 We can have a solo presentation. We're sitting here anyway. Okay. You ready? Sure. Okay. Which glasses do I need? Let's see. The sad thing is now, even today, we have our annual meeting on Veteran's Day, and so I sat up front because I figured, oh great, I won't have to use my glasses. I was like, oh shoot, I didn't have any glasses. I've gotten that bad. So my name is Adam Wiggett, and I'm here to propose a solar array for the brain tree school. And here is a little bit of information. Can you just take one and pass it there? Sure. Well, probably I should keep one of them. There you go. That's okay. Thank you. So my goal today is to answer any questions you guys have about it and get an idea of whether you guys think it's worth it to build a system. So we are currently spending over $1,600 a month in electricity at the brain tree school. That's the average for the year. Installing a solar array can basically, financially it's like pre-paying for the electricity at half price for the next 25 years. That's the long and the short of it. The roof on the building is an ideal roof as far as the structure for mounting an array. It's a standing seam roof and where we can attach a solar array to that roof without putting holes in it. They just clip on the roof of the roof. So it's a real small chance of having problems like water leaks because of the system on the roof. What about wind? I'm just curious just because as we continue to go through climate change. Sure. With these big, gusty winds, I'm just noticing as I walk around in the woods there are a lot more trees down and we get those big bursts of wind. I just wonder how you guys make sure they stay. The companies that... Where does it stop right to the roof? Sorry. I don't know that much. The ones that are up higher, the wind could get under them but will these be fairly close enough? You need some space on the back side of the panel to moderate the temperature of the panel. You're right. There are lift loads from wind and the systems... The racking systems, every company that has a racking system has designed software to be able to design them for certain wind loads. Around here, most of them are designed at around 90 miles per hour. I think that's... The last project I did, I did 130 miles an hour just because we don't know what the environment is going to do. Right. And I just finished a book that scared me a lot. Yeah. And we could even... They're installing these systems in places that have 180 mile an hour wind readings and the difference is basically how many fasteners you use. So it's not difficult to do it and... Yeah, so it's all... A little bit more than 90 miles an hour. Yeah, because that's a terrifying one. Solar panels flying across the table. Well, look at... And you look to... That was part of their problem, was all their solar radiation. It became sales and... Yeah, it certainly has to be done right. It's not hard to do that. The more we can go this way, the better. Yeah, I think it's a great move. And that one would cover the full electric cost of the school. So the design that I have and the numbers that I have in front of you guys are preliminary and there are some things left out and some things assumed. So this should be enough information to give you a pretty close ballpark to decide whether you guys are serious about it. And then we can, if you choose to, we can go forward and I need to be in the school looking at the structure of the school and you can look at the electrical. And I also need access to power bills for the school so I can basically hone the design. So this would produce enough electricity to fully cover our costs. Are there other money that we would regain by putting some of the power back into the system or anything like that? So this system is designed very close to covering... It's actually designed to cover 115% of the usage. So it's oversized based on usage. But you guys are paying... Most everybody at home is paying 16 cents a kilowatt hour. And the school... This school we're paying 21 cents on average. And I haven't seen the rate... I know what the label on the rate is but I need to see the electric bill to see how you guys are getting charged. So if you pay 21 cents here and we build the system, they're going to give us 18.9 cents for what we produce. There's a gap there. But I think what's happening is you guys are getting charged for peak usage. And if that... I don't know if that's the right term, but if that's accurate and we produce solar power at the same time, I think we can save some of that. So it'll take some time for me to size it exactly as we need it. But the goal is, yeah, to eliminate the electric bill the exception of the connection fee, which is 25 bucks a month or so. And then the excess that's produced, if there is, I think it goes into a pool that we can draw from if we have bad months or bad years or... So you can keep... So you get credit. Say if you use 10 and you make 12, you get two credit. And you can store that for up to 12. You can keep that for up to 12 months for this location. If we... So we can't apply it to other schools? You can based on a percentage. So if we say we build this out 150% of the size that we need, we can say, okay, we're gonna keep one, two thirds of it here and credit the other third to another school. But that's how Green Mount Power allows us to do it. So there are some constraints there if our usage change is here, we're giving a third to another school, keeping two thirds. At the end of the day, financially, you can recoup all of the cost or all of the benefit from the system if you set it up right, basically. So what would be the downside? The downside? So the system would be there 25 years from now. Our children will need to decide what to do with it. If there was a problem with the roof, which I wouldn't expect because the roof looks like it's brand new, you would need to remove the panels to fix the roof. Was it 12 years ago? Is it 12 years the roof? Mm-hmm. Well, the metal roofs should be for probably 150 to 100. 75, I don't know. It's the second roof on the building. Was it a metal roof? Yeah. It was? I believe so. There was a lot of problems with the building when it was first built. Yeah. We almost lost it because of water infiltration in the back wall. Really? So basically they didn't put the roof on? There was a lot of things going on there. They just finished it up when I first started on the school board. So it was just signing off on the last check list. So what happens if in 10 years we don't have a student population to support a school in Braintree? No, we don't need a school in 10 years in Braintree. From a solar point of view? No. That's something we need to discuss. Yeah. Yeah. Well, from a solar, I can answer from a solar point of view, if that is sitting there vacant, it's still producing electricity. It can be credited to another building in town. Or conceivably, if the building were sold it would raise the value of the solar price. Definitely. Is the construction of the roof, the rafters, et cetera, have enough load bearing capacity to support these? We need to have a structural engineer take a look at it. So that's not... We don't know yet, obviously. I'm 95% sure it's fine. It adds up to less than three pounds per square foot. And the buildings are designed for 50 pounds per square foot of snow. So it's a relatively small amount. So I'm sure there's... I'm pretty sure there's a... there's a design factor in there that would allow... Oh, yeah, we would need to confirm that. Okay. Are there any other questions? Well, I take it you're going to find out a little bit more about the roof also before we set all these panels on it. Yeah. That it's going to... that you think it will last at least 25 years? Is that what we're looking at? Sure. Yeah. They still produce after 25 years. It's just how much they produce starts to decrease. No, no. I mean just the roof, not needing to be fixed. Does that would be a serious expense? Would it to replace the roof and have to take all the panels off and then replace the roof and put them back on? Yeah. Right. So we would not want to install it on a roof this. Aging. Right. Rapidly reduced. Right. You want to have 25 years of life in the roof and put the panels on? Right. Yeah. So that needs to be found out before we decide on anything. So details, those sorts of details are something that there's going to need to be a little bit of money spent to answer those questions. And what I'm hoping for is to get an idea of what you guys think about the finances of the system. How much would it cost to install? I'm sorry? What is the cost to install? It's a preliminary estimate is 194,000. Did you see? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. You've got a lot to enjoy. And so in terms of financial, financial there is enough. There's 2.2 million in the facility surplus. You know, obviously we're thinking about the Raven pretty seriously. The Raven piece is interesting because we've got those structural engineers checking out the Raven building in terms of what the foundation work has to be done with the foundation to deal with the new construction. So if we had an idea of what we're looking for, we could send them over one day just to do that once they're here in the rain. Sure. I can provide them with a total weight of the system. A square foot. Yeah. And it's easy enough for me to get the billing to you through Robin. The R3 group that's working in town also collected that information. They were kind of taking a look. And then the only other thing to be aware of is that under state law we'd have to do a bit with 3 different folks just to keep that in mind. So we can't really make a decision right now because we haven't even called this meeting to order. Sure. And so it's It's informational. This is just informational. Yeah. So we will have to add this to our agenda probably next month so that we can discuss it. Sure. And I want to kind of add on a little bit with the R3 group. They're looking to try to put a solar charging station for electric vehicles at one of the schools. They will pay for about 95% of that. The question is what school if the solar project was going in here you know we might be able to use a little bit of money that they would swing our way for that charging station to help cover the costs as well. We also talked a little bit about the idea again this is thinking way down the line if this is successful the possibility of the other schools. High school I'm extremely interested in because it is the opportunity to build the tech center. I talked with the folks over there again real preliminary just kind of shooting the breeze about the fact that you know given today's day and age it might be worthwhile to start taking a look at an automotive program that teaches the kids how to fix and maintain electric cars. Dan is also taking a look at some of the products that are out and about for electric buses which is the other possibility especially for the charging station and the students come out how to maintain buses and the charging station so there's a lot of discussion around this right now with a lot of possibilities. Why did we choose to investigate reentry school most you know Adam came forward with it and I think it was mostly due to that differential and the kilowatt hour cost paying 20% more per kilowatt hour of brain treatment at other schools and there is a capacity limit that Adam can describe a little bit you're only allowed to generate so much electricity so like if we put the solar panels on the high school we wouldn't be able to generate enough under their regs enough electricity to cover all the costs brain treatment and then you get into a situation where maybe we're not allowed to put in enough solar panels on the high school to cover we have a little extra each of the smaller schools potentially to cover So the first thing that we really need to do if you guys choose to go forward with this is to apply for sorry it's a net metering registration form and we need to know if Green Mountain Power can accept the power they're the only ones that can tell us that and so that's something that with a system of this size we can send in the paperwork for free but most likely it would be a thousand bucks or 1200 bucks or something for them to do a grid analysis to tell us whether the system whether they can accept the power and my expectation is they can but I don't know for sure I've run into a little bit of trouble and randolph with other jobs that I was working on where they can't accept the power even on a smaller scale so that would be the first step because it's possible that that could kill the project so in other words their infrastructure just can't support it right so there are places in randolph where you can't do solar because there's already too much solar oh yeah so we won't I mean that's where we'd like to start and it's pretty cheap money to do that but if you look at the look at the paperwork here cost of the system is 194,000 the software that I use is it will give me the estimate of production in kilowatt hours within a couple of percent so it's pretty accurate the financial estimate that I have here $430,000 there are a couple of things that are left out from that one is the value the cost of electricity is going to go up over time it always has 3.5% or so a year and so the value of the electricity may go up or down over time if it's locked in you know if we if we start if we started today we'd have 10 years with it locked in at a certain rate that we're going to get back and after that 10 years we don't know exactly what they're going to get us back so they're this is this is assuming zero change in value in direct electricity and zero change in value in what they give us for electricity neither one of those is probably going to be accurate it's going to change they don't lock in the rates when you do the solar they do for 10 years yeah but after that it could change the nice part about it is in 10 years the system if we spend 200 grand to build the system in the 10 years where it's locked in we'll get 200 grand worth of electricity out of that and then after that it's crazy pretty much what sort of warranty is on these so the components have it depends on what we use for components the inverters are the items that are most worth talking about they generally have a warranty of 10 to 12 years and it's a new enough industry that nobody really knows exactly who's going to last how long I don't know which inverter is going to last how long but I estimated the maintenance costs at about 27,000 on the system that would give us 3% of the cost of the system plus cost of all seven inverters replaced one time in the 25 years and so the inverters are basically taken direct current that's produced and turning them into alternating and typically with the exception of cooling on that it's magnets and wires that should be pretty stable they're pretty set ups who knows if they'll actually last the 25 years that you're guaranteed the last panels are the modules are generally warranted for workmanship for five years and production they have a production degradation warranty so at so at year 25 they're guaranteed to be producing 80% of their original rating and that's actually that's figured into the production estimate you guys have a friend I've always wondered about hail damage and things like that yeah so they're the panels are a static system you can set them up on blocks and walk on them hail damage you know if we got baseball sized hail I think there's a risk there so we would certainly want them to be insured there is insurance for that okay I just don't know enough about those forms yeah I think they would I've never seen a hail storm here that I think would damage those but I think it's a valid point and I think we should make sure that the system that's a conversation with this board of course I just alright anyone else have another question concern thank you very much you're good I appreciate you guys taking the time to listen to me