 we'll call the meeting to order if anybody else jumps on and they jump on well first on the agenda is to approve the agenda it's um it's kind of a lengthy one tonight so i'll try my best to keep things short and sweet um so we do have quite a bit plus an executive session to get through so so we get quite a bit on our agenda tonight i think some of them are just motions so hopefully they'll yeah yeah i mean i don't know how long you know our two appointments will last um the other ones seem to go pretty quick the executive session might take a little while yeah so we will um is any any changes or amendments to the um the agenda from anybody else see a lot of head shaking no okay just need a motion to accept the agenda move to accept the agenda is written second a second paul home favor all righty and this evening we do have public comment first so if there is anybody that is currently on that um would like to bring something up that is not on the agenda now would be the time and then two things you can either unmute yourself or we get the message screen up or you can just throw it in the chat or if you know how to raise your hand that's a bonus and then we can call on you that way seeing no hands nothing in the group chat okay we will move along i did um tress i meant to tell you when i was in today but i i did get several uh positive comments this year in regards to the dirt roads um i mean you know mud season is what it is but you know um most of the comments that i have received have been positive that's good yeah i talked to alan this morning and well you saw him there when he came by he's um last week he would just hide up because right now there's only two people it's just alan and hazen and well richard some extent and um gabriel phini doesn't start till for sure you know full time till the middle of may so alan was tied up with crushing all last week but they're great is out this week and he's going to get peaveye and that was pretty bad i was out there friday but yeah i i think that's great i'll let him know he'll be happy yeah i think early on you know as soon as mud season started there were a couple of people that you know it's typical i mean you live on a dirt road and it becomes very difficult to travel at no matter what yeah absolutely overall um there was good comments this year so that's one yeah i i chris i've all also heard good comments about the the dirt roads um surprise surprisingly from folks that have usually generally you know had to complain about them uh have made good comments about it the only negative ones i've heard are regarding the potholes like on sand hill yep and a couple of the places like that but um other than that yeah uh done a good job yeah the um and i've been dealing with sand hill i actually um looking today or i will look this week to see about renting a hotbox so that we can do some patching obviously that comes later in the agenda but we you know it was in the packet we didn't get the money for sand hill but then um uh we got a call an email from two rivers and they were basically like if you drop everything right now and submit a grant to uh peter welch maybe they'll earmark the money so i dropped everything i was doing and sent the project including water to um to you know welch's office and through this forum and hopefully fingers crossed you know maybe we'll see something from there i don't know but in the meantime um we're obviously not going to repave sand hill right now but we will deal with the potholes and that reminds me chris i was going to i'll talk to you later i was going to talk to you about a roller for the paving but okay well that's good yeah so i'm glad people are happy and thank you um christie about abit road i'll let alan know thanks all right so our first appointment unless anybody has anything else chip in for a comment the um first appointment is six fifteen so we are actually ten minutes early so um do you have um uh lenard thomas christie uh oh and david you have all all the members that you believe will be here this evening on or should we wait or you're good to go a little early good to go okay i know sometimes when we move people up there might not be somebody there yet so so we will turn it over to you guys cool um thank you all so much and um we're really excited to be here so um we were really grateful for the conversation that we had on the eighth and um have brought back to our group and had some really fruitful conversations both as a large group and our smaller um education subcommittee um and so we wanted to this is basically a proposal about the proposal so we um we kind of wanted to set out a timeline um and i think i'll just sort of speak for the majority of what we discussed is that um i think something that this equity and inclusion committee is wanting to do is wanting to be in conversation with y'all and so i think we're kind of wanting to position ourselves less as experts in um this work and more like partners to the board um so we really want to have conversations that are about um questions that you have questions that we have um just really learn with each other and learn together and we really think that through conversation is part of how we we talk about and really model equity in our community um and so this proposal is to do a couple of things first we really hope that y'all will take some time to read this essay that um very short essay that um jerry thomas who's not on the call tonight because he's working um wrote and this is something that he originally wrote um for um some work he was doing at vermont law school um but he modified it for the select board and um this is talking specifically about um the concept of color blindness um and one of the things that we were hoping could happen is that uh we