 is usually every reorganization and I start the meeting and go right into board reorganization. But I'm going to make a suggestion to all of you tonight as a board and you can decide whether to go with it or not. It's your decision as a board to make. As the middle sex election is not certified yet, it appears that Charlie Mariam's the winner of that and there may be a recount of that happening. And I talked with the Secretary of State today to Will Sending, not the Secretary, but Will Sending's head of elections and talked to the BSBA which wouldn't give us an opinion on this. They asked us to consult our own attorney. I've been trying to get an opinion of an attorney for the past three or four hours. I cannot get anyone to call me back right now. So my suggestion to you is that you elect a temporary chair for tonight to run your meeting, that you table all the organization until Charlie is seated, is certified through that election process and that you come back to all that and that we usually use the third Wednesday as a secondary meeting so that you get plenty of time for the election to be certified and then you come back to the reorganization at that point. But someone would need to move and then appoint Kari as the Vice Chair from last time it's up to you if you want them or not. I mean but just someone to run the meetings. I don't feel comfortable doing that for you. I've always you know since I've been here and what I was told when I came in seven years ago as a superintendent started the reorganization and then got out of after there was a chair. So that's my suggestion to you is that you table all the real organizations until the middle six election is certified. Yeah I like the idea. I just have one question. Does that allow us to do business? It allows you to do business. I think like I said I'm giving you what I can best determine from Will's and conversations with Will's sending but there the Secretary when he talks about elections it's usually advice. He always at the end will say consult your own attorney I was open with you that I haven't been able to do that. And even when you do it's not always there kind of spanks like. Oh yeah it's all over the place. That's a good way of putting it but I would say that you just hold all that. There is a certain time that and Will said it to me he said we're in a gray area folks. So there is no so my best suggestion in all that is just table it until Charlie is certified and you can he can be part of the process for the reorganization. Yeah and that you appoint somebody as your chair to run the meeting I think I should be doing. Sort of a point of order Robert's rules wouldn't that the wouldn't we just default to the Vice Chair in the absence of our chair anyway. So Karen I I don't know the answers to those questions. I just think if you take an action if you just take an action to do something for tonight and then say you're gonna come back to it and set your next meeting date to do all that work on the board reorganization. When we have work. Yeah I mean for the point I mean Will actually said to me do you need to have a meeting tonight and I was thinking in the work that we've done in the past week and a half you wanted to get I took it as the board wanted to get to an election get to the budget vote so I said we need to have one by Friday he said well then it got into well maybe this maybe that I was like okay. I think it's I mean it's it sounds like a reasonable solution to me. Anyone have concerns? I move that we like to carry Bradley as the chair of this meeting. And I'll second it. Is everyone available on the 20th? Mr. Mariam are you available on the 20th? Yes Mary Mann actually. I think so which is pretty good now. Charlie I know you stepped out did you hear everything I was able to say or get the directions trying to go which is to take all the reorganization until. Seems like a reasonable course of action. Yeah. There's no right thing to do here. Well there's some question about the time how fast you have to do this and whether it's one meeting or not but that's the thing we couldn't figure out. That's why I said go to your own legal counsel. Just a point of news that's our winter sports celebration that night so you might have to duck out for a minute or two. For the best of it is. For your own children. Yeah. Thanks. All right. Appreciate it. We can do that. Yeah. So all those in favor of Karen's motion please signify by saying aye. Aye. For those abstentions. Thank you folks. Okay so we'll proceed. Thank you. So reception of guests. Thank you for being here. Did you have anything that you wanted to address specifically? I wanted to make sure that you could be too aware of Berlin's unexpected predicament as far as school board. Okay. Let's cover that in public comments. It's just coming right up. Agenda revisions. We're basically revising the first portion of the agenda. We're going to go right to a consent agenda and not cover your organization. Anything else that people want to do? I have a question about the music program that I'll ask during the administrative report. That's okay. Good. All right. So public comments. Do you want to share? Yeah, I'm not sure. Bill, did you get it? I haven't. That's as far as it's I have like a list of four or five questions. So Corinne and Corinne's been part of this. We're trying to figure out the secretary of state has told us something different than the way I investigate this. I had invested like five, six years ago and was trained in my first superintendent training about who, if the select board appoints, or if there needs to be a special meeting for the Berlin elementary school to have a majority of representatives. Because currently... Let me back up a moment. So we had one board member who didn't need to be on the ballot. We had four seats open. We had one person running, unopposed. So we had three empty seats. Our understanding was that if nobody was voted in as a write-in, which had the possibility of happening, but did not, that the select board would therefore appoint to get us to the quorum and then the school board would be able to appoint any further members. But we found out this morning that is not so. What we're hearing from the Secretary of State's office is that we need to have a special election in order to get our board up to quorum or full, whichever the case may be. And which then runs a little bit more in that we understand that this board and potentially some of the other boards are looking at having a budget vote April 9th. And it's very unfortunate to find out. We wouldn't be able to piggyback on that because the deadline for a candidate to have a petition in in order to be on a ballot on April 9th would have been Monday. We really hate the thought of having two different votes a week or two apart from each other. But we weren't even quite sure with what came out of the court and all if you guys were still even looking at an April 9th date. So I came up just to make sure you knew the predicament we're in and to find out what you guys are doing. And Karen, just so you know, we have three other boards that are set up to go for April 9th right now. So all four are ready to go. All right, Krista told me the predicament today. If you weren't here, I was going to say the same thing and just say, you know, if it went a week longer, which is April 15th, April 16th, which is a day passed, you know, teacher day, which there's a different question that you can, you can be asked about the teacher contracts and whether you want to go with those or not, whether you have a budget or not. That's a different question. But I just wanted to, I was going to give the same information, Karen, that you would bring tonight. So the board knows that information. In addition, in addition, I would give you more information on all that, that the secretary of education just issued the warning for our district organizational meeting to be Monday, April 8th. Okay. Because that will give a, if there needs to be a merged budget vote and looking