 People were missing. Landsat, people who have just arrived. We seem to be missing. Tony Fakos, Jay Erickson, Jim Murphy. Now, Mara has rotated off the board, yes? Correct. I mean, and our facilitators, Keisha and Sue. Keisha and Sue are not facilitating this meeting. They'll be coming back for their third and final meeting next time. OK. So we're on our own tonight. And I see Jay is in the waiting room now. So thank you for whoever remembered to put an asterisk in front of your name if you're on the committee. But if you could go and rename yourself, if you're on the committee, if you could put an asterisk at the front of your name so that you rise to the top so that we can quickly see who's here from the committee. So I think we can go get started. I think most everybody's here. Tony did send me an email ahead of time that he was going to be running late tonight. So I see that there are a few members of the public here tonight. And if you just want to use the raise your hand function or if you want to turn on your video and literally raise your actual hand, you're welcome to do that as well. And I'll call on you in the order that I see you pop up for public comment. Thank you, Susan, forever the teacher teaching people how to rename. OK, so it looks like we might not have public comment tonight. We can always after the consent agenda, I could open it up for public comment again if more public arrives. So the consent agenda is just to approve the minutes, which everybody should have received via email. And Jim, I actually had a question about this because the school board also approves the minutes, but the committee needs to approve the minutes and the school board approves the minutes. School board approves the school board minutes. The committee approves the minutes. OK, and we just send these minutes to the school board as part of the board packet, but they're not approved. Are they included in the board packet? Like other committee minutes usually aren't. I thought I saw them in the last board packet. Either way, we will approve the minutes. Yeah, we have to approve them. I don't think the school board has to separately approve them. OK, so do I have a motion to approve the minutes? I will make a motion to approve. I'll second it. Thanks, Jay. And I guess I will do the roll call to approve the minutes. So, Susan. Yes. Amanda, you were muted, but I saw an I there. Will. I. Jen. I. Joan. Is this an appropriate time to make an amendment to the minutes? Sure, because I thought I remembered at the last meeting, but maybe this was a previous meeting that Carolyn Wesley had made a comment, which was not recorded. Yeah, we'd have to go back and add the amendment in and then reappear. OK, and so would that be something that's done in real time or would I bring the minutes back to the next meeting? Um, it would have to be I think we'd have to stop the vote and someone have an offer and amendment to approve the minutes with the suggested amendment. So, Joan, do I hear a suggestion? Make a new motion. Is that make a motion to amend the minutes to reflect the public comment made by Carolyn Wesley on behalf of the just schools initiative? I don't know how much details needed there, but I think just to approve the minutes with the amendment suggested adding the public comment. Going to make that, Joan. Did I I thought I just said I make a motion to amend the minutes to reflect the public comment made by Carolyn Wesley at the November meeting. Yeah, I'll second. All right, Susan. I. Amanda. I. Mia. Jen. I. Thank you, Joan, for making that that change to the minutes. Joan. I. Catherine. I. Jim. I. Eliana. You were very quiet. There you are. Jay. I. Edie. Your volume is a little choppy there, Zach, but hopefully it will come back on. OK, great. So before we get started with the rest of the agenda, I just want to make note that everyone knows now that Mara had to step down from the school board and also from serving on this committee. And so the school board has appointed Mia Moore to fill her position on this committee. So I wanted to introduce Mia or have me introduce herself to the group. Hi, everyone. Thanks. Thanks, Emma. And so just as a bit of context as a way of preparing for joining you all, I watched the video from Orca Media of the first meeting. And so I did get a chance to actually experience all of you introducing yourselves. So I wanted to first of all say thank you to that. I'm really looking forward to working with all of you. And I thought it would be only fair to put me in the hot seat as well and introduce myself in the same way. So I'll share. So again, my name is Mia Moore. And I use she, her pronouns. I'm a Montpelier resident and mother to three children in our school system. I have a third, first, and pre-care. I grew up in Wisconsin actually and have lived in Montpelier since 2006. And I am not too embarrassed to say that in watching the video, I actually got a little bit weepy and choked up listening to each of your stories. It was just very moving for me to see each of you bringing and all of us collectively bringing our not only best intentions, but great experiences and perspectives to this space. The perspective that I come from and what draws me to this work is right now, I'm currently like my professional life is a consultant and coach in management and organizational development through an equity lens. And in my previous job, I was the chief of staff at Democracy for America for 10 years. And my primary roles in that job were to hold organizational budgeting and long-term planning. So I have kind of a systematic approach that I bring to problem solving. And the other role that I had was to ensure all of our people were both supported and held accountable to their goals. About halfway through my work at DFA, we started to learn some very hard truths about what it was like to be a person of color working at our organization. And at the time, this was really shocking to me because as a white person in a position of leadership, I wasn't experiencing working at the organization in that same way. And I also had the power to do something about it, and I hadn't up until then. And I wanted to share all of that with you because I see us as a district and as a community really plotting our way through and wrestling with questions of justice and equity and what people's lived experiences really are like. And I know how challenging it is when you hold an identity and a lived experience that brings you a lot of privilege to come to fully understand what it is like to not have that and to not have a dominant viewpoint. And as I see us doing now back in that work that I was doing at DFA, we started by educating ourselves, listening to each other, and working on how to change our system. And it was really, really hard. And we didn't always get it right. And I believe that that is a good lesson that to bring into this is that we're probably not going to get it right throughout the entire process. And still, I really look forward to really diving into it and rolling up our sleeves and working together on that. And I also wanted to say thank you all for your work so far on doing this and for welcoming me into engaging in it with you. And one fun fact about me, since I know everybody shared a little thing about yourselves that not everybody knows, one thing you likely don't know about me is that as a high schooler, I was on the pom-pom squad. And I and a partner choreographed a routine to pet benetars hit me with your best shot. Any chance of a video of that in my key point? I've made it impossible to find those. OK. None of you know my mother, right? Not yet, good. All right, great. So we're going to I'm going to try to move us through so that we can actually end on time. I don't think we've been able to do that yet. So it would that's one of my goals tonight. And so far, I don't see I do see Amanda here, a member of the public. I don't know if we want to I'm happy to reopen public comment. If anybody from the anybody from the public would like to speak. Thank you for the opportunity, Emma. I'm OK. I just here to listen to be present and to let you guys know that we're supporting this work and anything that is needed. Thank you, Amanda. And I think she may be the only member of the public tonight. So Orca Media is here. I'm assuming that they're recording. You all should assume that they're recording as well. So an overview of the agenda tonight, basically we're using this time to go through the survey feedback and sort of gain some clarity and present each stakeholder group will end up presenting to the rest of the committee what they heard over the past week and a half for feedback around visions and concerns for student safety in Montpelier Roxbury School District. So I've provided a long breakout room by stakeholder group. So you'll be breaking up into your stakeholder groups. There's a couple that are thin, like Jay, you're on your own. So I think I'll end up meeting with you. I'm going to send. Originally, Jim, I was thinking that you might go with whatever public was here today. But I think since we have Amanda, we'll just send you both with the parent caregiver group. Yes, Jen? You have a question? Yeah, no, perfect. It's a green, but good. I was just saying Pierre is not here. It looks like Pierre is not here either. So I think mine might be a lone ranger as well. So maybe you can come with me and Jay and we can have a party of three. So the plan is to give us 25 minutes in stakeholder groups to I'm guessing you've all looked at the survey results and you've probably done other more informal interviews and such of individuals. So just gather together in your stakeholder groups and share out what you've been hearing and then talk about how best to present those findings to the rest of us because I've only budgeted about five minutes, five to six minutes. And we may be a little ahead of schedule by the time that comes around, but for each stakeholder group to present back, we're going to take a break at 5.45 just for a few minutes to stretch and go to the bathroom or get a snack. And then we'll come back and do the stakeholder feedback. So I'll walk you through the matrix that I just sent. I'll walk you through that in a second. And then we're going to do some work again in different breakout rooms to identify some common themes. So while people are presenting, we'll be taking notes, just each of us individually taking notes on some things that we keep hearing come up across stakeholder groups. So it could be around visions or it could be around concerns or both, but just sort of jot down notes of things that are sort of catching your ear as common themes. And then we'll come back and report the common themes to the big group. And then we'll just sort of go over some housekeeping stuff around trying to schedule a standing meeting for December and January and what's going to be on the agenda for the following meeting. And we're going to also be asking, I'm going to be giving you a Google form to start formulate at the very end of the meeting to start formulating your questions around the SRO position. And so that's for you to sort of sit with between now and the next meeting. So let's get started with agenda item number two, which is the stakeholder feedback in groups. So I'm going to put you guys into breakout rooms based on stakeholder group. Mia is asking, would you like me to join you? Sorry, that was a private comment, but I think Mia, what I had, yeah, you'll come with us because you were originally going to go with the administrators, but you'll just come with us. So I'll have to, the breakout rooms might be a little bit clunky. I think Jay and Mia and Jen and I will stay back in this main room just in case any of you need to come back and ask a question, you could leave your breakout room and then go back and rejoin it. Does that make sense? You should get, I'm going to set the timer of the breakout rooms for 24 minutes and then you'll get a 60 second countdown. Has everybody used breakout rooms before? Does anyone have any questions before I throw you into them? Everyone's a Zoom professional these days. All right, so I'm going to get the breakout room started. Was there anything we wanted to talk about the matrix before the breakout rooms? Oh yes, thank you, Susan. Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but there's visions and concerns and then there's a column for each stakeholder group. So you should be able to go in and edit and I'll make sure that you have editing privileges, but you should be able to go in while you're in your stakeholder group and just enter any notes. Obviously I'm not expecting you just to drop all of the information from some of you had hundreds of responses. I think we had 432 responses total to the survey as of right now. So I mean, some of you had hundreds of responses to go through. So I'm not expecting you to write word for word all of the feedback that you received, but just sort of like the highlight reel, you know, what were some of the things that you were hearing over and over again or what were some of the really poignant stories that you heard, anything that sort of stood out to you and just take notes and you can, you should take them in the columns for visions in one area and then concerns in another area. And I think that those hopefully will be fairly self-explanatory. As I was reading through some of the feedback, it was some people were writing some of their visions in the things that they felt unsafe about in the answer about feeling unsafe. They would still write something that was more of a vision for potential safety down the road or vice versa. Some people might say something that makes them feel unsafe and put it into the safe question. I don't know if all of you sort of read, did a preliminary read through of the survey questions, but I think you'll be able to sort of make sense of it together in your groups of whether you think it should fall into visions for safety or concerns of safety. Does everyone feel comfortable with that? Don't go to the SRO column yet. That's gonna be happening, I think, two meetings from now. Sue and Keisha are working us through that process. So for now, it's just dropping your notes in. And then for the second breakout room, we might start identifying common themes, which is a whole separate column in the matrix. Does that sound good? I'm seeing heads nodding. Okay. I'm gonna get you in your groups. I have to do this manually, sorry. Okay, so I think that I'm just gonna double check these rooms and make sure everybody's where they're supposed to be. Emma, is Orca Media in all rooms? Orca Media is in this main room with us. There's no easy way to allow them to go to all rooms. I would have to make them co-host and I did ask if they were present earlier and nobody came to speak to me. So I think we'll just leave them in here with us. Did the feedback gathering go for you two? Jay, what was your group? You're muted, Jay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. Sorry about that. So my group is just the city council. So I've had, so that's, I included the mayor and the city manager and assistant city manager. So I sent a survey out to them. I've gotten a couple of responses, but I've also talked to a number of folks just on the phone. One of the things that's a little bit different than all the other constituency groups is, it's a lot smaller group, right? And also everything that we, what I was trying to figure out in the MNI emailed about this a couple of times is I was trying to understand exactly, is this more appropriate for a conversation at a council meeting or just through a survey? So at the end, I decided it made sense to just do a survey, but names are associated with all the responses because it's because we're the council, it's public information, whereas the other constituencies were parents and administrative teachers were able to do it anonymously. That just doesn't work for us. So I put together just a really brief, open-ended yeah, survey saying what are your thoughts and but knowing that ultimately it could, we could publish it down the road, it could be part of a conversation at a council meeting at some point, maybe or maybe not, I don't know, but that was the approach I took. And for the most part, I think that I've only heard from a few folks, but I think that from a council perspective, everybody's concerned or at least has on the top of their mind, they're thinking about process and thinking about the ownership of these decisions that are made. And at the end of the day, if a change is made, how is the city impacted and also how is the, more importantly, how is the district impacted to make sure that the safety of kids is always at the top of mind, so. Mia, are you, I see that you might be in the spreadsheet, can you do mind-taking notes? Not at all. So I started that as a, under the concerns, is that, would you say that that's the right place to put that, Jay? I mean, I don't have concerns to have a negative implication, but I think that for the most part, folks are just trying to really think about the relationship between the city and the school district and the police department and the school district and always being concerned about the safety of students. And no matter what the outcome is, being able to support the process as best as possible. And by outcome, I mean decision that's made by the board down the road. And by process, you mean process of creating a vision of safety for the district? I think by process, I mean, that's a good question, I mean, I think the process is more like, the council is really focused on ownership of the decisions and knowing that, okay, how are we, how is the city held responsible, how is the district held responsible, whether it's the chief or the superintendent, et cetera, depending on what, ultimately, the board decides on what to do with a position, it's less about the budget implication, it's more about how are we making sure that we're doing everything we can around the safety of kids? So I wonder, Jay, did you get into the sort of like bigger picture question around like the vision that the city, like, I feel like the city officials and city council might have a different perspective than the other stakeholder groups on like what their priorities around safety for the city is and how the school buildings and the students fit into that vision of safety, did you get into sort of those like sort of broader lensed questions around like safety and concerns of safety? I posed those questions to the counselors but I have not gotten enough feedback to really give you a sense of what folks are thinking. I hear you that those are important questions but I wouldn't want to say on the record that one way or the other there's a general consensus about how we manage that piece. Okay, so they're a little bit more like focused on the sort of like nitty gritty of this committee and then the board and the decision around the SRO. That was more of the feedback that you got. Well, yeah, like I said, I'm still waiting for a lot of feedback. I think that the general, that the folks that I've spoken to and the feedback that I did get is that they're maybe not the nitty gritty but wanting to make sure that all the voices are heard because I think that there's a general sense that the understanding of the, that there's a lack of understanding on the sort of where the rubber meets the road of the role of the SRO exists and this is just from a couple of them. So I don't want to like this, I haven't had enough feedback to say, oh yeah, this is how the council thinks. I don't want that to be like- That's totally fine, yeah. But I do think that there's, I've heard from a few folks that just want to make sure that regardless of what decision is made, that there is a more in-depth understanding of what role the SRO plays in schools and that relationship between the district, the school district and the city. So it seems to me like right now is the time to hear the voices that would bring that understanding. Like I don't think we need to wait till any later in the process to do that. But I don't, you know what I mean? Like I want to address that concern that they're having. We did hear a little bit from Jen and Pierre at the first meeting around how the SRO, the role of the SRO and how it's been utilized. And then also at the next meeting, I know Sue and Keisha are planning to have Libby present about the role of the SRO. And I think that that, you know, I appreciate you mentioning that Emma because I don't necessarily want to bring it up with the whole group, but I do think that at what point do we have Libby present and Chief Pete and what is there an opportunity for Bill Frazier or Anne to provide feedback, whether it's by a letter or some sort of engagement in the conversation. I'm not sure. Absolutely. I mean, I think that the timeframe, you know, has been at the forefront of my minds and I talked about it at the last meeting that I'm not sure that we're gonna have time to do all of that with Fidelity by December 31st. But absolutely, I mean, obviously anybody's welcome to come and testify during public comment anytime. So they, you know, if they feel a sense of urgency around some, this needs to be shared with the committee, they should just come. But I know that we're planning to have, you know, I think part of the process is to have experts from around the field, you know, various parts of the community come and testify. So it wouldn't, you know, yes, there would be, we want to hear from the police department. So how do you use the SRO and that sort of thing from Libby, you know, what's been the history of the SRO and that sort of thing. And then also from, you know, maybe Vermont Legal Aid who has a different perspective on how harmful the school to prison pipeline has become potentially, you know, I've heard them testify at other meetings. So you would want to have a balance of voices being heard and not just the perspective of how the district has relied on the SRO in the past. Sure, yeah. And have you, have you heard from Tony at all? Oh, for feedback? Yeah, I didn't know if he had surveyed the police department or how he was going to manage that process in terms of constituency group. Yeah, he emailed me to let me know he was at a different meeting tonight and probably