 All the mayors, are you ready Adam? Perfect. Calling the Wednesday, January 16, 2019, meeting of the Monthly Rocksbury Board of School Directors to order at 6.38 PM for Apple time. So first item is public comment. I don't see any members of the public. I did just get a text in for our biggest fan, Nathan. Me too. Me too. Oh, yeah. That's probably that'd be. Well, she asked me to read, so I will do so. Per Nathan Souter, thank you for serving our students and our community. As you vote on the budget tonight, please ask, are we doing what is needed to serve all of our children well? If my child were in need of more support, would I be satisfied with what this budget does? You're as truly named as me. OK. So next, well, we just blocked it. So consent agenda. Oh, I do want to just do a quick schedule order. We were thinking about going into moving executive session. I think we're going to keep it where it is for a few reasons. One Grant and Andrew here. And we want to be respectful of the time. And also, who are here in order to respect their time, so she's there in the midst of midterms, and they want to get to study. We will need your knowledge. Adam, you can suffer. So we'll keep the schedule as is, which moves us to the consent agenda. Can I pull? Yes, you may pull the neutral. We approve the consent agenda consisting of the minutes, the warrants, and the budget policy report. Is that what you need? Yes. I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? There's a tight vote. It's not a big one, but we go back in time. So learning focus. Can we have a question? Oh, sorry. I forgot. So my question has to do with, under guidelines for child nutrition programs, first page C, it says information for free and reduced lunch is available on our website. Great. Is it available anywhere else? Also, I believe, but I'd have to check with Jim's beginning of the school year. You get it in your packet. That's what I thought, and I was just worried if this is the only place. No, I believe it's there, too. It's in the beginning of the year. That was my only question. I actually had a question, too. You pointed out, under the guidelines for physical activity, that the district has considerable room to grow considering a campaign to our community regarding physical fitness. Do you have any examples, or maybe elaborate a little bit on what's considerable? We just hadn't done anything. So I think when I was just thinking that if we haven't, in my seven months here, we haven't had any effort to address that letter. And anyway, that I know of, so that's why I think there's considerable room to grow. Just because we haven't made any effort, that's the last part. I had a question, also. At the end, your conclusion is that we are in need. Because of what? Because of, sorry, big one. I was wanting, when we have a report that says, I mean, this essentially says we're not in compliance. Nearing is a nice way of putting it, but we're not in compliance. And so if you can add what needs to be done to bring us into compliance. I can most definitely do that. That's a really good suggestion. Thank you. I have another question. Not specifically about that, but about the superintendent's report. She stated at the beginning that we might have questions that she might answer somewhere else. But it's nowhere on the agenda. So I wondered, there was a place for questions. Right? Yeah, there was. Well, my thinking was, because we had such a full agenda with a first reading of a policy and the budget and the lead. To send them to you? To ask away, and I'll write them down. Right. Then get back to you in a later report. The next report meeting. That's what my intent was. If that's the way I interpreted it. That's the way I interpreted it. But I wondered if you were going to do it here or if you wanted to send it. You can send them to me, or you can give them to me here if you have them listed. Go ahead. I don't think that was your point. Right. Right. Sorry. I forgot to put that down. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But before we go there, what's happened to the federal Child Nutrition Act and wellness fund? I mean, do we have to do anything? We have to accept that report. We have to accept it, yeah. Before we go on to something else. Is there further discussion on the federal wellness and child act? So push or do approve? So moved. Second? Second. Calls in favor? Aye. Yeah, do we have a problem with it not being on the agenda? We can also have people send questions that I can answer next board meeting. That's absolutely fine with me, too. It's just a lot of information, and I recognize that. I just wondered, how are you working? Are you OK with that, Tina? Sure. If we had it on the agenda, I'd be more comfortable, because we're kind of adding that to the screen. Yeah. Are you sending questions, and we'll address it in a second, if that's all right? Yeah, if that's all right. Yeah. And now, I'm having myself down, catching up. Sorry, focus, so open number you, really? All right, so right now, especially at the high school, it's crunch time, and we just got done with summit of week, and now we're in retake week. And midterms, and it's been nice to see, over the past few years, students get more and more adjusted to proficiency-based grading. And so now, it seems like everyone's sort of much better. Like, the whole environment just seems more comfortable with navigating proficiency-based grading, which is always good. And there are also auditions for the spring play, our town, and the sport season is sort of in full swing, and state championships are going to come up in the next few weeks. And those were student celebrations. And as for student concerns and needs, we're both leaving early, so we won't have the chance to be here during the actual reading of the equity policy. But we do want to address it and support it fully. And sort of just appreciate how it thinks about student experiences and perspectives from a really holistic standpoint. And it's sort of just a great commitment that we're making as a community to strengthening inclusivity in our classrooms, and supporting all of our students, and really aligns with our vision and our mission as a board. And I can talk a little bit about the meeting that members of the Gay Straight Gender and Sexuality Alliance and the Racial Justice Alliance and other students who formed the Equity Policy Committee at MHS and how that meeting went. And I know that it was insightful to learn more about the exact workings of policy and also what is the purpose of this policy and how our needs and desires of students can be met by the policy. And I know that we added some language in regards. And our edits are in red here. And we added some language in regards to socioeconomic status so that we can support students address income inequality in our district and also wanted to emphasize marginalized students and marginalized populations. And by bringing students who suffer the most up, we're helping out all students. Yeah. We also are interested in perhaps conducting a survey of the middle school and high school students to sort of gauge the environments in each of them to get hard data and better address student needs. And I don't know if that's explicitly mentioned in the policy, but that is definitely a good next step so that we can best accomplish the goals aligned in the policy. I don't know how it happened, but that pretty much summed up like everything I wanted to say. But I mean, there is also a piece about professional development, which I know is something that Hope and I have discussed several times at these meetings. And so just stressing that and how that is a way to counteract and prevent bias. Also, Hope is pointing to restorative practices, which we've been working with Lysa Noss on the restorative justice. And we think that that's also an important piece of equity in school systems. So do you want to speak more on that? Sure. I know that Lysa and some other faculty members, and even our principal as well, Mike McCrath, are all interested in correctly implementing restorative justice practices in the school district. And I know that the middle school is already working on that. So students will be coming into the high school with experience. And with restorative justice practices, you always have to be really cognizant of the fact that if they are implemented incorrectly, the student body can become really resistant to them. So we're kind of carefully planning this out and working with lots of different students and lots of different faculty members to sort of plan our next steps. Good cool. It's just going to be a long process. Questions? I have one quick question on grading. From the students perspective, what is the difference between the old grading system and proficiency? Is there, does it feel like there's a real difference? And is it something that's understood, or has a four become an A? Well, Hope's never had the O. That's true. I've never known. And Emma only had it for one year. Yeah. So time flows. I can speak to this like a little bit, but like Michelle said, I've only had it for the old grading system for a year. I think there, proficiency-based grading has allowed me to spend more time learning and less time cramming and memorizing for that one big test that counts for 70% of my grade. But then, yeah. I think there is still some confusion, though. But I think that'll dissipate. Yeah. I have a question on that, too. It's a question that I received from a community member who's younger, who's thinking about having kids and raising kids in this community and talking about asking about public schools. And the question was, are Montpelier students finding it difficult when applying to colleges with proficiency-based scores? Yeah, but someone who was up all night last night applying to college. Don't say that. She herself. How could I bring this hand in public? I