important board engagement board conversation and board engagement with the communities that is I think we can do it as one process because and that it's important too because some of the other questions the questions of like you know our our we do is the district doing well enough at integrating Roxbury students or you know is the busing thing working those things are operational questions that the administration has to address but has to be informed by some you know the idea is to be informed by the the values and the mission that the district as a whole the community as a whole agreed upon while those things are being addressed by the administration so this the the bigger picture work I think it's really it is really important it doesn't have to get into the into the truly operational issues around how we're doing at um at working with the the Roxbury students in the district and the the technical and you know transportation and all those issues it doesn't have to get into those weeds but it is about trying to bring the communities closer together like Jerry was saying you know how much it matters that the school is kind of the center of the community in Roxbury and to me that's a value that many people across both communities will share um you know I've chosen to live in a larger town now but I've lived in other places in Vermont and we're you know we're all Vermonters at some level and understand the importance of of these smaller towns and agricultural communities and want to know how we want so those are the kinds of values that we can bring the communities together and see see where there's agreement and see what's going to drive the larger strategic decisions that we have to make about using the buildings so I I realize it's a little there's a little bit of a disconnect but I do really think it's a it's a linked conversation. Yeah I I agree I think it's a very linked conversation too and I think there's actually um there's actually a danger in not linking them which is that we have a conversation about here's all the great things we agree on oh you Roxbury people go figure out what you're going to do with RVS and we'll we'll walk away from it and I think that the more we invest the mob pillar community in the overall shared visions and values and then link that to you know the future of all four schools and how we can make the mess best of all four facilities I think the we increase the chance that the mob pillar community will really be invested in the RVS. I just want to verify that I wasn't suggesting that the Roxbury conversation was for Roxbury people only that it would still be a community conversation about how to yeah and and again it could just boil down to context and lack of context for me to understand what this conversation really is. No and I I definitely understand that and I think that we you know I wasn't suggesting that you were framing it that way but I think that if we decouple them it will decrease the incentive of mob pillar to be part of the Roxbury conversation if they feel that there's a conversation about district values and then there's a conversation about RVS you know especially when you've got community members with you know limited time and limited bandwidth. So I had a computer cache early on in the conversation so I oh sorry no I was gonna say apologize to jump in halfway through this part of the thoughts conversation after a computer crash um two follow-ups maybe to conclude first I do see a lot of value in starting this process either with or without the consultants to facilitate but this is not going to hurt us at all to have these really important conversations with our communities moving forward um and maybe to support the argument that Emma had made I would argue that we should move forward having the hard conversations regarding the village school's future um and not be concerned about how that would come up throughout the engagement processes simply because the idea of the village school being closed has been percolating in people's minds for decades like it's not gonna all of a sudden kind of show up at this point in time and throw people off like oh my gosh we merged and now we're talking about closing the school like that concern has been done it's been in people's minds for years and it hasn't gone away since the merger so I don't think we're going to turn anybody off or really people will be concerned but they're not going to be offense or maybe offended that it was raised in these conversations something that I did think about as we were discussing this that we don't think was raised with the facilitators when we went through the merger process the the guidance we got from the two district superintendents had been you know there's going to be two elementary schools in the future district they're going to be different they won't be exactly the same the experiences will be different but they wouldn't be in I don't want to say combat but one wouldn't be better or worse than the other as long as our students were leaving either union or rocksbury village school with proficiency in the core curriculum areas we would call it a success there you know folks choose to live in rocksbury you know for certain reasons they understand that you're not walking to the grocery store your students wouldn't be going to elementary school with class sizes of 15 to 20 people the same thing that folks in Montpelier would be selecting based on where they're choosing to live and so I know Libby has a different perspective and it might just be a result of our DEI policy about what equity really means across the two elementary schools as I know we had felt like as a merger came together they don't have to be the same nobody would have nobody was expecting them to be the same but what does it really mean for the two elementary schools to be equitable or to be truly equal and will be something that we should hopefully parse out of our visioning process with the communities right thank you Ryan um anything else or should we take a quick break and then talk about covid break um why don't we try to make it fast because I actually do need to leave it four and about others five minutes back at ready to start back up great so we can start the session with open meetings update um and I'll turn it over to Libby and then Bridget I may ask you to fill in anything that was missed or any points you want to make because I know that you're um relatively up on this as well actually I just turned over to Bridget we can we can start um with this so uh we just wanted to make sure with a lot of new members um that we did at least a brief um discussion of some of the things to be aware of with the open meetings law and a little bit on public records um and then share some resources the the board in the past has had a couple of deeper dives on this including a presentation from the vsba uh at a prior retreat where we went pretty deep into the issues around social media communications and the areas where that intersects with the open meetings law so there's some resources that it's really great I think for board members to read that we'll talk about um that can we can share with everyone but just to hit quickly on some highlight concerns and feel free to interrupt with questions um so as you as everyone knows the key um unoverriding principle is that meetings of public bodies have to be open to the public no secret meetings the public has to be able to observe and attend there's the opportunity for a public comment at the at the start of each meeting and sometimes at other points in the meeting there's a quite a there's a number of specific rules around the meeting times and places being distributed and posted the minutes being posted um when when we can have emergency meetings and when the posting requirements when we change the meeting schedule um there's always a couple of members of the board who are more attuned um because of the roles they have on the board and and our reliance on staff to do those things so I wasn't going to cover those in details but those are in the guide to open records law that the Secretary of State has and in the statute um and happy to answer questions about that but that's one important component of the public meetings law that everyone should be aware of um that people do have to know when the meetings are happening and we have to follow the rules for that um even when we go into even when we can properly have an executive session the meeting itself still has to be an open meeting and properly warned um and the public has to be able to attend the beginning and the end if they wanted to even if the rest of the meeting is going to be an executive session um the key uh a couple points that we wanted to go over today is what is a meeting of a public body because that's where it can be easy to get confused about what the rules are so the legal definition basically is a meeting of a public body is a quorum or a majority of the members of the body discussing the board's business and the board's business is defined as governmental functions including any matter that the board has supervision control jurisdiction or advisory power so a majority of the members which is five out of nine discussing the board's