wouldn't make it, might be late. And I asked if he might be able to forward me any sort of summary of his, of the feedback that he received and he hasn't gotten back to me yet. Okay. So Jen, how did your feedback gathering go? Excuse me. Similar to Jay's, I think. What was difficult is that we were on vacation all this week. So, and we were specifically told not to ask about the SRO. Am I correct? Cause we did not. Yeah, not to frame it in the SRO, in the language of SRO. We were trying to get people to sort of like step back and think about, I mean, I think what the intention behind Sue and Keisha's questions are more about some qualitative feelings around safety and then down the road, does the SRO ultimately sort of help these concerns around safety and visions for safety or hinder? And that's sort of where we're headed. If you look at the matrix, there's like a, and they presented it at the last meeting. Yeah, it's a little, little hard because I mean, it felt like we're looking at the SRO and that's why we're asking the questions in the first place. Yeah. So, but safety question, you know, we sent out, Pierre and I decided we would send out the exact same questions to get the feedback from staff at our school. And so it's embedded in that staff feedback instead of having a separate stakeholder. So I'm not really sure which ones are which. And so I'm not really sure also if the middle school has answered or how many people in my school have answered. I know that a couple have, but I don't know everyone. And so we prefaced ours with thinking about just your administrative hat answer in that way rather than, you know, just, rather than from a student perspective necessarily, but more of an administrative perspective how we keep our students safe. And it occurred to me that we're thinking along what Jay was saying is sort of like, maybe people don't realize what the SRO does or has done or could do. The impact or the role. I know that Libby had talked about it at a school board meeting before this committee was created. I kind of, I sometimes feel like I would go back to that list and say, what did she say exactly? Cause I was in that meeting but I wasn't totally paying attention. But I think the, I think the administrators and like I can't say for sure but reading through some of the notes, it's more of a bigger picture. Like what if there's a school shooter? What if there's a fire? What if there's a train wreck and there's a, you know, you have these trainings of, you know, a poisonous cloud coming to the school. What are you gonna do? You know, and they put you through those things with the police department and the fire department and how do you coordinate those things? So it's though, you know, it's a bigger picture sort of view rather than the social emotional view in school. That's more from my perspective. You know, I just did an interview with someone around school safety and that's what occurred to me. So, but I have to read through all those to try to pick out which ones might be. So, you know, the administrators, I'm not really sure. I wonder if it might be, did you- A lot of people, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. I'm just saying that there, you know, people were on vacation. So when I sent it out, I got a lot of, we're on vacation. We'll look at this, you know, yesterday, so. Yeah. Are we married to the timeline though? Do we have to be done by the 31st? Because I would hate- I talked to Jim and maybe I can spend some time at the end of this meeting. You know, I mentioned it at the last meeting where I was kind of starting to feel like. Yeah. This timeline is putting a lot of stress on people. And I don't, I want the committee to work and I want everyone to feel like all voices have been heard and that everybody understands how the SRO is being utilized, both of you mentioned that as a concern, a concern. So I want everyone to feel like we have enough time to do everything well and bring in the experts that need to talk to us to be able to make a decision. So I'm kind of, what we started to talk about is the possibility of earmarking the funds in the budget for school safety. And then this committee can kind of make their decisions and make their recommendations as we come to them. And then the funds would be there either to use for an SRO for however that vision is set forth by the committee or potentially something else. If not the SRO then we would have funds to support other measures within the school district to help with safety. So the big thing was like the budget was the big reason for the December deadline. So I'm gonna talk to the school board about that tomorrow and hopefully have them soften the deadline for us. And you know how we're managing it on the city side. So. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's no real reason, there's no reason to force a deadline onto people that is doesn't, you know, there's no real reason to have it there. You know, it doesn't seem like there's a sense of, the sense of urgency is sort of a false sense of urgency I think. So hopefully. And how are we looking at the debt? I mean, how are we really gonna tease that apart and then put it back together in a thoughtful way? You had mentioned, what's that? From the survey or what? Yeah. The survey data. Well, that's what we're doing tonight. So. Yeah, it's. My hope is that in these 20 minutes, we can talk about the feedback that different various groups received, plug in notes for visions and concerns around safety and then come back together and sort of then start to look at what themes are emerging. So I mean, it would definitely be nice. I mean, I knew that your stakeholder groups were a little bit different from the other stakeholder groups. In that A, you have fewer people in your stakeholder group and B, you might be having to individually reach out. So Jen, in your case, like maybe you call Ryan and have a conversation with him. Maybe you call, reach out individually to the various administrators and just have a qualitative conversation with them. But I'm not sure what Pierre has done. I don't know where he is tonight, but he also was having these conversations. So. But for the other stakeholder groups, there's tons of data to go through. There's tons of feedback. There was hundreds of answers. And I think even with the, you know, the staff, faculty group, there were a lot of, you know, interesting answers provided, I thought. And they were sort of all over the map. But I think it was, it definitely was a struggle for people to think about what their values were around safety and not frame it around the SRO. So that was a struggle. They all know it was around the SRO. It's not, I mean, it was specifically not around the SRO, it was around safety, right? Everybody knows that, just like you said at the forefront, like everyone knows that that's what this committee is eventually going to be talking about. Miya, sorry to interrupt. I was just gonna add that I think that makes a lot of sense that it's hard to envision safety in a really big picture way without immediately going to, well, we have this, that this SRO has been the sort of default, it's not the right word, but I can't think of a better one for safety in our schools. And so what we're asking people to do is envision something different, maybe. And I can see how it's hard for people to shift their perspective from what we've always known, or even though it's not always always, but it's been a very long time. And that requires definitely us thinking differently than what we have known and understood. And I think Jay and Jen, you might know this, that I've been involved in these conversations since June and I've heard often from people, well, I guess people just don't understand what the role of the SRO is. And I'm curious to know, and I suppose I would be asking you to speak for others as well, but maybe just for yourselves, what would tell you that now we have all of the information out there and it's available to everybody about what the SRO does? Like I'm wondering when we will get to the point where people will go, okay, now I feel like everybody understands what the SRO does. Well, I think that's a great question. I appreciate that, Mia. And I've been wondering the same thing myself because it feels to me, and this is exactly why I brought up the idea. And maybe, you know, city managers isn't really the best person to speak to this, but I wanna hear from Jen. I wanna hear from teachers. I wanna hear from Libby. I wanna hear from principles that can speak, because I feel like there's a lot that the SRO does that's not seen. And obviously a lot of it is just a function of the privacy of the work they do. And so just hearing, I know I've, we happen to have a mayor who's a teacher, right? Who has had very direct and positive interactions with the SRO, very positive. And so it's those stories that I just wanna hear. And then so that we can make, all can make an informed decision. And so I don't know exactly what the best, you know, how to best manage that. I mean, I know the surveys provide us a lot of information and I very much respect and appreciate the feedback that I've gotten and hope to get soon from other council members, but their approach is, you know, as a city counselor, not necessarily as a parent like I am, or as a teacher or administrator. And so, you know, I wanna hear their feedback, but I also wanna, I really just wanna hear a, you know, I wanna hear those varieties of anecdotes, of stories, of very first-person experiences. You know, I've been fortunate enough to have worked for the school district and been in the schools and have had a lot of first, have a lot of direct contact with SROs, but in a very different context. You know, it's been about supporting the school from the schools from a kind of a general perspective, not in the classroom, you know, immediate issue that has to be dealt with. So it's in those contexts that I really wanna hear those stories and so that we're hearing those alongside the perspective of perspectives of students. You know, I've read through all the, you know, all the survey results earlier. And, you know, I mean, there's so much to gain from that, but I also wanna hear all sides of it so I can make an informed decision. Well, not that I'm making the decision, but you know what I mean? So I can like really talk about this in a way that brings a lot of different perspectives or the perspectives we need to hear. So I don't know if that answers your question, Mia, but I think that that's really, as we like engage in these conversations, these are the things that I wanna hear because there's so many different approaches and people see this through so many different lenses that I just wanna make sure, you know, hearing all those different perspectives. And I think ultimately I think what's happened in this conversation is the, you know, the SRO has become something about lightning rod or a catalyst or something like to be this focused to bring these conversations together, but it's not just about that one position, it's obviously it's cultural, social, there's a lot to deal with, so. Jay, everybody's about to come back in about 10 seconds. So I just, I'm gonna. Yeah, I'm talking too much. I apologize. So yeah, I think the main, my main thing is the trying to facilitate is trying to bring in a variety of perspectives and not just like Mia said, if you're working in a school district that has built systems around a position, the school resource officer, that's gonna be your perspective. So it'll be important to bring other perspectives to the table. Thanks, everyone. Welcome back, everybody. Can I get some like sort of nods or thumbs up, thumbs down? Like do you feel like you had enough time in your breakout room or do you need to like go back for another few minutes? Enough time or please send me back. Okay. Okay, so the plan is to have a quick break. So I think we should take, I think we should take that break for a quick five minute, go off and do what you need to do and then rejoin in five minutes. You're welcome to turn off your video if you need. Wait, Eliana, I like, I think you just got cut off at the end. Was that a yes to the last question we asked at the very end or? Yeah, I think it's important. Okay, cool. We have about 30 seconds, everyone. Hey, Emma. Yeah. If we are eating, are we allowed to do that if we're muted? Are you allowed to eat if you're muted? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, I don't know. Yes, I think you're allowed to do whatever makes you feel comfortable. So if you need to be snacking during this meeting, that's totally fine with me. Yes, you're totally allowed to eat. Thank you so much. Okay, so I wanna make sure that we have enough time for each group to present their feedback. So I've allotted about five minutes, five to six minutes per group. And I suspect that some groups might be less than that. For example, Tony Fakos is not here to present feedback from the Montpellier Police Department. So there's an extra five minutes. So why don't we get started since we did all agree to frame this committee work around student voice and marginalized voices. I would like to start with the student group. Can you hear me? Am I too quiet again? You're a little, it sounds like your microphone might be a little bit muffled though. I'm wondering if you might just be able to like sort of lift it up if it's, you know, in your lap or something, just lift up the actual like part where the microphone is. Caring environment, fueled by different support systems of friendships, guidance counselors and social workers and very positive connections with teachers. A lot of, a few students said that no cops in the building would make them feel safer. And others said that they were in support of having an FRO. So there was a little back and forth there. And a lot of students said that they had a degree of like autonomy with deciding whether they have their cameras on or off in class or just deciding where they would work that made them feel safer. Um, and I'm going to talk about what people said made them feel unsafe. And I also wanted to share that we found most of the responses were given by people who identified as white females. There were also a number of responses from LGBTQ students and BIPOC. And we found that the least number of responses was from people who identified as white males. The main thing... Edie, can I just, I'm sorry, I forgot to, and I see people taking notes. So you were listening the first time I said it, but I just want to make sure everybody knows to just be taking notes, physical notes or mental notes because part of the work that we're going to be doing later is identifying common themes that we're hearing come up again and again. Sorry, Edie, go ahead. Okay. The biggest thing I saw the most that we saw the most was insensitivity, intolerance, discriminatory language, poor treatment of the responders and others and bullying or harassment from peers. And the second thing was a sort of feeling of disconnect or unfeelingness from the administration or from teachers, not understanding or not supporting enough or like too much pressure academically. And then, as Eliana said, in the visions category, there was some back and forth about whether cops or an SRO made people feel safe or unsafe. Some felt unsafe having an SRO and some felt unsafe not having one. Talking about the comfortable discussing topics like race, gender and sexuality. And so they're uncomfortable and possibly not having enough resources to do so, like can trickle down into the students like having more freedom to say like transphobic, homophobic and racist comments. So they're just kind of this, it just kind of goes down the levels in terms of how much people can say and how many hateful things can spread. You still have about a minute if there's anything else that you wanna add. Zach, anything that you wanted that you popped out for you? Mostly just reiterating the majority of students who said they kind of already both stayed with the welcoming environment, sort of interpersonal connections with teachers and other authority figures. The majority of them also, a big way was like bullying. The thing that made me feel unsafe was bullying or harassment of any sort occurring. Oh, and I just remembered one more thing. We thought that it was important to also talk about the people who said just no. I'm sorry if you heard that, that was my family. One second, I'm sorry. Sorry. People, like a number of people said either I don't know or no under the vision slash safety column. And we wanted to just acknowledge that because like, yeah, that is a move that you might pull when you're pulling out a survey and you don't really wanna answer the question. But we also thought that it could be telling that people don't want to answer that question. What makes you feel safe or don't know what makes them feel safe? Thank you all. That can just, that like saying no or I don't know can just kind of reflect that it's not really talked about in school. And like they might not be thinking about it regularly. All right, so let's hear from the parent caregiver community member group. I think you had the largest number of survey responses. I can, do you all want me to go ahead and report out? Okay. Have a great job. Yeah, sure. Yes, we did have a lot of responses. It was great. So I think I mostly actually just gonna read from, we took notes in the matrix. So I think I'm mostly just gonna read from there. And if anyone in my group wants to elaborate, just jump in. I can't actually see your faces because I'm looking at the spreadsheet. So it just caught me off. So under vision, something that we noticed came up a lot was the mention of having well-trained caring staff. And we also noted how this was made in a, largely in a very generalized way. There were some specifics around what does it mean to be well-trained? For example, specific mentions of anti-racist training and then trauma literacy, which I put in another box or being trained in restorative practices. But it was, I think, mostly shared as this sort of a feeling of having staff and teachers working with students who are caring and capable, helps parents, caregivers, community members feel like their students are safe. Having clear and consistent expectations and rules while also meeting the diverse needs of students. I mentioned earlier, there were a few respondents who got really specific and mentioned being literate around having particularly staff who are working with the students be literate in trauma and have trauma-informed ways of teaching and dealing with and addressing student behavior and also really investing in restorative rather than punitive practices when harm does happen. And there are a lot of comments that kind of fell under this umbrella of understanding and meeting student needs in a holistic way. So for example, engaging with school counselors when a need might come up or addressing challenges that happen at home. There were lots of comments that mentioned how the ways that students might show up at school are really influenced by what might be happening outside of school and that having staff and teachers who have the resources to be able to address that in some way is helpful and helps lead to a sense of safety. So before I move on to concerns, was there anything else or maybe even anything that didn't come up in our group Catherine or Jim or Will? Did you want to, are we going to concerns? I will, yeah. But before I did, I just wanted to see if there's anything else under vision that we might have missed. Similar to the trauma literacy, there was some specific mentions of disability and neurodiversity training. Yeah, thanks. And Joan, you took note in our breakout group of a few very specific and detailed stories about gender and staff support. Yeah, I think I mentioned, I added it to concerns. Okay. Yeah, awesome. Okay. So then under concerns, we like the student group, the presence of armed law enforcement was mentioned. And Will went through the painstaking task of actually counting the number of times it was mentioned. And similarly, just the student stakeholder group, there were, it was, you know, both the presence and also the absence of armed law enforcement was mentioned in terms of feeling safe or unsafe. And Will went through and counted and noted that the presence of armed law enforcement was mentioned more times as leading to a sense of not feeling safe than the absence, which was also mentioned a few times that, you know, if law enforcement isn't present, that makes someone feel unsafe. The presence of weapons, regardless of who has them, was mentioned as a concern in numerous respondent surveys, such as violence, bias and hate speech, you know, anxiety with the potential for school shooting. So there was a lot of mention of, and it's sort of, it seemed like ambivalence around how that's impacting students to go through the, you know, the drills and, but that there was anxiety about it. And even in some cases, that the actual risk is low, but that there's anxiety that can help, that make people feel unsafe around with that circumstance. And then, yeah, and then there were a few pretty detailed stories in the surveys of gender non-conforming students whose needs were disregarded in the school setting, or it took a lot of time to resolve or was, you know, just handled in a way that didn't really feel respectful or adequate. And those, those seemed notable to us. So we mentioned them here. One thing that occurred to me that we didn't, it didn't come up in our group, but I found was actually mentioned quite a few times was the issue of locking the doors. Did you all, it came up quite a few times. And I think I didn't do the task of counting. I think it was mentioned more times in terms of things that make people feel safe, that the front doors are locked and, and that someone knows who's coming in and out of the building. There were a few mentions people who said that locked doors, cameras make that they feel like that's actually a, that creates a feeling of not being safe. But I think there were more people who said that helps them feel like their student, their child is safe. Does that, that with, especially those, the locked doors seem, there seem to be discomfort with an open building. Right, right. I think