thank you thank you so what do you want to do with us then are we positive the quorum is based on the original number and not the current number that's a good question well can we get sworn in and then no we have to vote we have to vote to accept the what's the what's the what's the number right now six yeah six we've got four so technically that would be a quorum of the current names current board members yeah which makes sense besides the fact who's going to argue you know you can do it I hate to say it this way but hey guys you know people are going to if there's no worry about people arguing it then I would go ahead and do the appointment it needs to be redoubted can I always yeah but then we haven't but then we have to all of our votes we would have to yeah we would have to redo everything we can do that I mean probably you know I don't think we have much for both sides mostly information let's call this meeting to order at seven o'clock the first goal of the meeting is to accept the recommendations of the Randolph Select Board to accept the nominations of Ashley Lincoln and Anne Kaplan as our new board members so moved second all those in favor of accepting the recommendations of recommended nominations hi hi alright so we'll have the swearing in repeat after me I and state your name I Anne Kaplan I Ashley Lincoln do soundly swear or affirm do soundly swear or affirm that I will be true and faithful that I will be true and faithful to the state or of Vermont to the state of Vermont and that I will not and that I will not directly or indirectly directly or indirectly do any active thing do any active thing in interest to the Constitution in interest to the Constitution or govern their own or government their own so help you God or help me God or helping please And I, and state your name, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will faithfully execute the office of Orange Southwest School District Director until the next election for the town and will therein do equal right and justice to all persons, to the best of my judgment and ability, according to law. So help me God, so help me God. We're under the pains of penalty. We're under the pains of penalty. I need you both to sign these, and you're all set. It was interesting, the state of Vermont when they did the swearing in for being teacher of future license, it was almost verbatim the swearing in that I did what I got to do. Oh yeah, what's it? Yeah, yeah. So the signature of justice and peace. Of justice, peace, or local official. Okay, sorry. You're the local official. Important to know that. It's a multiuse form. Gotcha. Thank you very much. If you'd like a copy, I will mail your copy. Thank you Joyce. You're welcome. Thank you. All right. So we've already had the presentation and discussion of the solar project. Next is the public comment. And I just wanted to invite our guests, if you had anything to say or bring up to the board at this time. Okay, you'll also notice that we have several public comments periods put into the meeting agenda today. This is part of our response to previous concerns that public comment was limited to that first section of our meeting. So we're, we're trying it. We're experimenting with having a couple of public comment periods throughout the meeting. All right. Next we have the budget update, which is lanes. And there is a paper copy to make sure that you have. And then I'll give people a couple of caveats so we can discuss parts and pieces of it that you're interested in. I could give you a general overview. Sorry, did you get this? So, what we're, the stage that we're at right now is we spent about a month as a cabinet. And the cabinet, depending upon the school, has spent some time talking with the faculties to kind of lay down on the table. Everything they feel is necessary to meet the board's ends. To deal with some of the issues that are causing problems in terms of academic achievement, primarily the trauma-based behaviors that are happening in the school. And to kind of reverse a little bit of the level funding, non-salary level funding that's happened over the course of time. Level funding is kind of like compound interest in reverse. Every year you lose a little bit and then you lose a little bit on what you lost, as well as what you're losing this year. So over the course of time, there was a lot of cuts, a lot of things that were reduced. And there's an interesting cycle that occurs. When you start to cut programming, when you start to cut staff, your enrollment goes down. When your enrollment goes down, you lose funding. When that happens, you end up having to cut more programs and more staff. And it becomes a vicious cycle that we're trying to break. Now, there is everything that we've talked about is in this report. Obviously, we do not expect to get all or most of it. But I think it's important to give the community kind of an overview of the thought process and what the different schools are kind of concerned about in regards to their needs. In general, in terms of addressing the trauma-based behaviors, there are two pieces that go into this. And the first is public preschool. So public preschool means that the district is paying for the teachers. People that take care or bring their kids to the preschool are not paying the fee to do so. We are looking at public preschool full day at all three elementary schools. There is enough capacity, if we do that, each of those preschool units can handle about 20 kids. There's enough capacity there, if we did this, that all four-year-old students would have a spot. All of them. That's excellent. Three-year-old students, if there are spaces, could go through a lottery system to fill in those spots. But the problem with three-year-olds is that a full day is probably a little bit too much. So in addition to this, we would be keeping the morning and afternoon preschool at Randolph Elementary to serve those three-year-olds. There still would be a waiting list for the three-year-olds. So that's kind of what we're looking at. What it would require, it would require one preschool teacher and one support staff at each school. That's by state rights. And one of the reasons that we're really focused on this, again, it's this idea of the trauma-based behaviors. If the students are experiencing adversity in the home and in their home environment, that's where these behaviors come from. If we don't address them until later on down the line, those behaviors can become so ingrained, it's very hard to break them. If we start early, if we start our interventions early, we get the kids in here, we give them a little respite from what's happening in the home. They get connected with the teachers here, they're able to build some trust, and we can do some social work with them to give them some skills to be more resilient. And to change the behaviors that are manifesting themselves within the school. So that's kind of the goal of a preschool. Besides the fact that our poverty population across the three towns runs about 38% in terms of the people that are coming to school based on free and reduced lunch, there's a lot of folks there who couldn't afford preschool for their students in the state of things right now, if they needed it. So what's your full day? A school day, or are you saying extended hours? Full day. Full school day. Until like 5 o'clock? No, until 2.30, but then after school programs that should have been self-sufficient, if we can build them, they actually bring in enough revenue that they cover their own costs. So for example, kindergarten students, they can go for that full 2 o'clock and then they have after school up until 5 or 5.30, I forget which. So would that be the full day? To get to 5.30, yes. So the full day preschool is the 8 o'clock to 2.30, and then after school programming beyond that. So the after school then would be parent paid? Yeah. And that, like I said, the after school program that we have now does generate enough revenue to pretty much cover all its costs, which is kind of nice. The other reason for the full day preschool is that, you know, the research is really clear. Extended time on learning is what allows kids to grow in advance, and extended time on learning with a qualified teacher does the trick. So I think that these kids spending a significant amount of time in a preschool program, they should be in a very good spot to be able to take advantage of the education that comes later on down the line. The research is pretty clear on that. So currently the kindergarten program is full day at all three of our schools? Kindergarten. Kindergarten is, because I know when my kids came here, it wasn't a lot. So that's changed? No. Okay, and there's room in all three schools to satisfy the need here? Now we are at a point, we'll talk about that later tonight. We get to the enrollment numbers, the enrollments are going up. And that's one of the reasons that you see a lot of the ads to staff that are in here is to kind of do that. But even with that increasing enrollment, there would still be capacity. Yeah. And this includes lunch for them as well, and they can ride the bus in the morning and the afternoon. Yeah. Okay, thank you. So I know in the past, people who, so say a staff person comes in and they have a child that's preschool age. They get priority. They can enroll their kids in the program. And that's a part of trying to attract the best staff. A lot of infrastructure. I know at Ringtree, you've got the full day this year. Yeah. And you had to do renovation of the playground in order to make it pre-K safe. Yeah. What about Randolph Elementary in Brookfield? So those costs are in there. Randolph Elementary is set to go because it already has the preschool. They may have to do some work within a room. I mean, there's specifications for bathrooms, things like that. It'll be about 5,000 to convert things up at Brookfield. Okay. To get enough. So it's not a significant amount. And what's interesting is the Braintree program is full. There's about 18 kids in there the last time I walked through. A lot of our Brookfield kids do. Right. So there's, yeah. And over Randolph kids. Yeah, when they were competing to get into that program. But, you know, I think it's expensive. I was talking with Rob. I think it's about 300,000 to do it. We're talking, we're talking large amounts of money for some of these things. But the idea is it's long-term investment. What happens to these students now with the trauma-based behaviors and that population has been growing is they come into the elementary schools because the behaviors, and we're not talking minor behaviors. We're talking, you know, freezing, flying. They'll run out of the school. They'll have a meltdown that stops the class for a significant amount of time each day and their significant behaviors. What they do with them now is they throw a pair on. You know, in the old days you try to get rid of pairs because they were helping students with academics. Now it's not academics, it's a problem, it's the behaviors. And so they put a pair with them. Now there's a problem with that. It's expensive. And the pairs do a really good job with the students during the day. But at the end of the day the students have no more skill than they had at the beginning. And more importantly than that, what they're finding is that instead of learning how to self-regulate themselves, they have an outside person move for them as adults. And the students over the course of time can actually become dependent on the adult to regulate the behavior of the student. And so what you see, and there's a reflection of it here, is the students have the pairs in the elementary schools and they stay in the schools and they advance through the curriculum fairly well. But when they get to the middle high school there's a problem. They do not have the capacity to deal with behaviors of that magnitude. They don't have the pairs there. And so those students, by and large, they'll end up getting sent to out placements. Out placements per student are 30,000 to 150,000 a student. And that doesn't include another probably 20,000 to 40,000 in transportation costs. Which is one of the reasons that our special education budget has been growing by leaps and downs as we're getting more and more of those students. Can't be handled here. It's sent out. The goal of the preschool along with the therapeutic program that we'll talk about in a little bit is to re-mediate those problems. So the students are able to regulate themselves. They know how to deal with their own stresses. And they don't need the supports eventually. And so that we don't have to worry about those costs. To put things in perspective, we do have one student right now. That's 278,000 a year for the services that we do that's for them. For the one student. But that's probably not a student. We're going to be able to accommodate anyway. No. We had two students that moved in last year. If you remember, that was the reason for the big budget jump. It was about 300,000. Again, those are students that if those interventions, those remediations happened early on. Yeah, but I mean, we're still going to have people moving in who haven't benefited. We're still going to have those. So I think we can't say that that necessarily reduces all those costs. I won't reduce all, but it should more than pay for itself after a few years is the goal. Given that the students stay in the system. We'll take a look at the enrollment numbers and we'll get there. I'll show you how things are going in special education. And the fact that we've got another population of students that we may have to put in program to deal with in our, because our autism population has tripled in the last five years. Students were autism. So other things to kind of consider. Now the other main piece and probably another most expensive piece in here is the idea of building a therapeutic program. How a therapeutic program for the elementary students work is you have a licensed social worker in there. You have a content teacher. It's in the classroom. They're not constrained to that classroom all the time. It's a place when their behaviors start to manifest themselves that they can go, they can debrief. They can get what they call co-regulated, get them calmed down, get them to a point where they're rational. They can work on a couple strategies with the teachers that are in there and then they go back out to the regular classroom environment and practice what they've learned. If things get bad, if things fall apart again, they know they've got a safe place they can retreat to go through the process again so that they can acquire the skills over time. That program would happen here at Randolph Elementary. It's too expensive to do it all three schools. But what we would do is look across the district at the students to qualify for it. And any of the students that qualify for it would be able to attend that program if the parents are willing to have their students attend Randolph Elementary to partake of it. There is a model program in Milton, Vermont. The elementary teachers are going to go visit. This is modeled after and it's been a place for a few years with some very different results. And again, the idea is to give those students the skills, right? We talk about adaptability in the end so that they don't need those support services down the line. We have a financial savings because of that. And more importantly, the skills that we give in our life long. It's not just meant to get them through school. It's meant so that after they leave here, they've got something for them that they can take care of. So those are the two biggies on there. There's a lot of stuff that physically... Can I just interrupt for a second? So is this push for this? Does this come from the teachers? Where is it coming from? We'll talk a little bit about that in terms of the climate survey piece. There's a push for it from the teachers. There's a recognition that we cannot continue to maintain 10 and 15% leaps in the special