at all the timeline, the first time that that could happen is June 25th. Kind of on the right side. Yeah. But at least it's within this fiscal year. Right. And that was, that was tightening everything up in the past two days we've been calendar and tightening things up as tight as it possibly could be within reason to make sure things got done without making mistakes. It gave us about four or five days in between each action and the next warning that had to go. Clarify for me again the Monday, April 8th meeting is. It would be the district organizational meeting that was adjourned. The new single district? Yes. Okay. That was adjourned in February. It would be that meeting. It would be that meeting. And then if everything were to go as planned somewhere around mid-May would be elections. And then from there would be a June 25th. I could get my calendar out for the meeting. Just get the idea that there's three 40, 30 to 40 day windows and it's taking 30 day windows and having three or four days for whatever entity it is to get to the next warning. Okay. So it's really tight. Yeah. But the agency was definitive that they're planning to warn us. They sent it to us today. They sent it at about 4.30 this afternoon. Okay. So lots of new information here. Before we get into that, let's go to our consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of February 6th, February 13th and February 25th? Sure. Scott, second? Second. Carl? Any comments? They look good. I didn't have anything. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. So that passes. So let's talk about review of fiscal 20 budget. Maybe the maybe the place to start with this topic because budget morning or similar is for those of us who weren't here on Monday, could we be provided a summary of the legal opinion that council leaders do? Scott and Carl, we're here. Yeah, I was here. Even was here. I think that's everyone. I was in the audience. Yeah, you were in the audience. But yeah, I mean, I'd like the two of you to start. I was reading the board orders when you introduced it. We're talking about Monday's meeting with Chris Leopold. Basically, my take away from it, let me see if I can organize this a little bit in my head. I came away from it and I think Scott would agree. It looked like taking the two courses of action was our best bet. That warning the local budget vote and then when this new district is formed, they would warn a second budget vote and that the second would just nullify the first in that case. The biggest concern we had about that I think was public confusion and people already being confused and not understanding why they're voting on the budget twice. The budgets will be very similar, as I understand it, but one would be a single budget and one would be broken out for each of our local boards would be having their own budget vote. And then that would assuming that we end up with the single organization, that vote would then replace the other. Nobody could really identify any, nobody in the whole system that anybody could speak of could point to any real legal slippery ground that we were on in that case. We're doing what we're supposed to do based on our original organization and that would simply be superseded by the new organization should it come online. And that way we're, that way we've got some confidence that we can send out the teacher contracts by the 15th. If we didn't have a budget by July 1st we'd start the year with an 87.5, 87 percent. We'd have the authority to borrow up to 87 percent of the previous year's budget until we got another budget voted on and we could choose whether to start operating the year with a scaled down expenditures or assume that we're going to get a fuller budget before March rolls around and we're suddenly up against our 87 percent ceiling. That would be, that would be up to the board at that time to figure out how to do that. But for our purposes today it looks like there's nothing stopping us from warning a budget meeting based on what we've developed at this point. Yeah it's good. Thanks. So it seems like the advantage of warning as individual U32 budget is that if somehow there is not a vote on a unified budget then we still have a path forward to the ultimate goal here must be to keep the school running. Yeah and in shorter term it's to get that contract in front of the teachers with the confidence that we've got the budget as we planned it as opposed to putting that contract out there not knowing if we can really afford to pay for it. And April 15th is the date that the contracts need to be. The thing I would tell you tonight if we looked at it last week Lauren I say we Lauren I did and right now if you look at your fixed expenses and all the staff you take all the staff fixed expenses for the budget your debt payments and your assessments for Washington Central for the proposed budget not for net because that 87 percent is off of this current year. I didn't do the percentages off this current year I just did but the proposed budget it's about 90 percent of your expenditures. The staffing is about all the staffing all the human resource costs are 63 percent all for next year's budget 63 percent of it is staffing costs about 10 percent are fixed costs four percent is debt and Washington Central special education and Washington Central operations this doesn't include transportation is 12.8 percent so that tolls off to be about 80 it's around 89 90 percent I did it with whole numbers you do it on the calculator and you get the decimals the right place. Okay all right so again if if for some reason we didn't have a vote on a unified budget it would make sense for us to move forward with to have this individual budget as a card if there is a vote on the unified budget whether it passes or not the the individual budget is moved to that point that's what we believe it does right at this point. I sent an email to you because Scott Carl were here and Chris Leopold wanted to look at some articles of agreement after investigating that's not an option for us yeah it is too bad but they had when you read the Brotland Northeast which I did that the next day they had had their electorate still vote on the merge budget they just said we're going to put it together just the same way we did but said in our articles yeah and there may be an advantage just a political advantage in having voted on the separate budgets when the merged budget comes up for a vote if people say well each individual budget has been approved then it's not like why would we second guess what we change our mind four weeks later yeah and and shoot down you know something that we we have separately shoot down together something that we have separately agreed is is a solid approach a solid budget and let's go back to Berlin where where would Berlin fit into this? Oh Berlin sorry so this is this is part of the issue of they would need they need six Mondays that you say that Corinne but they need six Mondays for any election when you have someone being elected on a ballot there needs to be six Mondays from when the petitions are in to the election yeah and so that actually makes it longer it's one of the things it's a longer step in the merged piece as well so it's longer than 30 days but you have to have that that's in statute so in order to do that they go all the way to the 16th of April so Corinne did your budget budget pass yes it did everything was approved wonderful so so you you have a budget but you just don't have a board we have a budget we have no board my understanding from reading statutes is that they can actually approve um paying bills but that's it they can't actually meet and we understand that it would be the two of them that would sign a warning for the meeting even though there's only two of them that's what Secretary State is saying so ideally you would have us have a U32 budget vote on the 16th to align with your that would be our druthers we understand it may not be practical for other reasons but downside of that is we we have to do the