 Well, the supervisor is going to be in order at 6.33 feet centered on those factors of the grade. So the focus is tonight's meetings, thank you, the Republicans on the budget. You guys. You guys want to? All right. Great. Thank you. Do you need one as well? The agenda? Sure. This is like you get the same answer and everything. Yeah, it's true. You do. And that's up for discussion. It doesn't have to be an answer. But I was looking through the. And we can decide whether we think that's valuable or not. I don't have a whole packet. It absolutely may not be. But you know, it's okay. I get some of it. We used to have a form that would evaluate not only today's meeting, but also, or you could use the back of the form. You guys should just share with the other guests. Yeah. This came with it. That came with it. Evaluation of ways we are conducting. Are we contributing? We're contributing. We're sort of listing the policies. We're rating ourselves on that. We have. I don't know. Two years ago or something, we asked our facilitator at one of our intros of our repeats to give us some ideas on board evaluation. And we never received them to my knowledge. Well, I don't know. I wasn't sure at that point. No. It was maybe the go-between. Yeah. So, I mean, that's something we probably should follow up with. I've always thought that the meeting evaluator was in many ways just a way of keeping ourselves accountable. Not so much. The actual evaluation doesn't matter so much is that we keep it in the foremost of our mind and take turns looking at the rubric and taking turns thinking about policy governance throughout the meeting and making sure that our behaviors are not egregious. That's a good question. Why don't we discuss it at the retreat on November 20? That can be one of the items that we could discuss with the BSBA person at that point. But for tonight, let's assign a meeting evaluator. Is there anyone who hasn't done it in a while or ever? Brian? Hello. OK. Do you have the evaluation form or something? Last week's report. There's one, I think, in the file for you to sign, a folder in the back. And I think there's one in the book. OK. I don't think I have one. Oh, yeah. I got one for you. Here's one. Here's one. OK. Thanks, son. All right. Thanks for welcoming our guests. I'm going to start with a public comment period. We're also going to allow for some public comment after our budget discussion. So if you'd like to hold your comments until after the discussion of the budget, that's also fine. Is there any one of you that would like to speak now? All right. So may you hear first to review or present your budget? Yeah. So there's an actual kind of budget timeline. We'll be coming back together with the board three times, tonight being the first night of December and then January. Each of those budget presentations will be slightly different. Tonight is what I like to call the ENDS budget. It means that I sat down with the cabinet. Hopefully they have talked fairly closely with the faculty. They've taken a look at our continuous improvement plans, the board's ENDS, and had a lot of discussion about, OK, where are we at? What do we have left to do to achieve the goals during the continuous improvement plan to achieve the board's ENDS? And then they lay out on the table everything that they feel is needed. And that's what tonight is about. This is the everything. Based upon this meeting, based upon the open forums that will happen in the next month, I'll take feedback from folks. I'll bring that back to the cabinet. We'll talk about what the priorities of the community seem to be relative to what our discussion has been and things may be adjusted in the December budget. The January budget is the final, final budget that we're putting in front of the board with all the final changes, modifications for their approval for passage to go up in front of the community in large. To start off with, I think it's important to talk a little bit about kind of broad vision and broad goals. And then when we get to the actual parts and pieces that we're looking to add to the budget, it'll be a little bit easier to see where they fit in. In terms of building a successful organization, there's a pretty simple formula for it. It doesn't matter what organization it is. The very first thing that you do is you spend your time creating structures that are going to support your work. The protocols, the procedures, the programs, the schedules, the routines, the facilities, making sure you've got the right mix of people and the right specialist to help you get where you want to go. The second thing that you do is most organizations have kind of multiple units that work together towards an end. You make sure that each of those units has a very clear set of goals that it's striving for, that you combine them together, move the whole organization forward. And then the very last piece, once you've got those two pieces in place, is you work with the individuals within those units to make sure that they're the best that they can be. You provide them with the training that's required for them to do their jobs exceptionally well. And usually you're doing a little bit of each one of these along the way. In terms of a school, it looks pretty much the same, right? The structure is the same that we've got to develop protocols, procedures, the classes offered, the master schedule, routines, facilities, right people, right mix of specialists. And we spent a lot of time over the last two years trying to make sure that we've got the right structures in place to kind of support the work that we're going to be doing for the next couple of years. Now that most of those structures are in place, the big, big, big focus is on curriculum, right? That's the programs, that's what we offer. That's what helps get this organization doing what it's supposed to be doing, and that's teaching and learning for kids. And so that's going to be the next big step that you're going to see interleaved throughout the budget presentation tonight, is making sure that we've got a well codified, aligned curriculum, especially at the high school level to help drive things forward. And then the last piece, and we're going to have a little bit of this as part of the budget flavoring that goes on tonight is teaching quality. Making sure that the teachers have the tools to kind of evaluate how they're doing with the students, where their strengths are in terms of what they're delivering, in terms of the curriculum, where their weaknesses are, and then the skills and the facilitation to be able to go after those weaknesses and things. Next year's budget proposals, right? They're designed to build on the structural pieces that were put into place physically this year, right? Because we're building the budget for next year, what we're going to add to it. And it's going to get us moving up the pyramid from structure building to curriculum. Talk a little bit about this. We have a pretty good percentage of students who are doing very well. We've got about 50% of the elementary students who are doing pretty darn well at this point in time. And about 20% to 30% of the high school students are doing pretty well. The rest are struggling, just kind of come in two flavors. We have those that are academically based. That's due to a poorly aligned curriculum or no curriculum. In some cases, we do not have a curriculum. Poor instruction or simply just not matching student learning needs, how we're teaching to what the students need and how they need it to be taught. The other flavor and one of the big pieces from last year was the mental health piece, the trauma-based behaviors. We had a lot of students who missed out on foundational ideas and concepts because their emotional health prevented them from being open to learning. So if we want to be successful in terms of improving teaching and learning across the district as a whole, we've got to make sure that we're addressing both of these needs to make that happen. So a couple of parts and pieces here. We'll talk about them in a little bit more detail. On the mental health side, there's been a lot of discussions about moving to a true middle school model. In other words, taking the sixth grade from the elementary schools, bringing it up to RUHS and having a sixth, seventh, and eighth grade middle school model. Those students have very special needs. They're going through puberty. They need a bridge to take them from being dependent upon the teachers and the adults in their life becoming independent. And when you try to do that training while students are going through puberty and all the other changes that are happening on that age, it's a tough task and it takes specialized instruction and work to get them there. So, related to the middle school model that we've been discussing, because they kind of support one another and is this idea of having a free full-day public preschool for four-year-olds. That was a model we were moving to. We did the first step a year or two ago. We did the second step last year. Hopefully next year we can do the final step, which is getting that free full-day public preschool. Why those two go together is because what happens is you've got the teachers that are currently teaching the sixth grade, or in most cases it's a five-sixth grade mix within a classroom. When the sixth graders move on, those teachers will be redistributed within the elementary schools so that some of the elementary teachers are moving down into helping out and supporting preschool, right? So that staff kind of waterfalls down and you can move to preschool. There's some other shifts that are going to happen because of this or potentially will happen because this is a little bit later. One of the other big things that is going on right now is restructuring special education, how we're providing our services. Then I'll talk a little bit more about this as we go through the presentation later. One of the big things that you're going to see, one of the big asks is this idea of investing in the curriculum, especially at the high school. They've got some really good stuff that they do. There's no doubt about that. But it is not as aligned as it should be to what's expected and what's meant to be. And it's one of the reasons that our students struggled a little bit. And then the last piece that we're looking to for next year is the next step, is creating a true science program at the elementary level across all three schools. So these are the major components. They kind of cross over to one another. But you have a track that's really designed to support students that are having the trauma-based issues as well as going after the academic-based issues that are more curricular in nature. So questions. Anybody stop me along the way? There's like a million components to all these pieces. What grade level does the true science curriculum start? They pretty much middle school. They have science curriculum at each of the elementary schools. You know, Brookfield has volunteers that come in and teach a little bit about what the volunteer is interested in. They have a little bit more codified one at RES, Brain Tree. You know, they have people that are coming in and they're doing science work, but it is not tied to next-generation science standards. And it's kind of mostly out of all of these. It's more like enrichment. And the reality is that that was common across the U.S. right up until a few years ago. When No Child Left Behind came in, right? That's where MCAS in Massachusetts and that's where your Vermont testing came in. They weren't focused really on science. They originally were focused on ELA and math. And so when people had tight budgets, what they did was they put all their money into the ELA and math and they did it by eliminating science at the elementary schools. I had science in elementary school. That was one of the things that was common. So it's kind of interesting, if you look at the testing scores across all the states, what you usually see in states that have gone after it really hard, you'll see the ELA scores up here, the math scores up here, and the science scores are always lagging and lack of focus at the elementary. So good questions. And same