education cost each year because we're not able to remediate the issue. So if we're not able to remediate it, every time a kid comes in, it's the rest of their education paying money to take care of them. Do you have that data? Do you have where it shows? You'll see a lot of it tonight. The increases in cost. So one of my... I have two questions on this topic. One is, is there evidence that this works? It's a big investment for a future return, but I'd like to see that it's a good investment. There's a lot... Sounds like a great idea. Model programs are all a little bit different. This one really ties in really well with the work of David Melnick, who has been coming in the last couple of years. Even prior to my start working with the faculty to try to teach them how to co-regulate the kids in the classroom. And you can do that for some of the students that are at the moderate level, but the real severe ones you just can't. And so the goal is, like I said, it's to remediate, it's to give them the skills so that you don't have to provide the services of time here. And I guess my other question is, if you take all of the students who have a disrupted traumatic background and you put them all in the Randolph school, what does that do to the general classes in the Randolph school? And if you were a parent in the Randolph school, would that be... Again, it's a better situation than they have now. Now, when the kid melts down in the classroom, what happens? The child is disrupted learning stops. The kid will then, in a lot of cases, will come out of the class. They're losing learning. They're with a person who does not have the skill to properly work with that student. Because a lot of the work isn't intuitive. We tend as educators and as parents, you know, I'm guilty of it as well. We deal with the behavior side of things. What you're seeing in terms of behavior isn't really a behavioral issue. It's a stress response. They've been traumatized. They've got some post-traumatic stress disorder. So the goal of this is to deal with the root of the problem. The root of the problem is how the body reacts when it's under stress or it senses it's in danger. These students are hypersensitive to everything happening in the environment around them. And if anything happens that reminds them or clicks the needle over to say, hey, I'm in danger of experience. The very first thing that happens is there's a physiological change. The breathing rate goes higher. The stress level goes up. The goal of these programs is to deal with that piece. Don't deal with the behavior. We deal with teaching them how to calm down that nervous system so that they can remain rational and calm. And then kind of take a look at what's really going on in their environment. See it for what it really is immediately. Again, it's a specialized anytime we're getting a little worried with the schools anytime we're putting students out for detentions or suspensions if the behavior is happening because it's a stress response it's not really fair to the kid and it can make things worse. Because we've got so much of it I wonder if we've added other problems in some cases. So are you proposing five new hours for that program? Again, this is the idea. This is what they've laid out. I'm trying not to put my opinion in there. I want the cabinet to figure it out. As a board, we need to have your opinion. December because January is the final of December you'll have my opinions and all the changes. December? So our next meeting when you come back. On the table, I'm meeting with them weekly starting Thursday the next time that we meet as a cabinet what's going to happen is we're going to start reading this back. For this particular one, this program do I think you need five staff now? I think you need the licensed social worker, I think you need the teacher and we already have the parents here. If some of the students are coming into the classroom, into this program that already have parents, why would we need to hire more? It looks more like two people than five. So again, that's why I called it the fantasy one. Ideally, five would be awesome. Especially given the number of students that we're dealing with. We've just last year you talked about decreasing staff because we had two men. We still are an academic institution. Yes, definitely we have to deal with that. I think we really need to be realistic about both what our communities can support and our goal and mission. It's not to be over staffed here. I really think we need to know what strategically. You wanted to have the curriculum development assistant principal or whatever you called them but you wanted high school and then full time positions, those aren't going to be big administrative positions. Those ones are already there from last year. It would be nice to have a curriculum coordinator not going to happen. It's not even on the list. There are ways I can work within the structure that we have and it's already happening this year. We'll hear the rest of the fantasy. I'd appreciate sort of your saying, well, because this does look a little pie in the Scotty. Remember, these are the honest opinions of your leadership team. I do want to throw out there again. This is what happens with the level fund. Had some of the programs because you're going to see in the data these behavioral issues with the trauma based students started to increase years ago. Had they been a program put in place to remediate it at that time possibly most likely we wouldn't be in the boat that we're in right now. You can't guarantee anything with social engineering. You can be pretty assured but it's still a probability. It's a high probability this will work without those guarantees. It's dependent on about three of the right people in there. The other area outside of all the other parts and pieces here, a lot of the money is trying to move people out of title in the regular budget. My honest opinion, that's not going to happen. That's a significant chunk. One of the reasons however that it's a major concern is those people are vital to the operation of the district. As of last year when the federal and state governments revamped the title program, the title process we don't get the money until mid-November. We lose two, two and a half months of time with these interventionists and with the coaches which is a significant impact. So we don't hire the person until November or we just hey, lose the money up front. Yeah, typically what's done is they have a time I think it was around October 15th this year when we'll say you're substandardly approved. What that means is you're not guaranteed to get the money but you're fairly guaranteed to get it and at that point in time you can start paying people. But again it might come out that they don't approve it and if you've paid the money you've got the person on staff and you can't pull it back. Traditionally that's what's been done prior to my coming. But again the process has changed. The regulations have changed. They've made it a lot more stringent so probably what's going to begin happening is at the end of every year those folks that are on title here rift and they do not get hired back until we have the money in the bank. So we're looking at the time frame if things stay with it they've done the last two years. So then where would we put the title fund if we're paying these people out of budget where would we put the title fund on? We wouldn't be paying them out of budget. We'd just be waiting for them. If we moved them over to regular it would be possible. Then what we can do with the title funding is we can begin to really focus on the programming that's missing. Science program for the elementary school. We could probably use it like what are the plans for next year is up at Brookfield this for a year. We can probably get most of that preschool program paid for. But then we're still doing the same thing. We're up for the year but we're still paying for it and waiting to be approved in November. I don't see that we're suggesting the problem at all. We can't really even pay for it because it will be considered supplanting. So if we pay for it then they'll come back and say we're not approving you for it because So then I'm still asking how would we use the title funds then? So programming. The other piece is the same idea of the pair of professionals that we've talked about. Interventionists that we've had here for years they're not supposed to be in existence in a district for more than three years. When you bring one on board they're supposed to be an exit strategy. Why? Because the interventionists basically are filling in gaps in knowledge whereas if your curriculum is up to speed those gaps wouldn't exist in the first place. So they're meant to be in there for a short amount of time just long enough to fill in the gaps while the curriculum gets up to speed and does it for it. The other issue is that you get the same sort of problem. You don't want the kids becoming dependent upon those adults to get the work that will be able to access the curriculum which can happen. It's likely that because we've had those folks for so many years it's likely we may not be able to get there. They keep saying it. They keep saying that that's what's going to happen. That's what we said last year. And are they only here in the school? No because they're across the district. In the high school as well? Yep. The number that's there depends upon the population in the school. So when we write those the title grants, so they give us a block sum of money every year that we always get. What we have to do is we have to go in and do this extensive application process and spell out what we're using it for why we're using it, what purpose it's going to serve and how it plays into our continuous improvement plan. So we have to do that for each person every bit of money that we ask for. So there's usually about 35 of those by the end of the time. 32 to 35 of those processes we have to go through. And that interventionist is dealing with behavioral issues? It depends on what the interventionist is. There are behavioral interventionists. There are one or two within the district, most are academic. Again, there are issues with curriculum, their gaps in knowledge that the kids get because the curriculum's not up to speed. And so what these academic interventionists do, there's usually a math and an ELA one at each of the schools, they fill in those gaps. But the interventionists work directly with kids. There's also coaches in there. Those are more along the lines that they work with, they work with the adults and they work with the teachers to help improve their practice. Those, one and a half of them we moved over to the regular budget last year because they were violent. That's part of the structure I was trying to build to take the place of our curriculum directly. So what happens if they say no money for the interventionist this year? We don't have any interventionists. They've already... Then what do you do? We muddle through what we've got that would not be easy. So right now you're saying that there's a short come in the curriculum that's causing the individuals to need the interventionists. And so how long do you think it's going to take to address the short comes in the curriculum so we won't be reliant on interventionists? So at the elementary level especially with the work that we did last year and the wonderful work that the curriculum coaches did. They have their curriculum up to speed. They spent last year doing the data analysis finding out where the holes were. This year is implementation so you should keep our fingers crossed see a small jump this year in terms of the elementary testing academic performance and that should grow as each year goes by. At the high school level have not been able to do any significant work over there because of the excuse my expression of the GED graduation proficiencies and the standards based report parts. That has taken all of their time for the most part for the last three years. They have been told that they've got to they've got to get stuff wrapped up in January and then if you need to do work beyond that you need to get subcommittee because we've got to do the curriculum at high school. Discussions with the departments to try to give them a feel for what's happening. There are a couple of emails that kind of spelled out the vision and what needed to happen because I don't get a lot of time to interact with the faculty in meetings which upsets some people but not necessarily in a bad way to use some of their expressions because we talked about the academic performance and why it was where it was in some of the meetings that I had with the staff. The comment kept coming over and over again from high school folks it's never been a priority. We hadn't done it because it's never been a priority which is sad. So obviously it's been a priority since you got here you've been making a priority which is we're on board with that and so if January would say pine the sky everything's met and so January they can start working on it. How long would it take for them to get to a point to what a curriculum is? So you're going to see there are really three things that you got to do to have proper delivery to students to get them to advance and you're going to see some of that in the budget like the high school is asking for 30,000 for summer work so they can develop the curriculum over the summer. You can get some professional development in terms of the math department was great talking about some professional development and how to structure a professional learning community so that they knew how to discuss data and results and go back and apply it to what's happening in the classroom. So the first thing that you got to have is you got to have the curriculum. The second thing that you need are tools to go and to assess how the students are performing on what you're teaching so that you can adjust your instruction to the weak areas. And then the third piece is coaching just to improve the delivery. And that's the tiering. You've got the foundation, the little piece, and then the peak delivery. So if we were to fund the interventionists would you say two years? Are we talking that we're going to need interventionists for two years, three years? Probably two years. So at the end of those two years we'd be able to cut those out of the budget because they're no longer needed. You won't be able to cut all of them. You will be able to cut most of them. The first tier of instruction is there will always be students that have gaps. But it won't be because of the curriculum. It'll be because of things in terms of that students' environment wasn't able to attend school regularly. It's usually a big one. But if we gave you all the fiscal stuff that you are asking for right now to fix all the issues that the principals and you have said the shortcomings right now for academics if we were to give you that if we said yep within two to three years this place would be a powerhouse. And then in those two to three years would the budget still need to remain at where it is or would you be able to cut back back to a more reasonable so you're saying a three million dollar increase is what this would equate to. And again we haven't asked my opinion there's probably 50% of that. 1.5 million? So of that 1.5 million how much of that would be a so that would become the flat increase every year and what would it be to eliminate so that probably half of it but we talked early on about that cycle if you build it and it's good our enrollment will keep going up if the enrollment goes up that's more money that comes in at 16,000 per pop we built a revenue stream of over 300,000 this year from the kids that are coming in by school choice for the work that was done soliciting the kids from Chelsea and Rochester Brandville is another opportunity they're completely schooled choice we have a bus that goes out there almost to the town line and so we're trying to solicit the elementary