business committees that the board forms are also public bodies and the same rules apply so for example if we have a negotiations committee that has three members me Andrew and Ryan me and Ryan are a quorum of the negotiations committee and that's why we have to award a meeting to have to have a discussion um meetings don't have to be in person or a live conversation to be a meeting emails or social media can be an improper meeting the secretary of state's guide to the open meetings law has some really good discussions about emails and about social media um and the VSBA has some materials on this the the social media point I mean it's it's it's unclear but it's a you know it's a real concern if you have forums like Facebook pages or front porch forum and then and members of the board are commenting or participating in conversations about the board's business in those forums it can be it could be considered a meeting because it could reach a majority of the members whether a majority are actually commenting if a majority of the board is part of the forum and is reading and seeing the discussion and some members are commenting it's a concern that that could be considered a meeting of course that has to that balance is against concern that board members have with wanting to be accessible to the public and and paying attention to what's going on in these public forums so it's a it's a complicated issue and it's definitely one worth um reading the secretary of state's guide about and thinking about um when participating in those areas email clearly um so mass emails a majority of the board members cannot be part of an email discussion about um the board's business so that is um the the reply all function to is something to be very much aware of to not do um if you know as often happens if a member of the public emails the entire board to share their views on board business which is great and which the public is absolutely titled to do um board members should not reply all to continue that conversation you can continue the discussion one on one with the member of the public um that's fine but um don't use the the email chain to continue a substantive discussion what is okay um board members can email about scheduling and agendas for meetings um meeting materials can be distributed um so it is it is okay for example to have a group board email deciding how to organize the agenda what are we going to have on the retreat agenda that can theoretically be done by email we often do it in a meeting as long as it does not turn into a substantive discussion of the topic so that's one exception in the statute um another issue that's come up in the past it is okay for a majority or quorum of board members to attend a larger training conference meeting for example a school board's association meeting without warning that as a meeting of our board and that question has come up because that kind of like a v sb a conference arguably is related to the board's business um but as long as there is no discussion of specific board business that isn't um specifically addressed in the statute so that is possible it is a good thing it it has never happened in my experience that a quorum has attended the same v sb a meeting i think it would probably be a good thing to flag if this might happen because it is we would probably jim would probably want to know and we'll just make sure of it um everybody's aware of what's going on and is careful um not to have any specific discussions there it's okay for a quorum of board meetings to attend a meeting of another public body as long as the school board isn't taking action on its own business so you know if the city council were considering an issue relevant to the school board then it happened that a majority of our members wanted to go that is okay again just not discussing any school board business there social functions and gatherings are okay you know it certainly happened in the past that a majority of the board might attend high school graduation back in the day so when we could have high school graduation in person um that's you know there's no rule that you can't just have a majority of the board present social functions that are okay because you're not discussing board business um collective marketing negotiation sessions are not public meetings that's just a specific legal issue that was decided by the court and that's why those don't have to be open to the public or warned um let's see so another topic that comes up a lot that we wanted to just cover briefly are executive sessions so executive sessions are covered in great detail in the statute um it's worth reading one vsa 313 or reading the excerpt of it in the secretary of state's guide to open meetings because it explains very carefully what kinds of topics are permissible in an executive session an executive session is a closed session within an otherwise public meeting the meeting still has to be warned the public has a right to know that the executive session is happening there has to be a motion that's made during the open session that gives the reason for the executive session so there's a record of what's going to be discussed and then the discussion within the executive session has to be limited to that topic um the permissible reasons are listed in the statute and one of the issues we know we've we've touched on because we've been having a lot of negotiation discussions in executive session um is that part for certain topics the board before going into executive session has to make a specific finding in order to support that decision to close the meeting to the public um and the finding is that premature general public knowledge would clearly place the public body or a person involved at a substantial disadvantage and that that finding applies to contract and labor negotiations and to legal advice so when certain topics come up um and most commonly um for topics we consider it is labor negotiations um and the contract discussions that's a finding that we have to make there are other topics for which the board can go into executive session and that finding doesn't have to be made so that's why sometimes there's a motion to make the finding and sometimes there isn't um student discipline for example does not require special finding the appointment evaluation discipline of a public official does not require a special finding another rule about executive sessions is that the board can't take action in executive session with one exception about real estate that has never come up in the time that i'm on the board i've been on the board um so the topic that is the subject of the executive session can be discussed but the board can't take the action so to use an example if a board is hiring a superintendent the board can discuss the candidates for the position in executive session because that falls under the appointment of a public officer or employee but the board has to leave executive session and make there has to be a motion made and approved in the public session to offer the position to one of the candidates so that's the distinction between having the discussion in executive session and taking the action in an open session um although the executive session is closed to the public uh the board can invite people in to the executive session the statute allows us to invite in our attorneys staff and persons who are subjects of the discussion or whose information is needed it's usually best practice if that's part of the motion that's made to go into executive session so sorry that was a lot um have about two minutes on public records what i just want to touch on the email piece again but were there any just questions that anyone wanted to ask about on that open meetings piece oh this is really helpful okay um what about um collective editing of like a google document is that something that can't be done if multiple people are so that is specifically addressed in the secretary of state's guidance and they say that is a violation of the open meetings law um it's i think it's an unfortunate thing i wish that the legislature could change that in a way that we could have kind of google docs pages going that could be public that so people could see the editing it would be very efficient and i think it could be public but there's just nothing in the statute that allows that so what the secretary of state recommends is that you have one board member who acts as the collector of the information other board members individually share it one person makes the changes and then you have a board meeting at which you discuss all of the changes um another topic can i say one last thing about the social media sure that i remember susan holson saying this very specific piece is if a board member replies or makes a comment on a post and then another board member also makes a comment on the same post that could be considered a board conversation and so that's what that's where it gets really really tricky with open media law and social media in particular and it gets tricky um it gets tricky both of the open meetings law and as she pointed out in that session the public records law which was the other thing i was going to touch on because even if even if it's only two members