thing, audience too. If there's questions along the way. We have done the look at moving the staff around for the middle school model. No staff are going to be losing jobs because I know that's one of the concerns, but we wanted to keep things quiet about it even though we were in discussions thinking about it because it really is important for kids. But we wanted to get that matrix worked out. A little bit easier at the elementary level. It's a little bit more complicated at the high school, middle school level just because of where the cutoffs are on the licensure. So it is possible at the RUH level that there may be a staff member who may need to get a different level of the license that they currently have. But we would help them with that by helping to improve their vision. So you don't envision many sixth grade teachers at the RUH level? No, I'll explain why. There was a redistribution. We potentially are looking to add about two teachers to the high school to support so two brand new ones out of the group. So again, this is just kind of the overview. So I've actually had someone talk to me about this over the weekend. And their biggest concern was not necessarily pulling sixth graders out of the elementary school, but the logistics of sixth graders being in this school. And, you know, is there they were really concerned with the logistics of sixth graders being in the same building as 12th graders. So we took a look at the space. The goal would literally be to have it set up kind of as a separate program in its own way. So the space was the first consideration to look at. They will fit. They will fit, but anyone that has students know that they interact with all the kids. That's where this person was really concerned was wasn't necessarily the structure, but the interaction that the kids will have and mainly in and out of the bathroom areas with, you know, they brought up the vaping issues in the bathroom with putting sixth graders you know rumor has it is, you know, a lot of the high schoolers come down to the middle school and use the bathrooms for vaping. So, that's where the concern was more the actual interaction between the older kids and the younger kids and if there's if the, you know how that was going to be addressed. So part of this is getting together an actual middle school team with its own principal, its own area, getting the team up and running once we've decided that this is the path that they're moving on, letting them reach out to the research base. One of the facilitators that we're looking at to kind of come in for next year when I talked about the curriculum development piece would be a middle school person specialist to help them make the best decisions. So all those parts of the pieces, they're the legitimate legitimate concerns. The reality is we get some of the eighth graders, you know, separate as they are interacting with the high school folks now. But this is an opportunity and one of the reasons for the ads to staff is to keep it all separate. Different staff they're focused in a different modality with those kids. They're in a team mode as opposed to, you know, the kids moving from class to class they're really focused in on the social and those kids. We'll talk a little bit more about it later. You know, one of the pieces about academic improvement especially at the high school level is this, you know, this measure called final learning. You know, how much time are the students actually spent being and engaged with qualified teachers about academics? And there's a lot of really good programming that's happening at the high school that doesn't quite meet that academic because they've got these wonderful advisories that they run. But I question whether or not those advisories are here because we didn't provide those skills to the kids when they were at the middle school level. And if we're providing them with that social-emotional learning at the middle school level, do we need as much time on advisories when we get to the high school? Can that time be recaptured to be used for time on learning? We'll talk a little bit about that as we go through. I have good questions and good concerns. I mean, those are common. So, middle school day preschool for four-year-olds again, potentially moving the sixth graders from the elementary to RUHS. Goals, right? We've got to provide room at the elementary for the preschools because we're adding a whole new class of kids. I mean, literally under this plan you're adding a whole another year of learning for students outside of all the other possible benefits of preschool. We're adding a whole another year of learning for students. So, we need room within the elementary to be able to do that. Talked a little bit about this, allows the elementary shifting personnel to cover the new preschool programs, right? There's this waterfall that kids move on. We don't need as many teachers at the high end at the fifth and sixth grade end. They trickle down into the preschool program. It also allows a shift of one staff member to brain tree. Brain tree has been growing in Brookfield by leaps and bounds. Brookfield got an extra regular education teacher last year to help them with that. Brain tree is in that mode now. They need an extra regular education teacher to help them with their 20, 25 new kids that they've had since their last Ag. And then the biggest thing about it all is we've created a true middle school sixth to eighth program, which has to help those students with their needs. Talk a little bit about the preschool structure for potentially next year if this moves forward that we're looking at. We would still have a partial day free for the three-year-olds. It would be nice to do a little bit more for them as well, but when we look at things the three-year-olds, a lot of them are really young to be in a full day program. It would be concentrated at Randolph Elementary. There would be a two-hour morning and a two-hour afternoon just like now to cover the three-year-olds. There would be a full day free for four-year-olds preschool at each of the elementary ones. 7.30 to 2.30 each day. There would be what we call an extended preschool for four-year-olds, so that would run until 5.30. That would be parent paid. It's not that expensive. It's up and running now. That would continue to run at Braintree. And because we are now one district, we can help prioritize parents. If we have a priority that they absolutely have to have that after school component, we can allow them to join at the Braintree preschool. It's not perfect, but it's a huge step, potentially in the next direction. Again, reason for preschool, when we started to put it in last year, is it's good for kids. It's a whole extra year of learning. Students that are in preschool are better socialized. They tend to be more resilient to the adversities that they face over the course of their lives. Historically, if you go to the research two, three years down the roads, they are performing much higher for the remainder of their educational careers than students that don't have. So there's a lot of good reasons for this. Questions on the preschool potential structure? How do they are they going to be taking the bus? No. We've talked about that. They're a little young. It is possible if there's an older sibling on the bus. We talked about that, but we're still working out those details. It would be preferable for the kids to be picked up, dropped off. Other goal of this too, kind of the bigger picture vision of everything that's going on here, as all these things improve and make the district better. For students is the hope that we're going to continue to increase enrollments. I can't think of a better draw in the state of Vermont with all the troubles it has with the child care and early ed. There's a burden on parents, but it is covering 7.30 to 2.30, which is a big chunk of the day, which isn't happening now. A lot are still into our program. You did some marketing for this, right? Didn't you do a survey? They did a survey last year. Especially with the Brookfield. We were getting ready to expand it into Brookfield we just wanted to make sure that folks were there. This is completely separate from like after-school programming that's already in place at the schools, that would stay. After-school programming is for kindergarten and up. You have to do something different for preschool agencies. That's why we're, you know, got the name extended preschool on that. The requirements are in the beneficial program. It's completely different than what you can do with KDAC. So, we get grades 6 to 8 at RUHS. Big thing about it is recognizing that these students have very specific social and emotional needs. That the district is currently not able to meet very well given our structure. One of the ways that I can say that and I can justify that a little bit is, you know, when we were looking last week at the state and national testing, right, the state and national testing looks very hard at what's happening at the elementary and at the middle school levels. It goes from 3 to 9 mostly. So you've got, you know, a good chunk of the elementary and then you've got all the middle school grades in there and one high school grade. With the exception of science, that does an 11th grade exam as well. But what you see historically in this district despite the work that we've done over the last couple of years is you see kids doing pretty well and then all of a sudden, right, when they make the transition up here in 7th grade you see this huge drop. And then it'll be middling. It may go up depending upon a little bit or it may go down, but there's always this huge drop. And I think one of the reasons is just because that transition is just so tough. I mean, they kind of come into kind of a high school environment right off the bat even though they're still kind of in that dependent stage on the adults that are in their lives. The first thing about this transition is it's not an overnight thing. You know, you remember the pyramid that we kind of looked at at the very beginning. The first thing that you build is the structures to support what you eventually want to accomplish. This is a huge structural change. It doesn't mean that that one structural change is going to fix things overnight. But what it means is it gets us into a position where we can start doing the next piece, which is getting in the specialists to come in on a middle school model that's going to support the social and emotional learning that needs to happen and start providing that to the students. So two or three years down the road after the change, you see some pretty good improvements. Right, provides what these student needs is they're making the transitions from young children to adults, which is being able to bond with a caring community. Right, they're with the same core group of teachers when they're 7th grade, the same core group of teachers when they're 7th, the same core group of teachers when they're 8th. They have mentors, they have advisors that's a part of the structure and the advisory piece that's really focused on supporting that emotional growth that needs to happen. And because it's still working on a team, a 7th grade team, an 8th grade team, a 6th grade team, they are focusing on all the students on their team and their needs. It's a nice safety that if students all of a sudden the behavior starts to change, if they start to struggle, if they start to fail, they're going to recognize it right off the bat, they'll be talking about it and doing something about it. As opposed to waiting and not knowing until something critical happens in the student lives. Talk a little bit about the special education restructuring. The direct goal, the reason for doing this is to improve student outcomes. We have a model right now in special education. We've got fabulous people but what it is really doing is it's managing the students' needs. It is not getting the students to a position where they are the majority of them are actually becoming independent learning what they need to do for themselves. That is the goal of special education and an IEP. It is not to continually provide assistance. It's to provide assistance in learning the skills and the strategies that you or I need as an individual to be able to do it at some point in time. Or to get as close to that as possible. Right now, I think that one of the weaknesses in terms of our special education structure that we've got and I've been looking at it for two years is just that. The way things are structured right now we're not helping to move up One of the reasons that I believe that and you guys have seen that in the numbers are in the ENDS reports. 