 Go ahead and call meeting to order at 6.02. And primarily this meeting is going to be an opportunity for the board to have some dialogue and connect with our legislative group that is representing our towns. And the rest of the stuff that we have on the agenda is is fairly straightforward. So and we will be having an executive session this meeting as well. So so that we stay on track. I'm going to move right on to just reading our preamble for public comment and then opening up the meeting to public comment. I just have to find the comment preamble. Was that what you pulled out here? No, no, no, it's one page in here and it's just not ready. Okay, here we go. So the board welcomes comments, but it is not able to take any action on them other than to direct the public to the appropriate staff member or to the complaint procedure. Comments are limited to three minutes per speaker. Time may not be seated to another speaker. Comments are to be addressed to me or the board as a whole, not to any individual on the board on the staff or in the public. Please raise your hand and wait to speak until you are asked to by me. Please identify yourself with your first and last name in your town of residents. Please refrain from restating comments that have already been shared. You can express agreement with those comments. Order and decorum shall be observed by everyone. Shouting and profanity are prohibited. As the board chair, I will maintain the order and decorum of the meeting. And with that, I'd like to open up for public comment. And we'll start with public here and then we'll move to online if there are any. Do we have any folks who would like to speak tonight? Go ahead. Okay, do I need to speak in the mic or can I speak from here? From there. From there is okay. And remember your name and your town of residents. Yes, Elaine Young from Brookfield. And I wanted to mention the equity policy and wanted to talk about that briefly. I appreciate that there is discussion about an equity policy happening with the school board. I think that's incredibly important for our students and for our community. I'd like to see it be more specific. It seems very general, almost vanilla, if you will. It's good boilerplate language that we can all feel good about. But what I'm not seeing are things that we can actually that are actionable, fully actionable. And so the big point that I wanted to make is the final sentence of the policy that says, the superintendent shall identify outcome indicators as necessary to monitor this policy and shall provide an annual status report to the board. And I'm hopeful and I would like to understand from the superintendent at some point, that may not be appropriate tonight, obviously. What does that look like? How will the superintendent identify these indicators? And will the superintendent be bringing together community members and students and staff and faculty to have conversations to help inform that information? Thank you. Thank you very much. Can we have anyone else? Sierra Bond from Brookfield. So similarly talking about the equity policy, I'm really glad that something like that was being talked about. I do think that it shouldn't be like a hasty decision in order to get one on the table. Because I think far too often equity policies are like separate plan statements and are hardly ever followed. So what I would like to see is in order for the policy to actually be effective, like including the voices of everybody who will be affected in the creation. I don't know if that would be like a committee or just like a form of surprise just to get people's opinion. I think that should include students too, because the policy will be affecting them. And I think voices of marginalized people should be really centered in that because the policy will be impacting the most. But I think, I feel like the policy should include clear action steps will be taken. So situations of oppression stop getting swept under the rug. Because of racial justice we sent out a survey to students asking about like micro-abressions. And a lot of students talked about how they reported stuff and none of it was dealt with. Or how they stopped reporting stuff because it stopped being dealt with. How disappointed they were with that. And then I think the policy should also have like promised backing from the school board or another committee on exactly how they work for equity training for all staff so they can actually be getting that. So I think it's a good first draft and I'm glad it's starting to be talked about but it should not only be one draft and there should be more talked about before it gets to the place. Thank you for your comments. Anyone else from the general public here? Sure. So your equity policy and part of the definitions. Oh sorry, John Hellfant, Roxbury Brookfield. In the definitions on your equity policy it says equity involves acknowledging and disrupting inequitable practices, acknowledging biases, employing practices that reflect the reality that all students will learn in creative, inclusive, multicultural school environments for adults and children. So that brings me to a book that is read in 9th grade English. It's called Poet X. I actually complained about it last year because it has a very, very strong overtones of anti-religious bias and it also, I think it glorifies children not obeying their parents. And actually this year I found something else in it that I didn't find last year. I'm going to read it right out of the book. His body grinds against mine and it feels so good. I push away from him. I don't think our 9th graders need to be reading books that talk about sexualization like that. I don't think that's appropriate for them. I think when it comes to the bias policy I understand not teaching religion is talking about a historical foundation of many religions and history but I also think it's biased to say that religion is bad and I don't think the school should be teaching that. And this book definitely teaches that throughout. It's very anti-Christian, anti-Catholic. I just want to bring it to the board's attention. I don't think it's an appropriate book for 9th grade English. I think there's better books out there that wouldn't push an agenda or bias. Thanks. Thank you. Can I speak? I live in Washington, Vermont but I'm a teacher here at the high school. And I just used a little bit of my time just to mention that someone just texted me from online and said they can't really hear us so I'm not sure if anything can be done about that but just reporting that. Yeah and I think like some of the other commentators I am really glad to be at this meeting where the board is considering an equity policy. I think it's something that we desperately need. I share some of the concerns. I won't repeat them about making sure that it's specific and actionable and something that we can actually use as a tool to address a really serious problem that we have right now and that's really what I want to focus my comments on is that we have everyday kids being harmed at school by I would say a combination of intentional and unintentional behaviors but in the data that Sierra referenced that some of my students collected from about 150 of their peers there were a disturbing number of kids reporting being targeted in various ways based on their sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity because of their race, their religious affiliation where there's multiple instances of students who identify as Jewish having swastikas put into their field of vision in various ways and I just want to echo the widespread perception among a lot of our kids that what we have in place right now is not enough and that their perception is that there isn't accountability for these behaviors and a lot of kids reported losing faith in the systems of reporting this kind of behavior basically saying some version of I don't even bother anymore because I know that nothing will happen so I would also urge the board I'm not sure if this data is available but it's crossed my mind to wonder how many students are no longer at this school because they couldn't take this kind of behavior anymore and just as a teacher I have to say it is impossible for me to do my job if kids don't feel safe so just want to say again I really appreciate that you all are looking at it I think it is among the most important things that could be on your docket and I also want to echo that I hope this is a first step in really taking this problem seriously because it feels like it really undermines our mission to serve every kid if there is this sort of systemic inability for us to keep all of our kids safe so thank you thank you for your comment how about online do we have if anybody online would like to make a comment please put your hand up there you go my only comment right now is we can't comment on anything because we can't make out anything that's being said so I don't know if audio can be addressed from what I can see things are connected well here I'm happy to go see if I can find a text we can hear you laying out in the audience it's all garbled and anyone else speaking yeah it might just be the distance I apologize for that because they are sitting a bit far away can you still hear I can hear you yes how about me Beth saying to respond to Beth can you hear me can you hear me Beth yeah we had this problem with that owl but when we had this problem that pink light was on it's the mute light yeah I just tested that right and that didn't fix it right that's why I was trying to see yes it's not in the which way did I just saw Todd walking okay and that's not maybe it's in the tech room okay it has been working fine in the past I don't know we have that what was the meaning that we just had right but Heather and I we had it on mute by accident so this is what it looks like when it's on mute yeah we thought that meant it was on we thought it was I thought it was just it's power light right power's on it's like garbled it's probably like a connection yeah take off do you have this already yes I believe you have that that's the sign yeah yeah yeah were you able to find him no I'm trying to give him a call the signal's been revealed he's mapping out the strength of the wireless around the building yeah because Anne Watson and Andrew Erlich will be coming on remotely hold on and show it was kind of hard to do the guess I thought just personally too yeah yeah it's just my oh I wonder are you seeing something I was hopeful that maybe before he clicked mute all and I was wondering if it had muted the owl does the owl have its own square up there does it? orca does that's not the owl could the o is orca no no no but see on the bottom where we're all being is that muted there'd be a line through them they wouldn't even be able to hear a lane though right well they might be hearing you close the computer no I'm wondering if it's connected just to the mic on my computer so Heather do you have a stronger signal than I did here where on my telephone? yes you can call Todd AT&T give me the number 717 you're fast yeah you're quick I like that three hours social security okay we're two minutes away number 620 times yeah I may just put off our committee thing our committee thing too after technical issues bye good at the very least for