of the board commenting on the facebook post and you could say it's not a quorum so it's not actually an open meeting it probably has become a public record but it's not a public record that the district has any way of preserving so there's there's a real complication with the public records law as well um there were she the vsba had a lot of questions about um school board members of public bodies including school board members talking discussing board business on social media platforms particularly in the facebook context where it can be a discussion as opposed to just one you know what making one post on front porch forum is not really a discussion but being on the facebook page and getting involved in a serial discussion starts to look like a meeting in a particular group that does not have the full community cannot view the comments because they're not members of the group right um it's a really tough topic it is and you know the secretary of state does address it in the in that guide which um we can forward to all the board members and i think fair to say it doesn't reach any conclusive decision any conclusive views either on exactly where the line is but cautioning that um it's it's definitely a fraud area in this for this purpose the the only point i want to another point i wanted to make about i'm sorry i'm not go ahead i had a question too so has the board ever discussed like having one like appointing a member of the board to like sort of respond from the board perspective to like front porch forum posts about school matters or uh friends of Montpelier school's facebook page matters like is it um easier to have or have you ever discussed having like one appointed board member to like sort of handle the public comments of the various media platforms we have discussed that and you know i think at time i think you know the the preference was for Jim as chair and he was willing to kind of be a single voice on some of these issues and i don't i don't want to speak for Jim but it the other you know jim doesn't have any um control over the rest of us to stop us from doing that either so um it's a would it follow the same it would follow similar rules with the emails just like if you're not discussing board matters if you're just saying hey you know because the other day i actually responded to someone and i said you know please email me your thoughts on this here's my email address but it wasn't like a conversation about policy it was like i'm available email me with your thoughts right and i think that's a that's a different kind of thing than saying i i think this this this and this about these issues right it's different saying just saying i'm available to talk um or posting links to you know i think another thing that is um i think is on the on the fine side of the line is posting links to the official um school board page or school district pages posts etc to say you know if you're having here here's the statement from the superintendent on this topic related to his closure or you know so that people are getting the resources but you're not actually discussing topics i think that's a you know obviously helpful thing to do what we also talked about and i'm just going to take this off for a second what we also talked about at the time um related to several things one is we had talked about you know if there is a board vote on a matter and say the board split or say just one person disagrees or two people disagree there you know you still have your first amendment rights and you can say that you know i didn't vote in in favor of this and this isn't how i believe but it's important for the public to understand that the board did make a decision and that just because you might feel a certain way having been a dissenting vote doesn't mean you know it's important for people to understand that you know the the board made the decision the board's going in this direction but that doesn't preclude you from having a voice it's just important for people to understand what the difference is there and then what we talked about and this was over a year ago now so it's worth having this discussion again is generally Jim um is the de facto voice of the board the chair of the board but there are sometimes one you might have a committee like the after-school committee that Bridget worked on and um Bridget weighed in on some matters publicly there uh in consultation with Jim when i was doing the msms building committee work and i was reaching out to community members in different ways i talked with Jim about that ahead of time so we were on the same page um and so those are those are some different examples of when board met other board members would be a point person on something i remember michelle i forget what she was working on but she was a main point person with the community on an issue in the past couple of years so yeah it's important i mean the lines here are really not defined um you know so i think it's it's good to err on caution i also think it's okay to reach out to me if you feel there's a conversation on front porch forum or friends of popular schools or whatever that you feel needs responding to um uh because i have to be honest with you i i always have time to keep up with everything um and uh yeah i think we can we can work something out be yeah you know the time i think to be extremely cautious is when you see another board member weigh in on something um you know then all it takes is a third board member to not see that and say something and you've got to you've got to be uh so um you know so so just just be cautious and then there's the other things too like you know you can weigh in as parents and you can weigh in as community members but you have to be really cautious about that because those lines blur very quickly um some people who live in Montpelier might remember that there was some controversy a couple of years ago around um city council members having offline discussions that did not involve a quorum of the city council but kind of they were having serial discussions so that's another topic related to what's a meeting and it is also you know the secretary of state's guide talks about that they call it serial conversations um so you know i'll just try to use an example that's like silly like you know if um if jill decided that we should turn the mud lot into an orange citrus grove and you know called me and said let's talk about it that i mean that's okay you know people on city council or school boards can have one-on-one conversations about topics that's on a quorum um but if it then you know if then i was like well i think this is such a great idea i'm going to run with this citrus grove idea and i'm going to call every member of the board um and find out how they would vote and once i find out how andrew would vote then i'm going to call mara tell her and then that's that's what the secretary of state calls a serial conversation um which does not appear to fall within the letter of the open meetings law but raises concerns about transparency and openness um and it's it's definitely worth reading the discussion of that as well uh the public records point which is very brief is just to remember that um we made a decision as a district to use district email addresses for school board members which was has only been a couple of years so the new members might not realize that was a deliberate decision that the board made a couple of years ago to require the use of a district email by board members for purposes of making it easier to comply with the public records law um so but a caution just a caution to keep in mind is to please use that school board email for your school board business and try to avoid using it for anything else it really helps to keep the lines clearer as a legal matter your personal email account could have public records in it if you don't if you if you use it for board business um the fact that it's your personal email account doesn't mean that you're not creating public records if you're using that account to do the work of the school board and that's why it's it's a lot better for you and better for the district if you keep that work on your district email account which is then stored on the district servers and no one has to chase you down to search your gmail account if we get a public records request which trust me you do not want to have to turn over your gmail account for that purpose so that was all i wanted to say about public records point i've got a question about email um the are we are we supposed to keep every single email that we receive or because it's on a gmail server it's okay to delete some stuff or that is a great question that we should i keep i don't delete things out of my school board account except for marketing like mass marketed material emails are the only things that i delete out of that account i'm pretty sure um i think it's probably a better practice not to delete things but i don't know that we have given jim have we given any specific guidance on that uh we have not um and i don't know if we know the answer uh and i also don't know if gmail i mean because when i put stuff in my trash in my personal gmail account it's there for a long long time um i think that