21% of our students are on individualized education plans. 21% of our students on IEPs and the number goes up every year by about 1%. National average 14% Schools in Vermont have a different structure than we do. Their average is about 14%. It's about at the national average. So I think what is going on is we're not providing any of the kids on our casals or very many of them with the skills they need to move off those plans. So we're just adding and adding and adding until they graduate out. Don't know for sure. If I were a vet in man in Vegas that's where I put my money. So talk a little bit about the focus here. Current model what we've got is we've got a caseload model is what I'm calling it. So we get a new student that's identified they get assigned to a special education teacher the special education teacher works with them. What's difficult about this is it's very difficult to absorb new students right now the caseloads for our special educators are around 24 students per teacher if they're having to do a little bit of work with each of those students every day especially since some of them cannot be done in groups they're spending about 15 minutes per student trying to provide intensive services it just does not work. And I'm focused mostly on the elementary level. High school is actually fairly successful in terms of and I mean that in a good way in terms of special education services. This is focused primarily on the elementary level. So what ends up happening and we've seen the increase over the last couple of years every time a new kid comes in that has special needs that moves into the district all of a sudden we need a new body to go with that kid. New para after a few it's a new teacher and one of the biggest problems that I see with this caseload model is again we are not focused on developing student independence. I cannot give you the skill to become independent with your learning disability with 15 minutes a day of time or less. So what I'm suggesting and this was after a couple of weeks of research this was going out looking some of what are considered the best models and the state is moving over to what they call a cohort or an embedded model. So we take one special education teacher and then to three elementary classrooms. They work as a team with those three elementary teachers looking at the needs of the students that they have. Working out what the structure is for the service delivery is it co-teaching can you get a group of these kids together across these classes that all have a math disability and work on them in a group for an hour. Above and beyond what they are already spending in math class and one work in the triage and they work that out together. My question is with one teacher assigned to three classrooms I'm wondering how much that I mean first of all the principal teacher in that classroom is then having to manage these kids if we have 21% or even 15% it's a lot maybe behaviors or this or that a lot of differentiated instruction and does that teacher then does that take away from he or she teaching the kids who want more or who are need higher level teachers? The way to reduce that disturbance if you want to put a name on it in the classroom is to provide these students with the skills so that they don't need those supports anymore which we are currently not doing. How does this model change because we are still working out the personnel piece of it and that's something I can talk with folks about a little bit later in the evening is right now our special education teachers have an average case load of about 24 kids per teacher if we move to this model it will be 16. They have more time a qualified person who specializes in helping students with these disabilities has more time to actually spend with them with a very focused goal of providing the students with the skills they need to be independent. So that's a pretty significant decrease. The other piece for at least the transition year which is why there's the two little stars next there is that we put one pair of professional per cohort in addition to one special education and the team can decide where that pair of professional goes what's been happening in this district and districts across the state which is one of the reasons for Act 173 is they're in a managing model so every time a new student comes in because we can't really treat their need and get them better we throw a pair on them to manage the behaviors or the symptoms never cures it they're here but every time you get another kid with high needs you gotta throw another pair on them what this will do is allow the team together to be focused on their kids and their group as a cohort triage who is the highest need student what do they need for services as they're working with the students as the students are improving and progressing what they can do is say oh our highest need student now because of the work we've done doesn't need the services they did before to shift those services down to either somebody that came in or somebody that could use a little bit more that's been identified but the pair of professional is there to be a support when the teacher is not especially for those first couple of years because we've got a high population now this one to three ratio was not picked randomly the ratio in most successful models around the state is one to four why did I choose one to three well because we've got a higher percentage of students in the district that are on IEPs that's a little bit counter balanced by the fact that we have a lower number of students in a classroom than the districts we're comparing to we're around 17 and 19 at the elementary level where the schools that have put this model in the place are 25-ish on give or take a kid or two so that was why the one to three was chosen and again the biggest piece of all this is this changing student focus we are not managing behaviors we are not checking off a list that I have provided my 15-20 minutes of service to this student today we are going in and saying what is the student need this student reaches out when they get frustrated and hits other children well that's a very specific behavior well we now have time to go after that very specific behavior put some intensive time into it so that hopefully within a few weeks that behavior has changed the student doesn't need that intensive support anymore the other piece to talk a little bit about this we've had this huge growth in paraprofessionals we're up to 20 paraprofessionals across the elementary schools when we first started to work on this budget I had folks coming in saying they needed to add another 7 for the elementary level alone which is one of the reasons why this hit critical mass even though we've been looking at it for a little while the paras are great people but they don't fix the problem they manage it we need to be shifting what we're doing more to the professionals that can really focus in on the kids needs and provide them what they need to be doing one of the things about the paras that we have right now is that a lot of them are one to one when I go around and I do my observations the students that they would do not need one to one paras they might need a one to one for part of the day they have a particular struggle in math or they have trouble changing their clothes to go outside for recess that does not necessitate a one to one para all day under this model the paras can float around in the math time with the student that needs it shift over here at a later time in the day to help toilet this student whatever the needs are they can set that in that way so the indirect goal here is to stop this double digit increase of cost that's been happening with special education direct goal we do what we've got at it to start helping kids and getting them off the plans the indirect goal is it'll save us money we've gone up I believe 37% in the last of our special education costs Elaine I have a question so this is very reminiscent of probably five seven years ago when the previous superintendent was doing the same thing for the same reasons and I'm just curious that was the failure because that didn't happen the focus didn't change okay because there was the whole talk of now we're going to have the special educators working with the actual teachers maybe co-teaching some and then there was some beautiful planning and there were some protocols that I pulled into the model that were developed from that time for whatever reason it was never followed through on the protocols were never put into place and the one piece that was missing was where the focus was we're not managing kids that's not the goal of an IEP an old goal of an IEP is to get you independent so what I would like is I would like to see if we're going to go with this model and if we can if you can get the budget to do that is then I want to see this is my benchmark we are now currently this is where we're going this is how I'm going to measure it so that we can hold you accountable so you've created this model give I want to see some projections of where you think you're going to be in two years from now so that we can go to the voters and say okay you gave us this money this is where we said we'd be here's where we are alternative is if we don't go to this model no I don't you're looking at a 24% increase next year for special ed if we stay under the old model with no positive outcome for kids but I'm just saying that we need to be able to track if we're going to do something just like five, seven years ago we shifted over you didn't shift over that was the problem there were good intentions there were plans and processes to have something in place so that we follow this and this is maybe our work as a board to make sure that we're holding your feet to the fire to say okay you're going to give us some idea of what your benchmarks are in terms of improvement in special education I'm not asking for any money for this change okay and that's fine but I think we need to see is this going to work to see that this actually reduces the results that you're hoping for the special education team already did that work it was in the end report what they did is they went off they developed a rubric because what they are looking for as their ends goal their ends goal is that over the course of time students will either come off of IEPs or the severity of their IEP will be reduced and so they developed the rubric they actually went into their software system that they used to create the rubric they actually program in where they can put in the numbers to track the rubric so we have numbers to be able to track this over time so that was our again we talked about putting a structure in place and then the next step so that structure was put in place last year awesome questions by the way I'm glad you brought that up so say what you measure is the percent of students on IEP what percent graduate from their IEP you're no longer needing IEP say that's what you're measuring how you do it that's you so the two things that they are looking at and again the way to remember we talked about it would be nice to put the ends in the hands of so the two things that they are looking at is they are looking at the number of students that come off IEPs or the reduction in the severity of the IEP and they have a rubric to measure that right within there so that's all we need to know and my expectation, my hope is is that they are sitting in front of you during the ends piece in a year so good pieces I appreciate the reality and the big fact is we can't keep doing things the way we're doing we're not getting the kids advancing and the costs are just going through the rub investing again we're going to get to the numbers in the next slide next big