have a daughter who's a senior like Adam. Yesterday was a deadline, so yeah. I can tell you that. I don't want to speak for the bullet. Do you want to answer that, Emma, since you've had experience there? No, I think you're going to probably say that. So one of the things that we have done extensively, we as educational leaders have talked with colleges and universities about that exact thing. And if you think about the variation of schools that college and universities get transcripts from, it's all over the place. There is no one common transcript. In fact, there's no one common transcript between us and Burlington High School. They're all completely different. So they take academic transcripts and the package that a student sends, and they make the best of it in multiple ways. And so it really doesn't influence college admissions at all. I've been to like 20 college information sessions in the past three years. And at every single one, the college admissions rep makes a point of saying, we get a quarter of our students are international. You think their transcripts have a four-point scale? In the US, there are schools that have an 11-point scale and a seven-point scale. Or no scale at all. Or they get narratives from like Waldorf schools and that kind of thing. It does not matter. In one place, that's when they're in the A and the other. Well, you do it in a school too, because some classes are weighted and so in the animal class. Great, well, thank you. Any other questions? Good luck. Yeah, good luck. Thank you. Thanks. Not that you need it. Thank you. Oh, Emma's already all accepted. I know. I didn't know if I wanted to say that. She's going to Columbia. They didn't mind. Yeah. Actually, I'll use you as an example with this person. Congratulations. Yeah, congratulations. Congratulations. So next up, we have Led Results and Andrew. So, well, it was a copying mistake and I had to redo it. So you want to just kind of go through where we are, how we got there, and talk a little bit about where we're going to do, where we think we might want to go. So the heads of the parents, I'm going to stand if that's OK. I was called when Chris got on the job. I was asked about lead testing. There was a group of parents who had asked previous administration about it and he said, sir, we are one of six districts outside of the pilot program that everyone's probably heard so much about. And that was sort of the business for the first time. We were six districts that had voluntarily done some widespread testing. What we did was, what we've been asked to do by the department, we've done this in conjunction with the department of health. Not in the level, not the same level that the pilot program was, but we call it with questions, what are we doing here, what should we do. So to give you a little background, so we tested all the pictures that were commonly known to be used for drinking or cooking. We did not test every picture in the district. Again, a science classroom sink in a high school is not going to be used for drinking water, typically. So we went through the different schools, elementary schools, except for classrooms, drinking fountains, other sort of nurses office places like that. Again, we did not test all the classes, not required. We met with Michelle Thompson. We recently met with Michelle Thompson. She is sort of the, she is a industrial hygienist for the state. She's sort of the point person on this lead testing. She's done a lot of different people, but she's the point person for this testing. And we, what we wanted to do was do our sampling, meet with Michelle, get an understanding of what we were looking at, talk a little bit about what our options were, what we're moving forward and make this presentation to you, so just to see where we are. We will continue to work with the Vermont Department of Health. One of the things that the pilot program did not do a great job of, not that it is its intent, is didn't really talk a lot about what schools did after they got this information. There was a lot of information about what schools immediately did, but not how they crafted policies moving forward. The state of Vermont, I suspect that we will see something from the state of Vermont that will take recommendations and make them, they will legislate them. The governor has made public comments about testing schools. Again, what that looks like afterwards. I don't think we know quite yet. And this is an ongoing process. As we've gone through this and we've talked about the fact that we've been doing some testing, I've gotten phone calls from some folks saying, hey, I've got to sink in my room, can you come tell me? So that's where we are right now. Talk a little bit about the process with regards to the actual sampling. There are two tests that you do when you're sampling for lead. There is what's called a first draw, which is the water that immediately comes out of the faucet. That's water that hasn't been used for the last eight to 18 hours. The second sample that you take is what's called a first draw, where you turn the water on, let it run for 30 seconds, and test the water. I guess it's the right one. So to give some context of the numbers that we're going to be talking about here, the EPA action level for lead in drinking water is 15 parts per billion. That's what can come from the water system, non-pillar water system. Anything above 15 parts per billion is an action level. They need to do something about that. The FDA has a limit of five parts per billion. So if you go and get a bottle of water at the grocery store, that can have up to five parts per billion. The new Vermont Health Advisory Level and American Academy to get a pediatric recommendation is one part per billion, or less. That is, again, that's still a recommendation. It's not legislature again. Most lead poisoning in conversations with Michelle, most lead poisoning in the state of Vermont come from lead paint. It's not from drinking water. Oh, I misread that. So I was going to say, I thought it came from lead pipes. But you're saying most contamination comes from lead paint. Yeah, I think the source is lead paint. That all being said, it's a university degree that no level of lead is safe or inside the body is safe. So we're going to go through some of these numbers. We will be posting the full results with the actual ledger of the results on the web page. That's one of the things that the state has recommended that we do is share the information. I think that we would have been talking about what, no right time for that is, we wanted to understand what these numbers meant before we just come out there. So at Rocksburg, a small building, we tested nine locations. Our first draw test, within that 0 to 1 part per billion, five fossils came back clear. At three parts per billion, we had two fossils on the first draw. At nine, we had one. And at 10 parts, we had one. Those were those high numbers. Those four at three above, those all came from sink bubbleers. There were bubbleers on the side of the sink. The flush draw for all the fossils down there were below the one part per billion, which is great news that there's nothing that we know of down the pipes on the inside of the building. Again, to go back to those bubbleers, there was a window that in the 80s where some of these fossils, they had legislated a level of lead, but they hadn't made it. It was still allowed in public pictures. Bubbleers according to the Department of Health are notorious for that, having lead residents in there. We have subsequently, for all fossils, all pictures out of a factor, a concern was raised by a parent. And some cautionary measures suggested that we, until we have a chance to talk with Michelle Thompson to really understand the numbers we wrote, that we should close all the fossils, all pictures that had any to be above one part per billion, which we did. That's a relatively new, that happened last week, but it was a, seemed like a good idea that we should do that until we talk to Michelle. So down at Roxbury, those four bubbleers that were at a high level have been, we put signs on them, do not use. Those pictures, I don't think we have. And again, I am not an expert. I'm sorry, I'm still not catching up with you. What is a bubbler? Oh, I was wondering. A little water fountain. Imagine the water fountain that's in the sink. The silver water fountain with like a little knob on it. A drinking fountain. A drinking fountain. Adjacent to it. There's two bowls. There's a regular hand sink, and then there's a little insane basin. Binkley traditional classroom drinking fountain. Yeah, the old school ones. Okay, I can't picture it, but I understand them. I just Googled it. So, those fixtures, unlike some other fixtures that we're waiting on test results for, I don't think those will end. Those will, we're not even gonna try to get those down to one part. Those fixtures are from the 80s. They're just, we've taken them offline. We'll have to talk about what our next steps are. So, this rocks a third. Union. Union, we tested 17 locations. Out of those 17 locations, the zero to one part per billion was 10 fixtures. We had three at two parts per billion. We had one at three. Excuse me, my eyes, that's a terrible one, I apologize. We had three at two parts per billion. We had one at three parts per billion, two at four, one at five. We also had down there a fixture that came in at 23. We immediately shut that one off. Ironically, that faucet was brand new. In talking with the Department of Health, they say that often happens. What happens is you're working on a fixture, you're doing pipes around, you get a high reading. Take it offline, flush it, retest it. We did that with that fixture. The next reading came back at four parts per billion. We continued to run it and flush it. It's actually at the lab now being re-sampled. So, these tests are really difficult