depends on your settings though because i think you can set your trash to delete frequently frequently yeah um i think yeah there's kind of infinite space there and i don't particularly anything that's pertinent um i i keep it too and i think that's the safe that's the safe bet it doesn't clog up anything so it's it's uh yeah i mean the public records law requires you to keep public records not to destroy them so i think that is the safest direction is don't delete them if we end up with a storage problem the district will figure it out yeah okay i started to interrupt the retreat with that but no that's super important bridget um and uh thanks for bringing that up because you know we do have you have a lot of new faces and this stuff is is tricky and not necessarily intuitive one quick question um on the topic of keeping records if we get like the um swoop scoop or the msms things are those also things we need to be keeping uh because or i was gonna say that's a lot okay i appreciate the clarification because i definitely have thought that part of the role is to is to point people in the right direction when it seems like things are going off the rails but it's it's a good reminder that even on facebook even when you're pointing people to the right place if too many people are responding then then that can create a problem so i appreciate that clarification at the same time though jill if you see that somebody if you see that there is an issue revolving and there isn't a response then what i've done in the past is i just sent jim email yeah and i think that's the best i mean if you're really like wow this this conversation is going off the rails and there's a lot of misinformation out there um and i feel someone needs to to bring it back uh yeah but i do think it sounds fine jill like i know you and i both i think you posted the survey from liby on the friends of Montpelier school's facebook page and then but didn't provide the link and so then i posted the link below you that's two people from the board but that's not having a discussion about policy that's just here's this information you know yeah i think you can post stuff like that like you know the board passed this resolution last night here's a link to it um because you're not deliberately it's it's a it's a slippery slope which i think our public records law is it's going to need to be updated for the 21st century a little more than it has been i know it's something that secretary condos is grappled with his team have grappled with i do see how it's a really slippery slope that all of a sudden you have five people there and you're saying oh well we're just posting this information there and then you know you have five people emailing back and forth and you say oh we were just posting this but you know really um it's a slippery slope the the lines between decision making um and speaking as as as a board in a public space where without giving the public an opportunity to weigh in um and have a record of that interaction you know it's the the lines get really fuzzy really quickly yeah it sounds like an easy rule of thumb would be if you see two people posting anything even if it's just a link to an agenda yeah that may be steer clear of that particular thread yeah but i also don't think you should be living in fear of posting links to agenda i think that like helps you know with transparency and inviting people into the process and i think that's really important it's something that i think the board hasn't done a great job with in the past yeah i would agree yeah i mean the the challenge of posting information you have to be aware of is then someone asks you a question and then you start to get into a policy discussion about kind of your thoughts about it and then you know someone later sees it and says well i'm not sure that's how i thought the the other discussion went and they weigh in or they or they second it right right i agree with emma like you know emma raises some great points um i i also although the Friends of Montpelier facebook page is a very effective way to reach out to community members it does raise some equity issues not not everybody in our schools has access to that facebook page it's you know a group you if i remember correctly i mean i've been on there for a while but i believe i had to ask permission to join that page i'm not mistaken i don't know if anybody has ever asked permission it hasn't been granted that opportunity and when we talk about equity a lot of the a lot of the people who do comment on there are more influential members of our community the loudest voices on the bombs page are some of the most influential voices in our community i think that's important for us to be aware i i'm just i'm just throwing it out because this is really just all about open meeting a lot which is at at its core meant to be accessible to the public so yeah i would it just feels to me like the more places that you have it available like agend links to agendas or links to orca videos of this is like i think that that's helpful and if some people have access to the website or some people have access to facebook or twitter or other thing or even instagram like you have you guys have a great instagram feed that is always linking stuff and i think any multiple access points can only broaden the scope of the people who have access i agree i agree um and i would also say that just i think that group actually has a lot of diverse voices on it that um that you don't regularly see at other events like it's a place where some people that is their only access to information about the schools but well it's not if they're on if they're on facebook then they have access to the facebook page for the district as well yeah maybe not access but that's what they're that's where they're going for information yeah and one of the things we've talked about is driving it to our pages driving it to our instagram driving it to our twitter driving it to our um and with the addition of anna who is possibly the best hire i've made no offense to the other hires i've made but it's like a different world now with our communications and so if there are things that are popping up that are like wow there's a hole here and we need to fill it with some communication piece jill's really been helpful with this is to just shoot anna an email with me and jimanna and say hey i think you might want to address this in some way and we're on it almost immediately or she's on it almost immediately anyway i agree though the front of my peculiar page is a very robust yeah it's it's it's a robust piece of the community discussion uh any more for bridget and we should probably do a quick reset aware because it's 330 and um and we are not on the agenda point where we should be so i want to hear what the kid said in the survey can you have it so we want to move on to that yeah my unmuted yeah um so i sent it to you via email and i also just linked it in the chat um so we wanted to have this conversation and with the board as we looked at the survey data um this survey data is not all of the survey data and we can certainly share all the survey data anna did you link it in here no no okay um because it was just too much to go through um so what i asked anna to do was to go through it um and she did it i want to give her credit for that um go through it and and themes that popped up right so she was looking for themes and then put certain put some comments that went along with that theme um so uh we're going to take a little bit of time i'm just going to shut up and let you read it um these are some things that really popped up to i'm just because anna and i as we've been talking about this is that um the survey data was quite clear that there is not one way that our community wants our schools to go as we move forward it is across the board and before we really dig into this uh just so we know what we know right now about fall 2020 because the secretary did go on a press conference Wednesday to say that their goal is to be in person right um and that we're working to do that and he gave some little tiny snippets of some of the rules and mandates like staff all wearing masks he did not give all of them so i was on a phone call with him on thursday and he referenced the document that's coming out next week that is 19 pages long of guidelines so he referenced two two mandates right so we're nowhere near having a clear picture of what we understand and what we know um what we do know from the survey the survey almost tells us that any direction is going to make many people unhappy or and many people happy at the same time right like so that's one one piece that i wanted to get out to the board um in that way and the decisions we have to make there will be broad things that are have to use and there will be things that are you this is the general context you need to work in and it's a local decision based on what you have available to you okay so um our buildings are all different across from on right so um so with those kind of decisions the other piece that i wanted the board to really discuss is what is the board's role in and ensuring that you know the rationalization as to why we're making the decisions we're making and