the legislators I guess it's the animal present you can see it right next to the lane right but I mean present in human body right next to the lane or you can come right next to me wherever you want well no I'm just saying if the audio trouble continues that's where you should be so you can sit in front of my computer if anything helps wherever you want right how's everybody doing? we were doing okay until we figured out our technology wasn't working yeah it's fine as far as I can tell it's connected so folks online I apologize I'm going to shut the system off and turn it back on and see if that resets it so give me about a minute and a half and then try to log it in again so I apologize it'll be the same link yeah same link that's how I can change isn't it funny this only happens this once well yeah do I have the time it didn't fall apart until you walked in the door oh it was I was working for the first meeting Billy was so excited when he saw it he looked so different yeah he looks really good next time I see him like every weekend I come his eyes are coming on usually it makes a noise right in here it makes a beep sound oh yeah that's cool yeah that's a good sign do you guys see a colored light on your side on that thing it's red it's bad it's no color blue which is usually good alright Anne talk Beverly see if you can hear me am I clear that's so Bev can you hear me no she's shaking her head yeah I don't know if there's much I would be able to do uh oh that is really what happened I think it's just picking up through the computer microphone what if you put the owl over no that wouldn't do it now the mute I'll go water how about now Bev it's a little bit better at least it's not garbled but it's still hard to hear I'm not sure any of us online will be able to hear public comments we couldn't hear the other stuff hey lean there's there's a plus and a minus on that thing does that make a difference you try to turn it off just move it this way for the public comment period well I don't know if that's actually picking it up or if it's just the computer if they're hearing me well I think it's just the computer Lane can you Bev can you hear me Bev I'll just go find Todd he said I just don't have a roll call vote tonight did you look in the back there no I'll look in the back Lane you want me to find him I can't do that all the guys are here I don't like you know worst case scenario is people can actually that want to speak can actually sit right in the chair in front of the black computer well I think we'll cause I asked the legislators to be ready for 620 so we've heard from most everyone I don't know if you folks want to just speak so so I don't know if Bev wanted to say something or just to say it Bev did you were you wanting to say something in particular and I I think you should yeah you go there Bev did you want to say something in particular I probably would have followed up on anything Tev said if I had heard what he said so I'm going to say no but when comments are open again probably I sadly didn't get to hear Sierra nor mother speak either and legislators I apologize for the technical issues we're having I think what we might do is we can hear you just fine what we can't what will happen is that we can't you can't hear us so I think we can move on to at least have each one of you introduce yourselves and actually for this section of the meeting my vice chair is going to be running this section so she'll come over and facilitate this section of the meeting and hopefully by the time we come to the question and answer section we'll have the technology issue dealt with so I apologize for the inconvenience and hopefully this will all work so catch I'm turning it over to you and thank you for being here tonight with us for this part of the meeting and we just wanted to give you an opportunity to present yourselves and especially for some of our legislators who haven't been to our orange southwest meetings before we're happy to have you here as representatives of Braintree our little town here in Orange and if you'd all like to just like you said present yourselves have a little background to the work that you're currently doing and then they'll likely be questions from the board members as well and we have Jay here do you want to sure I'll start so I'll get close to the computer so my colleagues can hear me Larry Sackowitz and maybe the two of us representing the five towns of Brookfield Braintree Randolph, Grandville and Roxbury serving in my fourth term the last two turns, the last four years I was on house education but now I am thrilled to be on the government operations committee which includes military affairs we're discussing a whole motley assortment of topics including sports betting taking on various bills in the way of solving technical corrections to election laws we are also discussing jurisdiction and accountability as to the governance rules about sheriff's departments we're doing for the first time in legislative history a deep dive into what it looks like to explore the rules around governing sheriff's departments across the 14 counties in Vermont we've also just welcomed two senators Cummings and McDonald I don't know if the two of them would want to come over here because of the microphone that's where it's at will you check to see if it's fixed Bev can you tell us if this has been fixed yet for you can you hear this thank you for everyone online yes, it's just here and there's the bell super so everybody can stay where they are we don't have to worry so this owl looking thing in the middle so maybe I would pass it to my district mate Larry Sackowitz to introduce himself or somebody else in the room I can do that hello everybody my name is Larry Sackowitz and I'm one of the representatives with J for Randolph I'm serving on the environment environment and energy committee we've got three sort of big bills in front of us at the moment one of them is it's H126 which is also known as the 30 by 30 bill and it is a bill which would put Vermont on a path to conserving 30% of our natural landscape by 2030 and 50% by 2050 as part of a worldwide movement to save our worldwide biodiversity and then the other two bills that we're working on are both what's called extended producer responsibility bills one for household hazardous waste right now municipalities collect household hazardous waste and pay to dispose it with some help from the state but basically the onus of paying for all of this is on tax payers and one of the things that we're working on is the possibility for taking care of these materials at the end of their life to the manufacturers there's more to it than that but that's the big idea and then the other bill that we're working on in fact we worked on it quite a bit today is what's called the bottle bill as I'm sure all of you know from lots of containers we pay a 5 cent deposit on our bottles that bill was originally became law about 50 years ago and it's been tweaked but this would be the first big update really ever and the biggest part of this update would be that it will include many more containers so water bottle containers juice certain kinds of juice containers seltzers all these things which really didn't exist in big numbers back in the 70s and so we're going to bring all those things into the bottle bill to promote getting these things picked up off the streets but also to recycle them far more efficiently than they're recycled now when they go through the single stream recycling with the big recycling companies and I'm happy to pass it on to someone else. Would you like to introduce Anne Cummings? Senator Anne Cummings is chair of the finance committee and maybe Senator Cummings will tell us about the meeting we had today deal with COA and tax rates. Yes, hi I'm Anne Cummings I do chair of the finance committee and Senator McDonald has been my vice chair and Clark since forever I also serve on the housing and economic committee so I spent this morning working on a bill to help with the housing crisis it is statewide it's pretty perpetual but it does have some changes to stay at town zoning ordinances and also at this point to act 250 so we're working our way through that. This afternoon along with trying to figure out how to pay for childcare and paid family leave a few other things that are floating around out there we took a look at the impact of the rapid increase in housing prices that and what possible impact that's going to have on the property tax bill of individual taxpayers we're still working at getting our head around it there's a lot of moving pressure if basically what we heard is all things remaining equal it shouldn't hurt because the CLA has kept up the relative values and if your you know your grand list goes up if you're raising the same amount of money which nobody ever does then your tax rate should go down and individuals should be it should equal out but there's a lot of variables in there that's if your house goes up in value as the average house in your town goes up if it goes higher then you may not benefit we were especially looking at people who are income sensitized and you're only income sensitized up and it decreases over time but up to four hundred thousand dollars in housing value well if your house was worth two fifty last year and it's worth five hundred this year what's that going to do to your bill and I think we're trying to at this point discover if there is going to be a problem and if there is what kind of lever we can pull we know that there is a cap of fifty six hundred dollars on your tax bill that you can receive no and it's possible that that could come to impact folks so as the values go up so we may we can raise that we can raise the housing value there's a lot of things in there that we can tweak but we're looking at it interested to know what you're looking at here the yield is going to go up you're going to get a lot more per penny on the tax rate because your grand list is going to be higher but it'll be a mixed bag and we're we're still looking at trying to find a way to work with that so actually it's a good question so the school on the school side of things we brought things down between six and seven cents per hundred dollars of assessed value but when you add in the CLA changes at least in this area the average household increase overall per annum just to put a ballpark figure on things CLA the common level of appraisal which is the state program and we also know that we have over a hundred towns right now that need to be reappraised we know that you can't get appraisers the House Ways and Means Committee is looking at perhaps doing some kind of a regular appraisal which would make it cost effective for appraisers to have enough teams on if you have to wait ten years between appraisals then they can't afford to maintain the staff so you may see some changes coming there and actually it's a good point just so I'm being accurate with folks Randolph and Braintree would see about a $500 increase on the average price at home Brookfield because it reappraised last year would actually be getting money back okay if you reappraised recently the addition we got we were looking at numbers they took from South Burlington which is not your typical Vermont town today and they had just reappraised just