understand the restrictions of open meeting laws and we also understand that y'all have really busy schedules and are doing a lot of things um and so we were hoping that y'all could pair in in pairs with each other um to talk about this essay and um and sort of start doing that just internal conversations with each other and we are offering that as sort of a first thing to talk about um and it's written by someone that lives in our town um and someone who this issue is really um something that he's been thinking and working on for a long time um we had some ideas about pairings and um this is in our proposal so we thought um that chris and paul davin gene linley and teres could be the pairings um and um i don't exactly know how we came to these pairings i know that davin gene part of that was because y'all are neighbors um so i really think that it could be whatever you want the idea is that conversations are happening about this and that we want to be um facilitating conversations so that's sort of the next proposal is that we would have um a series of conversations amongst each other um and this is uh the proposal is to do circles and circles are um a type of facilitated conversation that is used a lot in our school system and i'm sure jamie could speak to it um later on but it's used in what's called restorative justice models um and it's used to address um conflict but it's also used as a way to have conversations and kind of step into brave spaces together um with like a really clear model for how those conversations happen to make sure that everybody has a time to speak and that everybody can actively listen and one of the reasons why we thought this would be a great way to start having conversations with each other um less as us being experts but more as all of us being experts in different ways in our lives and just actually talking about this stuff is what we want to be doing that's a goal of ours as a committee um that this would be a way that we could also be modeling um you know the same types of things that our students are learning about how to have these types of conversations um both when there's conflict and when there's not to prevent conflict and to just grow stronger together um so we thought that that could happen between now and the end of may um and then we were also hoping that um we I don't know if this is a formal proposal or how this even happens but we'd like to have a gallery exhibit um that honors the history of our town um coming together and coming out to support um the life of george floyd and other um black people um who uh were have been murdered in our country um and the organizing that happened last summer that I will give a shout out to david fair um as one of the key organizers of that um and there's a person named nick keating who's a professional photographer and he happened to he didn't happen to we invited him to the march and rally and he took beautiful photos high resolution professional photos of this time um and we thought it would be a really beautiful way one year later especially during the derrick chauvin trial that's happening right now to honor the fact that this happened and to celebrate the fact that even if folks have differing opinions about that moment it is a part of bethels history that we did this um and that over 300 people attended um and it was a really beautiful day and the state police actually were strong supporters of it um and supported the march and also supported an action at state police headquarters at the royal tin barracks at the end so we thought that introducing art and introducing celebration um as part of our committee's work um is something that we'd really love town support on and we think it would mean a lot to have the select board saying yes we want to honor this history um so those are our proposals for kind of first steps and um we we can either answer questions now or as we said um we're happy to you know give y'all some time to marinate on it or ask questions amongst yourselves and in your pairs if you decide you want to pair um and that's it i can answer about town hall chris um there's a form oh and just reach out to kelly okay about town hall because she keeps track of who books it when and um you'd have to you know if that obviously can't hang anything on the walls in there because it's town hall and it obviously has plaster and all that sort of stuff so they had talked at one point of the historical society about hanging up these kind of rails to hang pictures from not sure it ever got done um but you know there's a policy about running town hall so if you just email her she can send you the form and all that okay okay i know that um susie and greg had figured out a way to um hang stuff on the walls for their art shows so if there aren't any railings up then you could talk to probably talk to susie and greg about how they manage that because they they definitely did that a couple times a year i think right i forgot about that what was that when we it is a rail system but it's only in the conference room there isn't so if you wanted the main hall in town hall i think it exists okay there yet maybe they're open to that i don't know but you could use um the the conference room which is actually nice oh and because it's right on one level so when people kind of come in the main you know entrance it's you know when you walk in the downstairs door conference room is right in the back and it's actually pretty good size for them so that might work you could scope it out yeah we could get creative we could do easels we could do all sorts of things yeah and because it has the lobby too yeah so um just reach out to kelly and and certainly someone can meet you there kelly you're myself or something just to show you the space too okay