that you can communicate that effectively because you will be asked um and and there and i just want to repeat there is not a common understanding or desire of what people want in the future i talked to a parent the other day who wanted nothing but academic excellence it didn't matter if we were in school or not in school she wanted a full day of learning for her kids um and and that was what you know needed to be synchronous all day long and i you talked i talked to another parent that said my kid can't take this um and she will not be going to school in the fall and you just need to give her the limited work you're giving her now that's perfect right there's no common understanding here so this survey data points to that um pretty strongly there are some themes kids miss their friends right they want to be in person most of them not all of them but most of them want to be in person so um i'm going to stop talking right now for about 10 minutes and give you the time to read through this there's student and parent data on here um there's not teacher data in here this is just student and parents and then we'll come back and discuss uh board's role in about 10 minutes does that make sense yeah okay they have a plan as to how we want to just go the main question is the board's role going for further how can we ensure that the board um understands the rationale between behind decisions um and can communicate that effectively that's i think the main goal going forward i do want to be absolutely crystal clear that many of the decisions are not the district's decisions yeah um so you know the comments that this is just sticking in my brain but there are other ones like it step up and get these kids back in school like that is not me stepping up right somebody else having to do that so we just want to be really crystal clear that a lot of the decisions and the public will know that because it will be a public the guidelines will be a public document right um even things like the mass i mean yes yeah it's not going to be a well some of it might be right so the statement at the press conference was adults master mandatory and children are encouraged so what so that's one bit of feedback we've already given to him like what does that mean right what does that mean also how are teachers the the facial protection could it could it be like the sorry this is i this is just something that jumped out at me when i heard that because i was listening to it last night teachers have to project so if they have recovering from other faiths like that it's going to be really difficult i almost wonder if like we need like face shields or something like that we've talked about it um so there's a couple things there's the board's not getting into the weeds right because as bridget was pointing out earlier operational operational challenges and decisions are administration role not school board role however knowing the community the way i do it's imperative you all know my decisions are made and what we have control over when we don't have control over it can communicate that well so um even if it's decisions you don't necessarily agree with it um so i just would open up to a conversation about things that jumped out at you moving forward oh and i want to show off our masks that we got everybody you guys can get one too Montpelier Rocksbury's public schools we got two of them for every kid in staff member all different sizes the little's are super cute we ordered those a while ago we we thought we saw the writing on the wall around masks i'll start um as a as we supervise adults i'm already this week have started to have my first kind of interactions of people's opinions about masks and not masks and so the more that that i need to be helpful about driving people towards the the why or driving it that it is not trying to rationalize it or explain it away because the kids are also coming from different households with different opinions about these things so the more clarity that comes from state and national guidance that we can easily point parents to that and i would go back to a suggestion i think i made it a board meeting but maybe it was the open house was if we somehow do some sort of a before school starts kind of setting the expectations and actually having whatever that looks like where people can actually come and see it so the kids sort of see okay this will go my school or sell my teachers everyone wearing a mask or not wearing a mask or all the adults are you know some kind of way that people could voluntarily literally go into what school's going to look like for a night or something just i think that especially the younger grades i think that would be really helpful so that there's as little judgment or disagreement or confusion about what the expectations are about i know i came in here like i didn't know how to use that darn thermometer but that will be there for me but the more of these things that people can be familiar with and know that everybody's on the same page then i think that will help relieve some of the anxiety that kids might have about coming back into the the buildings i i think it's in a beyond herculean effort what is going to be required to get people back into school i mean you look at the different responses that and i don't have it broken out as data points to know the extent to which responses were more popular than others but and you brought this up our our community is it's very divided over how to proceed with this there's not consensus and it's because our world quite frankly is very divided over how to proceed and um well there's there's no playbook for this so and there are legitimate concerns on both sides i mean we have an ongoing health crisis that is not going to be solved um by august 25th whenever our proposed start date is and it to be honest with you it might not be completely solved by august 25th of 2021 um on the other hand like yeah i think we you know those of us who have kids have probably all seen it with learning it's very hard to have successful learning remotely um and it's there's this there's a social and emotional cost that kids are going through uh that's very real i mean i've talked to a lot of families and you know i've seen it some of our kids there there's some fraying going on after three months of this and i think with families that have good support it's probably a bump that's pretty pretty easy to get past but you know but for kids that are not getting the right support there are probably some kids who have been set back in ways that will last for years um already and the longer this goes on i think the more that damage occurs so i mean the people who say wait a second you're mixing kids together you've got a terrible disease out there what are you you know what are you doing have a very good point so do people say like you know look our our kids are you know valuable time is going by you you don't have these education years back and um you know they're not getting the education they need so it's it's a delicate balance and i really think you know as a board we have to be very sensitive to the fact that there there's going to be missteps there aren't going to be easy solutions there's going to be a lot of loud voices coming from a lot of different places and i think you know understanding various perspectives and communicating out the reasons that decisions are being made yeah effectively to the community is is a very important role for us and yeah listening but also i think being being understanding of diverse views and and being able to to communicate and yeah some of it might be hard i mean it's issues like opening the buildings there are going to be people who say these are public buildings and public spaces and you know we need supports to continue and we need basketball to happen here on saturdays um but that might not be something we can do you know that might take resources it might introduce you know more people into the building we we don't have any contact tracing from or it might require additional cleaning it's just you know it's going to be a very imperfect year um and you know i think we're working closely with the administration to uh you know to make the right choices for our district and also understanding that our district is not even even within you know the guidance going to say our districts are going to make decisions that are just different from other districts and that could have to do with a lot of things i mean just look at u32 um u32 has some transportation challenges that we do not have that may influence how they make choices about things and we may hear from community members but u32 is doing x why are we doing y and i think being able to explain that um is going to be important and and also just uh you know we we need to exercise strong oversight which is our job but uh i think boards that are there are some boards in the state i think right now they're not being helpful um because they're being a little too responsive to community to the you know emotions at the time of of the community and um are not necessarily listening to the administration or um really understanding the limitations and the limitations that you know there's some things the states are going