that's everything unless anyone had something to add. I just, if we have time, I just wanted to toss out some of the numbers that accounted. So, and similar to the student group where that found bullying come up a lot. The thing in terms of concerns and lack of safety, there were 54 mentions of bullying. So that was overwhelmingly the thing cited most. The presence of law enforcement came in second as, as a concern, 42 mentioned that that led, was directly responsible for a lack of safety, the feeling of, of being unsafe. So, compared to that only three mentioned that the absence of law enforcement made them feel that the school was unsafe. And yes, I have a few more numbers, but they're not as specific. Also, do we have any time left in the five minutes? You don't have any time left in the five minutes, but if you have a couple of seconds to add, you go ahead. I think we're going to be good on time. Okay. Well, both Catherine and I had, each of us had one interview, an email in Catherine's case and a phone call in mind. So it wasn't part of the survey responses, but it was part of getting feedback from the community. Not sure when exactly would fit in the agenda to, to tell the rest of the committee, the substance of those two non-survey bits of feedback. Do you mind if we let's go through the other groups and then see if we have time during this section for you to share that feedback. Perfect. That sounds okay. All right. Can I just let everyone know that I have to hop off at 615 for another meeting. So apologies that I'm not able to stay for the whole meeting and I'll probably just slip out at that point. Okay. Thank you, John. Thank you. Okay. So can we hear from the faculty staff group? Susan, you want to do it or you want me to. Sorry, I was having a little trouble with my microphone. Um, why don't you do the top part and I'll do the bottom part. Okay. Sounds good. So we were talking about how Susan felt. That, um, We didn't get a lot of responses and I felt like we actually did get quite a few given that it was the vacation. Um, I'm hoping to, to talk as a school counselor, I'm hoping to talk to some of the school counselors and social workers at a future date, but I haven't had time. Um, so some of the visions that we found and we just recorded themes. Um, Was the connection and relationships between students and staff. Um, that the teachers and staff really care and that there's this culture of respect. Um, That there's good communication that a good communication between all stakeholders makes people feel safe. Um, The fact that schools provide qualified counselors and social workers and nurses and healthy foods also make folks feel safe. Um, A few people mentioned the presence of an SRO making them feel safe and like everyone else so far that has reported back, then there were also folks who mentioned that the SRO doesn't make them feel safe. We didn't have time to count, but I now I'm really curious to see what the numbers are. Um, When students feel comfortable being themselves. Um, When students seeing that students actually want to be in school that they're happy and willing to learn. Um, when students are feeling calm and engaged, an inclusive curriculum, prioritizing student voice and individual needs. Um, And then another theme was having safety protocols in place. Yeah. I think that is all I see. I feel like we wrote more Susan, but that's all I see right now. Yeah, we were just looking for themes that were running through the responses. And so, um, Some of the concerns that we noted were, um, Uh, let's see. There were, um, behaviors that sort of counter the culture of respect. So clicks bullying. Again, I don't know why we were twice accidentally cyber bullying. Um, that was a thread that came up. Um, that faculty and staff felt, um, You know, put students in positions of feeling unsafe. And, um, We also, um, Found a theme of, um, That situations of conflict or conflicts were not addressed consistently or appropriately. So there was this theme of inconsistency of, um, Situations being handled quite differently and, And sort of unpredictability there made people feel, um, It was a concern. Um, Another concern was just, um, Unpredictable situations involving student behavior. So, um, You know, outbursts or violent behaviors are just things that Were unpredictable were really concerning. Um, Also, A theme that came up frequently were, um, Events in students lives that happened outside of school, But what entered school because, um, you know, It was the student entering school with the effects of these events. Um, Mental health issues, um, such as anxiety, disengagement, Trauma and sadness were, were themes that were concerning. Um, One night, One night came up in many responses was this sort of threat of violence. So mass shootings, um, Lock door locking did come up on under this category too. Um, Having doors locked made people feel safe. Yet there was a concern that for the need to lock doors. Um, and the active shooter lockdown drills and the Alice trainings. Um, Were concerning to some people that made people feel really, Really uncomfortable. Um, Seeing guns and weapons was mentioned by, um, Some of the faculty and staff is making them feel concerned. And, um, There were also people who mentioned they felt like they didn't Feel that students were unsafe. Um, They felt like everything was, was fine. Um, Um, Social pressure, academic pressures and, um, Lack of connection and lack of support were some of the things that Made educators feel uncomfortable. We had about, I think we had about 88 responses. So unlike Amanda, I was disappointed. I thought that was a low response rate. Um, but it was a tricky week to get educators. Um, I think she did it. Um, On Friday at three, she's like, put your, uh, Vacation reminders on. So I sent it out on Friday and then sent another one out yesterday. So I think more response will probably come in this week. Okay. Great. Thank you. Um, all right. Should we hear from, um, Jen, you want to go for the administrators? Yeah, I was pretty, um, pretty similar to Susan and Amanda, but they're out of the office until yesterday. So, and they were also, um, In the group of my pillar, um, Faculty and staff. So I'm not really sure which are the, um, Administrators. So, but in our group, I think we did talk about, um, That we probably need more information and, um, From stakeholders that are, um, Um, Specifically from the police department from, From the city and from Libby around how, What the bigger picture of the SRO is because I think what we said is. People may not know all the facets, Everything that the SRO has his hands in or her hands in, um, Um, There's no program around the SRO, But they do support the school in teams and in different things. So it would be good for people to know, uh, The bigger picture on that. Um, Jim, you had something from the city council. On what exactly? Sorry. Oh, Jay. I'm sorry. That was me, but Jen, no, I think you covered it. Thank you. Okay. Um, Thank you. So, um, If you still, or if anybody has, um, A couple of other things to add, we do have a few more minutes. So feel free to use this time. Thank you. Um, I just wanted to mention to everyone that I spoke with Justin Dreschler on Friday. He applied to be on the subcommittee and then withdrew his application. Um, and Seemed to have a lot of very specific experience, um, With juvenile law enforcement and, um, Some of the consequences of SRO work on campus. So I wanted to talk to him. So I got him on the phone. Um, and took a whole bunch of notes. Um, I can also paste these quotes into the chat. I'll just read them quickly. Um, The most pertinent to our work that came up in that phone conversation. Um, Well, can I interrupt real quick? Sure. Is this based on his experiences here or just in general, like his experiences in Massachusetts? Um, I believe most of it was his experience in Boston, specifically in Massachusetts. Um, He does. He says he is also barred to practice in. Um, Um, He says he's passed the Vermont bar. Um, But he doesn't work as a public defender in Vermont specifically. Um, Okay. These are some of the most. The quotes that struck me as some of the most important. Um, Quote, people don't understand how many things happen every day. At every middle and high school that someone could be arrested for. It is so easy to break the law. Almost anything can be called disorderly conduct. Um, He emphasized more than once the school to prison pipeline is real. And it is much more subtle than people realize more incremental and insidious. Um, that he saw. Kids pick up criminal charges at school for complete nonsense. Um, And that dozens and dozens, dozens upon dozens of my clients were sent in this direction from school. He said in his experience, police officers at schools have the hammer nail problem. If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. They're trained to arrest. They have that power and they use it. And this seems in that context, like a good and righteous thing to do. He also mentioned, um, Quote, there's an emerges emerging body of law related to juvenile brain development science. And how it intersects with the eighth amendment. And what we can really hold kids accountable for. Up until the age of 25, brains are still developing, especially impulse control. Um, Will an SRO have that background in neurological development specifically. Um, as a, this last comment was more as a parent in the district. Um, he said an environment where someone in uniform is always watching creates a culture of fear. And that was his personal concern as someone with an elementary school age. Um, I can also paste all of that into the chat. Um, you know, Jim and I, I realized that, uh, Jim and I, and to some extent Mia too was, um, you know, we're, we've been involved in collecting feedback for many months, actually on this topic. So there's been people coming to the board talking to us or writing us letters and emails. Um, So some of what you just said is pretty reflective of, of some of what we've also heard as board members from the community at large, um, feedback around. Um, the presence of armed officers, making people feel uneasy or uncomfortable and disproportionately. Um, people from marginalized groups, specifically people of color. Um, another thing was the training concerned about the specific training about of police officers and other faculty members. Um, around trauma informed practices, which was a theme that you already mentioned. So that, um, what you just presented was pretty common in the feedback that we received as board members. I don't know if you want to add anything, Jim. Yeah. No, I think that, that that's all right. Um, Yeah. Do you have criminalizing criminalizing age appropriate behavior came up a lot too. That there's, you know, things that are, that could be technically considered against the law, but potentially, you know, if you, if you did not have a police officer present could be, um, handled by principals or restorative justice practices and kept out of the hands of, uh, law enforcement officers. And so that was a big concern that was brought up as criminalizing sort of age appropriate behavior, stuff