piece of this all these things that we're trying to do to meet the ends to meet what's in the continuous improvement plans to meet what the expectations are that the state and nation has for us one of the biggest pieces is investing in curriculum development and delivery now one of the reasons when we look back at why is the high school struggling a little bit at least in terms of performance on these tests and exams most districts have a K to 12 director and along with that director director has a pretty good sized budget for professional development right to pay people to come in to work with the teachers to improve how they teach to facilitate meetings with the data so that the teachers can kind of inform the instruction where am I weak where am I strong what do I need to do about it teaching team to kind of address these issues this has not existed in this district it is not a surprise to me that the academics are a little bit better than they are without having the structure in place and this is looking back years so it hasn't been there now it would be nice to bring in a K to 12 curriculum director I'm not asking for that I'm going to be asking for something different because I built a structure to try to compensate for the lack of a K to 12 curriculum director I have a K to 12 coach in mathematics I have a K to 12 coach this year in ELA and we also have at the high school we have a director for interventions and the three of them have been working together the last couple of months in the role of a K to 12 curriculum director put out and pulled together a nice professional development plan based upon the testing based upon the needs that they are seeing and the kids and I think I shared that with the board the beginnings of it a little while ago but where the investment is going to be is to bring in outside facilitators next generation science standards and how you teach that to kids and how you get them to meet those standards that's a pretty darn specialized field but I was in science and I knew it really well at one time but you are better off having somebody come in who specializes at who works with it every day to work with the faculty to get the curriculum in place and to teach them the process of teaching next generation where it's supposed to be to get things up and running quickly we are better off having facilitators come into the high school work with them to pull together the threads of the curriculum that they already have and join it together what they should have meet those full curriculums and then sit down and work with them with the new assessment pieces that we built in over the last couple of years and really assess how the kids are doing and adjusting their teaching strategies to kind of match what the kids need to get it in have it happen one of the things when we invested last year we talked about track my progress we talked about the fact that they were starting to do the interim assessments each year we revealed from that testing that this team revealed when they were sitting down with folks and looking at it is we've got a real problem in terms of reading across this district there was a high percentage of students who cannot read well at all and so one of the needs for a facilitator and this is a longer term one is to have somebody maybe from the Stern Institute come in and work with a very specific group of teachers in a minute to get them up in terms of how they teach reading to kids they used to be trained in it at one time there was a lot of turnover so that training has kind of gone away a little bit but in grades K to 3 and at the middle school and high school level there are real problems in terms of students being able to read well we recently had a three year I believe reading training this is pretty these people were here a lot the teachers would remember that this is pretty intensive training so what we're looking potentially based upon the assessments is that K to 3 teachers and then K to 12 the special education teachers because by the time those kids get a little older that's pretty much where they end up so we put a lot of time and a lot of release time and this and that into professional development in the last two years where is all that time going so at the elementary level and again elementary is a little different than high school high school you can lead multiple strands because I have a teacher that teaches science that teaches the teach math elementary is a little more difficult because the teachers teach multiple strands so you can only do one maybe two things with them each year whether or not at the last meeting when we talked about the ends half of this district is currently jumping forward with leaps and bounds that had never been seen before and that's across the three elementary schools they were lucky enough that they had UVM come in about five years ago help them develop their curriculum they were struggling a little bit with implementation so the principals pulled together to make that happen they jumped on to the bandwagon and we started talking about formative assessments and getting the track of my progress and the interim assessments in place and they've been using that data to kind of address the needs of the kids and that's the reason that you're seeing the improvements so if you go back to that ends data you're seeing that 5% improvement each year in ELA and math at the elementary levels it's because of that work what happened at the high school we kind of talked about that there were some mandates that were put on them and a couple of the teachers that were in the audience at the last meeting actually spoke up about where their time was being spent it was on the proficiency based graduation requirements and the standards based report press that had to happen so they were spending pretty much every available minute doing that work that work still needs to be carried on still needs to be advanced still needs to be smoothed out so that's the focus for next year and then part of it is getting these facilitators in place that's a good question other before we jump into the actual numbers now you're saying that most districts have a curriculum director you're suggesting going with these outside facilitators I mean I'm just thinking you know is this a band aid or should we really try to fight the bullet to get a curriculum director there's pros and cons to both both will get us where we want to go if I go with the facilitators the work it's done quickly especially at the high school level we can do multiple strands at once I know that I've got the best and brightest in terms of the facilitators coming in that are up to speed on everything that's happening currently right here and now once they go then the question becomes is the real need is you got the curriculum done now you're at the top of the pyramid you're working on teacher quality piece and by that I don't mean to say that our teachers aren't quality but in terms of delivery I'm helping them improve how they deliver instruction to kids so that it's more impactful I've got coaches that are currently in place that can do that and do a pretty good job the reason that I worry a little bit about bringing in the K-12 curriculum director yeah I'd love one but they are not going to be as up the speed on each of the pieces they're going to end up bringing in the facilitator anyway to do the work on top of the expense of having the curriculum director and then once the curriculum director is done and I've already got the coaches here what happens to them another question is do we let them go after? or how you keep these curriculums up to date say you know five years after you're done with the facilitators do these curriculums need to be updated every five years they should be checked every time that they are updated somebody should come in and work with the staff I just want to make sure that you that we're doing if we're going to invest in it let's invest wisely and if we need a curriculum director for the long term just really think about that instead of pushing it off and then having to hire one later on well a curriculum I have an equivalent structure for the coaching piece and the improvement piece right now we can do this with facilitators but it ends up like I said my worry is that in two or three years it's going to be the first position cut when something comes up because the curriculum is done and the coaches are carrying out the work with the faculty further and more importantly that I'm not going to bring in a facilitator who is not going to actually train the staff so they can do some of this for themselves and the piece that the staff need to learn to do for themselves is that the PLC is the professional learning community you have department heads at the high school they should be leading the data and analysis data analysis and discussions with the faculty in their departments and helping them kind of hone in on where it is they need to improve and leading the questions about okay in the last couple of years the kids have really done horribly on these standards how are we going to teach it differently this year and if we teach it differently this year and it still doesn't give us the improvements we want then we know we've got to reach out to the team and say we've got some professional development needs and so we start to get that flow back up so we're developing a professional development program with an actual professional development budget to support those needs in that instance so the facilitators there's a lot of there'll be a lot of costs up front still cheaper than a curriculum director not by much in the first year it'll be cut in half probably by the second year but there'll be an ongoing need you know as those curriculums get reviewed especially with Common Core usually they update it every four or five years you know to have somebody come in and help them revise they try not to change that now they've done a lot of research on it for the reasons that they try not to change it is because it's hard to hit a moving target the first couple of years it came out every year they changed the standard and said dude we just bought all these tax books we've got all this stuff to support this and now you've changed it to this over here and now we've got to retool the factory no but very very good insightful questions again these are our best guesses they are reasonably calculated to produce they are not unreasonably calculated that's what you want to be worried about can't guarantee a thing but I can guarantee that all these things are more likely to get us where we want to go than what we're doing now so divide the numbers piece what we're looking at to support all this again there's no value statements on any of these as we go through them it's just what people are asking for remember that last year Brookfield was struggling a little bit so instead of having this co-principal model where we have three principals who spend most of their time at RES which is what was going on given the increase in enrollments that was happening at the smaller schools we said and the fact that we're building a preschool you know that might be a really good idea if we had a principal at each school because they have licenses and capabilities that allow them to do things that other people shouldn't be doing that we're doing in their absence so there's a liability aspect too just to have those principals in those schools was vitally important what is happening is we have the Randolph elementary principal who feels like she's lost a lot and she has she's not having the support from the Brookfield principal or the Braintree principal as much as before is asking for an assistant principal now the assistant principal benefits and that number up there is for benefits as well as you know salary so $127,600 there was a behavioral interventionist last year when I talked at the budget time when I talked about splitting them up you know they wanted the assistant principal at that time they came back and said well you know we'd rather have a behavioral interventionist so we did get them the behavioral interventionist that person would have to be given up if we were the small but that would produce a little bit