and it's not, when you're talking with Michelle, the second you start messing with things, you're gonna, your results can start bouncing all over the place, so. So, where is the actual source of land? Is it in the, is it in the materials in the same? In the solder, in lead water lines. We have lead pipes in union. Pardon? We have lead pipes in union. I do not know that answer. But it was very typical. If you guys live in an old house, chances are your water meeting is connected to your house through a sleeve of lead, straight up lead pipe that has a little bit of flexibility as the ground moves to water lines those days. So, again, the good news in union, all of our plus draws came back at the zero to one. Except for one that came back at two. Oh, I should have brought an aerator for you guys to see. But that's okay. So. So that means you should run the water before you take a three. Well, we can talk about that. So again, we had that one anomaly picture, that new picture, we immediately took it offline, we flushed it, we tested it, right down to the four parts, we're retesting it right now. At union, in consultation with Michelle, one of the first things you do is let's take the aerators off. Those little screens that make your water come out nice and smooth, well, they're screens and they trap everything that's been coming through. So the first step we took, and again, there is no XYZ, before just starting to ripping out plumbing and disturbing lines, and we took the aerators off, encouraged the system, we actually are waiting on the results at union for those fixtures right now. So we'll know in a couple of days whether just taking the aerators out was our culprit. A lot of these were in the 90 edition, so it may be in the fixture, but we'll have, we'll know that a couple of days. I mean, good. What's in the union? If I'm going too fast, just let me know. Main Street middle, you'll notice as the schools get older, there's less sort of sources of drinking water. Main Street middle is, we can sample 13 locations. Eight were the one point, eight were the one or below. We have three at three parts, one at four parts, one at seven parts. Those four of those higher above one point were in the home ground, which is historically, as in talking with Richard, it says, oh, I replace those aerators all the time because it's low water pressure down there and the aerators get jumped up often. Again, we took the aerators out. I mean, because of the sampling requirements, Richard had run some faucets when I came in to take resample last week and so I flushed those out for you too. Yeah, I'll be back next week. So I'm going to pull those samples tomorrow. He's going to do a little flush this afternoon and I'll be back and resample this tomorrow. Flush draws, 10 were at the one or below, two were at two and one was at three. Again, those two's and the three were in that home. Wasn't there one drinking fountain that we took offline immediately? And there was a drinking fountain engine that we took off. That one is a filtered bubbler. We replaced the filter, we're retesting it. We'll talk about the bottle fill stations. And as Libby was directly pointing out, that three part probability on the first and the flush was an old just regular wall mounted unfiltered water fountain. It's 30 feet down the hall from another water fountain that's filtered that you can see. We just shut the water off to it. High school. High school we had 14 locations, 10 at one, two at two, one at three, one at 15. The 15, as soon as we got those results we immediately walked out of that fixture. We were still waiting on the results on that one, the lead test on that one. The, one of the twos was again a new fixture, a brand new fixture up in the Lurid case. Those came back. The high school relatively new compared to the other. They were put in this summer, but again that's sort of jostling the pipes. We took the aerators off. We'll be talking to Michelle. These are sort of anomalies there. So we are again, and the other, the two that came in at two parts per billion was the nurse's office. And I would bring that one. I did not bring that one, but it looks like an old dinosaur tooth. When did they do this 90th edition? So that sink, that's an aerator that's probably close to 30 years old at this point. So we've pulled that, and so the next steps. As I say, we, all these fixtures that came in, whether it was a first draw or a flush, we have put do not use signs on them. The, sort of the next steps it seems in talking with Libby that sort of getting our fixtures to a one part per billion is an admirable goal. And I suspect that one that we may be forced to move to as a state is all opposite. We also need to balance how we get there. That's kind of the next tricky part is how we get there. In talking with Michelle, the idea of taking water out of classrooms where kids in cold and flu season can't wash their hands, teachers can't even know. In talking with Michelle Thompson, she said that fixtures that are below that 15 parts per billion can still be used for hand washing, can be used for dish washing, can be used for putting that out there. We also realized that in talking with Michelle that the only way that you're going to, the best control you have, we were talking about, okay, so how do we ensure the public that we are at one part per billion? We can't sample every day, right? So do you sample at the end of the year while the faucets are being used? Well, that doesn't help you through the school year, but you can't really sample just before school starts because that water hasn't been used the way it's going to be used. So those are kind of the questions that we're looking to the state to help us set those guidelines good, bad, or otherwise we can't be kind of deciding what the best testing policies are. But that being said, she did acknowledge or said that really the best, most consistent, lead-free fixtures are your filtered bottom water stations. That if you change the filters according, not even, she didn't even, I'll look the living, did you correct me why I say something wrong? That it's not even a matter of contested consistently, but change your filters according to what the manufacturer says and what the machine says consistently they come back to being your best source for drinking water. So then we also asked about so the testing. So if we test the faucet and these changes, what's our next, there's no standard of some schools don't really, some do every 10 years. She thought that three, four years wasn't bad sort of range to go through just to get a sense of where you are and certainly any fixture above 15 parts. That was, that's sort of universal. If it's 15 parts per billion, you shut it off, you take it out of service, you replace it, you take your first shot at what you think the appropriate remediation is, do that change, flush it for a week, retest it. We will continue to work with the Department of Health as we go through this. That sort of aerator test that we did, we're gonna find out very quickly when the next week or two, I suspect we'll get those results back that it's just in the aerator or if it's in the packings of the ballots, we'll know that. Or we'll think we'll know that, but at least we'll have an answer to that. And then also what we'd like to do is take these results and post them, set up a mechanism that the public can go in and look to see where their classroom's tested in if they have any questions. It's a scary thing for sure. And it's really my, I have a tough time, sort of that sort of, well, it's not good for you, but as the state will let you have one. And then it's sort of, well, one, what's the difference between one and two? So it'll be great when the state gives a little more guidance to schools. Good, well thank you both for the presentation. Also, if we're doing this, I know we're one of just a couple, six, Bob, six schools. Yeah, just a handful of schools that aren't being proactive in terms of doing this testing and taking action. So, it's hugely appreciated. I saw a couple of hands. Bridget, Lynn, Steve. How was the cafeteria, like the food prep area? The food was, we, and one of the sinks at UES was two parts on the initial draw was a two part. At one of the prep sinks, so we subsequently said, oh, using that until we get a retest on that. One of the fixtures at the Main Street Middle School came in at three. And one of the fixtures at the Kettle Sink came in at three. We got our plumber coming in and replacing that fixture. And then one of the other prep sinks that we had at high school came in at the 50 and not when we had them immediately replaced. Are there other places other than the bottle water stations where filtering at a sink is an option, like in a food prep kitchen? At the standard source, I would imagine so, but I'm not sure how we can look into that. Sort of a residential one, like you have on the kitchen. Right, we kind of have, yeah. Yeah, we need to think about that. Especially in the kitchen. What we've got is what's coming immediately out of the tap. Fortunately, it's the stuff, there's not like we need to put a filter at the building and clean all the water going through. It's sort of isolated. And how, certainly you've seen those for residential use. Yeah. How that would set up for a commercial, I'm not 100% sure. Michelle was quite clear that washing dishes and things in the sink based on our reading, she was looking at our readings in the kitchens and she said washing dishes, like that's washing hands, that's all fine to you. She was not concerned with our kitchens for those purposes. And I think that she was, she, we asked the specific question of how do we balance this potential water drinking versus the hygiene of the kids. And she was pretty. She was clear. She was clear, thank you. Clear that you're better off putting a sign telling the kids, telling the