students to come here now just trying to think it through because when we tell the public I mean this is only 3 million for this stuff but we're not even talking about salary increase that's the salary increases in there as well as the 11% for the health increase so you factored in what you believe we will settle for a number that 3 million is everything again it's fine in the sky we're just using it to have a discussion we're not expecting it this is not our budget this is his budget are we still doing policy governance we are but in the end you have to vote on it so you may as well have the input in it now so I don't build something that you turned down 3 times so we miss our our policy is for you to if you're going to make a case that you need to we have to look at his rationale his interpretation this is what I need this is my rationale if he's following our policies he goes to the public I don't want to be responsible for going to the public and making the case for this budget that's his job not my job his job is to make a case that this is going to create the outcomes we're looking at are you going to produce a reasonable amount the rest of the discussion will be December now this is great I don't seems like I appreciate hearing all the different ideas that you have but this is the case he's going to have to make to the people and we need to make sure he's in line and in place so we can hold his feet to the fire and say okay what outcomes do we have here and can we measure them and how are we measuring them I don't want to he's the professional who can tell me what he needs I'm a lay person he's got to go out there work with his administrators and say this is what we need and we really think we need this increase and it'll be really to the taxpayers to decide if they want to give that I don't know that they would let's talk about that for a little bit so remember how education funding is I've been having weekly open forums to talk with the community about this it's monthly right are you getting more than just the parents in the school district because it's people on fixed incomes are going to need to hear your rationale for why you're going to ratchet up property taxes parents will be more than willing probably because they're the customers but you've got a whole community that needs to hear this and then we as a board need to see outcomes alright you show us it needs to be uncomplicated where we say boom boom boom this is what we've produced because you gave us that additional amount of money to work with and that's hopefully where we'll go with this so you aren't here unfortunately but we revamped the Hens and put very specific data on there so I can send you guys a copy of that of what we're looking at the other piece I want to be careful of is how we talk about how budgets are funded in Vermont if we increase our budget it's not the local taxpayer that pays for it it's every taxpayer in the state to a certain amount there is a threshold and I want to talk a little bit about that threshold as far as the district is concerned the past superintendent did a really good job of meeting the civic responsibility of keeping below so we've done our part but we're at a point in time where there needs to be an increase to allow us to survive and break some of the cycles that we're in right now the threshold is determined by cost per student right now we're at 15.3 state average is 15.6 the threshold is about 17.3 my intent is to push this budget as far as I can go without crossing that threshold the 17.3 and what's nice about that is remember if our enrollments keep going up it's more and more and more that we're going to receive from the state so the other piece that's going along with this is there's been a dramatic push on the principles to really get out there and get out and about and try to get the enrollments up we're trying to get that positive cycle going work for a year we'll see if it continues in the next year but if we build a powerhouse of the district people will be moving here to take advantage of the schools if you have full day free preschool people will move here to take advantage of the schools if we have a therapy we don't get money for those kids so we don't point four or something but it doesn't cover the cost of educating them the goal is hopefully if they move here for the preschool they stay through that's true doesn't mean they will there will be some obviously so there has been a lot of thought that has gone into the parts and pieces but before we move on I do want to touch on one really important thing and that's Brookfield Brookfield at least in terms of terms of what it needs is very important they're up a little bit in enrollment they're going to be up a lot next year they needed a full time teacher this year so they've got to get a grade teacher we asked them too because math has been kind of a priority we said okay do you want a math specialist who takes the kids out and teaches all the kids math would you rather have a grade teacher they wanted a grade teacher so that's what we focused on the other piece that goes along with Brookfield that we just started talking about and it actually is built into the numbers at the end it doesn't show up in this listing is we're at a point with the increase in enrollment that we've got to have a dedicated principal in each school it's just not working when you lose that administrator from Brookfield for most of the day and the kids are acting up not having that person there it's a safety problem the other folks that are there are not licensed and not equipped to deal with those issues so I understand it from a budget piece and I really understand it the really powerful part of having those co-principals that was put together was the fact that it provides equity to the schools because they're constantly talking and trying to keep things the same that can still continue but if the enrollment keeps growing we need dedicated principals so it may mean bringing in another body here Randolph Elementary to support that assistant principal assistant principals at elementary schools are not expensive high school administrators are typically much more expensive than elementary so you would keep David Rolder at Brookfield and bring in someone new here and I actually that's discussion just started we sat down I sat down with the three principals on Friday I said you got to do something now it's likely that what they're going to decide is that David's going to be up there full time for the remainder of the year because there's a lot of things that that school needs I think and whatever and what have our enrollment numbers those are coming up very good so I'd actually like to backpedal a little bit and go back to the high school perhaps I misunderstood one of your statements and I'm hopeful that I did we're right now there is not the focus on the academics in the high school that you would like to see because there is too much focus on modifying the grading system there hasn't been as much focus on the academics in other words because the teacher said that when you do the climate survey that was one of the big things in terms of the moral piece is that we're doing all this extra stuff but we're not able to get down to the nitty gritty of actually spending time with kids evaluating how they're doing and changing our instruction to match so was that a directive from the board of your office to make those modifications or was that a statewide directive statewide directive happened before I came so they are attempting to the best of their ability to kind of fix it when I came in last year because I started last year I did point out to David and Elijah I pointed out that there was a loophole in the law instead of going through all these detailed plans what they could have done is just sit in terms of their graduation proficiencies our students have met our required graduation proficiency in mathematics if they all take Algebra 2 and pass it with a B minus they could have done it that way I understand the logic and I asked them at the time are you invested in this because you truly believe in it or just because that's how you interpreted the law what you're putting in place and at the time they said they're invested in it because that's what they truly believe that it's going to be better for the kids at the meeting because my job is to make people reflect I'm trying not to micromanage them but I am trying to make them think about stuff is the comment that I always make to them I said okay, you've been working on this for three years now what has been the impact on learning in your school and the responses that's a problem to me they are getting close to the end like I said like I said there's always going to be work on that but come January they're switching over to start really focusing on the curriculum we also have two courses to build to meet the ends we've got the technology piece life skills and the life skills so that work has already begun those are pieces that were part of the mission your core values, your ends that have never really been addressed we're also trying to get that built into place so that will start up in January as well so you guys handed me quite a debt to focus on I'm happy to do it I don't want you to think that but the magnitude of what needs to be done is absolutely huge and I'm pretty good I've got a pretty good track record of getting it done but I always underestimate how long it takes that's my weakness so I'm fully willing to support whatever it is that you say is what we need I guess for me though to process it and to make it in my mind seem like okay it can justify the amount because it seems like it's probably going to be a significant amount I think I'd like to know based on the projection what would be the increase on or decrease of student to staff ratio and teacher ratio because the state is making huge push on that and the governor being re-elected it doesn't look like it's going anywhere so we got to make sure we're staying close to what he wants and then with the increase what is the actual increase amount and of that what percentage of that do you think would stick around after say two to three years four years when you think the problems are gone so I think off the cuff to get rid of half possibly three quarters but I'd have to really take a look at it to be able to pull the piece up the other reality is is there are resources that we could tap into here I've been staying away from that for morale issues but there are significant resources we could tap into morale is very important though so that's the balance piece I'm leaving it alone and not really talking about it we're having some discussions in some of the departments though in terms of getting people to reflect and kind of come to those conclusions themselves but one of the issues is going to be if there is a vote that you got to get an average ratio of 14 to 1 in terms of student to staff that's going to have a huge impact on my school if it's legislated I'll leave it at that Summary wise there's a little summary there that I wrote up one of the things to be aware of again we talk about the special education students and the growth in that population so you've got to be careful with the special education numbers because they're still reimbursement the problem with special education though is you don't get reimbursed until after you've spent it even though you're going to get reimbursed for a significant portion of it you've got to have it up front so and again this is some of this is real probably 11-12% of this is real in terms of having to increase the special education budget to add the pieces that they would really like to really make the program do what it's supposed to do look at it in 19% so go back to the real number special education line we're looking at 11% increase which is less than the 14% last year and of that probably 3-4% of it is going to be reimbursed 3 or 4% percent would be reimbursed so it gets it down to around 7%-8% but again if you want to look at the magnitude of the problem in terms of the trauma-based behavior we're at 2.8 million of the $16 million budget is going to special education next year it'll be close to 3.3 million so it shows you the growth and again you'll see that in the enrollment numbers so we'll get to there so that's a piece that we have a little control over but not a lot the only way to fix that is to change the structures that we're using which the state's requiring us to do anyway change the structure of special education and the big piece is that that they're really pushing for the quality first instruction what's happening in the classroom which is appropriate I'm also because I still can't get a clear picture of how special education is structured especially at the elementary schools I've been doing tours with the principals and each time I do a tour I'm targeted on something specific so the next couple of weeks it's targeting I told them I want to see every special educator and I want to see every interventionist and every parent so that I know what's going on and I might be able to make recommendations in terms of structural changes that might be able to do some cost there I built two different special education programs in my life but again I don't have enough of a grasp on what they're doing I'm not sure they do all the time either because I've tried to have them describe it to me last year and I couldn't get it I'm going to take a look so you can see other questions on budgetaries so is this your dream budget is it 14.9% that's the fantasy budget the fantasy budget ain't going to happen but it's what the principals should be saying is necessary to get us where we're at and a 5.73% increase at the tech center yep we'll talk a little about that but it outlines what he's looking for that budget is separate from our budget there's a 87% reimbursement from the state he if I remember I'll speak off the half of what he's looking for about of the end he's actually one of the problems one of the things that's affecting the technical center this year we can actually talk about the meetings on the 15th meeting for them is their reimbursement is based on a rolling six semester attendance so in other words the higher the enrollments are over on average over the previous six semesters the more reimbursement you get the year before I came they were at an all time low and so that all time low is I think it was 120 or 122 students still in the next dragging down the reimbursement rate we are at a pretty good high right now they were up to 155 they're at about 147 right now but they have another 4 or 5 students that will be moving into the program over the next month so if that continues that average is going to go up and the cost of tuition will go down but they're in a pretty good place I talked with Jason and he made an interesting comment he said he's not too worried about the tuition piece going up this year because 147 students is their sweet spot the building is designed for that many yes there is a little more capacity there they're only allowed to have 12 in each of the programs but if they get much more you're going to start running into safety issues in the programs with the space that they've got so he'd like to keep it you know hovering right around that 145 to 150 range on average and again if you can keep it there over the course of time that average is going to go up and the reimbursement will be there so he was looking the pre-tech program potentially I don't think we need to we came up with some alternatives to this but potentially a full-time teacher the pre-tech program is a state mandate if we get it into place reimbursement because there will be students coming from sending schools to take advantage of it and I believe the grade range for this is 5 to 12 so it's touching on some of the younger students and getting them involved earlier the pharma school program has been very successful there's been a lot of educational programming around it the first year which