of savings there you get the total cost increase at Randolph elementary down to $916 at Braintree elementary if you go by the numbers right if we do this middle school preschool move they would have a teacher come over from RES that would mitigate you know their increased population that would be a zero cost they have an interventionist right now again we're trying to move folks out of the the title budget right the title funds who is still 0.2 in it would be $16,000 to move that person out and this is one that's directly related to the board's ends increasing the library and to use two days per week at Braintree elementary to support the digital literacy curriculum that they created last year right technology is the board's end curriculum we need the resources to be able to actually deliver to the kids so the total increase cost for Braintree elementary we're looking at $29,930 Brookfield elementary well they already got their person last year to deal with their increased enrollment they got a regular teacher last year but the same thing to deliver that digital literacy curriculum the librarian would need an extra day a week $15,000 why is that number different from the Braintree number there are people currently in those positions one has been around here longer than the other so that's a good question preschool costs so there's a lot of shifting going on in terms of teachers if we have this middle school model going to place and we go with this preschool model we have the structures in place at all three schools now that we got a bolsterm a little bit the half time teacher that's currently at Braintree would have to increase the full time same thing at Brookfield and then we'd need a full time pair at RES and then there's also some room renovation work that has to be done to support the younger kids they need extra plumbing, extra bathrooms extra seats and some extra supplies for the playground to kind of support their needs in terms of what the state would require so the total jump to get that preschool in so again, full day preschool for 4 year olds at each of the elementary is on the 75 and the goal of this is to reduce the ideas that will help them later on adjust so do we have statistics of students that have gone through the preschool program and how many IEPs they have in relation to students who have not we could pull them but we haven't had a full day so it's hard to tell at this point I wonder if that's something we could track to see like is the preschool actually making a difference they'll be tracked in the same way that the other IEP students are that system is in there we identify the students early usually it's kind of interesting the ones that are coming in now into the preschool program as well as kindergarten the biggest need that they have is speech therapy which is one of the things having the reading training the reading specialist working on the reading at preschool should help so this like hopefully is an investment in reduce costs later on when we originally looked at this we talked about trying to improve the academic achievement of the students but we also are talking about trying to make those IEP students independent skills to be independent this was one of the pincers in terms of trying to fight that battle trying to provide the services good question so if you look at the totals across the elementary so these aren't in addition to what we just talked about this is just summarizing together the three elementaries we're talking about 26660 the other piece that's in there you've got the subtotal of the three elementaries the other piece that's in there that we didn't talk about is they are the facilitator to get the science program and next year they need supplies to do that the facilitator has come back and said about $1500 per grade based upon what you already have that's just to have the materials for the science program RUHS right we talked a lot about the reasons for the middle school creation so I won't go into that again unless people have questions but to kind of make this happen minimally we need two teachers they have some capacity with their teaching staff there's one person who can be moved down because they do have small class sizes nothing wrong with that it's great but there is some capacity to absorb so two teachers and then conversion of our assistant principal right we've got an assistant principal or principal at the high school converting that to a principal to oversee the middle school program a little jump in salary to make it comparable where it should be the other discussion that went on that's not in that total at the bottom is the hiring of a permanent sub they hire quite a bit in daily subs and they have a daily sub every day it would be nice to just have one here permanently it would give them benefits but we talked about changing the structure a little bit of what a daily sub does this permanent sub could set up in one of the areas in the building and cover the classes for two or three teachers as opposed to just one there is not a lot of benefit for a daily sub they come in they are not educators even if they were teachers they'd have a difficult time teaching a class for one day for another teacher they're basically just caretaking the kids so there are a lot of models that you can use if the kids can show up they can see on the door that their teacher is out they have their assignment for the day they can write it down they can go down to the CAF or the library or one of the labs with computers can sit in there they can do their work and this person can be there to oversee district level so curriculum facilitators what are we looking for next year with this budget we're looking at a reading facilitator to come in that K-3 and then the K-12 special education folks right provide training for them in reading to try to address the reading problem we're uncovering to go into RUHS help out in ELA take the pieces of the curriculum they've got tied them together with everything that they should have to get it up and running really well get the math curriculum at RUHS up and running really well develop the K-12 science curriculum and then if we move to that middle school model it's also a little fund facilitator to come in and work with them on setting the middle school up for best practice how is it structured how do you work with the kids what are the advisories about how do you do the social emotional learning it's a project it will take a couple years with the first step is getting the kids together at one spot $10,000 increase to the legal line because we don't know where negotiations are going to go or end for next year they may go beyond this budget year because of the drawn out nature of the state negotiations on health care software to support the curriculum work there are a couple of really science programs that are out there that kids are already using want to use Mr. Science right now at some of the elementary but make sure that that's available for all and then $8,000 because of the bandwidth increase when the system will do a one-to-one system with Chromebooks for every kid there wasn't enough bandwidth to support them all using the Chromebooks at the same time so this is an $8,000 increase to support the new costs with the fact that we have upgraded and the other thing that's happened is across the country is there was some fed money that was coming in to help kind of support that that's gone away for everybody now it's about $116,000 with the district level so that is your your cost when I start talking about having the facilitators come in and getting that work done if you were going to bring in a curriculum director they're paid about the same as the superintendent so there's a fairly significant cost difference between the two that $88,000 would be nice to keep that year after year to do the work but if they get the work done next year that we're planning on then getting done that could probably be cut in half and at some point in time in the future get cut down to about a third to bring the facilitators in and then there's any updates or upgrades there was a lot of discussion about athletics it would be nice it's kind of looking at the comparables there aren't a lot of folks out there that have a full-time AD director but there aren't a lot of full-time athletic programs out there either in a lot of cases what happens is that you have a PE teacher who may teach two or three classes if his ed and the rest of their time is AD they're paid as a teacher what I would like to do is just so that our new athletic director who is coming in next year is actually just paid on the teacher's pay scale it would be a $3,000 increase to his current salary that he's coming in at and it would also hopefully help us kind of retain folks for the long haul we've talked an awful lot about with Steve when I was meeting with him about the needs of the turf out there there has never been a turf maintenance program those soils get compacted as the kids are running around on there as the vehicles drive over them they get hard and it means that you are going to get more and more injuries there is nothing but crabgrass out there which is not the softest stuff to be landing on Steve pulled together a three-year turf program it would be $23,000 the first year $13,000 the second year probably about half that again in the third year just to deal with the compaction issues and get stuff growing out there that it should just so that it's safer for kids there was a grounds keeping person that needs to kind of be reinstalled so that's separate from having the specialized crew come out do the turf piece this is the person that does the lines keeps up on all the equipment gets the equipment out puts it out brings it back it was a normal part of here at one time that's what West used to do I don't know I've been trying to track it through the budgets to see what happened to the position but it just disappeared one time so it's putting that back in adding a couple additional hours for the trainer the athletic trainer when we built a room for them they're here for all events with contact sports right we contract out the effort it would be nice to give them a couple more hours after school to help injured students actually work with them each day to help them with their recovery you know something critical happens right then and there and then just to keep in line with what the budget has typically done for supplies and equipment replacement and repair any increase in terms of the cost of having the crews come out and do details I was looking for many so 71,000 some questions on that a lot in the long presentations I apologize for that but again like I said everything I did facilities what they're looking for is we did a lot of work in terms of fixing around the schools but the door hardware does wear out over time and what I'm talking about in terms of door hardware are those panic bars those bars that you push on that open up the door those darn things are anywhere from one to three thousand dollars to replace and they wear out we have a couple of we have a couple of doors and they have to be on them right you can lock the door to keep people from coming in but everybody's got to be able to get out under the fire code there's a couple of doors around the building even though they're locked up because the hardware is old and worn you can pull on them if you pull hard enough you're going to be able to pop the door open the repairs and maintenance are looking for a nine thousand dollar increase just because that's more in line with what that line is supplies it's the same thing as the last couple of years providing uniforms for the workers especially protective stuff you know boots and coats and overalls to protect them from the chemicals that they use desks and furniture replacement there's always been a very minimal amount in there to replace desks and furniture that wears out and gets damaged across the district forty five thousand for equipment replacement in a generator so four thousand of that would be for equipment replacement the forty one thousand would be to get a generator in place at Brookfield it is the school that loses power most frequently we just had to move the