before this Burlington on the other hand had reappraised in 11 years and yeah some people's housing had just gone up unbelievably and they did they did get hit so we're going to the goal has always been and I'll cede to Senator McDonald he is our resident expert on Act 60 but the goal has always been to have the majority of people pay based on their income and to have that percentage of your income limited and we're going to keep trying to do that we're going to work cut out for us we haven't seen appraisals property values quite this deeply in the decade and a half and there's a section of state government property evaluation review that looks at the various town by town and offers us some advice on how to equalize as if the sales hadn't taken place so that there's less sticker shock and that'll probably be our number one issue before town meeting trying to get that be able to give the town some assurance on what's like what things are likely to be we've been here before on that one it's been a while this is my first time here but it's not my first time before a school board I serve on natural resources we were taking testimony on heat and and those entities that sell the heat that we use in our homes and trying to deal with a way to react to some of the high prices that we're seeing that have been caused both by the war in Ukraine and the fossil fuel, the oil companies who have raised prices because they can and those of us that use oil to augment other sources are stuck with the way it is until there's something changes but glad to answer any questions and have the senators and representatives online had a chance to weigh in and introduce yourself thank you jump in here unless you want to go thank you I serve on the senate natural resources and energy and McDonald there and representatives as well in addition I'm also serving on the government restoration committee simultaneously right now we are working on separate things happy to go into any of those in further detail but one of the things that I think is most relevant for you all we did task two which was really an extension of the COVID provisions for open meeting law that would allow for example school boards to be entirely remotely if that is what you wanted to do and that goes through July 1 of next year so and then we have a bill pending that is looking at what permanent changes we may want to make to the open meeting law right so that we've learned some things and we may want to put some of the permanently into the open meeting law so that's I think relevant for you well the other thing that I should mention is that my day job is that I am a teacher I teach high school physics engineering and math at Montpelier high school and the Montpelier Rockbury school district and so I'm happy to be there and happy to answer any questions you might have I'll go so that I'm Andrew Perchlich my third term representing the Washington district and glad to have these new towns in the district and meet new people sorry I couldn't be there in person you're well represented by the two senators there and Representative Hooper I first two terms I served on transportation and education so I got a good lesson in Vermont education laws and policies this year I was moved to the Appropriations Committee but still have an interest in education policy and interested in talking to you about that all I do have to say I have a League of Women Voters event that I have to go to at 7 I really should be there earlier so I'm presenting but so I won't be able to stay for the whole question and answer but Senator Watson and Cummings and McDonald can represent the Senate pretty well on these things and just on education we in appropriations we haven't talked to specifically about education issues yet but in transportation we talked about school bus drivers and issues around having to have CDL licenses and the issues around I don't know if this has been a problem in your district but we heard from other districts that it's been difficult to find CDL drivers there was one principle that said well if we can hire one I'll get the CDL license and he had to take the test five times because it was much more than what you might think you need to know about riding a school bus so we're going to look at that we don't know because of federal regulations and obviously wanting to make sure these school bus drivers are keeping our children safe but we're going to look and see if there's anything that can be done to still have safety be number one but make it maybe a little easier for some of these districts to get a bus drivers those are the one education thing we've come up so far but mainly it's bridges and roads and how we're electrifying our transportation future and how we're going to keep our bridges and roads just going as we do more electric vehicles and as we look at public transportation and how we can do that in the more innovative ways so that's it for me and thanks for inviting us for the introductions do we have any questions from the board for any topics well I have a question just the condition of school buildings so earlier our district our high school and tech center were listed as in the worst condition of all the facilities in the state and given that we have infrastructure money hopefully coming in from the national infrastructure bill I'm just curious what kinds of things are happening at the state level to be ready to be able to use those monies to maybe help allow towns to consider renovating or rebuilding if needed I'm probably going to punt this ball over to Senator Perchlett for transportation um we know we have a problem we built a lot of schools they're all now relatively the same age and they're all deteriorating we are testing for the PCBs and the finance committee last year put aside 32 million which has nothing to do with what it will cost to clean them up if we find them but was the most money we could put away just to have something we had um a lot of money in the Ed fund last year because people spent their stimulus and went out and bought things and sales tax is one of our main revenue sources but we know that's probably one time money so we put that aside we know that schools are going to need help is a facility study that is due in is it next November it's October it's October and so I think that they're kind of waiting to see that to figure out what do we have to do we used to bond to build schools I was actually on institutions when we stopped that because most of our bonding capacity had been used up and we really needed to pay it down so we would have some our bonding capacity has greatly been reduced there's a board that makes that decision how much we can bond for so we're going to be working through that and trying to come up with a way because if you all just do it and you go out and take the loan it's going on the cost of education it's going to get spread over all of us anyway so all I can tell you is we know it's a problem we're working on it this become my motto this year we're working on it I'll just add that I worked on the bill and education that did the inventory and then this assessment that's due in October that they're going to be doing it they're doing it now and then over the summer it's going to be the cost of all the deferred maintenance and all the schools and we know it's going to be a huge number also I started conversations with the state treasurer our new state treasurer is interested in how can the state be involved looking at what some other states have done to support just not modernizing schools just keeping them open and had a basic standard because we we heard a lot of testimony in education last year about an unacceptable state of some of our school buildings and that's really getting in the way of learning we spent a lot of federal money on the ventilation systems I don't know if your school is one of those schools and we still have several million dollars there so ventilation in HVAC a lot of federal money has gone into that there's some competitive grants that schools can apply to for federal money but there isn't other infrastructure money so far that's just more grant money so it is going to be small not small compared to the need so I think the state is going to have to think about how we can bond for it and how we would do that and how we would set up a new program that's going to definitely be a discussion in the next couple of years I actually do have a question about universal school meals and just how food security is such an important topic right now and looking forward to that what that will look like in the future for our students I probably can take that because that was the second topic we spent this afternoon on life at the Ed fund is getting back to normal and we aren't looking at the surpluses I think everybody wants to feed every child but they're because we need money to half offset tax rates and all kinds of other things in the Ed fund there's some concern about feeding children that perhaps parents can afford to feed them but nobody wants the lines where you you know kids get to stand out and get to be humiliated and won't eat because you can't do it so we looked at it the studies in the last year we were told we thought we were under counting the number of kids eligible for federal aid well it hasn't turned out that way either parents still aren't filling out the forms but it looks like you know that a lot of kids are eating reports are there's really good results in schools kids are happy they're better off but it is going to continue to cost us between twenty seven and thirty one million dollars a year to do that so that's another place where there's no intention to stop feeding children I think if we can find a way that parents that can afford to pay my daughters tell me that school lunch is the best deal in town and I happen to think breakfast is a good deal just because it decreases family stress when you're trying to get everybody out the door by seven thirty eight o'clock but if we can find a way that we can do it but also guarantee that your food service stays solvent we'll do it but we're not going to stop feeding kids you know if we can't find a way to feed some kids for free and some kids not then we'll just keep feeding everybody for free I had to actually kind of add on to that and not so much that about the universal meals per se but as kind of a potential unintended consequence of it that I just want to make sure is on people's radar much of the funding that we get is based upon the percentage of students and families in our district that are fiscally challenged and the way that they determine those percentages are where the free and reduced lunch forms I think one of the unintended impacts of the universal free meals is that folks have stopped the forms a little bit it was also hard to get them to fill it out even prior to that just because there's a stigmatization kind of associated with it and so one of the things that just to put on folks' radar is is there an easier way to collect that data we were told that there were new forms that were not going to be stigmatized and easier but I also getting things home to parents and getting them back I mean I've had children come home with things safety pinned to their clothes to make sure that I got them there's