contracts without the confidence that we had a budget that seems like a pretty big location doesn't mean that we can't we can't we can't you can't you can't it hasn't done other places the massive bill just gave us would suggest that if staffing is 63 percent of that budget 87 covered you know 87 percent would at least cover our staff yeah but there's something else might suffer as a result yeah and there's another problem with the 16th it's in the middle of school vacation if i'm so sorry but my inclination is to basically cut the lifelong and set you a drift we wish that the information had been correct that it was the select board the select board had switched so to thursday meetings and so they were all set to think that they were going to be appointed somebody if we had somebody to appoint and that was actually looking positive too but we're told that can't be done it's terrible yeah it's hard to flesh out this many school boards dedicated qualified people well um well actually for for Berlin i don't think anybody wants to be associated with having at 46 happen is my understanding which is it's radioactivity problem okay um so does anybody have concerns i don't wish to express concerns about this approach you're going forward with the morning of the night everybody clear about the budget you need to revisit the budget that we're recommending to the electorate i just tell you and i don't need to go through but some numbers have changed just because of you've heard equalized pupils finally got yeah okay got frozen around uh February it's over between the 11th and the 20th of February so everything i told you earlier about equalized doesn't actually i think improved a little bit for you 32 okay but the the cost per equalized pupils down a little bit um but not a lot do you remember what the increase per per pupil is i don't remember what the increase is i can i might have that right here it's on the warning the way if you look at age it remember the language was set by the legislature three years ago that for the warning the way you have to do it is that you have to have the overall budget but what it is per equalized pupil and then what the percentage is higher from last year so the warning if you look at page 16 you'll see that it's a $15 million budget um it's $18,809 per equalized pupil and this is projected spending of 4.17 percent i will tell you in the legislature they just had a report last friday that changed the dollar yield so that would change all those figures uh and that will keep changing all the way to the end of the session okay so just for you real you know when you talk with folks we give you our best estimates but those things change because the legislature has the authority set the dollar to yield so yeah that i mean that from last year let me just look i don't have last year's figure with me it's wrong no i'm just trying to answer your question well thanks yeah my question was about the 4.1 percent percent shows up yeah the expense budget is still the same at 2.98 percent increase uh yes you have that in your so it's just the the pupil it's a per pupil and that as you've been told we're losing lots of people so we're doing it it's happening everywhere yeah the one place that's relatively constant he spent two years the past couple years um i mean it looks like a defensible budget to me i think it's it's well done there's nothing nothing that looks weird or kind of good who here shared these numbers at their town meeting yesterday um i didn't know if they weren't shared at Berlin i did at Eastmont Pillar it was interesting there were a lot of questions there's an hour and a half discussion of the elementary school and act 46 a fair amount of discussion about student learning outcomes and you know the information i presented and then i finally got to the budget after you know two and a half hours up there and nothing it was crickets really i think people were talked out but you know it was kind of the questions the questions that were raised at Berlin was why don't we have a u32 budget to vote on right now and chris winter's answered that question i'm saying that you guys were going to be that there was yeah pretty much the process that we're all a part of yeah okay so we probably have a another meeting where one of us and steven you'll need to have an interview yes 10 days prior to the budget you'll need to have information on meetings all those on australia 10 days prior within 10 days of the election oh within within 10 days before like it could be the night before it could be but i started within 10 days we'll talk about that next time i guess yeah you could actually maybe have that at your april meeting here if you're staying with the if you stay with the first wednesday of the month is there any more discussion of either the budget or the morning is it okay if we move right to the action agenda and take care of this so to entertain a motion to approve the i think we've already approved the budget you have not recommended we look back in the mansion recommended to the to the transition so i i actually uh in prepping this agenda put it i thought it was good for you to approve the budget yeah that's absolutely okay so let me um so is there a motion to approve the fy 20 budget as shown on page nine so second any discussion all those it's 15 million 159 thousand 196 dollars no discussion all those in favor say hi hi and you oppose okay so that passes is there a motion to approve the that for a 20 warning on page six i think we need to add the date to that is that right adding the date of a phone yes yep what's this what's this business of a public hearing um so when would you like to set the public hearing you've done that on your warnings in the past a lot of people know i was suggesting to you that you would have a meeting let me get my calendar out because i am learning that i do not without support that april third would be your first first wednesday and you could have that as part of my that's within 10 days of the night and you could um you could have it so having a regular meeting that day yes so just do your informational meeting that day that makes sense yeah great so april third and then it would not be i mean that the municipality's respective town meetings you have to change that language as well uh can we just yes say on the articles to be voted on by a scurllian ballot i'm sorry i'm just not quite up for you the rest of that paragraph uh after that are you in the public hearing yeah public hearing will take place they said you provide information alright so the version about you we'll we'll take a look at it maybe my copy that i have here does not have that on it anymore i'm looking at the one you would actually sign oh did i what does it read it says that public hearing will take place at u 32 room 128 131 at 6 p.m. on and we change it from we would change it to say april third to provide information on the articles voted by australian by the municipal respective locations on April 9 yeah i think it's it's the old one that you have there and christus we as we always do we have the signature page and after you said these tonight we finish this okay okay um i'll move it okay i'll take it any discussion uh girls taking a quick look at something so something's right um well was there was there doesn't vote for this has never voted for their school budget by australian ballot not even you're 32 we hit yes yes you're right you're right you're 32 we do i'm sorry i we can do easier okay this is single you three i'm just making an order on myself we're okay you have to we're okay okay they're actually sitting in that town meeting right now the the dodie the dodie board yeah it may or may not be the same day lots of voting this here we're trying to get it all the same day to hope the town clerks out as much as we can and that's their plan is to try and get it that day yeah they're trying to get it that day okay yeah um i i'm sorry jonathan george quinn about sort of making life difficult for zolan we're not making life