awesome thank you and i did forget that our our committee is also working on some definitions just some language and we're to full transparency we're doing this work with you right we're we're having conversations internally about what do we think about this language you know how do we agree on these terms like who decides what equity means right and so we're actually as a group trying to figure that out as well we'd love to do that in partnership with you but we did want to let you know that we're coming up with some working definitions and stuff that we hope to share with you very soon as well i forgot to mention yeah i had met with jerry and christie and owen for i don't know hour hour and a half the weeks ago and and they were great and that's kind of we had talked about that too common language and and things and and after you know they were great answered my questions and you know didn't make me feel like an idiot and you know it was all it was good so um i appreciated their time as well so i just wanted to say to the committee thank you for providing us with with the literature that you did um and i was i was reading that this weekend as well as just kind of thumbing through the notes of um our other visits and and then i was going back and looking at some of the um i mean even though the meeting minutes at the committee meetings it's way different than actually being at the committee because you don't just get to see you know broad topic you know you can find out all the finite discussion um but one thing that kind of came out to me that that i had written down from the first meeting that we had last year and i didn't see anything and maybe it's just because the meeting minutes didn't cover it at some point um so i the question i had was i know we had talked about last year of putting together like a local survey uh of um you know of our Bethel community on on on on the topics and i didn't know from reading through things i didn't see anything in there i mentioned at the committee level so so is the committee right now are they looking at that or are you in the process of doing it or yeah um yes so that's something we want to do we have been um we reached out to the Bethel Historical Society because we kind of thought we could um whatever the non hurtful thing is kill two birds with one stone a different way of saying that but we thought what we could do is if we are going to be doing some type of reach out to everybody it would be a great time to also redo the Bethel phone book um and i've actually been in conversation with Greg and Susie Fedeck about redoing that phone book for a while um and so we thought that would be a great way to invite people like do you want to participate in the survey and also is this your correct phone number that you want in that um however Greg and Susie are going through a lot right now um and so they asked that we contact them again in June so we've kind of put a pause on that we'd love to collaborate with them and collaborate with other committees in general um and from that i think we want it to be um we want it to be pretty um open-ended so not really leading people in any particular way but just um asking you know um like how is your experience um are there things that you'd like our committee to do are there things we need to know about um and we've already heard some feedback both positive and negative and it's been really helpful to answer questions about what we're actually doing and what we're about um but i do want to do that i think we all want to do that in a more structured way and because there's this phone book already it seems like there's at least some kind of process for how to contact everybody but um Susie was just like you don't even know what you're getting into Owen like it's going to be a mess um so but yes we would like to do that yeah and i and it's always easier to you know understand you know on whatever topic that that anybody's doing is you know where is your baseline and establishing that baseline because i'd hate to see you know a lot of work put into something that maybe maybe isn't affecting the local community as much as we think it may um so that that was the only thing and i i know from having done a survey years ago there's a lot of work that goes into it it's not it's not as easy as you think like you just like pass it out there i mean it's there's a lot of thought going into the topics of discussion and and then there's distributing it and getting it to everybody and then receiving it and then categorizing it and you know there's there's a lot to it you know might take a year to do it but um i just had i had that written down when i was looking at it i don't know if any of the other board members had any other questions but that was one question that i couldn't find um that we had talked about last year so like your proposal i think it's a good starting place for us as individuals to do some learning but then also to kind of come back in small groups in in ways where we're not breaking the law to uh to then sort of help each other further that um i'm kind of curious what other what other board members think about the proposal itself i had been in the meeting where you discussed it so i sort of had a little bit of a heads up and had some time to think about it more than just reading the packet um i know that when i when i had sat through the meeting but before we heard the proposal formally my only big concern was um just the amount of time commitment it would be and it it feels it feels appropriate it doesn't feel overly lofty um and sort of recognizing that everyone might end up at different places than the ideal but sort of having an ideal to aim for and trying to meet that goal so i'd i'd love to hear what other board members