a sometimes problems in that delivery stream and I think yeah we all hope that the forms would come back they have it and I don't know because it's a federal regulation and you know again if we can use infrastructure for schools it's a federal regulation and I haven't heard school repairs mentioned I know we do broadband so broadband is in there but if you can help us figure out an easier way the tricky thing is that it's the federal government that makes the rules about how we collect the data that form is something that is distributed every four years and this is one of those four years so the deadline has passed for school districts to collect basically the poverty data that would have schools collecting as many federal and state dollars leverage as they could which as Senator Cummings says it's an unfortunate thing if we could have a better way of collecting that data we would pursue it but it's a federal federal which may make sense and I don't know if the I think one of the worries too is that you know with the new new weightings with the kind of the funding changes that are being considered and being put into place one of the weightings is poverty and so that's using the free and reduced lunch counts as well those students do not have to fill out those forms yeah, the one thing finance didn't do was weighting but that is going to have some major impacts on some schools and some of them are somewhat counterintuitive I've got one traditionally for a school that's not going to see any increase and I've got one that I would think perceptively is a wealthier district that is going to see an increase because they're more rural so there is rational thought behind these weights when they looked into them they were done in the 1950s and there was no record of why they were just a couple of people sitting around a table and said well I think it cost this and I think it cost that and everybody was happy and that's the way it came down it's got a more rational basis now but we may not have gotten it exactly right so we're waiting to see how it plays out and please keep telling us how it plays out or doesn't for you I think I'll just add to that universal school meals is that sitting on a number of hunger councils as well working with the food bank the recognition that that form is a barrier for programs like this I think is seen as far as other organizations see that it is causing some additional prevention of that program being able to really fulfill the needs is there a committee that communicates with the federal government about what the states are seeing no right your congressman Senator Welch is on the agriculture committee and they have a lot of weight on that on school meals and he's responsive I would do that and the governor's office probably has more direct input but the last legislative session we did fund a third fiscal school year of universal meals despite not having a concrete plan as to how we would make it permanent so that is indeed on the agenda well I think when finance put it in my words were you don't feed kids for one year and then stop feeding them if we're going to do this we need to assume it's a permanent cost and if we find some way it's a school district then you'd have to go back to an antiquity I haven't heard anyone saying that I don't know maybe the house is the chair had our people that do research on revenues in today and we're looking at soda sugar some of us want to diet soda flavored water folks are making a lot of money selling sugar and water and putting different titles on it and running good TV ads and there may be some revenues there so my committee is discussing legalizing sports betting which would be about ten to twelve million dollars per year by the time the market the estimate I heard today was four well I'll be advocating to put that money towards the universal school that is one source of revenue that's out there and then of course last session we discussed what's known as a cloud tax which is basically if you purchase a software that allows you to sell a product over the internet in Vermont pay a tax on that purchase which would be I think akin to the sales tax it's turbo tax if you buy turbo tax in a box if you can even do that anymore you pay a sales tax if you buy your computer and you want turbo tax in the package they give you a card you pay for it you go online there's a sales tax but now you can go on turbo taxes platform do your taxes in the cloud and you pay for that service it's a service but you don't pay a sales tax on that and I have committed that the finance committee because usually this has come over to us like the last week in April when we're supposed to be going home that we have started to take a look at it because we're not just trying to on school meals we've got child care which has a two hundred and seventy three yeah it's got a lot of hundred millions we have paid family leave out there we have school meals along with just inflation and so we're I told today we're going to look at all the revenue sources we can get we're going to wait till all the bills get here we're going to see what we can pay for and how we may need to tweak the bills to I doubt that we're going to be able to find a way to pay for everything everybody wants it's just not that kind of money here well in the just want to be mindful of everyone's time and appreciate everyone's time here tonight so are there any other questions that the board has I have a question are you taking a driver's test and can you beat that guy from what a how long it takes to get them to bus drivers license we're in a different boat I think than most districts and this was long before my time one of the few districts that still maintains its own bus fleet and so our crew up there can actually train anybody who wants to be a bus driver and they get their CDL certification right through us we don't want to be beaten buddy no who knows how to drive a bus my great kids have a day off from school because there's no bus driver Lane are there any other things that you want to understand the impacts of state rules you touched on the two big ones you know one of them was school construction aid right you know that's a big thing and so you know the buildings are well maintained as well as they can be I think ours was part of the first study that happened last year was considered the closest to the end of its useful life at this point in time and it's funny we're like a used car with a quarter million miles on it every month it's a big bill for something and so we're kind of in that place so we're had an initial discussion earlier this year about how we can possibly redoing this campus but you know a lot of it rests upon kind of what might come out of the legislature you know is there going to be matching funds if there is you know and so those are the kind of the things that we're waiting for at this point in time the only other thing that hasn't been discussed that I would bring up very quickly is funding for tech education because we have a regional technical one of the things that has hurt us which was actually a benefit at one time was how we get funded for that when enrollments were dropping in Vermont it looked like they had put in rules so that as enrollments were dropping the funding that we get is based upon you know the average number of kids that we have coming here they did that average over three years right so as numbers drop you were still getting a significant chunk of money we've been in kind of the reverse state for a number of years where our enrollments have been going up on both district and at the tech center and so we found ourselves in a horrible position last year where we had 160 kids at the tech center but we're only getting funding for 124 of them and it was going to take three years for that average to catch. We've done rolling averages and almost every yeah okay so there was a really good purpose behind it as far as I can tell at one time and that was because enrollments were going down but it's had kind of a negative effect in terms of being able to fund properly without our tertians go through the roof as our enrollments have climbed back up I did look at the agenda for house education today I think they were taking testimony from some personnel from the state of Rhode Island regarding their school construction costs last I checked which was about 2019 it was about $600 million that we were looking at for the state of Vermont collectively on our horizon as to what what kind of changes we need to make to integrate school buildings I imagine that cost would be larger today I don't know. Probably double double well given what we heard about housing the house that contractor did like four years ago for $260,000 is now costing him over $600 to build and it's basically cost of material and labor but it's material I mean do you guys have good fire insurance here? the don't even want to like one that's a joke assistant the state of Massachusetts has put in a school building authority they called it the SBA so they had a moratorium on providing kind of matching construction for years and they brought that system that group online and what they really did is they recognized there was only a limited amount of money that they could put towards helping districts out and so what they really were they actually did two things they really kind of would take applications from districts and they would prioritize them you guys are the top ten this year so you're getting the funding to be able to do your work they also did a lot to streamline the process to speed up the permitting and whatnot and then to control cost they also went into detail about the types of materials and things that could be used in construction and so I don't know if that's a good model to potentially look at if people do go down that path we'll have to get here I think we did that with construction it was I came in as we were shutting it down but there was a certain amount of bonded capacity and you got on a list and got evaluated and yeah the trick is going to be coming up with the seed money if you only got limited funds that might be a way to do it so that you're always taking care of the most yeah I think everybody is kind of waiting for the end of all the testing so that we know what we're looking at and then we have some idea of what the cost might be but we know it's going to be awful well thank you to the school board and thanks for having us and we look forward to visiting again soon and answering more questions thank you appreciate it thanks Senator Watson Donald Jake yeah okay thank you again thanks representative Sacklitz thanks Larry have a good night Larry thank you and Andrew and Anne and Andrew thank you for coming down to Larry about the school district we appreciate that I'm a retired realtor I've sold houses in this town I've been saying I've made this trip regularly oh perfect you've made money off us come on give us some more money I don't know why I know that I've been down here thank you take care have a good evening see ya okay so we are going to move back now to our ownership linkage committee report and that was Kacha and Heather so Kacha is the committee chair and Heather's so the only thing we have to report out on this is we are having our regular monthly