was last year was primarily grant funded we have applied for the grant again but it's unlikely we'll receive it two years in a row so we're looking for opportunities to that program to keep it up and running and it has supported hunger reduction in the community which has been great they're looking for an 8-student transport van for 16,000 the van that they currently have is 2000 was when it was purchased it's got very high miles on it it's just not reliable and they're looking for an 8-person van because at that size you don't have to have a van on it and then he was looking to move the equivalent of a full-time person off of the Perkins grant kind of like what we were talking about with Title's grant the problem is that with the Perkins grant those folks never really should have been on there so he was surprised that he was getting one so they're going to get booted off at some point in time and then he was looking for some facilities upgrades he wanted the lockers removed to set up some benches so when the kids are doing their project they work out in the halls they got a nice place to be talked about the creation of an outdoor classroom a little pergola to put out there so that they can do their work and then the mechanical labs have to start being updated so that money wouldn't allow all of them to be updated but you know a little bit here and there over the course of time we get them all in shape in a couple of years that's where they need to be he was looking for 15,000 in travel and a diesel program that go off the national competitions and do exceptionally well and this will help pay for the travel there have been a lot of issues with students vaping in the bathrooms there is a sensor system out there that can go through the entire school it's actually pretty cool it's got some artificial intelligence in it it can tell if they're vaping it can tell if they're smoking it doesn't set off an alarm but it sends a text message to the principal the other thing that it does that it's really cool is it monitors the noises and the motions and it can tell if it looks like a fight's about to break out or if there's some minor harassment going on and it will send out a text message as well does it record this stuff? potentially I think it could potentially it could I wonder if that's a privacy issue in a bathroom well it's not a it's not recording visual images it's just recording the sounds and not physically the sounds just okay on the risk meter here it is it's not recording what they're saying it's not recording your voices it would be recording a noise guard bow roller in this case it would be okay the noises that I'm hearing interpreting or putting it in the risk range you might want to go down and check the heated voices but it's got the motion sensors so depending upon how frenetic the motions are around there it could detect that as well this is actually a pretty cool system when you're talking about it it is it's interesting the other piece there you can see some increases in terms of facilities they're having trouble getting quality people to work I think that's been no this is for facilities for custodial so they're looking to contract a few things out one of them is the lawn mowing service it's actually cheaper to contract it out to make sure that the athletic mowing and the fields and whatnot getting down the way that they need to the other piece is they're looking at bringing in an HVAC of hiring one having them on staff so that we're not paying contract fees to go out to the vendors one of the things is that things were not maintained here well there has been a significant amount of work that had to go in this past year just to get things up and running in terms of HVAC and water and plumbing that's across the district so the HVAC would be across the district he would come in he would be able to do that work and hopefully over the course of a few years get things up to speed and save a significant amount of money there so this person full time job across the district other things to be aware of I think we touched on this a little while ago was the fact that they're increasing the rent on the garage up here going from 12,000 to 25,000 the reality is as we checked other alternatives it's still the cheapest and they're guaranteeing that they will not change the rent for at least 10 years it's not an actual lock in lease we could leave it at any time so if I let the town office as a dole phone check what's there we're happy to continue this but you got to get the paperwork together for us to kind of review from the legal reasons so that's what we're at on that process just one question with the HVAC they had the issue of the electrician or the plumber or both were not full time employees did we also do that at all they were trying to get they had another category they had custodians I don't remember the other word but it was people that were a little bit more skilled not licensed we didn't have skilled that was the issue we had you couldn't find them if you wanted to so we're looking for the full HVAC and like I said there is significant work even just replacing the filters I mean one of the reasons the heat didn't work here last year was because they hadn't replaced the basic filters for years and years and years up there so when the machine kicked on the darn filters were so clogged that they got sucked into the moving parts and stopped things from moving so yeah it's been there's significant pieces that need to be done other pieces there another 16,000 for snow removal to put it in line with what the funding was the other piece it's kind of a little odd there is a mentoring program for teachers that's required under statute so that new teachers that come in they get a veteran teacher that works with them that for whatever reason and why the state had ever accepted it I don't know was always put into title which is not appropriate never should have been there so we're trying to pull that out of title there are some questions that I have about the mentoring program that's not going to keep people very happy when I saw what we're paying it's two and three times what we paid in Massachusetts I did talk with the superintendents that are in the White River Valley the maximum they pay for a coordinator is 1800 we pay 6000 the maximum that they pay for an actual mentor is 700 we pay 2500 is there a reason? I have no idea one of the pieces is that typically in a CBA it spells these things out I give Brent a lot of credit he kept that CBA very kept as much out of it as possible just to provide flexibility which is a good thing so I don't know his rationale when he chose this it could be changed at any time but that 30 $40,000 program that we're running this year for mentoring should have cost this year with a lot of people should have cost about 10,000 if I remember correctly he used to go out not just in this region but he would go out to the entire state and look and see what and try and hit them we're required to under executive limitations require resistance so when you went out you only looked at this I looked at the White River Valley which is there's about 57 superintendents there were 12 or 14 so it's a pretty good sampling and it's in our region you wouldn't expect to be paying what Chittenden County but I think he used to go a little bit higher just trying to create quality instruction but this is triple so there probably was recent I don't know the context I don't know I talked with Robin she doesn't know the context either she did there was something that she remembers there was a reason for it but she couldn't recall but again not something I want to touch at this point in time for moral reasons like it says the total budget here includes an assumed 3% increase for staff salaries and also the 11.8% increase for health insurance that they've already told this is coming alright so we'll revisit this in December a lot closer to the reality great thanks and next is there any question or comment from either of you so including our packet I believe our dates for the next negotiations with unions yeah so next four dates for both the CBA meetings and the support staff negotiated meetings are already set what was nice is both parties agreed that these are open meetings so anybody in the community can come I've already invited the press so that's going to be advertised as open and published lots of change while we're on negotiations we'll see on the bottom of your school board member address form because we lost a couple of members we also have lost people that we need in these duties these committee responsibilities so we need one person on the teacher negotiation team and we need one person on support staff negotiation team we also need a board member to sign in the absence of the chair so you can see here Paul and Melody are on the teacher negotiation team and they and Anne Howard and Rachel are on the support staff negotiations does anyone have the willingness to join one of those two committees I'm willing to be on the teachers okay I'm willing to do it I'll be on either one would you do the support staff then okay great we'll have one more thing and just some we need to vote them in but is there someone who lives not far from the OSSD office who's able to and willing to stop by the office to sign in case a signature is needed we'll probably do that okay we'll add that you to that then alright so we've got three nominations and Howard to add to the teacher negotiation staff Ashley to add to the support staff negotiations and and Kaplan to sign in the absence of chair do I have a motion to approve those I'll make that motion to approve the nominees for teacher negotiations support staff negotiations and board member to sign in absence of chair second second all those in favor Linda here did you get thank you next we're up to you again Lane we've got the climate survey presentation the other ones are pretty short that we'll talk about tonight this one is a little bit longer it depends upon the conversation that you guys have which will be good so the climate survey couple things to remember is that starting at this spring the state is required under the old no child up behind act to do a climate survey and use that as part of their report card that they give out on the schools and the district and the state as a whole so that will take the place of what's been done here before the first of these climate surveys was administered in 2009 it was a common survey that the Wanooski Valley Superintendents Association used it was given every other year there was a four year gap between 2013 and 2017 right if you're offering it every other year then they missed a year in terms of the minister on the survey there were some response changes in 2017 1617 they had a neutral piece right it's you know agrees strongly agrees strongly disagrees neutral was in the middle for some reason they changed it to sometimes in 2017 it does not look after I got the context of what was going on that year it does not look that had an overall impact in the survey data and then in terms of the survey that I just did that I put out I went back to neutral for that center one but I also added you know does not apply in terms of kind of looking over the survey as a whole there were some confusion you can tell in the comments that were there of who was being referred to you know is it the students that were looking on this or how we is it ourselves that's too bad but that had been going on for since 2009 so hopefully when the state puts their survey out they're a little clearer I took the survey that was given out in the past was huge it sounded like the board was really interested in kind of climate and morale so I focused on the 22 questions that kind of looked at quality of life the one thing that I do want to point out these are bar graphs so you got to be careful on the Y scaling for some reason in Excel you can't adjust that so in some cases the scores are really high but because the scaling they don't look at I'll try to point those out alright so what these numbers represent so if you look at that 77 for 2011 that means that 77% of the respondents in 2011 either agreed or strongly agreed so in all these cases it's the sum of the agrees and the strongly agrees so students are eager to learn was the question and then kind of in going through the comments there were seven of them and basic thema that was there was a lot of concern about the growing number of students with trauma based behaviors and this was interesting the wording that was used statements that too many are not emotionally available that was in 2011 that's this year for learning or school and that this number is growing so who is taking this survey? so this survey was administered to all faculty teachers custodians, bus drivers every employee in the district and how many, what's your end you said 66% so 66% either agreed or strongly agreed but when you look at those numbers I'm just wondering year to year like are there 25 people 75 people statistically in looking back the previous years were about 89 respondents this year was 91 so it was pretty much in line and how many employees could have filled this out? probably 100 to 120 so that's an incredible rate of return for a survey and this was K-12 entire district went out to like I said it went out to bus drivers custodians, cafeteria and I think that was the case in the past from what I could gather I tried to keep it as close to what the case in the past was students have a positive attitude toward school so I'll give you some of these are exact quotes again the comments typically there were about 5 to 7 comments students have a negative attitude toward school because the system has failed to provide them with tools necessary for success namely high quality instructors and guarantee time for those instructors so I think this is a very telling one because it plays along this theme of where time is being spent are they saying that their colleagues are not well qualified to be teachers that's what they're saying if you think about 7th grade math last year is an example and we do have trouble in certain which is true across the state of getting people mathematics or languages typically difficult some of the sciences so there is difficulty because there's a shortage out there of getting top notch people so you read the same thing that I did but a lot of it too it feels like it's about it's about their time the other pieces that we came up with because the cabinet and I went through this last week to get their opinions along the way as well and then this will be distributed out to the full staff after today so let me present it to the board first and you can do what you need to with it the other pieces that the growing number of paraprofessionals because while they are affected with the kids they're not really trained to do a lot of academic work another comment I think there is an upward trend towards students having a more positive attitude to their school and then another one again that word again if they are emotionally available they are eager and positive about putting in effort so again this need to address the trauma based behaviors that we're seeing students are willing to put in effort to learn there are many students who show excitement about learning and being in school there are more who while they do what they need to to get by they are not truly engaged the rest of the student base are struggling to manage trauma related stress and behaviors so that is not really possible for them to be a part of the classroom learning 2% a little up from previous here again there was a contextually there was a lot going on in 2016-17 and so you're going to see a big drop from previous years morale is high and this one is interesting most of this dealt with teacher stress in terms of spending a lot of time in meetings that are not directly related to the teaching task that's what their comments are 53% of our district thinks our morale is low if 40% percent of our students are neutral or low