like you mentioned, like sort of, um, Disorderly contact and that sort of thing. We heard some anecdotal stories from the district to Amanda, that were very specific to, um, the Montpelier school district and experiences that individuals, anecdotal stories that individuals brought to the table, um, around experiences that made them feel unsafe in school and, um, And the, a little bit of that hammer nail thing came up. Yeah. I just wanted to note that Susan and Catherine do also have, um, more of the like pinpointed one-on-one conversation feedback to share. Um, we could, we could do the raise hand function if, because it's hard for me to monitor chat and look at all of you and know who's in order. But let's just go with, um, Susan, you typed into the chat first. Sure. I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to, um, share this opinion that, um, one of the custodians had shared with me. He, he didn't, um, complete the survey, but he, he's reached out to me three times now to share his, his concern. And he really feels strongly that he, when he is at the school, um, and no one else is around, you know, when he's working like hours outside of school time, um, he really feels it's important to have somebody who knows the building really well to respond to an emergency situation for him. He feels like he want, he would feel most safe if somebody could come help him and would know the building. So if he were to say, you know, whatever, I'm in, I'm in this room, that person could find it quickly. And so he feels like a school resource officer would know the building well and would help him. And, um, I really didn't have much to respond to him because I don't know if that's true, but I did want to share with all of you his specific concern that, um, custodians filled vulnerable and they're in the building often alone. And so that's just a point that I felt it was really important to, to share. Yeah. Very good point. And then Catherine, did you have another. Yes, I received one email from a former parent, um, caregiver at us. She's homeschooling this year, but her kids would have been in fourth grade and kindergarten. And I believe she'll be, her kids will be back in the school as well. Um, she says, I have concerns about eliminating the SRO position. I will outline them here. I was a pediatric home health nurse for years and worked with impoverished and otherwise challenged families in Vermont. Many of these families lead extremely stressful lives that include frequent interactions with law enforcement. Domestic violence, substance abuse and child abuse neglect are just a few of the reasons police may show up at the home of an MRPS student. Sadly, this is not just theoretical, even in our affluent community. An SRO, an SRO who knows and is known by these children can reduce anxiety and enhance cooperation during very sensitive and dangerous times. This is the goal of the SRO program. There could be 20 social workers at school, but they can't help a child when the police show up at their door in the middle of the night because dad is drunk and slamming mom's head into the wall. Domestic violence situations are incredibly dangerous for families and law enforcement. Poor helps. I'm going to guess that domestic violence and substance use are much more common in our community than our incidents of racially motivated police brutality or intimidation of children by police in the school setting. Police departments throughout much of the country are in sorry shape, full of bias of all kinds and desperately in need of reform. No doubt about it. But until we have something better in place, eliminating the real work that police officers do will hurt the most vulnerable people of all races. I wanted to include, and she included of an op-ed article. It says, I wanted to include this opinion piece published by an interracial couple. It expresses my thoughts on the defund the police movement, which I believe is the root of the current SRO controversy, as it applies to communities in Vermont. And I can share that article with you guys. I especially like this quote from the article, before we take the national lens to zone in on our local community, we might want to ask ourselves, is this useful? Is this helpful? Is this truthful? I think it is. I think it's helpful to share this with you guys, especially to our community. I appreciate, and she just says she appreciates me reaching out. And it's Anna Brown. It's her name. I can forward this email with the article in it to everybody or, I don't know what you want me to do, but. Yeah, feel free to forward. I mean, anyone should feel free to forward any communication that they're receiving from people. I think it's helpful to share this with you guys. I think it's helpful to share this with you guys. I think it's helpful to have. Frowns upon replying all. So you are welcome to forward it to me. And then I will. End it out to everyone. Yeah, I just thought. I didn't really expect that from her. But it was a unique perspective that I thought was. Worthy of sharing. So. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So the next step on the agenda would be to do breakout rooms. And then we're going to do a breakout room. And then we're going to work together to identify common themes across all the stakeholder groups. So what did we hear in these presentations now that we can. Start identifying as common themes. When I say common themes, I'm just thinking, you know, things that are coming up over and over again, that sort of our shared. Either visions and values around safety or concerns around safety. So I'm just putting us into four random. Breakout rooms. Emma, before we break out, could I share something that I'm just holding as we go into this exercise? Absolutely. Yeah. Which is that it's a, it's a. A challenge of. Of trying to sort of. Coalesce around any kind of data. And I think that the, as a committee, we've done a really amazing job. And this is all on you all, because this is my first meeting, but of trying to make this as qualitative as possible, instead of just like cutting it up into easily, easy to, though we've made the job more challenging for ourselves, I think that this has been the right, a really strong way to do it. And we still have the challenge of, as we coalesce and try to find things that rise to the top. And so I think that that, that exercise in of itself does, does favor the more dominant voices. Because it'll be, it'll be sort of like trying to find majority in, in commonality. And so it's just something that I'm holding because it is one of the challenges of what we are doing here too. As we, everyone has said, attempt to hear all perspectives. And so we're trying to make sure that there aren't any that get left out just because we're like, oh, there's these common, common themes. So it's not because I'm not trying to say don't, we shouldn't do this exercise or anything like that. It's just one of the nuance, the real challenges of this. I really appreciate that. And I think it brings us back to the way that the committee charge was actually written. And some of the work that we did during the first couple of meetings around committee priorities and guiding principles. And it's, it's good to just remind people of those over and over again, but you know, we're, we're meant to be keeping students at the center of all of this work, which I think that we've been doing a pretty good job doing. So it's like through the lens of what is best for the students. So sometimes it can be easy to, to look at, well, this is what makes me feel safe as an adult. But we're really trying to look at the, to frame it around student, student safety and the student experience. And then also the charge was written with the equity lens in mind with the diversity, equity and inclusion policy specifically in mind. And, and we are meant to amplify and make sure that voices of marginalized people are, are weighed perhaps more heavily than other voices in the work that we're doing. I'm trying to find the language right now, but maybe I can find it later and put it into the chat. And maybe we should just make a habit of putting that type of thing, just to guide us each, to recenter us at the front of each meeting. Just drop that language into the chat, maybe. So feel free to look at, I mean, I think one of the reasons why we did gather demographic information is so that you could pull out voices of people of color, disability, you know, marginalized groups. So if you would like to do some of that work over the next 10 minutes in the group, then feel free to bring that back. So themes, larger themes of that were a majority, but also some themes across marginalized voices and marginalized groups. So, okay, so I'm going to put us into random groups. And I'm just going to set the timer for nine minutes, and then there'll be like a 60 second timer when things close. Hi. Hello. Hey, Edie, what was for dinner tonight? Oh, we ordered from a couple places around town. I got a tuna burger from three penny tap room. And it's like pretty nice potato salad. Eating bread in front of the camera for a while. Take care of the needs. Anybody want to start us off. With some themes they heard. I do that. I think I heard across the entire board. A big concern with bullying. Like student on student. Poor treatment or insensitive conduct or. Deliberately unkind treatment and behavior. And the parent group. Through what when you reported, and then also it really came through strongly in the staff faculty as well. And the parent group too. Yeah. Yeah. I also heard. I think from everyone. A concern about. The presence of weapons or just the possible presence of weapons. You know, I don't know. I don't know where they were on armed trained cops. Or an SRO. Or in the hands of a student or a shooter. Who might potentially be able to get into the building. And then another common thing I heard in some of the adult responses. That I saw a bit of in the student concerns. But I don't think we mentioned. The fear of violence. The anxiety of violence. The anxiety of violence by the drills. A few people talked about. The, the feelings, the fear and the anxiety that the unannounced drills, like the surprise ones cause them. And I can say personally that I'm also in that category. Because I am a neurodivergent mentally ill person. And I'm also in that category. And. Unexpected fire drills. I think are the worst for me. But the clear the halls, secure the building drills are. Very difficult for me as well for a different reason. That's exactly why we announced them. At this point. Which is great. So you don't have to kind of get ready. Yeah. Yeah. I remember two years ago. Not. Oh, anyway, I'm not going to go into story. About drills. Is there anything else that you wanted to add? Oh, um, I guess I didn't even touch the visions. Side, but another one that I think was. There for everybody. Was the connections in the community. Between peers and between. Students and faculty. And the adults and the support within the school. Likewise, there was also. A broad concern. About. A divide. And a disconnect. And students not getting enough support. Or quite as much as they