to tell us we have to do and some things the states are going to tell us we can't do at all um so you know i think being very very judicious about how we assert ourselves throughout the process i'm very aware of um and and hearing a lot from families local families about the equity issues at play around making decisions either move forward or not with having school in person and um you know for a lot of families they might be able to do that and be able to sort of in perpetuity have their children at home with them and then there's a lot of families that really can't have their children at home for another year um and to me that's sort of the bottom line is like there has to be an option for for parents who don't have options um and i think it's it will also be important um edgy i i love what you said about potentially being able to actually tour the school and maybe that's like a virtual maybe we don't have everybody into tour the school but maybe we can like do a virtual live walkthrough or something like that of how it works um i feel like there could also be creative solutions around like maybe having like pilot groups of kids you know coming in before school starts to sort of play out what do the guidelines look like when you have you know 20 kids in a classroom and how do we actually do this with real students in the room um another piece that i have been thinking a lot about is um answers to people about you know what ifs so what if there's a case in the middle school what's our plan what's the contingency plan so like what if there's an actual case and then a cluster of cases at the middle school do we close the middle school do we close all the whole district do we do it for 14 days do we do it for three weeks that's where the we gets taken out of it that's not our decision yeah the board you mean no that's not even the district's decision that's the department of health decision so they will have answers to all those contingency questions they should yeah there's a case yep then this yep and if you make a decision to keep your child at home and do homeschool then this that's still up in the air that's a different state that's a different um question so for to whatever extent they answer the questions great and then to whatever extent we can sort of furnish additional answers to more questions would be great um i think that would be helpful in sort of people wrapping their brain around what is this going to look like for my family you know and my kid yep and and i think what it looks like on august 25th might not be what it looks like on november 25th it might not be what it looks like on february 25th yeah well we know now if you've read the cdc guidance it's split it into phase one two and three our state is going with step one step two and step three i'm not sure why they can't use the same language but they're not but it's a similar idea and then step one is remote this i do know step two is um significant safety precautions that are mandatory and the difference between step two and step three is that step three they're suggested distance your kids six feet apart if you can right so there's there's like the as much as possible kind of language um and that's the only difference between step two and three although i have heard rumors that if we open and the state says we're opening under step two then transportation becomes a major issue um for for that piece which causes some challenges that's the only biggie yeah so i'm gonna have to leave and we're gonna rigid said that she could take over facilitating right bridge sure no i'm happy to do that gym wants it to work that with people and i continue yeah do we want to or need to continue this conversation for like 10 moments or no i just think that there's another part of this time i think there's another part of this conversation that we haven't talked about and the the students and our families are obviously you know front and center but we're obviously one of the largest employers as well and the survey that we just read was very very appreciative student and family focus are we did you survey teachers as well and other staff members and do we have a sense of have you taken that temperature at all i'm sure you have i don't know if you want to talk about that now or if you want to put that off for a later conversation but that's another really important part of this equation as well i have not talked to the teachers in the same way in the same survey way where i sent out a survey to all the teachers we have not done that but we've done it in different ways so um i had a big town hall with teachers and what they were about 80 80 there um giving ideas suggestions telling me about their fears their worries that kind of thing um our teacher the teachers who came to that were c fall 2020 as an opportunity to change things for the better those that was primarily who came and they're 80 right so that's awesome that's awesome or maybe there's 50 i'm mixing up the parents they're 50 because we 80 teachers would be more than what we have there's 50 i think which is a considerable amount of our teachers um and so you know in the upper levels they talked about things like doing multidisciplinary courses where two teachers are teaching the same group of kids and from their different disciplines and you know and like really cool ideas that we should be exploring um how do we do more expeditionary learning how do we do really targeted intentional and good project based learning so it's not just a unit on apples right but it's really good and kids are getting in depth and learning how to be independent facilitating their own learning with the teacher behind as the as the guide from behind um they they talked about lots and lots of different things and they also talked about look i'm over 65 and i'm really concerned right so they're they got that out in the table during that conversation too uh they'll another piece of just formative data if you go into this state of the state this was just from this morning you notice in the very beginning of that there's a slide that says let's just get the uncertainty into the room and there's a link to a google doc there you can go to the whole google doc but the next slide we made a word cloud off of it and so you can see the words that pop up the biggest in that word cloud are the words that were repeated the most on that google doc um so you can go in and see just a good formative assessment about what they were saying in that moment but then that that word cloud also gives us really good formative assessment um for that the the four big ones are their uncertainties were what's we're going to look like how do we get our access our students better and get higher levels of learning what fall which is similar to the school and safety right um but you can see the other pieces that were in there that are their uncertainties around this this whole event um i know we'll get more information from teachers as we keep going on but they also had some really good questions and i'm going to look to you to see if i forget any at the end i gave them time for questions and answers um in the chat box and they said thing they asked questions about shared materials how do we do this without sharing materials right where is their money so we can buy more individual materials for kids um that was a big worry the um i moved them or i tried to move them away from physical distancing in space because we just don't know what the rules are yet so let's not worry about something we don't know about yet right um but they did what other questions do they have this morning yep yep and that implementation loop that i shared with you last board meeting that's in play right for all of this and on that is a group of 20 25 teachers um to give feedback about um our nurses are well involved with the planning process they were very interested in the and those kind of things today i believe yeah yeah but really they're they have their minds focused in the right spot right now our teachers have the mind their minds focus on how to make learning better regardless of our context right how do we do that um so that we can be fluid and flexible and agile and know that if we have to go remote again we made it crystal clear this morning that it cannot and will not look like what it does now that we will not revert back to what we've done this past because we've been reacting right i talked a lot about upstream versus downstream and downstream's reactive we've reacted some parents liked it some didn't some students liked it some didn't some teachers liked it some didn't right um but we were in reactive mode we don't get that pass next fall so we made that really clear that we got a pass on that this year we don't get a pass on that we have more time to do that so they're and they're concerned about do we will we have time to plan it right when we come back in the fall so i heard the governor saying in an interview yesterday that he was thinking about playing and dan french said it too playing with school calendars so that kids come back later to give teachers more time before which i'm proud like our calendar might be different because of that so um they're they're really they they're up to the