teachers, telling the admission, telling the parents, hey, if you want to be sure, we've got water bottle filling stations sending kids to school with a bottle, but closing sinks in the classrooms that work within that one to 15, the sort of health benefits of one versus the other. Being able to wash the kids hands is pretty critical. And she was not worried about that at all. She said, let the kids wash their hands, put a sign up that says this is not for drinking and then make it part of the routine. The teachers do routines like that all the time to say, bring a water bottle, fill it up at the bottom of the filling station. But washing hands was fine. And again, that's something that we'll have to kind of decide, is that just a sign we universally put up at every faucet? Right, never see. Or do we pick and choose? You know, it seems that the picking and choosing we're never gonna know until we test it and then retest it and you'll have worries if you just put a sign up or a plaque up or something pretty permanent that says drinking water is at the bottom filling stations down at the hallway. Use the, use sinks for hand washing and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Steve? First of all, thanks to both of you for dedicating resources and this. I know it's not like you've done it in your spare time. You've done it in your time, so. It's done at five o'clock in the morning but he's in the school. That's true, okay. So it's your spare time. Oh man, I got up early. So it raises a couple of questions for me. One is when you're testing, I've had water tested wells and such and there's about 4,000 things you can test for. Lead is just one of them and there's some that are much more threatening in a sense than lead at these levels anyway. I'm wondering whether that comes along with a test kit or whether it's something we're gonna do or whether we feel like because the city has regular testing, the number of contaminants can enter between the city line and us is very small. So, no. From this experience and I would say before we test for anything else, we get Michelle Thompson or someone else from the state to say, to have a frank conversation about what we should be testing for and what we will do with the results before we get the results. This is, you know, dealing with people's health and it's important and... Neither of us are lead experts. And we're not experts and... Although we're coming there. So, we do take it seriously and we are. And we are on city waters. Theoretically. Yeah. Except for Rocksbury. But Rocksbury has additional testing because they're on well water already. Yeah, quarterly well testing. Yeah, it would just be what enters between the city trunk and us is what we have control over. Yeah, but again there, it's a matter of perception and we found in notes in former water testing that Rocksbury had some water testing done and there was one of the tests that I found going through four records was one of these process that came in at, in fact, test headed at 11. And it was a little sticky note that I don't know who it was from that said all tests below actual level or something to that effect. We're in good shape. We're below that level. So, but some parents, you know, that's everybody gets to decide where that is. So it will be easier once it becomes. The other question that Rocksbury raises is I'm wondering, you know, we know that kids of the ages of school age tend to not eat paint chips too much. They do breathe lead dust and I'm wondering if UES, whether the, I know we have old windows at UES and Main Street, how much lead mitigation can develop in those? Because it's really the window tracing up and down up and down up and down, that's what creates the biggest lead inhalation issues. Yes, we as part of, there is lead paint in that building. We'll start there. And as part of our preschool program we have to test yearly to make sure that there aren't flaking chips, that the paint is solid and basically we do this down at Rocksbury as well. I'm actually trained as an official EMGS emergency management plan tester. I will tell you straight off I'm not going to do those tests. We are, for $200, we will hire somebody from the outside to make this test to say this is what this person does for a living. I don't really want to be testing for lead once a year. I wonder if that's appropriate or not. I've got the training so I can talk with this person and understand it, but same thing with the lead of the UES VESCAS management plan for my certified UES VESCAS management, the experts to come in in two years, six months. But our requirements are to encapsulate the lead, get the lead, but it doesn't work when you have to make the lead. I believe that the jams have been cleaned up. I'm going to look to, he goes to the inspector that we had, he went and lifted windows and looked in jams and did exactly that. They actually do that. They go and look at the slope side to see if there is dust collected. Other questions? Yeah, thanks so much both Andrew and Libby for getting on this. Is this important? Yeah, it's very important for our kids and we appreciate your product development. Like I said, we post this. We'll get the information that he's going to send out another sort of update I believe to the mayor so let's know where we're at. We will be coming back to you hopefully with a shorter presentation in a few weeks on radon testing. We're having the lead tested for radon. Thank you. Thank you. The next up, the budget presentation number three or four now with grant? Four. Four. It's shorter. Anybody need a heart? It's what you sent, right? No, I'm good. Can you give me a heart copy? I do. Thanks for checking Andrew. That's right. When you said what you sent, you mean what you sent electronically, not anyone on the board. Yes, I'd love one. Thank you. We'll just be abbreviated for this. Excellent. So yeah, since this is the fourth time, we went with a much abbreviated presentation. So unknowns were down to just one unknown and it's not even really completely unknown. I guess technically we can say two. Equalized pupil count, we did get a number from the AOE. We got a couple of numbers. I've gotten two numbers since we last met. But now we're pretty sure it's stabilized. It's not considered frozen. There's still some things like, you know, two school districts might have reported the same student. So you got to reconcile that and say, okay, which school district, really? Because if a student moved halfway through the first 40 days, so they got to reconcile some of that. So there might be a little bit of a change still in equalized pupils, but we're pretty close. The other that you can kind of tell an unknown is the residential tax rate and the yield, because those have to be set by the legislature a lot. But what we have is as good as it gets. So really equalized pupil is the only one which leads us into the changes. So equalized pupils, I was using 12, 25, 26 because that was last year's number. I got 1194, then I got 1245, and now it's 1232. So from last time to this time, the equalized pupil count went up. What's that? 1238. 1238.42. So it's almost 13 kids more than what I had used the last time in that, which is great. It's like between a penny and a half and two pennies on the tax rate, so that's awesome. Expenses, I did make some changes. We had somebody who moved on the salary schedule, which sometimes happens throughout the year. So if that happened this year, then my number next year was off. So I had to change that, a minor change. Health, we had a pretty good decrease because of people changing their coverage options. Career center tuition, unfortunately, went the other direction on us. Our six semester average came in, and it was 11.65 over a three year period, and I had been using 11. So 0.65 times a tech center's tuition is a pretty good chunk of change. So it was almost $10,000 I had to pump up. Roxbury After School, if you remember, in Roxbury they use Bridges, and they have a 21 C grant. This year they charged us $10,000 for that program. Next year we got a call, central one SU calling and said, hey your number next year is going to be instead of 10 it's going to be 25. So Libby and I had a few conversations with a few people, and we ended up settling at 15, so it's a $5,000 increase. We'll have to see what happens next year and maybe it's a great value that was going on there. So I didn't quite get a new increase there. The good news was, small schools grant is actually $6,300 higher than the last time I showed this to you, and that was a correction I got from the AOE. They told me that our small schools grant was going to be the FY18 amount, and actually it's the FY19 amount. Forever. So that was $6,300 more than I showed you last night. So those are the changes. Those changes resulted in Montpelier's tax rate going down almost two cents. And as you would expect, no change of rocks because they are already limited by law. So the tax rate calculation, you have that in front of you. I just pointed out a few things like equalized pupils might change a little bit, but the budget won't. All it's going to do is if the number of pupils changes that are spending for pupils might change a little, the tax rate might change a little, the budget might change a little. Some things just kind of noticed is where I circled there, and a little blue circled. If you look at our equalized tax rate, it's actually lower than last year. So not by much in Montpelier, but a little bit, and a significant amount in Roxbury. So really what's causing the increase, you can really just point to the CLA, the increase in the house values. That alone, if I went back to last year's CLA, the Montpelier tax rate would be 4.7 cents lower than it is. Which would mean that we would actually have a tax rate. In Roxbury, it's 9.7 cents higher than the CLA. So the 1.703 bottom line, bottom right through Roxbury, that's the same as it was, and it's not going to change pretty much the letter, what we do. The Montpelier number was 1.665, it's now 1.646, so it's got 1.9 cents for the rest. I think that's, I think it's a math rate, where I think it's like 2.7% increase in tax rate. You know, if you look at last year, it's an increase of 0.7%. The budget as a whole is 2.6%. Yes. The education spending is up about 4%, because we have less level revenues. If you look at our spending for Pupil, it's only up 2.9%, because we have a lot of 13 more kids than we have last year. So it's 2.9% for Pupil, and the increase in tax rate is about 2.8%. 