meetings now of the ownership linkage committee and we had some good discussion at our last meeting but I want Heather to just discuss more about upcoming this portion of a graduate project that's ongoing we are looking for some support and that the board will be a part of this and actually attend some of the discussions that are happening so Heather so we did receive the title funded amendment for the federal funds to retain up for learning to facilitate and lead group of student leaders well group of students are going to attend leadership training tomorrow February 9th and then subsequently we have a series of launch events these students are going to be asked to create a larger group called the Portrait of a Graduate team which will be about 30 people both adults and students and we need that group to meet on March 3rd March 9th April 18th and May 2nd so the ask is that we would like to have at least one board member at those portrait of a graduate meetings they are from 8 to noon on those dates so again those dates are March 3rd March 9th April 18th and May 2nd sorry I need the dates one more time yeah March 3rd March 9th Friday April 18th and May 2nd we'll be in the minutes thank you Hannah for your telling the days of the week yes it went Friday Thursday Tuesday Tuesday are you attending this to be the same person or just any board member on any day it does not need to be the same person I mean in a dream world that would be great but that we'd love board representation all of these and if you're able to make all of them phenomenal if you can only make one we would love to have you there perfect I think it would probably be helpful if we send out some sort of sign up for the day so that everyone has it in their calendar and we can know which board members will be present perfect so who's going to do the who will send out the sign up Heather and I will take care of it thank you Linda and so everybody understands the ask is to sign up for at least one of those four days and on the 9th do you need no February 9th will be students and we have school counselors and the facilitators from up for learning excellent yep so that is getting ready to go and so once it'll be interesting to see from there what they plan community evenings and dinners and outreach activities in various forms to get student involvement and families involved and parents and members and employers will it'll be interesting to let them take the lead on that so that's as much as I have right now is these dates that we have structured and set aside for the work excellent totally understanding because I know this is a big ask for a date time hours during the day so there will be other opportunities as Heather mentioned for maybe evening events, dinners things like that that board members can attend if you're not able to reach the date time events it's understandable but if we can at least get at least one person to each one of these four dates during the day that would be great we can spread it with the idea of by the end of June or having our portrait ready yes so there will be multiple outreach to the community so as Katja mentioned there will be evening events throughout that board members could attend as well and that's all the update on that okay awesome it was great meeting with the students today okay so next up we have just the review so this is the first run through of the monitoring reports EL 2.3 and 2.6 Lane do you want to it's the first read so just general kind of overview executive limitation 2.3 financial conditions activities in general it's about ensuring that we're using the monies that are in the budget for their intended purposes that we're paying our bills on time and that if there's any money owed to us that we're collecting it in a reasonable time right 2.6 is asset protection and I think the name kind of says what it's about it's about making sure that the district is protecting its financial assets, its facilities because those are assets as well as well as our equipment and that's typically either through our processes and protocols or through liability insurance and then oh sure I think it was on 2.6 there's a rouge employee instead of a road employee well gotcha yeah I can't remember where no it's just one transposition of letters what provisions are there I'm trying to find it ah, provision number two what's that it gives it a little flair a rouge employee yeah 2.6 provision number two under the interpretation okay so the next thing again Lane you're going to be going out to the community with some open forums just explaining the budget yeah I gotta send another update tonight later meant to get the reminder out earlier today but we have a lot of events going on as I'm sure people are aware so it's budget season at this point in time and so I always make the effort to go and kind of have separate meetings in each of the communities just have that discussion about the budget we've also been discussing and trying to get feedback through listening sessions with the community on draft homework policy that we have and then it's always kind of the open forum at the end anything that's on people's minds the first in the series for this month actually happened last week in Brookfield that was on February 2nd on the second is tomorrow night in Braintree at 6 30 p.m. the third is next week on the 16th and that will be at 7 p.m. right here in the media center and that's the last week before vacation in addition for folks that are trying to be informed when they go to vote on March 7th or March 6th on March 7th about the budget we're asking for and why we're asking for it there is also the state required annual budget meeting that will happen on March 1st at 6 p.m. here at RUHS and then we'll have the annual meeting the night before the vote and we'll talk a little bit about budget and can I answer questions about it at that time as well and all this stuff has been going out in community emails and will continue to do so on a weekly basis just to keep people reminded we're requested obviously to attend the annual meeting annual meeting yet there they do vote on things like the school officers like the treasurer that sort of thing and the clerk and yeah so the dates again you already have been in the agenda but the Brookfield one Brookfield we had last week February 2nd February 9th tomorrow's brain tree and then I don't think I put the open forums no you didn't put them on there the Randolph one will be here on the 16th on the 16th so February 16th but you'll be sending those out to the community as well they've been out once or twice and I've got to do a reminder today a final reminder for brain tree tomorrow do you put that in the paper or not and I usually I try to do I always do the our broadband email I try to get on front porch forum when I can remember as well because that especially for some reason Brookfield tends to rely on the front porch forum which is interesting talking so did you have many people show up for five or six which isn't bad what's I've noticed happen over time is that as we kind of communicate more with the emails and explain things through that the attendance at meetings has gone down the other thing that I do do I didn't mention it is that as part of the annual report my writings are about the budget what we're looking for so what I also do is probably a week or two before the vote is I break that up into usually a two or three part series and send it out to the community so they got that information again it's all just about informing people great great so brain tree be ready for tomorrow night okay so those are and they're the same discussions at each of the three meetings yeah yeah just sharing so if you've been to one it'll be the same it might be easier for board members that are from certain communities so you just pop over to there some more health um okay so next up we have um two monitoring self evaluation um self evaluations to do as a board last time we tabled 4.6 for this meeting and we also we're going to go ahead and do 3.0 for this meeting just so that we would stay on track with our monitoring and plus 3.0 is very simple it's just one line so hopefully everyone had the opportunity to um look at 4.6 that was evaluating our policy regarding how we work as communities somebody else want to go through this other than me you do a great job I'll just say that I feel like this wasn't always one for me for the most part because we haven't had very many committees like subcommittees that have come out and the ones that I feel that we have had have all been adhering to these principles yet did anybody see any issues with this maybe that's the way we should do it as you looked over um I had most of the time because I think our ownership linkage committee we just sort of we didn't put any end date to it and isn't there something about putting an end date in at some point oh time limited to read through the policy just so that people are aware so I'm going to go through it fairly quickly so board committees when used will be assigned so as to reinforce the wholeness of the board's job and so as never to interfere with delegation from board to superintendent so how have we done on that did everybody did anyone see were we not doing that reinforcing the wholeness of the board our committee is taking the superintendent's job I don't think so so accordingly number one board committees are to help the board do its job not to help advise to help or advise the staff committees ordinarily will assist the board by preparing policy alternatives and implications for board deliberation in keeping with the board's broader focus board committees will normally not have direct dealings with current staff operations and I said yes that one issue with that is our negotiation committees because in a way we are advising the administration in those which is kind of a but the contract is with us the administration is true that yeah okay yeah yep so that's a better way of looking at it because that because when I came to this one I was like oh we kind of advise I think that's something that needs to be reiterated every time there's a negotiation session that it's actually with us with a ton of help from the person who can actually give us the information we need to consider but I think it's something to be reminded every year especially when there are new committee numbers okay yeah alright so is there something that you think do you think we need to make do we just need to remind ourselves of that when we when we get those committees going or do we need to make any policy changes no because I think this policy and this you know number two specifically has to no one one is about when it because that's directly because those committees are directly between the board and the staff it's almost the exception to the rule so I don't think a change is necessary okay the end okay okay anyone have any other should this be like we form those committees after elections should this be reviewed as those committees are formed so that it's a reminder as the committees are formed or should it be reviewed when negotiations when that committee can be so should it be reviewed not this time of year but when did they usually begin like October usually in September oh so when we're when we're actually doing the