easier for bro and you put it that way yeah you may want to wait another week you can pass a cool break and get a little more separation we just like no i feel them to be able to have our board meet yeah they won't be able to meet until it happens any more discussion closing favors that all right any of those okay so that passes and i will be passing around the warning payment signature patient thank you all right so let's move to reports to the board central romant career center student report yeah how's it going good um congratulations by the way yeah thank you that brings me to my first point which is that um both the girls and boys and boys ski teams won the championships on monday which was the first time that happened like at the same time in like 20 years or something marked happened said um so that happened obviously there was February vacation um the eighth grade plays also happened the week before break and on a very exciting um i guess environmentally friendly note our cafeteria has shifted away from single-use plastic um which i was very happy to learn about um so basically the only like single-use plastic they're using i want to say is like coffee cups or something but other than that like it's gotten a lot more environmentally friendly which the students are pretty happy about i think mostly um excuse me lucy was that the green team initiative or yeah i'm pretty sure it was a green team working with brian to sort of because my understanding is green team wanted there to be more environmentally friendly options in the cafeteria and it also helped um from what i heard it helped the food service economically so like it helped everybody yeah so that was exciting um there's also a climate change presentation at our school which i didn't go to but some science classes did and members of green team did and i heard positive things about it um on a proficiency note as many of you have probably heard about um juniors are really starting to talk about the possibility of summer school and that's sort of like there's a meeting how long ago was that like a couple weeks ago like a month yeah but people are sort of getting in their head more but that's a potential option for the junior class mostly because of proficiency and then i know it's nobody's favorite topic but there definitely has been talk about um act 46 among teachers and students mostly like what does it mean and how's it gonna work and what do you mean it's nobody's favorite topic it's a bit of a loaded subject but a lot of students like don't really know what it is um so the chronicle is in the process of trying to like come up with a couple articles or just pointers because students don't really know what's going on and it's gonna um directly impact them and their community yeah what um did you say a little more about the level of concern about proficiencies and graduating next year yeah so i wish mia couldn't make it tonight but i know she has a better perspective than i do since she's under the proficiency-based system but i know um for a lot of juniors the very real option for them because they haven't found track is either go to summer school this summer and make up the work that they haven't been doing or um face potentially like either right a fifth-year high school potentially or like a very stressful senior year because everything they have to like meet all of these students um and i think a lot of them are sort of starting to wrap their heads around it um because it's proficiency i mean has been a thing for their class for a while but like as graduation for them is looming it's sort of starting to become a bit more clear on what they need to do and what that might look like for their summer yeah essentially two semesters to get it done yeah exactly and like they're gonna be applying at college in the fall so like figuring out what that looks like as well and are we talking about dozens of students or like that are concerned yeah well i mean like a month ago there was a meeting with the junior class that's just you posted it right that's even hosted about with the ta about summer school so everybody's aware of it obviously i think some kids are more concerned than others it was a little more broad than just summer school that was the message that everybody heard but um what we did tell them at that meeting i don't mean to step on on lucy with this is just the um there there are a couple of components like here's how you need to look at whether or not your meeting proficiency so there's a way to track it and see it on um infinite campus um showed them that process um really tried to to show them that you know in the past that um you know just sitting in the class got you there that doesn't work now you know you need to demonstrate that you know these things and and i think that i heard a great quote from another um school that's talking about you know students now demonstrate that they can graduate instead of calculate whether or not they could graduate and so i thought that was a really good way to think about the change in a provision system and so some of our kids i think lucy said it right is that realize that they need to do their work and um and so they they're awakening to this possibility summer school is going to be an option for some kids to be able to uh to get some of that work done um some of our kids through no fault of their own i mean they've been a part of some of the other programs so um Central Vermont Career Center does doesn't offer quite everything and we don't have enough time for them to do it so if they want to do some additional programs at CVCC for their senior year it might benefit them to go ahead and just take a summer class to get a couple of of the provisions he's taken care of like um a health if they put it off of financial literacy um some of those other programs so so there's some options there that can help kids get a little bit ahead as well um but right now the interest is pretty low actually for the summer school like kids that are doing it um i would say this in the past if we show you a student schedule um their senior year was typically english and some other things that they might want to take um some students chose to do math and science and all that but it wasn't required if they'd already taken three math or three science courses um now what we're saying to kids is that you haven't demonstrated that you know those things at a level that you're prepared for uh CVCC or state college which is what we think of as proficient um and so you might need to spend some time your senior year preparing because i think one of the other goals of proficiency is as we all look at it across the not just the state but the country is that we don't want kids doing remedial courses when they go to college right and and our hope is to guarantee that they have the knowledge to start taking credit bearing courses as they head off to college that may not have been our standard in the past right and so that's that's where i think we're we're having a better understanding of the conversation now with with the kids is that you're going to be prepared you know to be able to go to trade school or to go to uh community college or or you know any college really for that matter and then some of our kids are going to choose to go to more competitive schools and they're going to need that time to to do the more advanced courses i think like you said it's like among the student body the junior class is sort of having to like lead this culture shift that's happening because like kids in my class like they can just show up and maybe do a couple things and still graduate but the class below us is forced to actually like understand the material which obviously in the long term is very helpful um but it's definitely a lot a lot more work than they have to do and i think that's not something that's been asked of kids in the past like there are plenty of kids that migrate that can just chill out well also being the first it seems to me like we may not have you know been