kids to Randolph Elementary one day already this year and it would be nice not to do that to know that if the power goes out we can keep them in school lessons can continue and they have flushing toilets in heat if the power goes out we don't have that an increase to rubbish removal because that's what the cost is there were some stuff in the maintenance budgets over time that were never adjusted under special education and again this is under the old model we got some predicted out placements in other words we have students that are need services beyond even after all the accommodations that we tried that can't be here anymore that would be going to out placements that we need to pay for and this is after we've reduced their parrots they had a pair of one to one pair most of them with them while they were here that was the highest step in that tiered intervention with them so those parrots would be a reduction so that number takes the reduction of those parrots into account and then we talked a little bit a little while ago about the biggest need for the youngest kids coming into the district for their speech so we need to increase their speech line other pieces because it goes into strategy for negotiations I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about what those numbers represent but predicted amount needed for the salary increases across the district the 784 the health insurance increase for next year I'm barring anything major coming out of the negotiations which I don't expect to happen this 228 this an executive session I can go into a little bit more detail what it actually means but again some of it has to do with the negotiation piece overall so again big thing about this is we are just looking at expenses we don't have the data from the state to look at what our potential revenue increases are next year that might balance some of this out but it doesn't happen until around the first week of December so we are just looking at potential expenses we don't know what's balancing if we are just looking at the expense piece those are what the potential increases are again just a clarifying question from me last year you presented when we had this dream budget you presented a few things that you didn't truly believe in just they were asks from teachers or parts of the school that you presented to us I'm just wondering that'll be part of this discussion is to get a feel from this body and folks in the audience where this sits and where this stands what they think about the parts and pieces and then I can bring that back to the cabinet and say hey this isn't going to fly now again the piece that I want to point out that's difficult right now is this is just looking at potentially spending next year we've had a lot of revenue increases in the last couple years we've got more kids that have been coming in through school choice our ADM is up in other words our average daily membership how many students we have so we get more money every student we get is worth another $10,000 that we get from the state we don't get those numbers until and so that may very well balance out a good chunk of us one of the things that I do want to point out as you know we're talking about improving the academics and some major changes here to help kids 1.4 million 784 228 there's a million over there close to again we'll talk about those pieces so questions on any of this it's a precursory look at where the discussions are what we're talking about what they're geared to and all of these changes what they're geared to affect in terms of better outcomes for kids and meeting ends questions thoughts how does that compare to last year's increase last year was almost 12% it was a 12% change 11.7 I believe and again this is the this is the equivalent of last year's dream budget okay and how much of a tax increase did that end up being presentation for you for each town I think my tax increase was 200 bucks as a Randolph resident with a moderately expensive house and at this point we don't know the tax no because we don't have those ratios we don't have any of that from the state until early December but what I can do is if you want when we do the next budget presentation is I'll pull up all that data and I can show it to you side by side because one of the biggest discussions last year was the idea is trying to press reset are we committed to making this a district or are we committed to just always keeping things very fiscally tight regardless of the impact on kids but again this is the word that you use I'm calling it the ends budget it's the dream budget so I haven't asked anybody to cut anything at this point in time I guess that's my question as we sort of oversee your work I'm asking what you think is important to keep you're going to throw me the dogs on this and I'm just wondering if there are any parts of what you presented to us that you don't really think we really need yes and again you know I this is my gut looking at things after talking with folks let me pull this back up here so the board has to the assistant principal I don't think is needed in terms of the digital literacy that's important to me it's a low dollar amount it's important to the board it's an end but in terms of of other cuts and things that need to happen you know folks want to get things down that would probably be one of the more likely to go moving the interventionists you know there are things that I can do we can keep them in title I can't guarantee they'll be there next year though again the rule of thought and what the AOE was saying was three years either by three years you've solved the problem or it's such a need that it needs to be in the regular budget so that was the purpose of trying to pull those folks out same thing with this big M but it's small dollar do we want that preschool I think it's critical and I think it's critical and I think the middle school is critical looking at the numbers seeing what's happening in the district I mean you've got very highly qualified teachers that are passionate about the kids that care deeply about the kids they need the structures to help them do their job these are things that will help them with that science programs critical permanent sub not worried about it actually the reason it's in red is because it's probably cost neutral anyway district level depends how fast you want to get start getting things improved at the high school could we come back yeah we could focus just on math I'm just asking what's important to you right so so the two again without talking to the cabinet their input is invaluable the two easiest for me are the digital literacy again the board would have to accept that we're not meeting an end and then the assistant principal and again we haven't talked in detail about the derivations for the salary increases and impact of that should be an executive session because the negotiation needs it does the board have any other questions or comments on this subject if not I'd like to open it up for a public comment when you do this can you for the next one can you just show a sort of spending trend from going back a couple of years or maybe from the time you started I did that I think I have that from last year I think I went back about 10 years easy enough did the presentation last year and that usually and the number of students we have an idea I think for me just an initial look it's almost a 8% raise last year we had went with 12 almost 13 or something like that and it was kind of a promise to community that because you're going to do this we probably won't have another huge increase half of what it was I'd still say that's kind of high I would say based on what we were saying last year I would have expected closer to a 5% or something like that as a reasonable task but I think from my point of view it's kind of high well this again, dream budget but that's part of the reason to do this is to get a feel for what people feel is important and what's going to fly and one of the things that we had kind of talked a little bit about too was the idea is as a board one of the things that sometimes a board does you can do whatever the heck you want but it's not going over this percent and then what we do is then we take that and we go back and we prioritize what's most important to this year and that's a perfectly acceptable given the way that education funding happens in Vermont too I want to wait until we know what kind of impact this really means on people's property tax bills because you know we we are a receiving town and so what will this actually look like in terms of the value of somebody's house and their actual property tax so I did those calculations again this year so we don't have that information so we'll have to wait but it makes it awfully hard to judge okay you went up that much but what is the real impact on the average person's property tax and I have a clue at this point those numbers are going to be anything else in the board or about no that's what I was going to ask you guys so state your name and ask so Julie Heimann I taught 5th and 6th grade for 14 years in 6th grade math I have some thoughts about the middle school change I just am not ready to articulate them is it possible to just send the board an email with my thoughts at another time to say to communicate my thinking yeah I think that's fine okay thanks I'm a parent of a 5th grader and a parent of an 8th grader both here in Randolph I definitely have some questions about the middle school and some concerns that I also would like to articulate I came to this meeting to hear people's thoughts and I definitely appreciate your time but I don't think that I'm ready quite yet to really speak to what all of those are it's a lot to take in right now so I'm going to be doing a forum this week it's the 15th so the high school has theirs I believe on the 15th I usually hang out with them and I'll hang out for an hour or so afterwards so if you want to connect directly with me or the board in a month or if there's things you can usually communicate directly with Laura are you going to be presenting this in a community forum sort of parts of the it is such a huge change that I think I'm sure there are lots of people who have questions and that's the same process that we did last year the goal is is that when we get to the annual meeting nobody shows up because they've already heard it all I mean I guess that's just the biggest concern just in thinking of putting all of this together for a next year is really concerning I don't feel like there's a lot of time and I do feel like I have to speak for the 5th and 6th grade team at Randolph I mean they're amazing and I think they do an outstanding job challenging our high kiddos and I think they do a really good job helping our kiddos that need support and I know that I'm not being articulate right now but I feel like our kids are in a really good place when they leave 6th grade and I just I would hate to see them lose a year of what I would consider it to be excellent school but it's just yes but I'm you know the other thing too is if there are ideas that come up because it's nice there's some beautiful ideas that come from the community at times oh we didn't think of that something that we really need to consider you can connect with me too I'm pretty easy to get a hold of and pretty open in terms of people coming so if other ideas come up along the way anyone else? so I actually have a question so this is new to me hearing this this evening about the middle school I think I must have missed one of our board meetings I apologize but has this had input from our current 5th and 6th grade teams at the schools and the principals? it's had input at the cabinet level I believe because we were going to potentially talk about it tonight until we were kind of sure if we could even do it we had to check to make sure that there was space that it wasn't going to have a huge impact on the cost of staffing that we weren't going to be losing people we wanted to get all those logistics done first before we started talking about it more so those steps are yet to come so I was able to sit here tonight in front of folks on camera and be able to say that if we do this we're not losing