2.7 or 2.8, I think. So that's 4.5 cents is 2.8, is what we're figuring out. Yes. Okay, so the tax rate implications just to update this slide, so Roxbury's the same, 12 for every 100,000, and Montpelier it's 45 for every 100,000. It was 64, I believe, the last time we looked at it. And then the footnotes, I just kind of updated a little bit, just pointing out the tax impact would be a financial negative if it wasn't for sale. That's a big driver. And then once again, the point that two-thirds of folks get an increase in tax credit, so this is actually kind of a worst case scenario. Discussion points. So what we were hoping to get done today, we have one week, I think, for the window, for morning by log. We have one week. We have 30 to 40 days prior to town meeting day to warn your articles for the morning to be published. I think 40 days is the 24th, I think is the 40 day, and then we have 10 days to get it posted. Because we don't work in a vacuum and we don't have our own warning and our own annual report, we are a little bit at the whim of the municipalities because they had their own internal timelines on when they want us to ship our information to them so they knew the annual reports. I think if we got it to them by next Wednesday, they'd probably be okay. They're already kind of asking us what the tax rate might look like. So what we were hoping is that you could approve the budget today and that amount is what I was showing. You get the $24 million, $73,000 to $18 million that includes the capital fund. If you're good with that, then you can approve the warning which I gave a hard copy to Libby. I can show it. I can show you what those articles look like. I think I sent it to you as well. The third bullet here, authorized minor changes. What that's about is if in the next day I get another Equalized People Conference frozen and it's off a little bit from what I have in here. The wording on the articles is about what the budget is, but it says, and your projected spending for pupil is X, which is an increase or a decrease of whatever percent from last year. The budget number won't change, but that spending for pupil will change if the Equalized People Count changes. So I would also hope that the board may be authorized, Jim, to sign an updated warning if the pupil count changes a little bit, but I have to tweak those spending for pupil numbers and percentages on the article. That way you don't have to read again and if you're authorized to do that, then you can do like we just sent it off to do this. So I'll let you take those actions in one moment, and then the last thing is just thoughts on the informational hearing if you can think about how you want that to look, whether you want it to look a lot like the slides that we did through the public forum, if you have any feedback on whether you want your slides to look like how many slides you want, then we can start working on that and then we'll work on that further. So at this point I'll turn it over to questions and then if you can, if you feel it's appropriate to ask any questions on some of these things. So let's do questions for Grant on his presentation, and then we can move to discussion. So any questions for Grant? Great. So open up to discussion on whether to approve, whether to ask for anything additional. Does the city decide on his tax rate on his budget? I'm arguing with him last time I heard him. The last time I heard it was pretty similar between two and a half and three percent increase. So last time we met we weren't sure about a few factors and we did have Nathan pleading with us to consider increasing resources. I think that in the course of the merger process we projected slash promised that that would help stabilize our spending and I think it's important that we keep the trust of the voters by delivering on that and I think that this budget does deliver on that. This is a really pretty stable situation we have here. We're getting a lot of value for a small increase I think. I do hear where Libby has said we need more resources in a few areas particularly to address challenging behavioral issues, social support and so forth but it also sounds like you're not quite ready to propose specifics in that regard. Except for the coordinator to help us plan it. My inclination would be to follow the lead of the administration and look to next year to make those improvements and stick with this for this year. It's my thought. I agree and this is the year paying more on the bond so it's good to keep it here. Quick question for clarification. The 87K that we were talking about initially that is not in here the 87,000 in fund balance that was in the first budget or two. The fund balance revenue is not revenue sourcing much. So if we wanted to do something ambitious in the face of the incentive going away and we had another sizable fund balance which hopefully we do there may be an opportunity to help with a transition there as well. From time to time I come back and maybe ask for adjustments to fund balance and what that means is you've got a fund balance with this large number and then I will ask you to commit pieces of things. As a matter of fact you can export me and I'll probably come back and ask for an adjustment although this one is just to clean things up in some places we ended up with all the dust so 17 cents in here or 18 cents extra or a thousand here and a thousand there so I want to come back and just say I don't want to change the committed fund balance amount I just want to have you approve that I'm going to zero out some things and clean it up so we can really handle committed projects but at any time we could come in and say we would like to commit X number of dollars for this thing and I would much rather know the specifics of what it is we're asking for because you don't want to ask for something get that resource, use it inappropriately for a while and then try to fix it. It's much better to make sure you know how to use that resource and then get it. I'm really confident that the administration is taking a very careful look at where we have needs in the system and thinking about what resources we need to put to those needs and in fact although we're not going to talk about it tonight the entry plan from the superintendent really just confirmed that a lot of really hard work has already been done and that hard work is continuing to figure out what needs the district has so I want to thank them for that and echo what Michelle said that you know the administration having had the time to do that work already and time to make those thoughtful decisions that I'm comfortable with with the budget and very open to that ongoing discussion over the coming months about what we need and what is appropriate in the budget next year so that we can explain to voters when we figure out that plan we can explain it and sell it and show why it will benefit our kids when we fully understand it. Thank you both for them and the rest of the team for the work on the budget. Tina I also since we're still in construction like the idea that we have a fund balance because you never know what's going to happen in construction and that makes me feel better at this one. Looking at the capital plan we're going to be construction for a long time. Yes. Steve I'm kind of being persuaded by Michelle in terms of the argument you know when I see a number that's coming in pretty low we look at public schools as a whole as having come out of some deep austerity times and sort of a sense of we have to count every single pencil we spend in schools there's a real starvation in public education in general so there's sort of this political backdrop that we have to judge things against and I don't want to I don't want to lose track of that that we have a hole to dig out and sometimes we've set our own expectations for what we think are public schools that's the bigger picture that's the macro the micro level I think what we're seeing are the things you guys just pointed out one is that we have a commitment to our taxpayers to repeatedly earn trust and we do that every day and we have a very generous communities who really support public education and we don't want to take that for granted we do want to honor the values of this community though which are do more, do more, do more do more with public education that is a value in the community and they're willing to spend for it and they see the austerity of public education in America and they don't like it so they want us to do the most the school can do so I think we have to be aware of that but then the other piece on the micro level is that we have a new administration and they are getting things organized they're digging out of a different kind of hole and really making sure that every single thing we do is well thought through and I think we need to buy them a little more time and so I like this attitude I just want to be careful not to lose that bigger, insurer that momentum that I think we all value which is let's make bigger rocks for public schools a model for what a public school can be and thank God we have this equity rudder in the middle of it because that's what we use to make these decisions so I'm willing to be less of a pain in the butt this year on not spending enough because I