need. And that's about it for me. Do you know, Eddie, can I ask a question? Um, was that, um, middle school. And high school mostly. Yes, I believe so. Quite most of the responses though, if I just glance at it real quick, we're from the high school. A lot of them did seem that way. Yeah. And oh, yeah, they did actually say the school. Yeah. Then yes, I mostly saw. Um, I saw a theme of, um, training. You know, and, and sometimes that fell into the category of very specific, you know, trauma informed practices or sort of practices and that, but otherwise it was. You know, well-trained staff. I think. A lot of the parent caregivers. Felt confident in the staff. You know, so I would put it under. Uh, more under the, the visions. You know, that we have a really high, highly qualified staff and that that's what gives a lot of. Parents and caregivers faith that their kids are safe. I was happy to hear when I was listening to Will's. Description of the lawyer that the public defender that he was reading. That, um, Our resource officer does not go into classes. He has nothing to do with the discipline in schools and things like that. So I was kind of happy. About that. We haven't had any. Disorderly conduct arrests, at least at the high school. I don't know about the middle school, but. It's kind of. Happy to hear that when I, when I was just reflecting on what he was reading. We just don't see that. Um, I don't know. I think another theme I saw and I don't know you guys tell me if I'm wrong with mental health as being a concern. Um, specifically, I think trauma. And anxiety. Um, and along those lines of social pressure and academic pressure. Yeah. And we did see it in the positive side too. That we, as a district have invested in. Mental health resources. You know, that we have three social workers in the district is. I think. A little uncommon. Work in Chittenden County and they were for social work. Right. I feel like, um, I, I. I'm thinking about communication and it wasn't exactly framed as communication in all the places, but I think people like being informed. And I think that, um, It. It's something that sometimes it's done well, but also becomes a concern. When it's not done well. And. I think that, um, I'm on your comment about, well, about training sort of communication also kind of falls under there and sort of like, uh, do we know how to communicate in the event of an emergency? We have that Alice trainings, but those make sometimes make people feel anxious. So we have protocols and systems, but I wonder a little bit more about communication. Um, and do we know the role of different people in the building and do we know the role of the SRO? And so I, I'm kind of thinking a lot about communication as, um, something that this committee might want to look at a little bit more. I agree. I've been hearing that. I mean, Jen and Jay, and I spoke a lot about that in our breakout room. Is, you know, from both sides. So it's like what, what more communication, more transparency leads to more trust in a feeling of safety. Lack of transparency, lack of communication leads to fear, anxiety, and lack of safe lack of a feeling of safety. So I think if people, you know, the concern from Jen and Jay was that maybe people don't understand what the SRO does and how the good work that they've done. Um, and I feel like that's a communications issue. You know, that. Yeah. We need to invest in that. If. You know, if we want buy in. Well, Oh, but let me just say this back to the communication. I also heard in that last meeting, Eliana, I think said something about the communication of staff to students who are marginalized, the comfortable community. To be able to say and talk about issues or talk about, you know, how they're feeling, anyone is feeling. And to have that. That. Comfortable conversation that makes you feel safe. That was big. I said, or the uncomfortable conversations. Yeah. Just to. And to trust each other that you couldn't have that conversation. And. That it's okay. You know, you know. Welcome back. So we have a little bit of time here. To report back to the groups, if we, to the larger group, could. Mia, I wonder if you might be willing to take notes in the matrix. In that. Common theme. Column. Do you see it? Is it shared visions and concerns column? Yeah. The green one. I'm not looking at the matrix right now, but I can look at it. It's all the way to the right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If you could, do you mind taking some. Happy to. All right. So. Let's try to be. Sort of quick about. Giving. I know I'm, I'm, I'm feeling like I'm not going to hit my goal of, of ending at seven maybe, but. Let's try to be relatively quick. Yeah. I'm not going to hit my goal of, of ending at seven maybe, but let's try to be relatively quick. So my group. I don't know, Amanda or. Edie, do you want to report back? I took some notes and I can just like list them quickly because we've talked about what most of these mean for people. The. Common themes we found. In the past. In visions were connection and support and communication. Training and being informed. And. Communication specifically between teachers and students. Which was also. A concern as was training and information. And so I think that. Bullying a lack of support. Mental health issues for students and the presence of weapons. Real quick to add that to that. I don't know if you said that, but for mental health, we also put that in a theme for visions that the, that the schools have invested in social workers and. But you might have said that. I missed it. I think you mostly did. You reported back on visions, right? Yeah. Mostly and then it will, at the end, I reported on some concerns, but. I think. Bullying was a big common theme and the presence of weapons, whether in the hands of people meaning harm or in the. Hands of police officers. Anxiety. Not enough connection support. I think that's a good point. Yeah. The concept of communication. Like if there's good communication transparency, open communication, that makes people feel safe. If there's a lack of transparency and open communication, that makes people feel unsafe. Will. Do you want to report out? Sure, though. I got, I got in the weeds back in the. I was back in the spreadsheet for a while. And I feel like I missed some important. Points from the latter half. Yeah. Who was in breakout room. So. Jay. Jay, Eliana, Will and I were in a breakup group. Initially we, we also talked about communication. Primarily and. Communication support respect. We started to talk about demographic information. And the second half. The students and members of the community. People who identified as white and female gave by far the most responses. And that was the moment when I dived back into the spreadsheet. And was mostly cutting in pace. Sting specifically from people who identified differently. So on the second half. Jay, over to you. Oh no, I think Mia needs to report. That's okay. I mean, a lot of what we talked about was covered. I mean, it makes sense, right? We're finding common themes. I think the one that I would add or two that I would add that felt like, again, a common theme within a group that is not as dominant in this space was just real friendships and community. And I think that was common in other places too, but it stood out to me from student responses, students that hold different identities. And so I think so that one feels important to share. And then we at the tail end of our time together, we're talking about how it feels like a foundation of safety is this combination of very clear expectations that are probably set by administrators and other leaders in the school. And then an ownership, every single person who enters the school really feels true ownership in meeting those expectations. And we use the noting that many people in the survey, even though the survey wasn't about COVID, brought up COVID around the issue of safety, we feel like it's a good analogy or, I mean, not really an analogy because it's a real thing, but a good example of how we can set very clear expectations and then to a person within our ecosystem of the school system be actually holding real personal responsibility for meeting those expectations. Right. So the final group was Jim, Catherine, Zach, and Julia. Would somebody like to report back? Well, I jotted down, so I can do that if y'all are okay. Yeah, no, thank you, Catherine. Okay. So like other people have mentioned, we said being the staff being there for students emotionally supporting and academically supporting as well and communication being very important. Mental health competency was also mentioned within the staff, fostering a positive environment. Having a sense of trust and belonging was a big thing that we brought out, fostering an inclusive environment. And in the concerns, we talked about bullying and that happening between peers or between students and staff could be and also the lack of trauma-informed care could compound issues that are happening outside of the home that the child is bringing into the school. So if they're being traumatized at home outside of the school coming in and not being treated by someone that is competent in trauma, mental health, then it can compound the issue. Great. Sorry, did you have something to add, Jim? No, no, thank you. No, that was that was it. I'm sorry, I did have one more to add that I actually didn't bring up in my small breakout, but that does feel like it came up in these larger buckets of groups of the fear of a threat of danger does cause a lack of safety. And we haven't named it here, so I just wanted to offer it as. Thank you. Yeah, it actually did come up in our group of just anxiety around years and specifically from students who do not enjoy and have anxiety around the drills that are performed in the schools. I don't know if that's what you were talking about, the fear and anxiety. Emma, I think we heard that from the faculty and staff as well, the anxiety about drills was in the parents feedback too, so I think that is definitely a. So the plan for this matrix is that Sue and Keisha are going to guide us through the next step of the matrix at a future meeting. So there is a column at the end to sort of reflect upon these shared values, visions, concerns, experiences of safety and unsafety in school and to start looking at them through the lens of how the SRO relates to those shared visions and concerns. So we'll be doing that a couple of meetings from now. Sue and Keisha will be facilitating our next meeting and they're going to be having us do some work reflection work around common readings and videos and experiences directly related to the SRO or to SRO positions. And they're also going to have Libby, Bonesdale, the superintendent come and present a little bit about specifically how our district uses, utilizes the position of SRO. And they will be sending along some of the readings they've already sent you, but it might have fallen off your radar, but there was a statement from Essex Westford district. There was an article entitled something to the effect of does more policing make middle school safer. So these articles were sent out