think yeah and i would agree with linley and um i i think the only challenge for myself is the way my business um works is you know spring summer and fall we are like 24 7 um you know i don't i'm not one of those people is like i work 60 hours a week because you're working like you know emails at 12 o'clock at night i mean it's it's crazy um so this time of year for me is very hectic um my time um is you know between my kids and this is like i'm like maxed um winter time wide open like i you know have all kinds of time so um i think there's way of doing it it may not be exactly the way it's you know has been put out here but i think there's a way to have you know um to read literature and to talk about it either amongst ourselves or you know um to do that i don't know if i can you know say i can devote x amount of hours per session doing it but i think you know there's probably a way that we can do it um uh you know and make it work um so i guess that's kind of where i'm at the with it i have a question oh and what are you going to do or have you thought about the possibility that there are going to be folks that are going to be not celebrating George Floyd so are we going to be able are we going to talk equally about both sides of this coin that's a great question um i think for the vision of this of this gallery opening is less to is more about celebrating the fact that our town came together and did this big event together in partnership with a bunch of different community members businesses and the state police so it was really sort of like all of us coming together um we are thinking maybe if it is a gallery opening and we haven't talked about this um fully but um you know it'd be great to have some of the people involved speak and um i would defer to David as the organizer um but you know perhaps that would even mean um superintendent um of the state police speaking as well right because she was very involved and very supportive um so i think instead of sort of getting into um how people feel about any individual person it would be more about acknowledging the fact that our town did this and um and really just like celebrating that as as something we all did together um if that answers your question well it kind of does but you're i'm yeah it's going to be it's going to be a tough one because while you had 300 people there they were not all from Bethel right there are 1900 people in Bethel um and walking the streets i hear other comments that are not necessarily positive so while i'm getting educated here i feel that i should be educated well rounded so um i guess we'll have to see how that goes as far as timing i've worked for 58 years and i planned on taking some time off this summer so i will do what i can but i'm going to be in Montana for a month and i'm going to be in Rhode Island for two weeks so we'll have to work around that yeah that sounds good um and i hope that our committee can become a resource for those conversations like i said i personally have received and had some really productive what i thought productive dialogues because i think part of what the equity and inclusion committee is really about is that this town is a place for all of us we don't all need to agree about anything and that's not the expectation of what our committee does um so i think we would really welcome to be in dialogue um about you know how people feel about this that's what we want to do how do people feel about the the issues that are happening in our town in our state and in our country and being a resource around that but totally heard about the time commitment as well um and yeah we're willing to work with y'all however that needs to happen i i also have been thinking about it a little bit and while the national scene has a lot of high-profile things happenings when i when i asked for education i think i was i know i was more looking for what's going on here what's going on next door what am i what am i perceived or what am i not knowingly doing that uh i should look at more closely because i'm not going to see i'm not going to do anything about what's going on in los angeles or minnesota or washington dc or florida or wherever i if i'm going to do anything it's going to be right here in back over a month yeah so i need to be educated on what's what's not happening in bethle bramon or what is happening that whatever yeah so i'm hoping that this education will will drift that way at least partially yep totally yes dave and that's what we want to do with these conversations we want it to really be neighbor to neighbor folks from bethle talking about bethle um and really kind of getting to know each other and and kind of getting past like all of the other noise right and just really talking about each other getting really it's about relationship building is what it is but also at the same time we need to be understanding of how the um situations around the country are affecting the people in this town and making some of us feel because just because it's not here doesn't mean it's not affecting us at the same time but i do agree with you davin we do need to worry about what's going on here right well that's what what what what does it do even though i i don't not going to do anything about the national stuff what is the national stuff done to the people in bethle to their i woke up every day look i woke up every day last year watching the news crying every morning every day for probably a good three months straight because another black man got killed another civilian was killed by an officer yeah it affected me very closely they like honestly in a way that a lot of things have never affected me ever i've never been affected the same way that i was last year and that's from the bottom of my heart that what what