prepared them as well you know when they were in ninth grade as you know next year's ninth graders correct we'll we'll get a lot more information up front well as they ask questions we come up with the answers and the questions have continuously you know we get more and more complex with those questions and so we have more and more complex answers to how do i take care of this how do i do this what does it look like it's also my understanding the system is that you do a lot of preparation early and then you're demonstrating proficiency late yeah which has got to be stressful if you if you don't have there's no track record right we don't we can't say oh it's okay most people get all this done in senior year so the junior the second half of your junior year should be where there's a big acceleration and all of that and we can see it with some kids so what we can see is those kids who may have um accelerated like taking algebra in the eighth grade or something like that we see that they're really starting to show proficiency in the math or some of the science as they finish the courses that other kids are finishing their junior year they finish in their sophomore year and so we are starting to see those things we're also seeing holes in our curriculum you know they're you know we adopted the SLOs that had standards associated with them and we find out that our curriculum wasn't as strong in sustainability in science engineering and statistics and economics and those were areas where we just we realized we weren't giving kids a lot of chances to learn it and so we have to boost our you know curriculum we're not going to hold the kids responsible for something that we can't offer them right but we are going to hold them responsible for what we could offer them and so we wanted to be a little bit higher in the long run but we realized that our curriculum wasn't built around some of those areas the depth that we really want like in my pre-cop class because of the lack of the statistics standard being that earlier we're doing a unit for the end of the year mostly for the junior so that they can check the statistics box on their trade or not transcript what is the SLOs yeah but on their transcript yeah so as every junior had a chance to assess where they are and create a plan to get so we show their TAs we need to there's an additional round of information that we need to get out to parents now just so that they can go through and look at at some of those same things but but their TAs the school counselors the students have already started looking at that particularly around scheduling when we when we went through that process so that's why we did it with the juniors when we did it because they were just going into the scheduling time for next year I can give you the perspective of a parent going with someone going into ninth grade next year and the meeting with the TA and looking at scheduling Duncan's schedule next year was also looking at learning outcomes and being able to make sure we're working on proficiency in multiple areas and that will you know if you do this that will satisfy part of your progress in this so I found it very refreshing and it felt like the TA under was you know we were going all around the book but you know it felt like you know they understood how to guide the parent and child through making those decisions and you know we were weighing decisions like doing some work now versus putting it off till later and and making those choices so I think the ones coming up for benefit I think you make an interesting point I think that this is something that we need to communicate more is that you can't do everything at once you're here for four years in high school it takes four years to get we have a pretty decent body of knowledge and skills that we want kids to be able to do in the past we tried to pack a lot of that into the first three years of high school so that there was an easier time or there was something different their senior year and and we really reserved the senior year for those kids who wanted to go to the more elite schools to get you know additional people now we're saying to every kid is that you may have it may take you all four years of taking classes and doing work to be able to satisfy our learning outcomes and I think that that's something that we didn't communicate well early on but I think that's something that we communicate a little better and we need to get better at you know we we do have you for four years enough our community pays for four years I mean you should not be given the benefit just as much as you get a senior and it absolutely sorry we kind of took over no it was good but like you said it's all part of the like shift that's happening because with seniors like there's like a very small percentage of the class that like takes APs and gets all their college credit not all of them like some of their college credits but most people just don't do anything it's almost like you could do high school in three years when you're under the old system but there are electives and yeah there are really nothing like the only required thing for a lot of seniors unless you've failed other things is English so questions for Lucy the administration so I just wanted to report to you on a couple of things from Tuesday as you know we had write-ins for the clerk and treasurer and Mary arms be had enough votes in both clerk and treasurer to be the clerk and treasurer for the next year for you 32 so I wanted to let you know that that's all set I don't have much more to report to you besides we've been in a lot of meetings trying to work the work of the budget and getting that elected and where we are we have those discussions so Stephen I think your bill dad yeah I think car you had a question for us in the administrative report I do you ready for me absolutely so I heard a story today that music is no longer a requirement of some graders or will in the future no longer be required so was never officially a requirement and when you say being in chorus band or orchestra was never requirement officially it was unofficially a requirement what we did was I actually met with the elementary principals around this and we asked I asked of them in the leadership team how should we present this like what do we want and and the consensus was is that we have a slo that is an artistic expression and how can you satisfy your artistic expression slo it's through music it's through theater it's through it's visual and performing arts right and so there's a wider range of things and so our our feeling was is that why don't we offer the electives of seventh and eighth grade as the artistic expression elective as opposed to a you have to take music or you have to take or you have to take music instead we say you have to take something within the artistic expression it's a it's a broader field and and so that was so the way we placed it on the seventh grade choice sheet for for this next year is that we asked them to choose from artistic expression which area they wanted to go into and and some students can choose there is no limit if a student wanted to do art and wanted to do music there could be space in their schedule for that we don't limit that but we asked them to choose at least something from the artistic expression possibilities as opposed to just music as a requirement but middle schoolers are not demonstrating proficiency they're not but they're gearing towards it I mean you know everything is still but we pre-k through 12 we have so I think just a little bit and you've heard this before as a board we have performance indicators yeah so just as you know we were talking about with Lucy it it comes later that you actually know you're proficient in that in that proficiency that you meet proficiency but you need to know are you kind of like along the journey it's mile post along the journey and that's what those performance indicators are so those are good ones to have yeah I understand that I guess I don't know people share this