challenge and i think 95 percent of them say that they're up to the challenge that's me being arbitrary with my numbers but um they also know that they need time to plan it they need time to make it look good so that's where our teachers are but that's really there's not the formal survey i can quote them having been done yet can i clarify a question just about the actual role of the school board so it's you know understanding why we're making the decisions that we're making and being able to explain that out to people when we are asked about it um will there be any point where we're asked for input or we're voting on anything or is it pretty much all administrative the pieces that the board would play in terms of an official role would be if we need policies so if we need to change our attendance policy if we need to create a policy around i just put my earbuds in case project chimed in um if we needed to create a policy around staff who doctors have told them it's not safe for them to come in do we have to file go into fml a or not you know like we may have to come together as a board and and get a policy around that piece um we may need policies about the children saying or parents saying i'm not sending my kid into school you know like that which is connected to the attendance policy right all these things are connected so at the policy level there may be a role i bet there's going to be a role this summer where we're going to have to do some quick work sorry bridge it and ryan oh wait is ryan on that anymore no it's bridge it this is on policy ryan oh they remind ryan get ready um might have to do some quick policy work uh i the the decision making as far as the organization's response to guidelines and things that's an administrative role with board input i would say so what i would do is i'd go to jim and probably cc bridge it on it because she's second in command and say these are the decisions we've made i think the board might want me to weigh in on this let's bring it to the next board meeting or something along those lines um that's where that's what i foresee happening um but at every board meeting moving forward it's these decisions have been made this is why we've made them and feel free to ask questions and all that kind of good stuff so that we get it all out in the opening the entire time what i've been saying to my staff and what i've been saying to the administrator is ask questions you're not just keep asking questions because clarity is absolutely key right now and transparency and everything so um so we need to just keep asking questions to make sure that it's all out in the open but yeah as in regards to organizational decisions i'd go to jim and bridge it first to say this is what we're this is what we're leaning towards but i just need your pulse on that too which i do a lot anyway and mara and ryan and i are the policy committee and it's making me think we might i don't know if you ended up landing on any committees yet but it might be that we want to add some bodies to the policy committee because we had already started to talk about additional policies that we might need in place by this fall like policies on illness and staying home and perpa and and yeah perpa's another one so i don't know if you ended up on a committee yet i i also think and we might want to take a look at our committees um bridge it are you not on the policy committee anymore no i'm not on the policy committee anymore so i almost wonder if we are looking at a bunch of policy decisions we do have two i mean our chair and vice chair of both attorneys and i think having an attorney at the policy committee could be really helpful so we might want to consider realigning some of our resources too if we are looking at you know coming up with a bunch of policies pretty quickly yeah that could yeah i mean it may it may be where we just need a lot of people on the policy committee yeah and if there's a lot of work coming another thing i would add to what liby said is that there could be board involvement on budget or fund adjustment issues thanks for it if you know if the administration is saying this is what we would like to do but you know we have to draw on the fund balance to do this or reallocate resources that usually comes to the board as well yes yeah that does come to the boards thank you for adding that and also of course the diversity policy we talked about earlier we might want to be taking that up too liby could you talk a little bit i and you may just have no it sounds like it's so uncertain but um i was struck in the comments by you know there's certainly some parents saying i'm not going to send my kid back to school until this threat is over um entirely which is not going to be the case in august and i think i've heard that there's you know the schools that are reopened in other countries are seeing pretty you know pretty significant numbers of kids not coming back to school when they reopened so that concern that i mean it was hard enough to do remote learning when everyone was in remote learning but it's even harder when not everybody is right to be trying to reopen schools with all the challenges that involves and have a significant number of students at home um also needing to learn i mean is the is that that just seems another major component because on the one hand the administration could take a heart that's why i say when they say they're ruling on attendance and things like that soon that's what we need the guidance on because uh on the one hand the administration could within their rights say school is open if you decide to keep your child home you need to enroll them for homeschooling which would significantly impact districts enrollment right that is a very negative impact on our on our enrollment and budget um however would be easier just from a school's perspective right without the finances if you threw out the finance reality then it would be easier for our teachers um or they could say um if if schools must provide some sort of hybrid to a child's course load um and provide remote options for children so then do i dedicate staff to that um do we you know john pandolfo from barry who's moving to be superintendent tell your head colorado said that they're debating putting technology in each of the classrooms to live stream classes that's about a million dollar investment do we want to do that you know like that's that's a significant investment to do it would be the easiest answer but it's a lot of money um so do you so is there another way to live stream classes that doesn't involve that technology piece um you know like or do we just provide the coursework um do we do a completely flip classroom model um and there there's just so many difficulties and so many questions that we need and we need that piece answered for us very quickly so we can plan what that's going to look like it's not as easy as just saying well designate part of your staff to be the remote teachers because look at high school the licensing components don't allow us to do that unless we had enough kids who wanted to do that where we could pluck a science teacher and a social studies teacher and a english teacher um and and make a team right it's just not we're not big enough to do that um so there's there's so many questions around that piece well that could i mean when you say we're not a teacher just be able to go back and we'll get into the bridge oh sorry sorry go ahead bridge it ours when you say we're not big enough to do that if if we end up in that situation of needing teaching resources for remote students while we're in session that seems like a great area to be working with u32 or bear you know to to be working with other districts too same problem yeah it probably could be and then yeah if we can figure out all the logisticals of who pays them and who's in charge of them and who evaluates and who supervises and if we can if we can get through those logistical questions then yeah it could be a really good opportunity the other barrier that we're going to face um that i don't think really our parent community quite some members of our parent community quite understand is that we have a contracted bargaining agreement and we can't change the school hours of the day like it's contractual so that's a negotiation and with any negotiations it's two sides and one side is very well within the rights to say nope we're not doing that uh so there's that's another thing that's been suggested well if you have remote students just have them work at night or some you know just do a different schedule and that may not be possible with our teacher set teachers contract maybe it is possible but it might not be just quick reactions to that is uh it just seems like you know every teacher has a laptop and they could just do a live stream you know from their laptop and not have maybe by speakers but maybe it doesn't have to be a multimillion dollar investment and then the other thing you said about um teachers and their FTEs and pulling like a whole teacher you know high school science teacher to teach a fully online curriculum to a group of students it could just be that you reserve one of their classes is online you know like one of their blocks of time