happened last year was insane and i literally woke up in tears every morning i think definitely um you know dav brings brings up some good points and i you know it's obviously this this isn't uh you know easy subjects to talk about because if it was easy then we would have everything by now right um you know i think we have to you know not to take away from anything that's happening nationally but i i do understand you know my perspective more as to i can't control what happens in boston but i can sort of control what happens in bethle or maybe randolph or you know my community you know community areas and you know how does that and i guess i'm a little bit on board with dav when it comes to like education wise is you know like david was just pointing out you know knowing some of these um or educations on how it is affecting um our citizens of our town right you know how does that affect david when he sees what's happening nationally or or how does that not affect david when he sees something nationally you know i mean so i'm just you know i i think that's when i talk about like the baseline and you know uh some sort of survey or something but you know how how are people in bethle feeling you know and try to keep you know i know there's always people trying to tell us how we're supposed to feel but how are we feeling you know i mean you know and how can we use the tools that we have and education to help our citizens of bethle and i saw jean you had your hand up i believe yeah uh the we this is not bethle specific but it is nearby specific in that it is vermont we have recently seen uh select board member threatened uh because of her race we have seen a state senator threatened and forced to resign because of her race here in vermont we have seen uh a town report that had a very controversial cover uh saying if you don't basically if you don't like it here goes someplace else uh expressing uh uh some uh anxiety uh that many of us who are quote flatlanders uh may not feel as welcomed by vermont and may not feel as welcomed here in bethle uh as others there is a there there is an underlying uh part of our state uh that tends to not be as welcoming and inclusive as we would like to think we are or that we want to be and so i think part of that's and part of that's part of my response dave to your question uh we need to in my view be able to say out loud and be able to have the con the hard conversations what does it mean to belong to a community what does it mean to be a vermonter and and how do we talk about that it may be that we need to take uh i'll look at issues that are national in scope the uh and ask ourselves how do we in a predominantly uh monochromatic community in and state uh how do we uh respond to uh the issues that are that have gone unnoticed to for too long in our own communities as just part of my response is that we need to be aware that yes there are we want to include everybody but everybody's got to be in the conversation and one of the ways to be in the conversation is to to say this is going on all around us and it's going around here uh and it may not be uh simply related to color it may also be related to ethnicity language that you speak are you hispanic are you welcomed how do we react to uh migrant workers or hispanics in our community all kinds of uh of issues that come up uh i think those are they are hard conversations and we need to be able to to talk about them even with those where we might traditionally think we are across the table or across the aisle or across a chasm that is unbridgeable i think we need to find a way to bridge the chasm and then and engage people who want to engage and some people are not going to want to engage no matter what uh and so we put it out there and and see what see what we can do but i obviously don't want to cut off our conversation um but i probably will give it like 10 minutes um because we do have another appointment coming up um so if we have any other comments in regards to i see Leonard's hands are up um thank you gene for for that uh a comment i really appreciate that and dave i appreciate your comment as well and i totally agree with you that we need to mainly focus on baffle but at the same time i believe baffle is not an island we live in a state and in this state is in a country that has a lot of problems with black lives and with minority lives just today another kid in minnesota got killed by a police officer so you can hardly open any kind of news or or anything without seeing this and personally it doesn't affect me firsthand but it affects me and because i see what's going out what's going around and i think that's that's the conversation we need to have and you can't really separate that completely from baffle or from from us here because then we could also say well i live in my own house and nothing is happening in my own house so why do i need to worry about anything that's happening in my town and the community you know something basically um what i want to say is being anybody brutally unnecessarily murdered black white green or otherwise in the street in a in a country of liberty and equality affects everybody one way or the other it affects us all no matter where we live so if it happens in new york and i live in baffle it affects all of us but i want to know what baffle feels about it and what they're doing about it but we can't separate baffle out from america without america there would be no baffle that we live in that's all i want to say to that and i think that we are impacted we're also impacted because there are conversations in vermont about use of force by police officers what is appropriate what is not appropriate there are conversations in vermont about the housing of criminals whether that is something that