staff we wanted to make sure that that was a question we could answer before it was brought up and I certainly do appreciate that because I think that the staff in these schools these elementary schools are excellent as a parent of two who have successfully graduated from 6th grade I just I guess I'm sensitive to these teachers that are at that level and then it seemed like a very easy comment that they would just drift down to a different grade level teaching and I just would want to make sure that those teachers want that that's something that's satisfying to their careers or as we think about that transition over here whatever teacher they may need we have excellent teachers over I can speak the Randolph Elementary and I would hate to lose any of them because they have to drift down to a younger level or lose the position they have so I guess I just want to be sensitive to the teachers what they want and to make sure that they have feedback and to this process as well that it's not just happening at the cabinet level would be my request no that again the only reason that it's been on the Hashash as well as the special education piece is because we were working out the logistics to be able to answer questions about what impact this is going to have on. I wanted to make sure that we understood that fully before it was brought publicly so we had the principals kind of reach out for the first time and it was on Friday right at the PD day and kind of talk a little bit about it and this is the beginning of that conversation potentially but recognize one thing that is very important the middle school and the full day preschool they tie together it's hard it will be incredibly costly to do one without doing both so we still could but it will change the matrix of cost if you decide oh no we don't want to do this but you know the other is okay or a nice person so that's a part of the discussion of the law with the community you know kind of going on top of Ash's comment and has anyone thought about you know the general public I mean this is kind of a cultural shift I mean these you know 6th grade has always been at the elementary school for years and it seems to be really working well right now take a look at your 7th grade and tell me that well that's what I'm saying is you know the high school the high school seems to be the issue area where the K through 6 seems to be doing exactly what everyone kind of wants them to and is this shift going to disrupt those 6th graders too much and that education portion of it anything's possible but I can tell you that the middle school model is well researched for decades if not centuries there is a reason for it one of the reasons you know it's very hard to point at a very specific reason for why things are lagging when you're dealing with people but like I said earlier one of the reasons that we may be having some of the problems at the high school level that we have is because we've had to reduce the time on learning to deal with the social and emotional needs that those kids still have because we didn't meet them in their earlier grades but not at the elementary level specifically at the middle school it's a good argument I've got data to support it can you prove it with people that it's absolutely true? I'll be the first person to admit that but I I don't want people thinking because this is the first time that it was discussed that there wasn't a considerable amount of thought that went into this middle school idea we've been actually discussing at the cabinet level more in the need in terms of addressing the needs of the kids and social and emotional needs I guess as speaking more as a community member than a board member my biggest concern with that is what Brian touched on earlier with the 6th graders next to the 12th graders and how do you create and I'm not familiar I didn't go to this school I'm not familiar with how things work structurally here but how do you create a physical barrier so there's some separation I went to a middle school a 6, 7, 8 middle school and it was fine it was a great place to learn but it was physically separate from the high school I mean it was the athletic fields were in between there was no sharing of hallways or bathrooms so I think that's a big that'd be my biggest concern so the goal and the trick like I said that plan is already there is we pull together what the middle school team would be the development team with the facilitator and they would call that out and we take from the open forums and the community discussions what the concerns are that folks have and either we're able to address them through that model in terms of those discussions or if we can't then maybe the community doesn't support but that's the stage we're at now so we're introducing it we're talking about what the financial impacts are what the personnel potential impacts are now it's time to take a good hard look but ultimately it's your decision to do that it's whether or not the community decides to pay for it I won't do it if the community is not supportive of it because it just stuff won't fly I will come back and say you didn't help me meet the ends if you beat me up on the scores but that's far for the course that's part of the give and take I think for parents in the community knowing that their sixth grader isn't going to be sharing a bathroom with the 12th grader that would be probably understandable nobody's going to sign up for that I think it would be an interesting discussion as a community to hear from the fifth through eighth grade teachers for instance and just the give and take of what their perceptions of the kids in those age groups need because it is an important discussion both emotionally and academically and every other way just writing down is important it is just I look at the time we really should move on are there other questions or concerns before we move to the next item thank you for an in-depth presentation with lots of think about it so next we've got discussing negotiations with unions that's you something you wanted to do in the open session there's a little bit kind of in closed session kind of a salary increase piece and whatnot for a better budget planning but a lot of it is just waiting to see what happens there has been a little bit of discussion by some groups about whether they are going to hold off a year if they come to a decision if they come to a conclusion of not having it be enacted next year what impact it is having on everybody's budget process as well as the fact that everybody across the state because of that negotiation on health care has to renegotiate their CDAs with the teachers and they can't even start that yet we're already starting in October so there is some discussion about that if any of that comes to fruition I'll let folks know but that's something they could easily decide the union that state school board could easily decide together whatever we agree to let's not start it until next year so that people can get on with actually planning what they need to plan my suggestion whether or not we're kind of in a holding pattern until January next on the agenda is to discuss a possible adjustment to a policy to recognize staff we started talking about this at the last meeting I believe we should get a copy of our policies and look at it Paul and I both have something that we saw that caught our eye in regards to this I when I looked at the governing style of the school board out of 4.1 .2 it says the board will direct control and inspire the organization through the careful establishment of broad written policies reflecting our values and perspectives and to me inspiring an organization is part of that is to recognize the staff at certain parts of their work with us Paul looked at the essential works of school boards and also had some language in there that seemed to yeah so last time I brought up that it was a best practice for boards to recognize staff members and I doubt that was a best practice so I looked into our school board manual if you will it gives recommendations to boards and in it it has indicators of success under the monitoring and learning outcomes and one of the indicators of success you can go to a page that has different indicators it says indicators of achievement and school quality it lists several one of them is identify teacher expertise experience and recognition awards and so it seems that if our association is recommending for us to do these types of things and our superintendent has said that there are several awards he would like to see us start to award it would make sense for us to start to do that and I think Laura has pointed out our policies do not say anything about not doing something along these lines and in fact would encourage us to do something along these lines and so I would again propose that we move forward and start finding a way to recognize staff members that have lanes of recommendation is there any other discussion on this I was the one that brought up but before my concern was that it seemed like your concern was that you were going to we needed to give somebody some award because we helped negotiate the teachers contract and my feeling was giving somebody a gold star after you pulled their salaries down or removed their healthcare is not going to really it's not going to do too much for morale and I didn't understand that it's Lane that's going to be telling us who he wants us to recognize that is more appropriate in my view is that because he is responsible for managing staff and if he wants to have us present the award or whatever I'm totally on board in the minutes or something like that or trying to actually tell you what he wanted what he would have recommended but they kept getting erupted perhaps he would like to share what he had shared I think the ones that I have seen that happen most frequently in terms of board recognition the first one and probably the most important one at least to me is that September meeting is the teachers that have achieved tenure having them in have a little kind of meet and greet before they're formally recognized give them a little gift because that's a huge step that's equal to the doctor getting the cup it's a big deal other pieces that have been recognized and I think are incredibly important is longevity years of service usually starting at year 25 maybe five years thereafter and then retirements those are recognized on that very first day of school kind of the opening day one of the board members will come in and say a few words it's usually done at that time will be ideal by recommendations 25 it wasn't much to ask are there any other discussions or considerations on this topic are we ready to present a motion about teacher or staff recognition in the ways that Lane has suggested we do so well he's going to do the work right he's going to tell us we order at me yeah you're going to so you just want us I just want clarification you just want us to be there it's not the ones doing the actual the award it would be from the school board on the school on behalf of the school board it's the school board's recognition okay so Lane is suggesting when those would be would say a teacher is retiring Lane would notify us that this teacher is retiring and then we would write a card for this person and give whatever we've come up with award or whatever that is given to this person for retirement but we would be the people actually doing the card saying thank you for your service to our school for that kind of thing Lane doing it would be us but Lane would be telling us who is we would know that who's the same thing as he was saying the 10 year part he would tell us who they are and we would recognize them at the beginning of our board meeting whatever sort of event that the teachers would be present for well again I guess I still sort of feel like that's the manager's responsibility not really I mean I'm okay with us I guess moving into that realm but I mean I just was at my annual meeting today for my organization not the board of VZAC that is awarding it's the CEO of VZAC calling up people who've done 20 years people who've done 35 years that's who does it but that seems to say that we do it right but that is not our policies