so but again it depends on the causes of it so let me read some comments and then I'll make one more comment that I don't want to lose on the vicarious nature of stress there is an undercurrent of stress about meetings lack of planning time and feeling we don't have adequate teaching time I would say all love school but are feeling overwhelmed with initiatives and the mental health issues of the students stress was added due to the late start of the interventionists which we spoke about a little November teacher morale is extremely high for the majority of students morale is high this is one of the ones where people were confused are we talking about the students or about us support teachers by guaranteeing two types of work time directly involved with students time analyzing student work and planning for instruction so again they really want to be focused on the classroom piece and I think a lot of this relates back to the standards based report card work and the graduation proficiencies much improved higher than previous year the rest of the comments dealt with the spelling of morale morals some of the again there were I try to put in the critical ones too especially the most critical ones both the superintendent and the principals consistently make efforts to establish means versus supporting ends despite neither having taught a regular course over a decade well the reality was as I was a full time teacher prior to starting here because I took time off from administration and I taught freshman physics in one of the most prestigious schools public schools and most diverse schools in the country and my kids scored higher than any students here so that is not true but throw that out there just for fun so quick question what is this administered this was administered in October of this year where all of these in October I believe so because they had to report to you so when did you start October of 2017 I was not here for this administration that was 2016-17 they always put down the last the last year so this last column is the only ones that have time for it this is a good place to work and this is one we have to be careful of the axes 76% this year are saying this is a good place to work strongly agree or agree and again it's kind of funny because you're going to see some of these are really high which kind of the morale piece I look forward to Mondays I really do much improved over last year I find this place to be refreshingly pleasant and you guys remember all the stuff that happened last year in terms of personnel I am in a supportive environment but stress levels are running high again I think that's a referral back to where they're spending their time RQCC is the best school I have worked in over 20 years and again my analysis in talking with the cabinet and actually some of the faculty it seems that too much time is being directed by administration and not enough time being given to teachers to focus on implementation and changes it's going to affect directly impact learning school provides a high quality education again be careful of the axes it's at 76% which is fairly high in general they feel there's too much testing at the elementary level there's a concern about the lack of science education at the elementary level there is a limit to the quality because of student engagement prior knowledge and mental health issues the district does what it's capable of doing based on budget and the size of the student body and again another theme in there is that students need more time with their teachers so quick question about the testing comment the testing going on at the elementary level is that state driven stuff that we've said we want testing in our district it's things that the elementary principals have put into place so we talk about those three tiers in curriculum curriculum is down once you start implementing the curriculum you start taking a look at what the students are learning and what's not so they develop a whole variety of different testing mechanisms to give feedback to the teachers on what's going well and what's not you know they talked about their assessments in ELA the reality is is they've got too many that are going on the principals recognize this but what they're trying to do they also bought the they bought a program this year if I wasn't tired I would remember the name of it that the kids will take in like a 15 minute exam and it gives them immediate feedback on you know what standards are weak they've got too many going on but what the principals are saying is yeah we're going to continue it for this year so that at the end of the year we can take a look at which is the most effective for what they're using it for and drop the rest so that will change so the principals are aware they're going to address so what they said is they got all these different ones we're going to use them we're going to see which ones are actually the most valuable for the faculty because some of them are redundant and then we're going to get rid of the rest physical plant is well suited to student needs it's at 64% the temperature is unbearably hot at the beginning of the year which is true especially at the high school but what's interesting you know if we get the solar panels up there we can get the heat exchangers then and we could air condition the schools imagine what a draw that would be across the state you think I'm kidding we had full air conditioning in swamp sky that's Massachusetts small school high school was only 650 kids no I said that's Massachusetts difference between Massachusetts and Vermont is in Massachusetts the town pays for the educational costs it's not spread out across the state you get a little bit from the state to help but it's not large we can't drink our water so guess which school this is however there was a huge improvement in work order tickets getting completed faster and then chairs desks and furniture need to be updated the furniture does not fit the size of the students in the elementary schools is that true apparently I asked the principals about that they're like maybe so they're actually checking on that you know I'd hate to think those orange chairs the sixth graders are saying I haven't seen it during the walkthroughs it looks appropriate but it may not be true in every classroom it may not be true in every elementary school the school's physical plant is kept clean again this one's higher than it looks based on the scaling it's at 76% the general feeling is the facilities so this is somebody's comment team is doing a tremendous job within the constraints of their staffing size they recognize the staff does that it's hard for them to keep staff long term the quality of this isn't there physical plant is repaired promptly at 57% and these are quotes they inherited a mess and are making great strides we need another person for light fixer upper jobs a valiant effort is being made to update an aging building despite working with a small staff and limited funds things have improved in this there's a long way to go but we're carriers and we're occurring and then kind of the old classroom piece here old equipment in the classrooms then the heat did not work for two weeks that was at the high school but that was another long standing maintenance issue the heating system at the high school has two pumps that circulate the water they're designed for one to run for a while the other one to run for a while so they don't burn out well one crap the bed about four years ago was never replaced so one pump was running constantly to heat the school there and those pumps are expensive they're between $7,000 and $15,000 a piece and so they ordered it with a surplus money they actually one to replace the one that it failed and one to put on the shelf with the surplus money it just took forever for it to get in this year I had a feeling that that system was old enough they probably had to manufacture them for a scratch so that is in place but again you know we talk about maintenance that was done and not so we're lucky there wasn't more damage there my assigned responsibilities are fair and reasonable 67% and again we go back to a common theme the number of hours spent not directly on student achievement is fatiguing there are too many things beyond teaching responsibility or responsibilities added that we are not trained for are these temporary things? what we can tell is most of them deal with the trauma based behaviors they're not trained to deal with those really well in the classroom for the high level ones I think it has to do with the high school it has to do with the new grading system remember they have spent close to three years if not more of their time at every meeting for the most part working on this so I'm sure that's that's got to be a little bit frustrating again you got to be careful with this one because of the scaling I feel safe at school there's some context 84% feel safe at school you have to remember last year everything that went on in the community and some incidents that happened in the schools last year we did the safety survey this question was on it last year it was 52% so one year has gone from 52% to 84% which is a pretty good job there are only a couple of comments on this one of them had to do about the ability to leave the doors unlocked they do have buttons now to help unlock and then with the new changes that happened at the beginning of this year with Alice and changing around how they kind of respond to emergency threats a couple of folks are concerned that they got to speed up their response during the drills which makes sense because it's new but that is happening now I am satisfied with the quality of leadership of the superintendent is at 70% and I'll put some of the negative ones in here which don't really warrant too much to really comprehend the responsibilities of elementary educators I upset the elementary educators a bit when I was sending out the emails kind of outlining the vision for this year they were very upset about the word generalist they thought it was derogatory it was not meant to be generalist to me just means that you teach more than one discipline it's actually a pretty hard road they felt, I use the expression you know, our use of paraeducators is a band-aid fix it is the paraeducators felt that that was derogatory towards them, it was not it was derogatory towards the structure we're using which was intended we talked a little bit about that the other one was some of the special educators I made the statement in the the emails that I was sending out under students with disabilities under the law is the idea that they're at average intelligence or above and they took issue with that and then I pointed out the laws to them and your average intelligence or above you can't be put on an IEP for having below average intelligence they do have an intellectual disability that people can qualify for but you have to be below average intelligence and to other things have maladaptive behavior that prevents you from learning at your capacity what bothered me a little bit about this was the fact of all the information that was there and all the analysis and all the data and you're talking about the ends and why they were important these were the only things that they wanted to discuss so I have a feeling that we're touching on a sensitive issue with the faculty which is the academic performance and it's going to take them a little bit of time to realize nobody's being beat up over this we're trying to give you tools, we're trying to give you focus and trying to help you along the way it is what it is, there's no blame here we've got to provide the tools and instructions to help them succeed the other piece I sent out the Massachusetts curriculum some of them were concerned that I was trying to use that to replace what they're doing that was not the case and the curriculum about that, it's a tool those curriculum documents were tied to the Common Core a long time ago they had been revised and researched since 1993 and I sent it out primarily for the high school folks because they do not have curriculums most of them and the idea is ok if you're teaching this year and you need a tool to guide you here you go until we get time after January to start to develop our own what about some of the positive we do need to be mindful a little mindful of time just so we know we're already over we still have an enrollment presentation well since your efforts are being made there are still ways to go creating a cohesive team feeling I think administration is being stretched too thin and all that they are expected to accomplish there was a lot of push for a curriculum director considering again over trying to put a stop to the work on the graduation and standard based report satisfied with the quality of leadership school administrator 79% only one comment was a positive response about the principal and a statement that he needs to be there more often which we kind of discussed tonight satisfied with the quality of leadership the teacher leaders was at 71% the only comment that was there was the recognition that not all schools have teacher leaders quality leadership school board was not a lot of comments on this comment wishing that there was more interaction between the board and teachers we're not allowed to interact with the teachers and I wonder again sorry I just run into this all the time is just I think it's really important and we haven't done it is to meet with the staff and help them understand how we operate because I think we get that kind of a rating because people think we're going to be micromanaging what's going on and we're going to be telling you how to do your job and the way we govern we don't tell you how to do your job we look at we say we want you to produce this and we say show us the data show us that you've produced what we said we wanted you to produce and I think if we can do that our numbers probably go up people don't understand the public doesn't understand another piece to it I think there's two pieces to it one of the pieces is the separation between the board and the community the further away you get from interacting because of your position the more likely folks are depending upon what they hear as opposed to their own direct experience so that's very true with the board usually the people that come before us it's because there's a concern that they have however that is resolved that's what the speak and the community is because the rest of the community hasn't interacted with you directly they listen to what they hear that's true with the superintendent a little less true with the principals not very true in terms of the teachers again as you get further away through the hierarchy I certainly can't imagine that they actually would want some of the board teacher interactions that I've been proving to from other districts I've trained education in college so I have a lot of friends from college who are teachers and having board members just show up in their classroom and sit there for three or four hours and not talk to them then wander away and wonder on earth what that was about you don't want that at all it's just like I said it's interesting the other piece too is that 2016-17 was it tough here? I'm happy with some of the administration stuff that was going on who was responsible for that it makes a complete sense that that was part of it why wasn't it dealt with it makes a lot of sense local efforts to improve education are headed in the right direction it's up it's at 60% from the previous year again but it's that same thing we need fewer initiatives to work more deeply on the ones we have the efforts that are being set in motion this year seem to be steps in the right direction to support children dealing with trauma as well as to improve academics supporting and providing enriching opportunities for students who are performing at grade level or excelling is also an important tool which should not be lost making is inclusive of the school community 46% decision making