really feel like we're on a good course and I think that if we can just wait one more year we can maybe have the buffet in front of us a little smarter setup I'm going to use your equity rudder I'll give you credit Steve but I like that Other comments? Questions? I move that we adopt the budget I actually want to clarify before we do that we have a budget and we have a capital plan they're two separate items so we probably need to we need to I think if you have a a motion to approve the budget in 24 million seven three thousand two eighteen that would be fine because you're going to approve a warning that breaks them out it's okay why don't what we have an execution that whoever proposes that makes clear in their in their motion that it includes the capital plan it's just I move that we approve a budget of 24 million seventy three thousand two hundred eighteen dollars which includes two hundred sixty thousand dollars deposited into our new capital fund I'll second that All those in favor? Any opposed? Well, thank you for the great work and I want to echo everything that was said I think this is Do we need to make a motion that you can approve any minor changes? Oh yeah, let's do that We have to approve the warning or are you comfortable with what I said? I I think I think that we cannot repeat too many times and we should keep repeating it many many times between now and March that although we just talked about approving a budget of 24 million that includes the capital fund it is going to be two separate votes it's going to be two separate votes on the ballot and people will see two separate things but they should know that the 2.8 percent tax rate increase that we're talking about includes both of those things so it's not 2.8 percent plus another 260,000 that 2.8 includes both That's exactly what I was going to say and I really think we I don't know if now is a good time this is what I wanted to talk about in advance of the warning is how do we want to go about communicating that exact message because I can see people getting confused going to the polls and saying wait it's this 260,000 included in this figure are they trying to pull something and we need to be really clear with the people that we are presenting this in a very transparent way yeah I think that's important on your March for you know once it's here there will be no problem but this is the first year we've done this and people have to know that this will come up every year and what it's for and the explanation of that because we haven't done it and it was done differently last year one suggestion I have is that we the school board or the school district is now doing a page in the bridge every month so the school board is more welcome to have part of that page and I think right before the next February issue will be right before town meeting because it's the second issue of the bridge every month so that might be a spot to explain right we have to stay on that line of explaining all night right now I'm happy to work with someone on that just as another public place that I know goes out to a lot of people and I think people have to understand what this is for but it isn't always that's what I said once they understand it then people are usually fine with it but they have to understand it I'm not sure we even said tonight why it's separate which is so that the money can roll over from year to year and continue to be used so that we should say again and again as Michelle said and there's also one other aspect of the annual report like Montpelier's annual report when you get to the school section there's just a couple there's just some charts the real description is just some charts there's a superintendent report that leads up to it and then there's like a 48 page audit this year just so you know I'm only going to send them the management discussion and analysis which is like setting instead of the full audit and in the package where we send them the charts instead of just sending that tax rate chart I'm going to put a full review and put some words about what the budget includes and some things like that so I just took a note to go back and look at what I started drafting to make sure I say it includes the capital fund maybe a little bit about what the capital fund is so so I think the draft did that so I just took a note to do that you could even include your chart that you have shown us that shows the projects that are assigned to those funds for the next 5 or 10 years I don't know how long you guys have that set out that's what I was going to say an explanation that says this will now be an ongoing thing how it operates, why it operates and that it's ongoing so it's not just this year we'll ask for a capital fund every year you put it in and it's the nuts and bolts running the business I think you know just to the bridge or it's a lot of ads and to some social media the bridge usually doesn't be subject to the budget doesn't it the bridge is that coming out this in the latest bridge reach out to Steve Mill both of them interviewed us I think they do want closer to you I know I feel like that was a long time ago it just came out at the end of last week I think the current issue it actually worked out pretty well because I think whatever we were talking we were estimating actually it might go up like 5 cents and then it went way more than that but now we're back down to about 5 cents so no harm we have two more actions approve the warning and authorize minor changes do we have the motion to approve the warning the move that we approve the warning for the 2019 annual meeting any discussion all those in favor opposed and then authorize minor changes do we want to define minor so the minor changes I'm envisioning is not to the budget you approve the budget I can't change but if the penalized pupil account ends up dropping by a 0.2 or something like that that's about the cost for people in the language it has to it might be enough that it might change that a little bit it might change the percentage increase from last year so I may need to tweak those those little sections in each one of those two articles and it's not really worth having to have everybody come back and re-approve it so if it's something just like that and that's all I'm talking about if it's a minor thing like those root factors and percentages we can just ask Jim to come in and sign and update and authorize people there's two numbers in there it's two numbers but they're both related to equalize people sure but it will be okay so we could say authorize to assign varying up to 20 equalize people and resulting change in avoidable results from that something like that so give them a you know honestly it's going to not go more than one if it could we should give some guardrails and all those things yeah so I think it's, I mean we talked before that it's like maybe 70 equalize people's ends of being depending on the tax rate which I would say that's significant so maybe it's up to 5 or up to 7 doesn't matter as long as we pick a number that doesn't freak us out yeah that doesn't freak me out either so maybe it's you authorize the board chair to sign an amended warning if the equalize people count changes by 7 or less yeah so moved second all's in favor any opposed great again great work great work great work yes but there are some exciting things to build on in here and I think the ground work to really start investing strategically in excellence you're so generous that's what it is though I'm going to be union and testify so we're actually relatively on schedule a little ahead good job Jim working on it that's the process and he drives the school bus to Rothsburg yes yes we we use the old codes and the new codes so that whenever the principals give the budget they'll be able to understand oh this new code is the old code the live first is my kickstander and the bigger concern is the whole new finance system but the budget is yes hey Craig no worries so we are pretty much on pace policy reading first reading equity policy we have the one that was distributed by Olivia's part of the package that the policy committee worked on and put my understanding is for the original justice alliance and I've got some others and then we have the suggested changes it's the same thing but when Tracy copied it it didn't come out with a red and so Lisa noticed that and said we need to see what the kids the students suggested so that's why so you're getting more on the package it's the same thing so you can see the right Steve did you get one so we're good we're good so discussion suggestion changes on the policy I thought it was very well done one small agenda to suggest on the list of bases for discrimination race, color, religion, creed, national origin ethnicity, marital status, sex, sexual orientation gender identity, socio-economic background or disability I would add family composition in that I just heard of a bias incident related to that this week that was just a typo in the last sentence of the period and then a semicolon and then includes including where are we at? at the very end right here there's a period of semicolon and then there's includes and including I think including should be taken out either it should be this includes or including there shouldn't be a period in a semicolon yeah yeah so I had been you might actually be best or disability comma including the consequence one question in that section it says that we'll provide education and training about hazing, harassment and bullying and then particularly with regard to this long list of people but it seems like that might be tricky because hazing, harassment and bullying are so specifically defined and the classes of people that they apply to are also legally defined I don't know if we can just include everybody I talked about that with the students we actually talked at length about that very thing and I think we ended at