we farm out to uh for profit corporations in mississippi or anywhere else or whether we quote take care of our own uh there are all kinds of questions uh that that are not exclusive to minnesota or the other hot button hot topic places they do affect us all i my concern is uh carving out two-hour blocks i understand that but i also uh would would welcome um and i welcome the idea of pairing but i would also like to see the possibility of select board members being paired in a variety of ways and not just you know david and i i think david and i should be paired but i also think chris and i should be paired and then so that it's it's not just uh uh two here and two there and and so i so i don't know how we might uh think about that um just to add to that i hope you some of you i don't know if you're aware there are people who have a problem with the policing in bethle and what happens to minorities in bethle so that's something we should think about as well in this conversation i actually have a perfect example of that i got out of work today and was walking to the hospital because my stepdaughters had orthopedic appointments and i got one sheriff that drove by me and turned around and drove by me again mind you i'm in my work uniform i have my work bag on and then uh a state trooper circled around and did the same thing and then another sheriff that said guess what my heart was beating a million miles a minute i had no idea was gone what was going to happen and you wonder why or how the things that are going on in the country affect us i was scared i was scared in the middle of downtown randolph that i could very well be another statistic simply based on the way that i dress that is what i not what i wanted here but the but yeah but that's what yeah uh being uh that's happening here here near my home and that that is troubling i don't know what to say uh other than that that's when i talk about education that's what i wanted to hear is what's going on around here and apparently it's uh similar so uh i guess we need to talk we meaning all of us for monitors we need to talk about it i'm in regards to local policing you know lenny if there's ever an issue with the local police meaning obviously we have two constables justin and oscar um so if there's ever an issue locally you know i i want to hear about that uh if there's any issue with um with that i i you know would like to know about that so we can address it immediately and i just wanted to say thank you and thank you to everybody who's shared um these are exactly the types of conversations our committee wants to be having so dav eddie like thank you bud and like thank you for um um thank you for being willing to step into that and ask the question what's going on here our hope is that in these small circles we can have more dialogue like this and hopefully you can understand that these aren't comfortable conversations for any of us um it's not comfortable to experience this um and so part of what the idea of the circles is is to create a little bit of a container where there can be um the conversations can go a little bit deeper with each other and the questions can be deeper as well so we look forward to next week answering any more questions you have um and thank you so much for your time that's what i want to ask the board about um does do you is that enough time for the equity and you know for people to come back for them to come back we're meeting back to back because of my uh request to go on vacation on the last week in april so i'm not sure you know does that i'm i wonder oh and you know does this like word how does they feel about that does that give you do you want to wait and meet in a little bit later i i will speak up in the back on only the fact that my main client which i'm trying to let me retire but they're not had a major failure and i am going to be back working full time for probably the next seven to nine days so i'm not going to have any time to meet with gene between now and next monday there's i just can't when's our next board meeting after that one teres um i knew you're gonna say that i'm just grabbing my phone here to let me does that sound right i think so hang i got my account 10th that's right yeah may 10th maybe we should move them to may 10th that would have a you know i don't want to waste you know the equity inclusion committee's time obviously time's valuable for everybody maybe that would give people more of a chance to have certainly read jerry's um essay and to have done any other you know and for reading of their own it seems like he joint he he listed some other sites and references and things that people can look up on the internet and stuff i will speak to the essay and the fact that i did take the time to read it and uh that brought out a couple things that i really hadn't thought about uh so yeah that that definitely starts another conversation i would encourage us to continue well to say well here's what i would say i would be willing to commit to meeting with dave or talking with dave about the essay whether it gets it's not going to get done by next week but i would also be willing to commit to the committee that we could continue tonight's conversation next week after we've all had a chance to uh to let it simmer and and see how the second phase or these two the circle conversations might be held and whether they might be held by the end of may so that uh we could maybe i'd be willing to commit to the first step and then to continue the conversation about the second step sooner rather than later so we don't keep putting it off but that's christ i see lily has her hand up sorry lily i didn't see you you weren't you weren't part of my um the brady bunch screen at that point because i get to see nine blocks right