at each level in the district is dominated by loud voices rather than common sense so it sounds like they're talking over about the community can I I'm not clear what this question is asking yeah it's hard to tell hard to tell this is one of the ones where I would sit down actually with the faculty and I have a protocol that I usually use and it's something like this you know I'm not going to respond in turn or defend anything that's up here my job is to get clarity and to hear why the numbers are the way that they are and usually through that conversation you get an idea of how they interpreted the question how did they interpret the question it sounds like it's a community thing too much weight because there are a couple of these so decision making is dominated by loud voices too much weight is given to squeaky wheels and many voices are missed okay so it's not the school community that they're talking about it's the larger community decision making continues to be non-transparent so wait why do you want I mean how again I was keeping this is for your teachers but these aren't my questions I was repeating what was in the old surveys how do the teachers even how are they even aware of that oh they're interactions see how I would interpret it is okay if I'm having a meeting with my principal is there a back and forth is a discussion or we just told what we're doing right so that's not about the wider community isn't are they interpreting that as the it sounds like that either that or when they're in those meetings it sounds like there are some people that are dominating the conversation teachers meetings could be okay okay that's I thought you were saying the school community like parents and when would that ever be happening again that's how I would interpret doesn't mean that's how they did decision making decisions being made on how we feel as opposed to educational research I appreciate that the superintendent is very transparent with the community keeping us aware of what's going on as it sounds like the community through email and phone including having forums for discussion it's apparent that he intends to implement changes to improve our district I feel very positive about this however I'm not aware of whole staff meetings discussing asking for feedback or looking at plans so again that's what I was saying is I have not had the opportunity because the principals are here to actually talk about the vision which is why I was sending e-mails out that was my way of getting the vision out and things that we've been discussing about in the scenes to get them talking and thinking so it was interesting decision making was respectful there were no comments on it that they headed it 61% decision making is fair again no comments on it 46% but that kind of goes along with the previous all voices are heard this is one that didn't exist before I feel comfortable talking with administration about concerns I may have it's 75% I feel cared about here 78% that's not fair it's because of the scaling the only concerns that were listed were things that were kind of out of control commenting on that there's not enough paid paid days for maternity leave nursing room is not ready they were putting in a room with a lot of teachers with children to be able to nurse and it's not complete yet and superintendent making suggestions on curriculum it's funny this is the same voice in a couple of these across the board without having any knowledge of curriculum I hope that's not true that's not true I've got 15 years this is not difficult problems are addressed not avoided so this is a new one that's why there's no previous data there I believe the district responds in the best way it can to issues passed down from government and cultural social issues common in our present world I think it's getting better we're so focused on the graduation requirements and the proficiency based report cards that we're losing sight of what we need and that's it that was a long answer and I can email this to you I'm happy to email all the questions to you guys the comments to you guys as well but 90% of them were questions, thoughts thank you I don't need the email but if everybody else feels like they do you can shoot me an email I'm happy to send it up to you but like I said, the comments and the survey results will be shared by the principals with the faculties for discussion which I think is good I think that's helpful feedback you're on again for the enrollment presentation these are pretty good I don't play them so what I did was sorry they looked at their meeting evaluator oh yeah, you got the form what I did was three year trends just to make it a little bigger hopefully total district enrollment across the last three years you see there was a dip last year but there was a big increase the current year that we're in the three year trend means that on average we're gaining 11.5 students per year does this include the preschool at grade 3? nope, does not include preschool members what about students that were leaving? I know there was a couple of years we had a lot of students leave is there any I don't know if there was any truth to that I have a feeling there were some high profile students that left but again you get the voices that we'll talk about the fact but what's everybody going I don't think that was the case at least I look back I only put three years up here but I did look back five years I was going to say I seem to remember from certain districts but other districts grew I think that was 2018 the high school there's high profile going to Sharon Academy a brain drain a little bit of a brain drain brain tree elementary is growing about four students per year it's on a nice upward trajectory usually when you see a nice steep line like that and the dots are fairly close to the line usually it's a pretty good indicator that's going to continue Brookfield and it's not as bad as it looks had a drop but it's had a significant jump back up and there's another significant jump about that size scheduled for next year depending upon the kids that are in kindergarten and the pipeline and what not so the three-year trend line is that you're dropping one student per year but again they had a huge jump last year Randolph Elementary again you see the dots are nice and close together it's a pretty good upward trend on average they're gaining 8.5 students per year REHS they had a big drop in 18 that may be potentially what you're referring to but an equal gain the year after so there is no slope on that it means things are flat they're back up to where they were so that's interesting with sending two new buses and a little further I would say I don't know the reason again for the 2017-18 again those students those students coming in in 17-18 would have been enrolling in the spring of 16-17 again it seems to be making a rebound and hopefully that two-year trend continues I have a feeling it will RTC enrollment on average they're growing 8 students per year and again right now they're at that sweet spot around that 150 mark 147 questions on that and then I want to just show you the spend enrollments really quick because I think that's important again this is a short one there's a lot of info in today's so gotta understand what this is telling you this is SWD students with disabilities there were students that have IEPs the percent of the total district enrollment so in 2017 about 18% across the district of the students here were students with disabilities so you can see that that number is growing every 1% gain is about 9 students district wide so we're up so we're at 18-20 we're up 18 we're up about 20 students overall how does that compare to statewide? so statewide again I'm going to give you my best estimate it's higher in Vermont because of all the trauma based behavior across the state that trauma based behavior is centered dead center in Vermont we have more of it it's probably about 16% national average is 10-12% so we are way above it in Massachusetts if my students with disabilities enrollments ever got above 12% I got a very nasty letter from the department of that but let's break it down by school it gets a little bit more interesting so district brain tree so 18.5% to 21% right so they're growing in about 1.4% per year in terms of the percentage of their population that's a student with disabilities Brookfield they're at 26% so they're more than double the national average and it's growing at 6.2% per year so that's what we talk about this need for these therapeutic if it keeps going like this the cost in terms of the special education program is just going to keep skyrocketing and again if you look at the numbers what we talked about the lines are straight the further out you project from there the less accurate it's going to be but you can kind of be guaranteed for the next year or two so my question is how much of this could be not just trauma based but autism and other things that you actually have no redress for really this isn't just the trauma based yes is that a lot of the growth is due to that so you have the base where it started so there is a lot that's academic but with a properly structured special education program what you're doing is you're training the students with the academic disabilities the strategies they need to use to be able to do it for themselves and so they eventually come off the high EPs that's how it's supposed to work and I'll show you some data on this in a minute and students with disabilities percentage school enrollment at RE assets going up by 3.1% so but you're looking at 2017 to 2019 how come you didn't look back have we always been about this yeah it looks like it's going up but it's two years takes three years to establish a trend and so I always stick with the most common most current three years so next year instead of 2016 to 2018 I can put more data up there so my guess is in looking back it did something like this that was high for a while and then it did this I would be interested to see what it was like in 2010 and 2012 why are you looking to put the interventionist program that you were discussing in Randolph if the largest percentage is in Brookfield why would we not put it there Randolph has a smaller percentage at around 20% but a greater number of people means more kids overall and it's central so it's easy if you got to transport the kids from you know brain tree to Randolph from Brookfield to Randolph if you had to go from brain tree to Brookfield or vice versa that was a trick it always surprises me how long it takes REHS actually a good thing there but we got to dig a little bit deeper into the data the data is telling us it's going down by 1.25% we don't know if that's because they're coming off IEPs I don't believe that to be the case I think it's because they're leaving the district they get to the high school level and at that point in time you're able to drop out our dropout rates aren't bad but there is about a 5% there these could be the kids that are leaving them what you want to see if you're sure that the drop at the high school is due to students coming off IEPs this is what you kind of want to see over time you see how the high school trend is going down even though the elementary is going up at the elementary level that's when you're identifying the students for IEPs they get their services for a while and eventually they should come off them assuming which again I don't believe is true I think they're leaving the district IEPs this is a good trend but the thing is the same amount would be dropping out all those years if it's at the high school may not have been special education students that were dropping out those previous years I do know that a lot of the focus at the high school is on keeping students in school I'm just wondering about your rationale for that it's all a high school population it's not but again who's most likely to drop out students are at risk of learning disabilities students are probably yeah again I'm just I don't know the answer to this this is one of those ones that you need to dig deeper and do to find out what's really going on are you doing that yeah part of the discussions this is the data that we'll be talking with the special education group with us and going around and doing my observations district-wide students with autism going up at 2.5 per year so in this case you got it from OE back from 2013 had more data that was easier to grab with this what about current, what about 18, 19 like all the other ones so right now we're sitting at 15 this year about 4 or 5 years ago we were down around 5 now we're up at 15 again that's a pretty straight line with the dots pretty close to it it's going up at 2.5 students per year that one's probably going to continue for a little while that's true across the nation there's a significant amount of growth in autism alright and lastly in this we've got the review and approval of policy review contract with the VSBA so what this is we kind of talked about this a little bit earlier the Vermont School Board's Association has their legal team that is happy to review our policies to make sure that we've got everything in there that we're mandated to have and to make sure that they're in line with state regs and federal regs and local regs and so this is the pay of them to do that review and they'll provide feedback and recommendations that you know it's something that the board should engage in to make sure that the data is necessary so that's what that's about I don't know what they came up with for cost I don't want to say it was around $600 typically it's in the $60 that's a lot I don't think I have it with me so we need to vote on that yeah I think that's one that the board has to sign I can't do it like to make the motion to approve the policy review contract with the VSBA second all those in favor all right so we've got two EL reports 2.1 and 2.2 and I let our two new board members know that we were going to be reviewing these they were in our packet last month are they still in the package that we talked to okay great so hopefully people took the time to review these I explained to Anne Ashley as well that we're now doing the monitoring so everyone's clear on those expectations I do have full reports on them but time wise you guys decide if you just want to ask questions was there anything you wanted to tell us about the way these were written or these are adaptations no these were pretty short and straight forward in compliance across the board and I threw you know as they talked about is adding some of the evidence right into the reporting you know I did that where it was possible in some cases it's a lack of evidence that shows that things are all right you know one of them was like you know treating the staff respectfully the fact that there's been no grievances by the board to that effect I had a question on one about 2.1 and 2.2 I was in the ends monitoring nope that was an ends monitoring okay I didn't press down any questions I guess I didn't have any I have one can I be the grump well coming back on to the board I see we're continuing to monitor in the way that we did in the past everyone sort of thinks we're doing policy governance but we are not forcing him to create an operational definition so that he presents data and we have something that we can measure it's just a bunch of words well that is why we had this that's why we had this climate survey presentation because I asked him to do that he hasn't operationalized his definition in these he needs to say there needs to be something measurable there he needs to say 80% of the staff are going to respond to a survey we have to have something there that we can measure not reading through gobs of information that's just wordsmithing defining things it has to be a measurable data driven answer we're not getting that and I'm not saying I just think we need to move that way and perhaps it's more training on our part on the superintendent's part but if we're really going to measure we need to have data responses