concern at all but it seems like one of the great things about middle school is you get to try a whole bunch of things and some some things are electives and some things we've traditionally made you try like it like music I think music comes to mind and it's interesting to hear that it wasn't a requirement it was an unofficial requirement whatever that means right but it forced people to to give that a try and and um if that wasn't for you so be it but this was kind of your kind of your shot at it because it's much harder to pick up music later in life as we all know right um languages so so I guess one of my concerns is is are there implications for students not trying music and another one is what is the implications for the program you know because that's the that's where you know well this is where this is where actually a district discussion has to occur because what we saw and this is what typically happened students who were who moved towards the orchestra was a very limited number of kids who for the most part had private lessons while they were in elementary school the students who gravitated towards the band program were those students who had some kind of band program at one of their elementary schools which is not at every elementary school um so they had some kind of musical instruments some kind of opportunity there and then all the other students as the requirement were forced to take chorus or the digital music or the digital music piece we added in because we were having difficulty because kids like okay so I don't play I've never had the opportunity to play an instrument and I don't want to I certainly am not picking up a stringed instrument because there's all kinds of issues around that like I am not singing right and then so we have to develop the digital music program to to give them another option within that little band and you know we weren't we're actually finding success right now with the band program because we have more band programs in the elementary schools than any other program and our program is also visiting the elementary schools to generate interest which you know and and here's how you can learn to play and this is and so we split up the band into a true beginner band and like an intermediate middle school band that is those kids that already have some stuff so we have a small group of kids who chose to pick up an instrument our biggest issue is frankly strings and orchestra right now yeah we need somebody that can work amongst the elementary schools we have great music teachers at the elementary schools but only one has a background in strings and it's not something that's as easy to pick up as in band when you can switch from one instrument to another so we need we need someone that can do some of that work at the elementary schools there's a lot of concern around that and I think rightly so yeah this is the bigger issue really and truly comes down to equity and access for our kids before they come to us sure it is probably the bigger issue it's not the requirement that we had it's the issue of do they have the opportunities before they get to us because that's me what we were finding was the kids would endure their one year of chorus and drop it immediately our feeling was is if we have visual and performing arts as a whole that we at least give the kids multiple options to to start engaging in artistic expression yeah that makes sense to me I don't think we're going to see I really don't believe we're going to see a wholesale loss of the program because of this I think what we're going to do is see a growth in the overall VAPA program as to what kids find they're going to identify with one area or or two that they really feel strong about and they may dabble in some of the others I mean that's kind of how it works once you get to high school is you might focus on pottery but you might try out drawing you know it's those kinds of things the art program generally speaking at the middle school level gives the kids a broad range of all of those things so they try drawing they try pottery you know they do a little bit of each of those things to see which one might be interesting to them so that kind of survey course all that very interesting question yeah yeah thanks any other questions for the administrators I'd like to share one thing we have three members of the student restorative panel and two members of branching out who will be working with a month for your community justice center to set up a youth panel for our area so it's very exciting they're meeting next week and I just think it's important to say that our students are at the middle of that along with a bunch of adults from Washington County schools yeah that's an extension of our restorative practice that that jody has been leading a great deal of yeah what would it look like community justice center has recognized that when youths offend in our scent through their process that they they struggle more with interactions with the adult panels they seem to do better if they can have peers brought in so they're thinking that if they could have a panel of peers that they might be able to get further with those students in changing behaviors and we have a microcosm of that so our our detention time which is not called that is called community and and that's where some of these students came out of right is am i correct on that they met with that uh some of our the students that are working on this have met with them as part of the restorative panel here yeah and so we try to practice some of these same things and lucy's on our panel as well and she's it's certainly work to have the student panel here work through some issues with peers because they result them kari can i give one other piece that would be there this or finance it's kind of a bit of both right with the uncertainty of our budget we had to start looking at the track project and what would we do with that because if we didn't have a budget and we were going to 87 the board can look at that learning dollar project and say maybe that's something we would need to use that money instead of for the track but for operations for fi 20 um and talking with the boys construction they've given us a 30 day extension to award them the contract we had to have it in by March 4 so now it's due April 4 so in the next meeting i'm going to want to talk to you a lot more about it you know it's about a million dollar project as you approved as a board they know they have and they were willing to give us a 30 day extension to kind of figure out where we were with budgets in act 46 but that's going to be rummies going to have the same question around the boiler that says 65 to 75 thousand dollar project and i know some of the other buildings with some of their summer projects so it's we have a little bit of breathing room but we will need to talk about that in hindsight it would have been better to ask for five weeks so it was one of those things i actually said that actually um the way the rfp went out we and they signed in on it is that we would sign a contract within 30 days they were gracious they came to us and said we will get you know i started talking about where we were at and they said the project manager nick said to me so let me go talk to the owners and he came back two days later he said we'll give you another 30 days we'd like to do the work and because we can't postpone it and definitely because of the bid laws in vermont we would have had to go all the way back through and hold another process which we didn't want to go through so by the boys saying hey we'll give you another 30 days it gave us a little bit of breathing room right now but it's something we'll need to talk about the thing is if we have to make a decision on the April 3rd and we're basically in the same boat we are today i understand that and i didn't want to get into a big but i wanted to preview it so that since we're going to get together later on the month we'll get you some more support materials behind that and then you as a