previously by Sue and Keisha, but you may have lost track of them and so we'll make sure to send those common readings again. The schedule, the standing schedule for future meetings, I sent out a survey and most of you responded, but there's still about five or six people who didn't respond. So I'm trying to find a common regular night that we can just schedule out a bunch of meetings so that you can just have them on your calendar instead of doing this thing where we're kind of doing a doodle poll and scheduling one meeting at a time. I wasn't able to land, I asked about Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and it looked like Tuesdays were the best day for most people, but also had the most conflicts. So the answers that I asked for were, you know, that these dates are preferable. I might be able to make these dates or some of these dates don't work for me. So more of you responded for Tuesdays that some of the dates won't work for you. So I'm not sure if that means one or two or three or four. So I might have to send out another round or doodle poll, but for the next meeting will be scheduled on Tuesday, December 8th from 5 to 7. So just we'll get that agenda put together soon in case you're working on that and we'll get it out to you. And if you're not going to be able to make it, then please just let me know in advance. I also put together a very brief survey just for the committee members to get your questions down around the SRO position. So I'm going to just quickly share my, oh, I'm seeing some action in the chat. So I'm not, I don't have time to read through the chat right this second, but I'm going to, I'll open up public comment in just a moment. Okay, so I'm going to just quickly share my screen and show you, I'm going to be emailing you this very short survey. And it's basically just asking you to reflect on information that you would like to have presented to this board that will help, help you come to a decision eventually around the SRO. So can everybody see that? Okay. So keeping all the feedback on visions and concerns around safety for Montpelier Rocksbury Public School students, we have heard over the past two meetings, please share questions that you would like to see answered in the coming weeks around the role of the school resource officer. This could include questions around how our current SRO is utilized, what alternatives maybe there may be to an SRO, or any other questions that you might have that could help you get closer to our goal of making a recommendation to the board about whether or not to move forward on an SRO. It's going to just be anonymous. And then these questions will be shared, will be shared out and then we'll try to find ways to answer everybody's questions hopefully in the next few meetings. The concept of the December 31st deadline has been on people's minds and has come up quite often. Jim and I talked through the potential of asking the school board to soften on that deadline. So I think we're going to have a conversation about it at tomorrow night's school board meeting. You know, there are alternative ways to move forward with this committee work without the deadline. The main reason for the deadline, the deadline that was put in place of December 31st was a budgetary concern so that, you know, do we include this, the money for the SRO and the budget or do we not? And I think it potentially could be that we earmark the funds for school safety and then we can decide what to do with those funds at some point down the road. Jim, do you have anything to add? No, finally, that all makes sense and we'll hopefully get guidance from the board tomorrow night on the timings but I think it would be good to have a little more time and we also might get an update on what, you know, absent guidance from this committee, what would a budget look like in terms of for this position or if there would even be money specifically for this position. So we can hear Libby's thoughts on that. I will say, I think that, you know, that there is, they are aware this is happening and I think they're thinking about ways to get the certain things filled without the SRO. And Jay, I don't know if you could speak to, definitely I heard some feedback about the city and the deadline for the budget, you know, there's this domino effect of, you know, of budgetary decision making. So if the school board decides not to include the SRO and the money in the budget, the concern was around, well, how is the city planning for that? And I thought that it might be important for the committee to hear your thoughts on that. Oh, yeah. I'm happy to share that. Like I mentioned to you and Jim previously, we're moving forward. We're in the middle of our budget process right now, but we're proceeding as if the money from the district will not be part of the city's budget for FY21, which starts next July. That's not an assumption of a decision. That's certainly not an endorsement of any decision by the committee, but it's really a function of the fact that we're facing a really significant reduction in revenue this coming year to the, you know, approximately $2 million, a little over 15% of our overall budget. And so we are approaching all of our decisions very conservatively. And so we're just going to assume that that piece, you know, that part of the salary will not be part of the budget, but Chief Pete will be creating a contingency where if ultimately the decision by the board is to maintain the position and fund the SRO position, then the police department will be prepared to, you know, sort of work that back into the budget appropriately. So that you addressed when I spoke to you was the specific person that's filling the SRO position. That person's position is not in jeopardy. Yeah. And I thank you for bringing that up, Emma. I appreciate that. Yeah. So ultimately, and I think this is really important for the committee to keep in mind, this is not about ultimately the position will be maintained in the police department, you know, beyond any sort of other more significant changes. But as of now, ultimately, this committee is not determining whether or not the current SRO will have a job next year or not. So that's, I think that that's important to remember. Right now, I mean, you know, the board is the school board is, you know, the SRO is not in the schools and currently the person who was in that position is we're just working as a patrol officer now. So she will continue in that role, regardless of what the ultimate decision of the school board is. But I appreciate that that you bring that up, Emma, that there's we're not deciding whether or not Diane has a job or not next year. Ultimately, it's whether or not the the school district will partially fund the SRO position. And the, you know, she'll she'll have a job, it'll just be different. Yeah. So I want to, Amanda, do you have a question specifically about what Jay just because there's kind of like going into weeds about funding. So I think I'll wait on that, I guess, because it's over over time. Okay, so yeah, I mean, I'd love to, I'd love to end on time, but I would also let I, you know, I want to honor the fact that the public comes to these meetings sometimes. And I see that Julia came in late to the meeting and she's posted into the chat. I'm not sure if, if we have a minute, do people just have an extra minute to stay on to listen to, for me to open to public comment? Okay. So I'll open, I'll reopen for public comment, Julia, if you want to speak. Thanks. I, you know, I posted in the chat. Well, first of all, thank you all for your thoughtfulness. I just heard, I got to be in some of the small groups tonight and just heard the, the level with which you all are kind of engaging and I appreciate it. I just, I put some thoughts in the chat because I felt like when following the comments about from the custodian and from the parent who's a home health worker, and I'm a social worker and I've experienced working with kids in domestic violence situations and went out as well. And I just want to make sure it's clear to this committee that the SRO may not be the one who shows up to a child's home in the middle of the night. And I think that's really important to understand that person has, you know, a certain, at least a certain person of their hours are during the school days. And so they can't be working around the clock. It's one person. And so I just think, you know, that may be something you all want to, some data you all might want to find in one of the questions that you all ask about how the position functions, because I hear that a lot that like, oh, the SRO can come, can, will be, it's important for a kid to have a family face. But that may not be the person. And so I think we need to look at also like all of our police officers being able to have that competency, and then putting the structures in place as well, regardless of whether we have an SRO or not, making sure that the structures are in place to allow for communication between the school department to police department is maybe more important than having what having all of these sort of responsibilities live within one human being who works a limited amount of hours because they're a human being. I think the other the other piece of that is that, you know, in thinking about the real safety concerns that a custodian may have, it's the same thing. It may or may not be the SRO that is on duty and can respond when that person is in an emergency situation. So how do we create policies that would support that person being safe regardless of what police officer is responding, making sure that there is that there's, I think there's a way to do that at a structural level, rather than having it be within a human. So I just wanted to make sure that that's part of the conversation and part of you all's awareness and understanding of how this works. Thank you, Julia. And thanks everybody for allowing for another minute of public comment. Mia, you had also said that you're holding on to a question I wasn't sure if that was addressed with just saying just responding to Julia. Okay. All right. So so I will send out an email with your homework. But I think importantly meditate on the questions that you have that are lingering for you around specifically, you know, we're ready to move past the sort of broad lens view of safety and move into the discussion of the school resource officer specifically and that position. And so if there are questions that have been coming up for you information that you would like to know people that you would specific people that you would like to hear from stories that you would like to hear just there's there's space for five questions, but feel free to type a few questions into one section and I'll and I'll separate them out from there. And then we'll just try our best to get all your questions answered in the next few meetings. So thank you all for coming. Do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? I move to adjourn the meeting. I second. Okay. Filliana. Amanda. Susan. Hi. Will. Hi. Mia. Jay. Hi. Jen. Jim. Hi. Edie. Hi. Catherine. Hi. All right. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you all.