the point where they said we want to put it in I said go for it the board will discuss it I mean I completely sympathize with wanting to protect everyone but I don't know if we get ourselves into weird territory if we expand those protections are we expanding them I mean how much are they all aligned I assume yes right well certainly the hazing harassment and the bullying policy has a language from the statute that has protected classes and I gave them that policy and I gave it to them so they could read it does it say does your economic background in that policy in those I don't think so this list definitely so I see why they put it in but I agree with Michelle it's legally going to do what well maybe there's some room here I think it's okay to expand it at the district level we're not imposing our expansion on to the rest of the state or anything like that but what I'm thinking is this a new sense right it's not in with the first district to regularly provide education and training about hazing harassment and bullying period then make a new sense that says something about expanding I'm just concerned that yes expansion is breaking these terms hazing harassment and bullying are reserved in statute for specific things and if we start to redefine them I'm concerned that we are creating this sort of overlapping area that when it comes to enforcement or liability to the district what have we done and honestly we're probably going to hold this out really quickly to make an determination on that but I would be nervous about the liability of the district and we start to expand and then the statute can we get advice on that so one I mean I'd like Tina's idea of a different sentence and what I'm looking at is the first sentence of this paragraph is not hazing harassment and bullying it's educating students and staff about the significance of how what they say and do affects other students and so I think we could probably try to work with the language so that we leave the hazing harassment and bullying sentence alone and then talk about the district you know it's committed something that echoes back to the first sense it's coming we just have to work on the words and it's too edgy I mean the district will educate on the significance of how what they say and do affects other students and then maybe we could tie it to those categories and then also add the district will provide education and training about hazing harassment and bullying which probably would more attract the statute and of course there could be some hold on do you have a minute to students so we'll look at other students I mean I feel like that's what they meant it just affects others right right one I think so too yes and Libby would know maybe from having engaged with the students on this but I know that I heard from a lot of students that they were very frustrated and very disappointed at what they saw as a lack of consequences for what they saw as incidents of this nature that happened last year and part of that is because you don't get to see the consequences that happen to other students and they find that very frustrating but I wonder whether this grew out of that experience and whether they want to whether what the students are trying to get at is a stronger reaction from the adults when these things occur I think what they I almost switched over here so she could characterize it because I don't want to speak for them in any way they speak plenty well for themselves but I would in answer to that in my conversations with them they were they didn't reference last year in particular to my memory that group was just very concerned that we have marginalized groups and that they feel that society in general does not give enough credence to the fact that these marginalized groups bring different things than others and that hazing harassment and bullying happens more often to those groups and is less reported and is less taken care of in their eyes and so they they really just wanted to call out the fact that marginalized groups yes yes all kids matter in these kind of policies in marginalized groups we might have to put more emphasis there they wanted to emphasize it so I have a couple of other things I was wondering we have or before disability in the last sentence of paragraph 3 in the last sentence of the whole shebang and I was thinking and or because they're not all independent of each other can it kind of be my wonky like Bill Sapphire or implies and is less like legalizing I didn't know that and or is totally unnecessary or implies I didn't know that that's good to know you saved me 4 characters I don't know if she's drunk and white taught me that I think and or is just a nomination that lawyers have done to me I agree I respect something else that first of all this is a great I think this is a great document I don't know exactly how this came to fruition how did this come to fruition a general question there were a lot of drafts there were a lot of drafts it's the policy committee did we start with something from the students we started with a very interesting draft from the students we had to kind of rein way in they brought it to me actually I'm curious listening to Michelle's comments and thinking about the term that Hope used in her presentation tonight restorative justice how did RGA respond to not having that term in the policy we had long conversations about the difference between policy and procedure and that in policy the board does not put mandated programming procedures yeah which is what restorative justice is you know I pointed out that there are many different philosophies thoughts programs around discipline relationship building that kind of thing restorative justice is one of them and so so you don't put that kind of language in policy and we went around in circles around that for a long time until one of them finally said well I don't care about this policy let's talk about procedure so I said we'll get there once we're in policy so I have a couple of other questions and I just wanted to put them to the board says the district will counteract I was wondering if we wanted to phrase this in a way that kind of charged the district with counteracting because if the district isn't counteracting then where are you sorry it says third paragraph the district will counteract the president historical impact bias I was wondering the district must counteract the district is responsible for counteracting maybe we want to just maybe we want it to be more of a visionary statement but if it if the district isn't doing that and we want to hold the district accountable this language isn't as helpful I was thinking maybe you don't feel that way yeah it's like the the district is doing is is going to do this thing but what if the district isn't doing this and we're the board and we're saying but it says the district will is that enough I was just when they give us a report you'll tell us we're not doing it we better do I think a lot of our policies are used as will they used to all say shall but then Bridget told us that that was ambiguous blame should use will instead of shall we could say must yeah that's what I was wondering district must counteract I struggle with the tense in these things because it's just that point is it aspirational right and that's what I wasn't certain I wasn't saying it should be this way I wasn't certain reading it and that was one of the things that I was I was thinking how do we use this to hold ourselves in our district accountable that was in parentheses and it says possible sort of superintendent will develop and I was trying to figure out where is that where is it that the superintendent develops for the board I mean you could change any of these I'm asking I didn't know I got to that I thought okay I could definitely speak to that but I didn't want to leave Andrew's appointment until I had some sense about about this will or must oh you're saying that's the same thing because that's the district will well I'm trying to figure that out of the will the who will the superintendent will the district will the board will well that's why that one has an alternative which is something that the court we should discuss tonight and figure out where the board wants to land on that because we say that the district must take affirmative steps in the paragraph before there was something about this that struck me as should it be must, should it be something else well I'm trying to change must I mean must must is what we're trying to get at I think maybe it came out as will because it seems like something we're not going to adopt the policy and that's going to happen tomorrow I'm like the superintendent must adopt procedures that's a good point so will is a little more visionary I just want to pose it to the board a little more I like I like the will because it's going to take time to get to this policy like we're going to have to do a lot of work in many different ways and I'm excited to do that work and my team's excited to do that work when it says must it welcomes the shame shame because you have not done that yet that's a good point this is not easy work right here we're combating years upon years upon years of unequal treatment so I think that I like the language I mean we're combating something that has not been solved by any institution ever thank you, that's a better way to put it so if we don't get there obviously then we might not be alone we're going to work hard just to do it on the very last paragraph can we just break that out into a bunch of sentences yeah, it's good to see we've managed it this is the third paragraph of the intro no, that's the last paragraph we kind of discussed earlier oh right, break that out the policy committee can the same way I feel like the policy review section right under 2.0 board expectations could use some board smithing it doesn't read fairly well don't need to change