self-evaluation for this particular I would actually say when people are being assigned to committees so that they understand but we're going to have different committees throughout the year those are just committees that are kind of standing people are appointed before the negotiations begin when we do often has to do with someone offering to be on it right can someone give me the cliff notes version on how you get assigned to a committee when you volunteer you get volunteers you get volunteers the negotiations committees often people choose true state on them because they've been through the process which is very very helpful because they're not supposed to happen this week just because of the changes in the state health laws and MLU we'll find one for you we'll get you on okay so moving on to number two board committees may not speak or act for the board except when formally given such authority for specific and time limited purposes expectations and authority will be carefully stated in order not to conflict with authority delegated to the superintendent I felt like we were doing that always right although the time limit we didn't say when that ownership linkage committee will be done but it's the first time we've had one and we're still sort of making our way with that committee so I think the fact that we haven't said it will be for these three months or whatever I don't even know if that would have a time limit because we will always have owners we'll always have owners it just may change and shift the work that we're doing yeah or we'll get better at it because it's our role our job is to make our plan so once the committee has made the plan and it doesn't carry it out the board as a whole carries it down so but we're still, this is the first year we've ever tried to make an ownership linkage plan we haven't yet done it yet so we'll see so I'm giving us some slack on that one number three board committees cannot exercise authority over staff beyond the bounds of typical support functions for committees with assigned staff superintendent works for the full board he or she will not be required to obtain the approval of board committee before an executive action yep I'm going to turn to the superintendent to say have we been overstepping our bounds at all in terms of staff time in terms of interaction with staff well in terms of our committee functions yeah I don't think so either to be honest during negotiations I want you guys to take more of the lead we can I sit on my hands can I ask a general question about language are we moving to more gender inclusive as far as he, getting rid of he or she replacing that with they will not be required to obtain yeah we could do that have we wise to do that throughout yep like an equity audit maybe we should do that I mean that should be in all of our policies right we should be checking all of them for that so who will do that maybe that's a suggestion is that something we need to put on an agenda to discuss more or is that something that can just be done is that something we need to vote on is that something that I mean we have them already on a regular schedule for lane to report compliance yes so each month as he reports compliance I could do an equity audit and propose updates to the board we also have them on our board yeah and then we have our selfie val ones I don't know I mean I don't want to do it alone I think we should have an equity team that involves different stakeholders was recommended it's a great thing to be working on like auditing documents for equity language but I think as we're coming across them like this too yeah sure right right you've got all your federal government policies they're huge you know there's actually an ideal time coming up to actually update that that wording because it wouldn't substantively change anything that's in those policies right we're transitioning to a new website which will mean redoing and getting those policies back up there that would be the time to do it I'd be happy to do that in the summer with the website group so so there's the policies that we're talking about though are our policies those are more the district policies that we you still vote on right we approved them but they're in the consent agenda we're how would we amend you could just charge me with we own this policy who types it how you guys they've been in the books for a long time we own them so if we want to change it up we can there are policies to change we can just do it not if it doesn't change the policies as we come to these let's just get them done we just need to change them who has the documents you send them to me format that can be edited you must have something to send it to me to send out to the board well I have this in this but I don't have you've got the ones that you made them all you made the chart from the policies what you're saying so I'm just copying I've got copies some of them are pds but I can convert them right they're all on our website right I'm noticing that after the website attack they had been going up and they had been replacing some of the things that we had up there with horrible photos comments it looks like they have removed through that process some of the policies so we're looking at that at this point like the board policies yeah so you know C10 C11 you know they were actually how they were putting stuff up is they would remove something that we had there and put something in its place and so it looks like a couple of the policies I mean we still have them in the the main book but they've got to be up and so that's a big big job and so I'm trying to decide since we've got the policy book can we just wait until the new website goes up or not they should be up there but because we're transitioning we should make it happen before they go up if someone's going through them let's just get them done and I don't mind editing documents if we're looking for someone to do because they're board policies if we feel someone on the board should be doing that editing so that would be our governance policies correct yes these policies yeah so do you don't have a word I have a policy you converted this into a chart I don't know because you'd have to change the language here too you see what I'm saying and then we change it in the actual policy and I don't think I have the chart things so whatever document would be used to put onto the website once it's a PDF or a JPEG or whatever it is the master editable version that's all for me and then everything else can feed from that right we just need an editable version so a word document of the policies yeah and Hannah will be that certainly I appreciate you bringing it up just a hallmark okay so that's a task that you've taken on for us Hannah, thank you and maybe you can work with Linda to figure out where the board policies are yeah what I know what the policies are you don't have these I don't know I created a bunch of these they're all in Google Docs so I can share those with you and you can make the same language changes in these perfect okay number four, board committees are to avoid over identification with organizational parts rather than the whole therefore a board committee that has helped the board create policy on some topic will not be used to monitor organizational performance on that same subject so basically not kind of getting a niche expertise and then having the whole board rely on that committee rather than the whole board taking responsibility but I said we don't have committees doing monitoring so I think we're good with that one committees will be used sparingly and ordinarily in an ad hoc capacity I would say most definitely that's how we we don't have a lot of standing committees this policy applies to any group that is formed by board action whether or not it is called a committee and regardless of whether the group includes board members it does not apply to committees formed under the authority of the superintendent and there we are okay the next policy we were reviewing was 3.0 we got a little bit out of sync so we're starting on the board management delegation policies but we have one more governance process one that we'll do next next meeting and that's also just a one sentence policy so 3.0 is the board's sole connection to the operational organization its achievements and its conduct will be through the superintendent of schools so that means the board communicates with the superintendent we're not bypassing him and going to staff I would say yes no of any superintendent it's actually been really good compared to most districts this is when I think it might be worth a while making sure we want the community to know all of our policies but this one in particular I think it's really important for them to understand especially when we have a large number of public comment we say we can't take action and we try to visually engage with them but I think they need to understand how our flow can work and why we're not going to immediately speak to whatever take action so at the ownership linkage okay awesome okay so we're good to go on that one moving on we have the second reading of the equity policy so at the second reading this is when the board will be voting to adopt the policy or not so Heather do you have or does the board have any questions, concerns regarding the equity policy we did hear from a few members of the public regarding the policy we clear the generation of this policy is a state policy this is a recommended policy but the wording is state it's from the Vermont school board association and so I think that may be what some of the community members were referencing is that so it is the state wording and the only which is made were to add identifiers I will say I appreciate the comments about specific and actionable and I do think that that is a lens through which looking at this policy or any equity policy moving forward making sure we have that lens of specific and actionable so I can understand why this may feel made in that sense I do always also feel that it's the start of something and it should be the end of something I think I'll talk a little one of the original plans and I think the discussion started next year was this idea that with a policy like this what we want to do is get the students involved in developing it sort of as an end like we do with our ends policy and our end statement so define for us what this means and once we've defined for what this means in practice then it's okay then what's the logical data to collect to see and so that was a discussion that started a little bit towards the end of last year so there always was an intent to have the student involvement and the shaping of putting the specifics in there just so folks can rest a little easy on that the recommendation that the outcome indicators be collaboratively identified and I would like to point out that under the implementation those bullets under implementation do give clear direction for things such as one of the community members mentioned required continuous professional development and that is there things such as identifying bias practices and disparities and opportunity gaps and so there are even though it is a brief policy and it is the state language there are some very clear implementations that I think