yeah it's not it's not neither of those make it so easy because of FERPA and because of um access to internet and because you know like there's so many different things that um it like yes right and there's so many other questions that things bring up yeah um if a teacher turns their laptop on and just starts a google meet that that kid joins does the teacher stay in one place the entire time right what if they move to the other side of the room and then the kid can't hear on a home anymore and that you know like there's so we have so many things to to figure out with that with that kind of stuff um that and not saying it's not out of the question there's just so many questions behind it um you know you saw a lot of comments about outdoor learning in the uh parent responses um well we have standards that we have mine to get to teach that not all of them have to do with outside we have kids who need access to water and access to bathrooms and we live in Vermont right so there's there's a lot of challenges to outdoor learning that are not that easy to to solve and do we really want to spend their time on that angle right now right there's just like that's just another example of it sounds really easy in practice and then when you think through all the questions just gets a little bit more complicated do the survey again in november and outside okay as much as i did wonder about that spring time and i don't mean to sound like a negative answer or that we will get through these we will get through this and we will answer these questions it um they're all just really complicated complex questions so i used to have an office next to this company in burlington who um they had this online school for very impoverished kids in third world countries and i thought oh it'd be interesting to talk to them i could try to find the name of the place but they were doing this with such limited resources and it's all i was thinking it's almost easier to do that because the kids were very eager yeah and the kids were using their telephones yeah and um yeah and of course they have access issues and all that but yeah we have a lot of learning to do yeah what we could do and what we can't do most definitely and we'll learn from each other and other districts and what they're thinking and doing and yeah what kind of thing so i just i'm just curious about the timeline um do we know anything about when the some of these decisions uh from the um governor or french they're gonna make or we've been told they're coming out next week okay so we've been told that they will they will be getting to us next week i'll believe it when it's in my hands so that's that's the that's what we know right now we do know that there's a group of pediatricians one superintendent um i believe one nea representative in the department of health working like as a committee working on this and we were told on thursday that it's pretty much in its final stages and they were just kind of going through it one last time so we expect it to be given to us next week and then after after assuming that you see the decision what not what's the time frame that we would form um our uh plan and then communicate that with the with the then we'll we'll spend july doing that yeah the administration and the teacher implementation team will be spending july and the nurses and the buildings and facilities we've been working with viz bit andrew and i've been working with viz bit on uh on doing some more facilities kind of planning pre-planning um for this so july will be very intense for our administrators which is why we're kind of shutting down the buildings the end of june to give everybody a vacation so we can come back fresh so tentatively august is when the community would start hearing about what plans well it might be before that if we start making decisions before that yeah um but we haven't that would be one of the things that tasks that we have to do is how do we communicate these decisions out to people do we do it all at once do we do it in pieces do we like what what would be the best way to do that do you have any flexibility if you need to add a nurse or technology coordinator or something that does the district have the well that those are the decisions that bridge was talking about that are financial that we'd be coming to you i think that y'all will want to be thinking about um rocks berry with a if we don't have one hired right because we can't hire it right now it's posted everywhere but we can't hire it we have a point two fd nurse at a rocks very right now do we want to increase that to something bigger not because of the kids kid capacity um but because of the situation we're in right now that's that's a big question that we'll want to consider i think ryan had a question earlier you know i had an idea popped into my head is the u 32 collaboration popped up and liby i'm kind of curious what the conversation is like right now within the super attendance community in vermont you know this spring when we were forced with the decisions to support you one way or the other and the closures not that they were easy decisions for the board to to make or to enact but they were clear every district every superintendent was on board with this is where we're going this fall sounds like it's probably not going to be like that with as much cohesion across districts and like what are you hearing from the other superintendents on what might be the big decisions that will be unified versus where everybody's going their separate paths do we have a sense for how the superintendents are expecting to be able to collaborate we are a very collaborative group so we're we share all our resources with each other but we're all going to have to make any local decisions we have to make based on our context right so the big conversation that people are having right now is around transportation if we start in step two or step three or step two two which is kind of the rumor how do you get kids to school without having them start their bus runs at five a.m. and how do you how do you have them doing the safety check who's going to check their temperature I'm not having a bus driver do that so who's checking their temperature and and so what do you have to pay a person to get on a bus at five a.m. so it's really like those are the questions that those are some big that are going to be local decisions that have to be made that we've been talking a lot about I mean it really truly is dependent on context you know I was just having a conversation today with the regional superintendents and Tracy rend went into the their in-service days who's in stow saying I want you to plan for remote and if it doesn't happen then we're ready for remote and we can just go into hybrid or whatever right or in person whereas I said I want you to plan for in person and I want you to be flexible so if we have to go into remote we can right so we have different stances and how we are pointing our faculty based on what we know about our our districts and what we know about our group and all that kind of thing I don't know if that answers your plan or answers your question Ryan so we talk awful lot and we get a lot of really good ideas and we share all of our things together but we may be making different decisions no that's helpful that's what I would have expected but it's just thinking about again the role of the board going forward and there's a chance that the board will be making decisions they're going to be different than other districts and again how we support you in those and how we communicate that with the public is going to be really important so it's just yeah yeah so I'm conscious of the time um it's almost 4 30 I don't want to cut off people's discussion but we are pretty far over um to folks feel like we're ready to wrap up for now thank you Libby for sharing this and for all the thoughtful discussion and for the and thanks to the board members as well it's been really good to see everyone and start these conversations um I think we need a motion to adjourn don't we still need executive session or no oh thank you I was looking at the agenda but it's not on the agenda of course that should be relatively quick yes so we don't we need um Andrew can you do the motions for the negotiation session I will try I'm not guaranteeing anything I might need my hand held here Bridget um I move to go I I mean I move that going that discussing negotiations in a public setting would would it place us at a place the district at a disadvantage is that substantial disadvantage substantial disadvantage um and second I move to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing negotiations okay so I need a second for the first motion which needs to pass first a second that all in favor hi hi hi and the second for Andrew's second motion to go into executive session I'll second all in favor hi hi any opposed okay what are you going to do let me send us to a break or oh yeah right we're good too we have to go into a breakout room it's Bridget it looks like we're all back so we're we're out of executive session and we just need a motion to adjourn make a motion to adjourn to adjourn I'll second all those in favor hi hi we're adjourned thanks everybody