content necessarily but focus on the final paragraph doesn't disproportionate access and outcomes mean the achievement I mean disproportionate outcomes is the same thing as the achievement I agree right also number 4 Ryan to go to your policy review my question would be does that mean that in monitoring reports the superintendent's monitoring reports will have an additional piece to it whenever a policy is monitored that there's like an equity lens the paragraph tries to get at you know it's not interesting point I think the thought of this was that this section was on the board the board has to claim responsibility for having its own evaluation of itself the superintendent is above there reporting to the board on the district's compliance which is another policy so this is like an overview of professional development so Ryan you were saying we need to word Smith policy review this is just that to consider their effect on perpetuating inequities or contributing to disproportionate access and outcomes and the achievement gap it's those three statements disproportionate access outcomes and achievement gap are all kind of related and it doesn't speak clunky in the way it's worded right now it's about outcomes if we want to say achievement gap the same thing seems like the same I kind of preferred outcomes because it's more general bigger picture than the achievement gap I think it was fine the way it was but I can understand the students wanting to explicitly reference the achievement gap but I think disproportionate outcomes is the includes the achievement gap does that include the achievement gap just so it's clear that it's in there and then I didn't want to lose Tina's point about the recruitment and hiring section it's the main the main text in there not the alternative is very procedurally written and I think that's why the committee left in this alternative for the board to consider how far in this policy we wanted to go down the procedural road versus just directing the superintendent to do it this particular work would definitely fall under the superintendent's roles we can't hear a word you're saying at that end of the table sorry I was saying under this recruitment that this is work the superintendent's going to do so this possible alternative makes sense to me that we that it's an assignment to the superintendent the board is not going to do this well it's in the district wouldn't that be the superintendent take big of us the district is the board and superintendent together it forms the district that's the old policy we don't have that policy anymore well and we are accountable for all of it and I think just to be clear I think if we took the alternative it would end with the first sentence the superintendent will develop recruitment and hiring procedures to ensure that the district follows best practices to ensure a diverse and inclusive applicant pool and bias free hiring practices period that would be the end of it but that would take out the part where we're affirmatively including some things about training resources it would take that part out it would take that part out because it would become the superintendent's job to figure out what the best practices are and put it in the procedure your new HR coordinator what did you approve I would delegate your responsibility to the council fantastic not another part made in HR any reactions to which way to go on that one I think the alternative makes sense it does mean you're going to have to codify procedures though which can be kind of limiting it can be revised it's one of those things as you know more you do better and especially for something like this especially for something like this because it's bridging new territories for our ever white Vermont state HR in general it changes every year anyway zero up for it just a substitute for that first time the first time it starts with that the superintendent will develop recruitment and hiring procedures to ensure that the district follows best practices to ensure a diverse and inclusive applicant pool and bias free hiring practices period and that would be the end of the section that's the old end of the little paragraph ensure to ensure can I say ensure bias free hiring practice absolutely the diverse and inclusive applicant pool I can work on procedures and we can work to get that to happen and training and all that kind of thing I don't know if I can ensure a diverse applicant pool because I can't control who applies that's what I thought you're following best practices how about aid that to ensure best practices go back to the same thing all school districts we recognize that that has to be different such as school spring stop certainly I don't know how you I think ensuring best practices is probably going to get us there yeah I mean it would be great not to have the word ensure well you could say best to ensure but this is ensure a diverse and inclusive applicant pool so to promote a diverse and inclusive it's ensure best practices and to promote a diverse the district follows best practices for a diverse and inclusive applicant pool for recruiting yeah for recruiting that's really what it is that's what's within our power so then I have for recruiting a diverse and inclusive applicant pool and ensuring bias free hiring practices good okay I think number four just needs to be word submit don't think we need to necessarily do that here but that's all one sentence and second and parts of it don't jive with each other that is a long sentence yeah yes for clarification you probably remember the conversation better than I do the concerted action by the board that support the objectives of this policy implies that we will do what yeah I thought people would want to talk about that glad you brought it up under board expectations I was thinking of and we had discussions on the committee about whether it's too broad it's part of the discussion of the board what was in my mind and I won't speak for everyone was that some of the things we're trying to accomplish can't be done at the district level and so there is a role there's a really important role for trying to make sure that we're not just looking at at some of these actions as we do them in Montpelier but for example if there's an effort to try to improve recruitment to Vermont to try to really do something about diversity that you might want to be working with the VSPA or you might want to be working with other school districts in the region there's lots of professional development there's lots of other examples where we would want to be working with other regional and state organizations to try to achieve these objectives but I think as we talked about on the policy committee it could be read as a broader sort of a commitment to a much broader range of political actions I don't know there are opportunities to join to join into other initiatives that we've seen this in other we have actually in this area where we have actually we are there are opportunities we can be sometimes reactive it's like it's coming before us where a board member says hey this is going on in the community should we do this I really like this idea of being able to go beyond the work in the district to say that the work of the district connects to other districts and other communities I don't think it's a mandate to go to do a ton of work I think it's just to be see it as part of our mission is to be open to it and to accept opportunities when they arise in a manner and we really are leading on this front I was talking with my wife who has developed a student group similar to the diversity groups that we have here at Stone Middle and High School and I shared this policy with her last night and she thought this was amazing but the board was proceeding with this and she thought it was a real we were stepping into a real leadership role as you guys are on the cutting edge here yeah and she was saying it would be great if our board adopted this and other boards adopted this and this could be a model it could be really helpful for teachers and students to have this type of support from their boards so I think putting this in here and reaching out to board members through the association networks I think it's a good thing that's for example if we adopt this to be consistent with this policy we would share it and we could do things like the BSPA and other things to help yeah establish a leadership role and talk about it I'm sure the BSPA would like to see every school have this policy they are coming to your next board meeting so maybe they'll give us the second reading what did you say maybe they'll give us membership for a year what work will you say model policy I just wanted to recognize again the leadership role of the students who came to us and have been working on this for so long they're fabulous it's awesome this is an exciting step Peter so while we're recognizing I'd like to recognize the policy committee who has been working very hard to see that we're in a flow we're in a flow we're where we need to be and I want to thank those people because they've spent a lot of time prizes all around yeah this is an exciting step but it is cutting edge we need to do a lot but I think this is a good a good concrete step after raising the Black Lives Matter flag we're getting serious I think executive session is next you go for two purposes so we need one for contract negotiations and one for personnel motion for contract negotiations motion to enter executive session for contract negotiations I move that we find that discussing contract negotiations in public session would put the board at a disadvantage second discussion all those in favor any opposed then I think we can just do one motion to go in for both purposes go ahead I've been absent for the board enter executive session for the purpose of discussing contract negotiations and personnel matters second all those in favor