that we would benefit from and I don't know I'm done talking on that topic I think so and if the board approves this policy it then goes to you to implement it and so you can choose to use students to reach out to the community because a policy is as good as its implementation so to identify outcome indicators and to report to the board the one that you brought up the identified bias practices it's identify and counteract so it's about reporting back not just that's going on but this is what we're going to do about it I feel like some of the public comment is deriving from the lack of confidence in the ability to counteract do we have is there any way we can add strategy for how to ensure that action happen I mean I guess that comes up when you do the report to the board but yeah I don't know I'm just kind of talking out loud here about that would it be an annual report because it seems like thank you so okay I think it would be considering some of the public comment about it being the reason here specifically that we need this is so current and frequent and present that perhaps annually is not enough for us to generate based on the level of concern yeah and I think I heard also just from some of the public comment like the proactive stance rather than the reactive stance and possibly no offense to pretend is the check and the balance on where the opinion the status is derived from whether there should be another body that says we agree with that to create unity there I guess I think this is a great we talked a lot about involving students on the board and I think this would be a very key area if there's an equity committee of students that comes about that would be a report that that student body would be able to bring to the board and have student involvement in potentially presenting that review if that's something that is found to be beneficial but I think that would be a way to get student voice in front of the board is something that we've been wanting to have anyway and it sounds like reporting perhaps is not going on so the hope would be that if the student body is seeing that the students are having a direct voice to the board hopefully the effect would be okay then my report will be heard having to report an incident will be heard because it sounds like right now there's a perception that they are not being heard so then what would the board do with that I mean again I don't want to leave students with this sense of okay I reported to the board we would then report to this we would then direct the superintendent to do something it's about perception right so if the board says we want a committee of students to help us put together something that will have an effect and we want to hear how it's going from you the perception is the board is listening directly to the students who are affected about how it is for them that's seen we're seen as an authority so then the student body feels they are being heard because we're hearing them I'm not saying we take action I'm not saying we go into operational decisions but people come to public comment to be heard right so we need to listen to something we are specifically being told it's felt as though it's not being heard yeah my concern my concern is one it's super takes a lot of courage and you're very vulnerable if you speak up to say this is happening to me I'm not asking for the report of the incident to be here but I'm worried about is then okay so now we've heard all the way up through the board the board doesn't really have take any action and a student has made themselves super vulnerable no I'm not saying a student reports an incident to the board that is not what I'm saying but the fact is I can't say fact but something we heard tonight is students have stopped reporting incidents because they don't feel action is being taken and we're talking about monitoring that this policy is being followed through one of the monitoring reports we should get is from a committee of students who understand what they'll be doing we're not asking them for personal okay testimony part of Heather's equity work this committee that you're considering you know we do for example our wellness policy indicates that there will be a wellness team and that team will meet at least four times per year so that language models of that language do exist but I thought it would be best to take exactly what the state recommended and put that in front of you so in the hopes that we would have something yeah and this by all means does not have an attack on this I think there is a desire amongst those who voice their opinion of public comment that they want something less boilerplate and more detailed and actionable and I'm not suggesting that this isn't actionable I'm just trying to generate a conversation around where can we create the perception or you know create a little bit more equity and accountability to the policy so that's just I think this idea of having a wellness team meet on a matter consistently and can weigh in I think that maybe should go into status reporting and I do agree status reporting should happen more than any one curious how we monitor how we would monitor this policy since it doesn't kind of fit in our framework of monitoring policies because our job is to monitor Lane and so how does implementation of this it's his job to then implement this policy it's my job or in this case you know be delegated to Heather it's our job to just like we would do I would imagine your end statements is to work with a group of people to interpret it again what does this mean and the specifics and then based upon what the group has identified is what these specific things that we're trying to improve are what are the measures that are going to measure progress towards that and that's what we get reported out on I'm going to say a little bit that it would be very helpful to have this policy because right now in this work I've been unprotected and this will help a little bit with the protection in the parts and pieces that I've done it would be very helpful to at least get something in place tonight that then can be you know modified in the future and a part of that feedback loop is as we're collecting data then you know maybe there are just like any other policies hey it doesn't look like we're improving enough here or it looks like there needs to be more detail here you can always adjust the policy after this but I would strongly recommend it sounds like you guys are leaning in that anyway but get it in place so that we have some protections as we do this put it in place so that it can be implemented and if we are hearing that things are not going well as we are hearing now with the policy in place then we know that there's adjustments then we need to get more specific with our policies but our policies are supposed to start very generally and again we've got very capable competent people who can help interpret and you know that's one of the reasons to have an equity coordinator is to make sure that also in terms of what folks are deciding on is to kind of balance it out make sure that it's reasonable appropriate going to be effective and so I think that's an important piece so the only thing that's left this is not a question for you Lane or Heather the only question I have left is how do we put this into our annual structure so that's just looking at our just be a part of end reporting make it an end, put it on your mission statement we could put it as an end we could put it under treatment of students, parents, guardians and community we could add it as another enumeration on that one because when you look at our treatment of students it's we don't really it doesn't speak specifically to that but again the superintendent interprets that policy or we have it we could put it it could come under the global executive constraint the superintendent shall not cause or allow any practice activity, decision or organizational circumstance that is unlawful unsafe, imprudent or in violation of commonly accepted educational and professional ethics and practices so in some ways it fits under that I think putting an enumeration under there is an important recognition that while these problems have existed in this our town, our district for a long time things have gotten dramatically worse in the last couple of years and so I think that having an enumeration on there like that is the board making that recognition that hey given whatever is happening in the world today things have gotten worse and so it's important enough to try to counteract that as best we can Anne you were around when these policies were initially developed and adopted how do we add an enumeration? we can write it and we could work with I might run it by Susan Mogensen who is kind of a policy governance guru person just because you do want to keep it fairly general so I could but enumerating acknowledges that this is a particular issue that we want to highlight we want to go we want to dig a little bit deeper and in particular this is any area we want to look at we want to make sure and we want to monitor it we have to charge you we have to vote to charge you when having this to have a conversation with Susan and see where we could I'm going to move to adopt the district equity policy policy C29 I'm going to second any other discussion all those in favor aye anyone opposed I will need to chart and with discussing the placement of enumeration under treatment of students the policy 2.1 treatment of students further discussion on that all those in favor say aye aye that will be done consent agenda I just had over heard some some comments about our minutes on the minutes from January 11th. Rachel, I know that there's not an adjournment time or when we edited exactly the session. So we've been in exactly the session. Thank you. Does anyone remember? What's the question? When did we adjourn? When did we adjourn the session on January 11th? Yeah. I think I can look back to see my frozen pipes. Unfrozen pipes, yeah. Hold on. Wait, I have it. Oh yeah, Chelsea's got it right? Can you hear me? Yep. We entered at 8.27, and we exited at 8.54. And adjourned at 8.55. What else? What other information was missing? Adjourning the meeting. But we'll just, 57 sounds about right? 8.55. Thank you. Thank you, Chelsea. Thank you for adjourning the minutes. Do you have to redo those and then add that in there? I'll put them in these minutes. Okay. So, and then will we, so do I, do we need to accept these minutes, or do we wait until? No, this will be in the minutes here, and then you approve these minutes. It will say that that was added to them. Okay, so we can approve them now as is and that we're going to make some adjustments to them. Okay, so do I have a motion to approve the minutes? If they are. So moved with the amended, you think of a session at a German time? Second. Seconded by Hannah. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Okay, here we go. We have a general update regarding negotiations with the teachers union. I think that's the support staff. Yeah. Or is it support staff? Support staff. Yes. I don't know if the team wants to talk or you guys want me to talk. It was a very long meeting. Oh, yes. Very long. We went to mediation. When was that? The 25th of January. But we reached an agreement at the end of an array. And I don't know what else I should say on that. Say anything you want. Second, you reach in past. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I think it was successful. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think it was successful. The fact that we were able to reach an agreement was great that we were able to leave that meeting with that in place. And we would recommend that the board... We have to vote on it as a board, right? Right. So yeah, we recommend that the board approve the remiters 25. So two years. Two years. So the basic numbers and stuff. So it was a 12.4% increase in year one and 8.4% increase in year two. This is for the support staff. There were two language changes as well. It was making Christmas Day a paid holiday at a cost of about $8,200 to the district. And then adding a sick bank that was similar to the teacher. So those were the major changes. I'm as kind of the advisor piece. I think it was a very good deal. I highly recommend that the board pass it. I don't think, you know, it's through the discussions that it quite addressed the district's desire to have starting salaries higher. Then they were, but it is a good start in that direction. Because we were hoping to get the starting salaries higher. So do we have a motion to accept that? Support staff agreement? Sure, I'll make the motion. Second by Sarah. Any further discussion or questions? All those in favor? Hi. Okay. So we've got that official now. And do we have a general update on the status of the teachers? Yeah, they are going to mediation with the teachers March 15th at 4.30 p.m. Yeah, we're trying to get a little later, but that's, yeah. And then that'll be through my guesses through a Google or a Zoom link. Okay. And then... Oh, we have ownership linkage that day. That's 4.30 p.m. How did they do that? We can change that. That's the reason. Just bring snacks to your table. I can do that. Okay. So I'm going to just go through the next piece. Oh, Tav has a question. I'm going to get to you, but we're going to go through the stuff before we go into executive session. So I'm going to have you speak just before we head into executive session. Sorry, before we move on, I have that was going to be May. Really wrong. Are we sure it's March 15th? Yes, it's March 15th. I put on my calendar as well. Wow. I missed my calendar. And just to be on the same side, make sure nothing's changed. I'm going to add. I'll double check with folks tomorrow. Thank you. So we'll move the owners. Sorry. Thank you. Yeah, we can reschedule ownership linkage. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, we can reschedule that. Seriously, the support staff, and you guys know, it's five and a half hours. And I don't anticipate, you know, that this will be a short meeting either. So... Sex. Or earlier on a different day or on that day. It's just, I would recommend it. Yeah, well, we can reschedule the next meeting. I'll take that one. In our next committee meeting. Is the next committee meeting right? No. No, we have one coming up. Oh wait, we have one this month. Yeah. Next week. Yeah, next Wednesday. I'm on the head. I don't want you in May. Okay, so superintendent's report. Any questions from the board on that? And how about any of the principles? Financial slain. How are we looking? So at the end of December, we should have had 50% of the budget spent. We are at the end of January. We have always spent, what, 46% of the budget so far. So we're well in the black right now. Nice. Awesome. So action recap. Linda and Heather are going to be sending out a sign up for the portrait of the graduate work. The, the, the, the, the, the, the ownership linkage committee is going to be meeting next Wednesday. I'm going to be connecting with Susan Morgenson about adding an enumeration to our treatment of students policy. And there was one other thing. I'm going to be working with like that. governance policies and I think that's that's all of the action that we've got happening between now and the next time we have a meeting we're not going to adjourn because we need to go into executive session where we're going to be discussing a labor negotiation but before we do that we're going to have some public comment because we are going to be needing to make a decision and have is going to speak on behalf of the union so you have the floor to have right thank you for giving me this time to speak and I promise it won't take too much of your time so yeah we're asking the board to consider a side letter to you know it's a little weird a side letter right after possibly settling this disagreement with support staff but this is an issue that came up after our initial proposals had already been filed and I believe I have to admit I'm filling it for Nora so so forgive me Lane if I say something that isn't true but I believe that you and Nora have been talking about you know yeah sort of what might be possible so we've proposed some language and and basically our rationale is that the current language stipulates that paraprofessionals who agreed a sub for a classroom teacher get a $25 stipend and the issue that has come up is that there are some some support staff who are not paraprofessionals for instance front-office staff or media center staff who are doing a lot of subbing because we're having trouble finding you know subs and so they're getting pulled from their duties and it's yeah it just felt like it would be more equitable for that language to include all support staff Lane had mentioned in some of the discussions and again Lane correct me if I'm saying that's not right that one of the the major concerns from the district's end was that in the small schools because there's not like a full time nurse for instance that there are people who kind of have to fill in on a regular basis and so we added some language at the end that says this will not include support staff who regularly perform the duties of a licensed staff member as part of the regular job just to make sure that there was a an exception that could be made for that so yeah that's basically what I've got and yeah just ask the board especially to consider it and I'll hang out if if there are any questions and otherwise I'll get out of your hair. Any questions for Ted from the board? Anything else you want to say to us before we go into the executive session to decide? Yeah I mean I can talk a little bit about it probably would be appropriate that way that you know Ted has an opportunity to respond and I apologize I kind of wrote this out because I spent a good deal of time kind of studying things and there's there's bigger components to this that the union may or may not may or may not recognize so so the support staff and Ted kind of touched on this they're comprised of eight different job categories that are recognized in the master contract so you have this you have this contract that's called support staff and they're these eight job categories that are under it so there's paraprofessionals, head cooks, cooks, administrative assistants, clerks, custodians, lead custodians and maintenance workers and under the contract as it currently exists there's only one category of support staff that has provided additional pay for assisting with duties outside of their normal work expectations and that's the paraprofessionals and Ted touched on that basically the paraprofessionals who agree to sub for a teacher receive you their sub payer their salary plus twenty five dollars whichever is greater now the thing that I think it's important for the board to consider is that the support staff contract is silent on all other potential duties and for all other job categories and that's an important point and I'll get to it in just a moment and that was negotiated by the district to ensure in part that administrative assistants could assist in basic nursing duties additional pay right especially in terms of brain tree in Brookfield when the nurse was not present but it also provides the district something else that silence provides the district with a broader ability to have support staff assist and other duties when needed without additional renumeration so I think it's important to recognize that under the current contract this is a right of the district that exists because of good faith negotiation and it carries a significant value to the district though it is very rarely used should the board agree to what the union is proposing it would represent the district giving up a substantial right with no kind of comparable give from the union and so I just want to make sure that that's important and again it is correct you know I was talking a lot lot with Nora but this issue came up for the union before negotiations before initial proposals were on the table I did spoken with Nora about that so I'm not sure why it could have just been timing but I'm not sure why it wasn't a part of that negotiation session because that's what we kind of talked about as you know to negotiate it because there might be some exchanges that we could make to get this into place so I think that's just kind of an important piece to point out there yes changing this language potentially is removing some significant rights for the for management for the district to be able to ask you know staff members to step up above and beyond especially in cases of emergency and so I think that's you know there's a significant give here we don't use that that often Ted is right it was used a bit during you know COVID when we had teachers out and shifting people around so you know usually if it's used it's in an emergency situation but so just so the board has that to consider have did you want to add any more to that from the union perspective um yeah just just a couple things I went I I was under the impression I don't have dates and stuff in front of me like I said this is more some of the dollars on top of what I I I don't believe that the incident that sort of prompted this discussion happened before negotiations it started I think it happened in November again I'm not trying to contradict you but that just so I actually emailed Nora with the timeline and the dates and asked her in an email to make sure that it was documented you know why this hadn't been done in negotiation based upon the timeline so I did check my dates and my numbers yeah okay well I'm sure you did I guess I just want to say like it was certainly not the intent of the union to transfer the negotiation process I'm not saying that's what you're implying but it's more to note that and yeah I mean I don't I don't have a whole lot else to say I think I have a different view from from Wayne about the the the frequency with which this is this is happening just in terms of like the need for for something and I think it's yeah I think we brought it because I think it is something that is affecting support staff morale like this perceived discrepancy and yeah I wasn't I wasn't thinking about it as something that that would be such a significant lift for the board but that's obviously there's got decision to make so that's all I want to say thanks for thanks for hearing me out okay thank you board members any other questions before we head into executive session to decide on this that's our call so so can we have a motion to