and it needs to be more clean we're just doing what we did before we're not moving forward in the way we really need to be monitoring if we're going to say that we're being policy and data driven this is not it I think some of the monitoring the policies really are not necessarily data driven he's got to figure out a way to do it but they don't necessarily or you guys need to change and modify the policies I've got a perfect example up here so provision one elicit information for which there is no clear necessity the superintendent will not I have the right to create the interpretation of that and as long as it's not out of bounds so the interpretation I interpret this to mean that current perspective and former students and families will only be asked for information that is required for the district or its schools to make informed decisions that support board those mandatory statutes so again this is one of those ones where the absence of is the evidence about 100% of our forms do not ask for information that is not necessary 100% of our forms but I could solicit it through email and so in this 100% of our emails 100% so that you're saying 100% of what I I asked for does not do that because it's got to be measurable again I don't believe that this one is conducive to that or we've got a failure from a random sampling of communications with staff and students I report that 100% of these did not and again in terms of this just so people the help of the conversation in terms of the evidence piece again absence of evidence the only information collected beyond what is normal and mandatory was a climate and safety survey administered last February but it was used to inform the security upgrades as well as programming decisions related to student behavior I agree with what you're saying I agree with what you're saying too and that's why for example we asked for the climate survey because we thought that was a measurable so again we're in a lot of treatment of the staff but we need to have it more concise than hours of detail it needs to be measurable and then if we have questions you can pull it out and say here are all the responses and we can see the data here are all the responses but I think we need we need to keep them to numbers it has to be measurable that's what you do when policy governance is data driven so I disagree with that I disagree with that statement that that's what policy governance is just numbers I don't think that's what it is it's holding somebody accountable through your policies and I think for me when I'm talking about treatment of staff numbers aren't going to tell me anything I want to know how the staff feel when you go through a survey and all the staff are asked a certain amount of questions every year we can look at and so we probably would have if we would have received that if we would have received that several years ago we would have knew that we were known that we had a problem with our administration we were not aware of that until Brent left and then when we were going to hire him all the communities talking about this huge problem we had because we weren't getting something like a survey we were just getting numbers that was the faculty faculty staff I didn't see a huge drop I didn't see a huge drop the drop I didn't see a huge drop from for example 2011 to 2016 where they were going from a lot of numbers that were a lot higher in the distant past remember there was a four year gap there were three surveys that were done on time and then there was the old superintendents last year and then my first year big difference between those several years there and why isn't it again where every year the staff should be they should be surveyed we should be getting feedback from them but we never have and finally we have no I think that's great am I not providing as much as what you were providing exactly and I think the difference the meetings are going to be longer because we're doing the monitoring here but our job is to be looking forward I understand that and if we operationalize and we are data driven there won't be as much we can have some but this is an awful lot and it's pretty detailed and it's looking at the past and it's where is the part where we're looking at the future and I hope we do an equal amount of looking at what are we producing are we getting the ends that we want what did we spend half the time so far doing is talking about in a large sort of wide range sort of way looking at what are we hoping to achieve and how are we working towards it our job is to monitor a superintendent and we're now sort of under the gun to decide what we're going to do these are important and I think it's okay that there's not just numbers I want to just strictly numbers but this is treatment of staff right now we're supposed to be doing this the interpretation needs to be measurable I can't measure anything from what's written here there's no measurement so what would you propose that you change it to what I will do is I will grab the policy governance book again and I will bring it and show you what I'm talking about because if you look at it that's what we'll be able to do to try and streamline things a little bit and keep us on track so that we can say we have a track record of doing this and we're seeing a trend but if we don't have any data to sort of show that and figure out a way to do it it's for today we had asked Lane to do this he's going to provide us debt to ask for it's something that I would like to work on because I think we're still not quite there and I would say yes I agree however we don't know we can't just shoot down what we have because you don't know what you want I'm just saying I still think we need to work on it I think there's and I will go back unfortunately I was dealing with some family stuff I didn't have as much time but I will take some time and I will look at it because I think if we're going to still say we're operating from that policy driven focus we need to make sure that we have measurable data and we can do that for the ends we need to do it for the monitoring everything needs to sort of be measurable otherwise it doesn't mean a whole lot the only comment I have is I'm happy to provide anything that you need especially and I'm in agreement that there needed to be more oversight and there should be more oversight but I also don't want to get beat up for someone else's past and at times it feels like that I'm not trying to do that and I don't believe that but no we talked about that I was in full agreement that there's stuff that went on and so we had the discussion about you know how do we find a way to make sure that you're tracking and so that's a I think that's an ongoing discussion I don't think we've come to a but you know I'm well open to it I just want to be clear about roles because you're running the school and we are asking you to produce results we need to be able to have a clear way to know that you're producing those results and you're doing it in a way that is legal that's ethical, that's professional and we need to have clear data to show that and as lay people on a board that meets once a month we need to have enough information to feel comfortable with it and I think things have changed a little bit I mean I think the piece one of the pieces that contextually that's missing was the N's report there was a significant amount of work done there was a significant amount of data that was presented in terms of the reinterpretation of the N's and what we should be looking at for data and so that will continue but you know there was quite a switch I should if you guys don't get that wrong I went back and watched the June meeting because I wanted to see the last one was October so there was a significant amount of N's monitoring last month so anyway I'm more than willing to work on it because I think I want to make sure that we are moving in that direction and we're not micromanaging our superintendent and we're keeping our roles clear in terms of what we're going according to our policies not just sort of a willy-nilly interpretation of the policies but we're following them and he's aware of what our expectations are so he presents these EO reports one month more than able to go to the office just as always but we're all responsible and I don't mind that are there any other questions on these two reports we do right because these were presented last month so we've had a month to do due diligence is there anything else you want to add alright can I have a motion to approve EL report 2.1 I'll make the motion to approve reports 2.1 and 2.2 all those in favor any opposed advocacy that one's really short it's just kind of relaying what had happened at the school board's association and the superintendent's association meeting primary focus was on the changes to the state report card and again we touched on that a little earlier there is a report card that goes out as part of the old no child left behind law so that the community is aware of the performance of the districts and the individual schools that first one should be coming out this fall summerish time excuse me spring summerish time when that comes out I can give a full presentation of what the changes are a lot of it in the reinterpretation of the ends a lot of that was built on what the changes are going to be for that report card to try to tie them up make sure that they were supporting you know what we're driving towards supporting that report card and now it's going to make the district appear to the community that's it so what do you mean by the reinterpretation of the ends so reinterpretation of the ends is how I took it was just like the executive limitations is the board has a statement there has to be an interpretation of what that means so that it can be measurable so that that was done that was a massive project and then it tied it directly to the data that was going to be used to measure that and what was nice there was a big preamble talking about the reason that this data was chosen was because it was objective not subjective it is what it is so this is an example of what you were talking about before my friend we kept asking for this exact thing and it kept getting kicked down the road and for instance when that WCX article came out saying that we had you know horrible was it math scores and then we asked him in that meeting and he presented data but we weren't able to use our ends to discern what was the ground truth and so in this case over the course of several months now there are data dumps I'm calling a dad dump hopefully it's somewhat understandable yes it is where he's meeting the ends and so it's exactly what you were just talking about so it's no longer I'm meeting the ends it's here's the data where we're at and what we're trying to I interpret this way here's the data this is the data that you can use to measure this is why I'm using this data this is why I think it's the most appropriate data to be using so that was done over August, September and October all right I'll have to go back and look at those meetings because I haven't had a chance yet all right we need to approve the minutes from the October 8th meeting I looked them over I didn't see any changes that needed to be made I don't know if anyone else noted anything all right so can I have a motion to approve the minutes motion to approve the minutes second make a motion all second all those in favor all right all right superintendent's report anything else besides what you've already told us today most of it was included I think in your previous yeah I think that the superintendent's part really kind of focused on that trying to fix things is upstream so that we're not having the giant jumps in budget later on as time goes on there were a couple of incidentals that came up recently I sent an email out about one we received a communication from the town about the fact that they're going to be out investigating the water treatment storm water treatment on the northern part of the high school property they showed up within 24 hours to do that work there was no discussion or notification to us part of that of even what it was about still don't know but I did check with PHO to ensure that I was right they have no right to do this without board approval unless an easement was signed I'm granting that and I have requested of the town to provide us with an easement and it's not that I'm against the work I just don't know what it is it's only appropriate to communicate about it clearly and we have projects in the works which is the raven which is very close it's probably something simple like drainage which is great but I don't know because we're not on the loop so I was a little taken back by that just to keep folks in the loop and then the other fun thing is the board member name plays they did a first run they didn't like them so they're redoing it the eighth grade STEM class is doing all the work and they're using the laser cutter in the new makerspace that was built last year so it's actually pretty cool Ken sent over pictures today if I get around to it I'll email them off to you they're kind of cool so we're having a good time with that that was it anything we should note in particular about the RTCC or principles reports RTCC the next meeting is on the 15th and I had to talk with Jason about at least talking with that group about where his budget stands because there is an increased iteration just to see how people felt about it eventually that boat has to happen in this body to get that feedback any other questions for Lane about anything in the packet any comment from your view okay do you like the opportunity to come out throughout the meeting? I think it's a lot better than being out front good especially when you don't have anything to say I could mention on the stormwater I was actually my company we put a proposal in for that so I know a little bit about it those areas were designated by the agency of natural resources they did an inventory of the storm drainage for the town and they just found these areas around the town where they could do some green stormwater treatment and that area at the end of the school was one of them that designated that they found where the drainage actually comes down through there so there was other ones throughout the town but I don't think there was any more done on that do you know what the construction would look like if they built it? Is it actually a treatment? I think it's going to be like an infiltration or possibly just a green trench a drainage swale type of treatment on it I figured it was probably something simple but it was cryptic what we got it made it sound like they were going to put the big wastewater treatment for sewer jobs all the treatment was supposed to be so it would be an infiltration or vegetative swale or something perfect how are the financials as we stand for this year? usually what I do with the financials is I take a look at the amount that's in there and I divide it by 12 and then that way I can kind of judge if we're on track I mean it's not perfect but we're on track no surprises no surprises nothing abnormal for evaluations which you did and I think we have our agenda was playing an acceptable manner to focus on the real work of the board it wasn't all focused on the past the board did we follow to our agenda and we did not get slide trapped in a commendable manner the meeting was acceptably attended the board was commendably prepared for the meeting there was no evidence that any of us had actually had a time we met our best expectations for proceeding without interruptions or distractions we didn't get lost in an entirely different realm participation was balanced we all participated and not one voice dominated I felt that we met our best expectations we listened entirely when others were speaking we treated each other with respect and courtesy and that our work was accomplished in an atmosphere of trust and openness thank you alright and we do have executive session okay so say goodnight