board can advise which way you'd like to go but you know just to preview it from my perspective because bill and i had a conversation about like how do we think about this it's really about risk how much are we willing to risk um if the budget doesn't pass and we signed a contract for this track you know one of the implications of that so i'm just suggesting it maybe in Du Bois' best interest to give us a little bit more time i think you know three more days if we could pledge to meet the day after the vote right and that may be what we come out of the next meeting and i'd be glad to do that but i think as a board you should have that discussion i'd be glad to communicate that back through to the boys and say hey this is our timeline can we do that but they just came back with that and i you know after i confirmed the card because adrian was around i as a vice chair i said this is where we're at right now i'm just trying to get everything figured out here we are still going ahead with the elevator and the hood project the elevator because we'll be out of ad a compliance and the hood because we'd be out of health care out of health regulations for the kitchen we would have to shut down the kitchen right so those two projects are going forward and they're quite expensive questions about that that brings us to finance page 17 is there's quite a bit of updating in january but not six no we haven't we looked at the finance reports you had one you've had one meeting where you looked at it but this is this is the same report since then in january in january which this would came into you in february lori went through the budget and really tried to project all the costs at the end of the year and thinking about as i've talked to you many times about the biggest piece of the whole merger process is really the financial and all the business implications so lori did actually a deeper dive than she usually does in january really tried to predict everything as if she were closing the books right in january so this is pretty tight any questions that's financial report no questions but i feel much more comfortable with where the fund balance lines up i think it's much better yeah with the actions that we have taken i think work it looks like we're on track for a tough year in food service however um maybe we can get some confirmation from i was actually i'm writing the process of writing an article about the future of the food service for the chronicles so i've been talking right now a lot about specifically this issue which is that basically not until i get into too many specifics because it gets kind of confusing but the school gets federal reimbursement if students get a meal deal which means they have to get a certain number of components and historically in the past couple years students haven't been doing those which means that our food service is getting less reimbursement to cover their costs and that's part of the issue of why the food service is struggling is mostly because of student choices so in the past week before break brian actually set a requirement that when students purchase lunch they have to get all the qualifying components which means we're going to get more reimbursement which will hopefully get the food service a little bit more back on track financially and this was part of our conversation too when we talked about the budget and one of the positions that we talked about reducing by was a food service position yeah um so actually i think leaving one unfilled is what it would amount to i talked to brian about like the implications of having one less food service member and um obviously like the food service could still function but there would be decreased options for students and like less choice around um specifically breakfast he mentioned if one position was cut in order to satisfy the question cry we should have the lucy on the finance committee um this may not be an absolutely reliable indicator but um the uh the backseat conversations that i'm privy to as chauffeur um suggests that um actually more positive response to what's going on in the kitchen these days that's indicating good so um hopefully that is maybe a leading indicator i don't know anecdotal but anecdotal positive yeah i i should test the fun in that after break actually with the reduction in plastic students have more choice about what they eat like in the past we had like these pre-made salads of the cafeteria made in plastic containers but now you like go into the line you fill out the sheet about like everything you want it's basically like going to a restaurant like a salad bar type situation so i would agree with that anything else on finance and policy reminding me are you a policy yeah but i haven't been to a meeting i don't know we've had a meeting in a while that's been waiting since january or december the district like policy this is a supervisory policy okay um we took care of the action agenda approved order orders got two of them here one conference 21 two seven to 220 102 thousand 228 dollars and 19 cents you're moving i'm moving that in a second any questions comments all those in favor say hi hi and then i would move check warrant for february 21st to march 6th for 101 thousand 786 dollars and 80 cents and i'll second any questions or comments about those all those in favor say hi all right future agenda items there was something else that i had lost track of because i was so wrapped up about our board issue um i love reading the chronicle online it's very handy but i was really taken aback recently i read an article where a librarian here was quoted as saying to the effect that three quarters of the space the part filled with the books was wasted space and that they'd rather see it used for other types of learning like adults coming in and working with kids sewing machines i forget what's out was used and i was just wondering if that's something that's been discussed here or if there's talk about it because there's nothing like sitting down on a couch with a harry potter book and the very thought of there not being books just made me gasp i was out in public reading this article on my phone and people around me just kind of looked at me because i was like what i didn't see that one i have the article pulled up now and that is an accurate um quotation i also did not see that but i find that pretty um surprising but it does echo that there have been a lot of changes with our library recently um because we have we did get a new librarian last year and some of the changers have been positive like there have been um measures taken so that's a more quiet learning space like for homework and stuff but that is an alarming quotation about wasted space with space with books and i don't it is i'm using it too gradually i have fallen memories of the library here i'll tell the rumors around my house about the library in the last few weeks have been about the fact that it's been too busy and they're needing to cut off the number of people coming in until somebody comes out so if you and your five friends show up to go to go hang out in the library only two or three of you might be able to get in and the others are stuck hanging out in the atrium nationally the trend around libraries is that they're trying to make them more inviting spaces for a variety of learning that they're not just a repository for books um and so i think that what you hear in that quote is some of that process so um so the broader piece here is that our design class has been working with the library so that our woods to class can help build some new structures for the library so that we can create a more usable space and i think that it's not an issue of eliminating all of those books but we we have um half shelf book and that is space that really right do we create an area where there's full shelves um and and and shrink down the space that the books take up um but not a wholesale dismissal of three quarters of books that get rid of the book yeah it's it's more of an issue did you read