these are our policies that is our policies are right here so we can add a motion to add a policy for this and then that would solve the problem we could I'd like to move to add a policy to recognize that to modify the policy but didn't the policy what you read to me seems like it that's more appropriate it covers it so I can it's within the one very underneath this policy that we already have in place and since we aren't restricted from doing it therefore it's okay but do you guys understand my reason for being concerned about it he is responsible for it's that making sure you're clear on who is in charge of who we are in charge of him we do not direct staff and this just it makes me a little uncomfortable I will just say it makes me a little uncomfortable because this is sort of a you're thinking of it as sort of a morale boosting or I mean gesture a gesture of respect right and maybe I'm reading too much into it but I just and again the negotiations if we look at our policies and if you understand how we're governing that's really we're there in support of him as he negotiates but he's the one deciding and he's got to work on providing that morale that his relationship with his staff people and yes we need to as as the board it would be nice for some of us to be there in recognizing staff but that's his realm and I just want to make sure that we're staying clear with what we're doing and the purpose and what is what the concern is and initially I thought the concern was well negotiating and and you know teachers might not be feeling really that's our only interaction with teachers but our interaction we aren't supposed to be directing teachers he directs the teachers so that's where I want to make sure that we're very clear with who's delegating and who has what authority and responsibility our responsibility is to be directing him he directs his staff from that point on unless we want to throw out our governance style and choose a different model but if we're going to be following this model of governance we need to follow it that's my only concern so and this seems okay I'm willing to go with it you can vote no too if you'd rather so I make a motion that we move forward and participate in recognition of our staff and teachers when they hit milestones or other special occasions as a board second is there any further discussion around this motion can we add to that is by recommendation of the superintendent into the motion I will modify my motion that you will work collaboratively with the superintendent on those recognitions do I have a second for the amended motion so I hear a motion proposed that we would in accordance with the superintendent's recommendations we would as a board recognize teachers for tenure retirement and perhaps longevity for the superintendent okay Linda you got it I'll figure it out okay are we ready for a vote all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay so the motion is carried next we have a second read we need to accept EL reports to point 1 and 2.2 we looked over them last month I know I personally went into the superintendent's office the reports there any further documentation I personally can have no other questions for Lane do I have does anyone else right now have questions for Lane on these reports is there a motion to accept EL reports 2.1 and 2.2 as written can we discuss last time I'll make that motion all those in favor aye any opposed okay next we have a report on BSA and your meeting which Anne and I attended last week and Lane did as well Anne is there something you would like to report on yeah I would say the keynote speaker was I thought very very good and in listening to it what came to mind for me is it's been several years and I I don't know how many but I think it's been at least 5 or not 5, 10 or 15 years since we went out to the community and came up with our ends and we have been talking about you know we need to connect with the community in order to share sort of how we're doing with our ends I had a fairly lengthy conversation with Lane during the conference time where he was like would be helpful for him to sort of know what the priorities are for the community and so I just felt reinvigorated for just sort of pushing to have us spend some time connecting with folks in our community and revisiting those ends again to sort of make sure we are on track with sort of where we want the district to be many other districts are a lot further behind they're not operating the way we do in that they haven't really gone out to their communities and had those discussions and we have several new board people who were not here when we initially created the ends that we are now trying to hold our superintendent to and even our superintendent wasn't in his position when those ends were developed so we wouldn't my thinking is we wouldn't necessarily redo the whole thing but just sort of I would encourage us as a board to consider just checking back in with our community in some fashion to make sure we're still on track and then as a board also take a look at again we have kindergarteners starting now what is it that the experts are telling us in terms of what skills do they need to be able to pursue their next steps in their lives you know twelve years from now because things are changing so dramatically and there's the keynote had had a lot of resources a lot of suggestions for things to read some things to look at and a whole plan for you know groups to do that if they've never done it before and and when I asked a few questions she said you know if you have done this type of work before it is appropriate to then go out and just recheck in with those groups and make sure that you're on track and that you're looking for are still what the community wants and according to what experts are saying will be important in our future our three year old pre-k's that we have in our district now aren't, our next year aren't going to be graduating until 2035 but it seems like a long time away right and I'm sure things will change dramatically it was framed as portrait of a graduate which is an interesting way to look at it it provided good framework okay consent agenda we need to approve the minutes from our last meeting in October so moved second any corrections all those in favor of approving the minutes as written you say aye opposed okay and then we need to approve professional contracts this is the three essentially the last one on there doesn't have the contract yet because he hasn't had a chance to come in and see Elaine I thought we would Patrick, yeah Patrick Martin he'll be here next time he's not starting now yep so we just have two names here an RUHS physical ed teacher and our ES academic interventionist so do I have a motion to approve professional contracts for these two I make the motion to approve the two contracts second all those in favor aye next we have the superintendent's report is there anything to add to it or to what your presentation was previously I think just kind of a thank you and kind of an introduction Steve Proucher was with us for three years and he's moved on to the Carolinas his new wife got a position at Shriners Hospital I believe she's an occupational therapist and is running a unit down there so we moved down to be here so he has done an exceptional job I have not seen the passion for that position anywhere else that I've been in my career which was always a joy to sit down and talk with him so I wish him well I know his mountain biking adventures are not over at this point in time that was the big question he left are you actually going to go back to work are you going to mountain bike full time I didn't get an answer out of him so he's definitely thinking about it but also to welcome Benjamin Diller Benjamin is coming to us from New York where he was an athletic recruiter for St. Rose College he has a bachelor's degree in education, a master's degree in sports leadership he is coached at the college level and at the youth level and he has stepped in stepped up, he's up and running I ask people to go gently on him for the first year until he gets a full round of athletic seasons under his belt but he's a wonderful addition especially couldn't have asked for better especially given the time of year we're making the transition but I do want to welcome him and wish him all the best the other piece I think that's important to spend a few moments to talk about is there are some commendations that I'm going to be giving out next faculty meeting and that is for the integrated field review that just happened so last week and that was kind of going on at the same time that we had the conference was the AOE with some outside teachers came in to take a look at the schools in the district and kind of rate us in terms of how we're doing relative to the state's quality students we had a fabulous team led by Melinda Robinson and Lisa Floyd who came together to host that event to plan it all out to collect the evidence that they needed to review and to get everything set up for that day so that it was productive and enjoyable and so I want to commend them and I want to thank them all for that work but they will be getting commendations from me for that work kind of all the time to do that it was truly exceptional I'm excited to see what happens in terms of the report that comes out from the visiting team when will that be available for us to look at I have to have my debrief with Lisa and Melinda and I should be able to give you a time usually they try to do it if it's anything like me ask which is what it's based on usually they try to do it within a month they did a lot of writing that afternoon the different teams that were going out looking at the quality standards those are important ones all the other reports were enclosed in our agenda is there anything you wanted to add or have us notice about the financial report? actually yeah financials were good they were where they should be maintenance is overspending a little bit but that's to be expected to get Steve not a maker who's our HVAC person that we hired so a lot of it he's doing a tremendous amount of work on the heating and cooling systems as well as plumbing so a lot of it should be buying the materials units so we're not paying for the actual work at this point in time like we would be if we were contracting out so that's been great but on the very first page if you go down to the bottom so out of the revenue side and you look at line 10 where it says building maintenance fund and you go over to 119,960 that's the cost of Raven and it is complete that includes the demolition of the building and then what will happen with that is that's out of the reserve fund Robin's normal procedures at the end of the year if there's money in surplus she'll replace it and that building is working well and serving the needs of the kids? yeah I mean it's change is tough it's a little bit classroom space it's a little bit larger but the building overall is a little bit smaller but I think they're happy, it took a while to get some of the contractors to kind of finish up the work at the end but they just wrapped up kind of a major electrical upgrade today which was kind of already paid for we're just waiting for it to help them get online some of the heavier equipment they've got but at that point in time they've got a pretty good shape nice Promethean board in there to teach from, nice modern classroom everything's beautiful new so it's a wonderful location for your students do a tour sometime you can do that I'll get the kids to put together a video tour some of the other kids have noticed that my son one of the day after school they walked up the door's open and he noticed that there was a cool new classroom in there so they've looked at it they've noticed they're walking by they even got the sign up Raven too is there any other incidental information for you okay, time for the board evaluation a lot of fours put a three on our inside track but they were good conversations attendance was that everyone here would get a five but mostly fours and a couple of threes I'll start with you now thank you and I believe we do have an executive session both for negotiations and personnel is that correct