the article she doesn't know but did you read the article no i didn't read the article before you say that it's not really what they're saying this is that your interpretation well the warrior referencing it says and if you look here jill said pointing out a map where all the books are this is about three quarters of our space that is wasted she explained that the library where all the books are is space that could be used for other activities for learning right this is so let's go burn all the books make them vertical i mean i know most kids libraries and the high school shouldn't be like a elementary school library the book shows are like this and if i'm laying out my house or my library i'm going to go to the ceiling these kids are tall you know you could consolidate and then have more space for kids to spread out and learn and do different things so um but is that the purview of this board to dictate what we do in the library i think that it's good to know what our library is doing i think that um like would be better for us to have the design class to come talk to you guys about some of the ideas that they've been opposed because they are trying to create more usable space for students in the library because our library does get packed with kids i mean yes well and it goes to so when you do a redesign of like a major office space um the way people work now is different so they don't do cubicles they do work pods and they have spaces where they can get together and do different kinds of group and individual learning so it's thinking about all those things too well we brought in some i don't know if you've used the tables in the back um we have these what are called collaborative tables where the students can work around those with their computers and there's a monitor that each one can share on um in those so those are some new pieces of furniture so the old idea was that you had a computer lab in a library right so we just had all these individual workstations now we have this collab table where the kids actually work around with each other because they have laptops and do that so so those are some of the design changes that we had um i know that on a regular basis our our um our librarians will go through the books and books that have not been checked out in a considerable amount of time are usually pulled from the shelves but we also get new books in i mean that's you know a request and so so we actually have a rotation of books that are coming through the library and i would like to speak to one of the i'll call it one of the hazards of my job my day job is that i'm the funnel through which all the books out of all the libraries and schools in central vermont get get disposed of i'm the one who takes them to recycling or reuse and so i'm the filter for i see what everybody's getting rid of and the truth is u32's discards are just about the least interesting in all of central vermont and other libraries are turning out you know i'm not worried about the quality of the books in our library given what i've seen coming out of our library and they're making good choices when they call books but um i will try to get our couple of our design kids to come in and talk to you about what that project is because it's it's really great to see what they're trying to create for the i think the posters in the library show really and really explain what they're trying to create yeah yeah i think they're gonna do a great job if you get in there and see them we'll hold a meeting there there you go okay back to future agenda items so at my tally we have a meeting on the 20th that will be the reorganization can we talk about the track track yep yep yep then on april third i expect we'll have our regular first first wednesday of the month um that would be the hearing on the budget yes i if you don't mind that we just would do that first since we'll say six o'clock on there and had that person i've never actually attended one of those is the presentation or it just depends on who shows up so there were three of us um at the last meeting so it was scott um adrian and myself um last year it was adrian and myself and karen and the year before that was adrian myself and emily um boy yeah um and the year prior to that we actually had somebody stop by for five minutes to ask a couple of questions all right so it's unlike we will get so so it's a time where people can't ask questions about our budget it's um it's been sparsely attended over the past five years that i've been here but who knows this could be the year this could be the year and if um it's not just the budget hearing on the third it's also a regular year so maybe we'll maybe that will attract some a couple of you know a couple of of bomb workers more than more than two i don't know well quality is more important than quantity anyway so um potential topics for that meeting i think we had a nice discussion about proficiencies that was good i really wanted to hear more i'm i'm actually wondering if we want to hear even more and the reason i'm saying that is because i'm starting to hear more concerns from the community about you know just people i know about you know what's up with this proficiency stuff and and i think the more fluent we are in the topic the better we can i mean the more proficient we are i'm sorry the more proficient we are exactly um so you know getting a little bit more into the weeds um understanding what the the challenges are so we can be honest about that when people ask us getting getting more student perspective maybe teacher perspective mm-hmm yeah what do people think about that yeah i agree i've heard a little bit too and uh i've kind of pushed pushed them back on steven saying you know what kind of type you've had with steven in the school yeah and teachers about the proficiency it just keeps coming back there's not enough information um and we don't like proficiency and there has been a fair amount of information but i think we have that chance for a one-on-one and say a few things and i'd like to be intelligible yeah it's an opportunity so would that be fair i agree set that up for April 3rd yeah that's April 3rd yeah that's what i worked on here was April 30th and track and uh for the 20th of March and i know at least at least it's good at all over there too anything else on teacher agenda uh in terms of the rest of the calendar do we have a so i'm there's a there's a washington central supervisory union reorganization meeting on the 27th okay you and i know it's not a carousel that's right not a carousel it's not a if people want to have a board they could but usually it's just that we try to carousel one mark one time a couple years ago where everyone reoring that same night just in fact wasn't was it part of the reorg is setting your meeting dates yeah and as i said the beginning we're getting some new dates because of the new district meeting i will send out another calendar probably version three now a possible dates through the rest of the spring realizing that and i hope you guys will help me communicate those when i put those out they're not speaking for people have authority to say it is i'm just trying to put it on a calendar so people can understand the way out i think sometimes people get confused that i'm trying to set them and i'm not i'm just trying to say this is how this could all get we can fit everybody yeah i think that's all i had on that good so board communication i can try it again maybe more timely this time okay yeah i mean we got a little more time to work with um essentially we want to get the word out that we're we're warning about help people understand that while we are we do want people to vote for this budget they may and probably will be asked to vote on a unified budget at a later date at a later date yeah but the reason we're doing this is to ensure that we have no matter what the scenario so okay so you want to take a crack at that sure all right and we'll work together okay any other business so we're adjourned at 7 16 thank you thank you