now is it okay if i ask a quick question follow up to the eic sure um i'm a huge believer in community conversation it's a lot of the professional work i do and i think it's really important and i love what you're saying about these first conversations with the select board are you thinking as a town committee about larger community conversations is that part of this work for you kind of in this phase of how this iteration of it as well um thank you lily um yes totally so in our sort of like charging documents um our first um sort of the first tier is that we really want to work with the the select board and with um town committees of the select board but i think absolutely this is something that we want to do and we're thinking about all different ways like maybe we can have you know some sort of regular conversations over the summer maybe we can do some like movie screenings with like parent shares afterwards like we're definitely bubbling with ideas um but we really wanted to meet the goal of supporting the select board um um first so yeah and we'd be super jazzed to partner on anything any ideas you have awesome great thanks for sharing i look forward to learning more all right so chris what's he so you heard from dave and jean but paul and limley i'm not sure so do they do you want to oh i think i'll jump in just for a quick second i haven't had a lot of comments i'm still in a marinating phase i like to get all my ducks in the row before i speak on something and i really just got to read the essay and everything yesterday so i haven't really had a chance to form firm thoughts i do agree with a lot of what's been said tonight i think there's needs to be an emphasis on the community conversation and outreach to the community um i think that we need a little more time to do it um i know chris's schedule is pretty pretty well packed mine is getting more packed every moment the phone rings um so i think taking a little more time to be able to digest the essay and and formulate some concrete thoughts um would would uh would be better for me anyway how would i get partnered up with paul just walkie i guess i'll meet you at the fire station we'll have a nice combat paul so what about limley um so what do you think about next week versus the tenth i'm honestly flexible on either i i have read the essay i actually made a point to read it twice just to really absorb it a bit more and i would probably read it again um beforehand but i i i feel like some of the folks that maybe want some more time that i can defer to that that works for me that was not a real answer guys not really i was she's a true politician my god she's good isn't she so it looks like um dave would like a little more time paul would like a little more time um gene's okay limley is good to go so um i just know um i'm trying to think about what's on the agenda for next monday so what's the i mean you could you could do it instead of having you know i'd book them for 15 minutes which so we could do a making sure we stick to the 15 minutes next time or you could book them for 30 minutes on the 10th i know i'd go anyway i'm just the keeper of the calendar i mean i i think i personally would rather wait until the may 10th meeting and the only reason why i say that is our schedule is a little messed up with usually we have two weeks to kind of prepare for our next board meeting yep in this case we only have one week but we also have another meeting to prepare for which is a joint meeting with the world and board the very next day yes not to mention everything else that we do in our normal lives right that's right i think you know i would be better prepared myself for the 10th than i would be uh or i'll back up i'll probably be able to share more um and have more attention on the 10th than i would um trying to cram this in in one week yeah limley all right i have more of an opinion now ready i would say let's go with the 10th but um sort of twofold so i think that the essay is great but could we maybe ask the eic and it doesn't have to be this does not have to be like the full perfect glossary of terms but maybe give us a couple starter terms and do it like it's maybe lofty to ask because i know your next meeting is next monday so but like give us a full week with that information because i think what part of the problem is is we get our packets on friday and then we have between friday night and monday night to read them and so then it's the reading and absorbing time that's sort of what we're hinging on here and so if we could have like a little bit more to go on and then in return we would be our homework would be coming up with our dates with our paired person and knowing those those dates that we could give you guys so for your meetings you could actually come to may tense meeting with okay here's who your pair will work with this person and so like we could help each other if we're going to push it to the 10th we can still be doing some work outside of this time um and i can it helps i can write that thought out a little bit more succinctly than i said it but just to kind of give you guys a little homework us a little homework so then we're coming to the may 10th meeting a little more prepared from both sides than just giving ourselves three weeks between now and then and doing nothing more than we've already done i think that's a good point i like the idea of having you know even if it's a couple of of the terms of definitions i think that's a good idea like you said it doesn't have to be every single one but there's obviously some main um you know to be we can't i i feel like in order for us to have the right conversation we need to be using the same language and understanding what it means so i think yeah i think you're right even if it was just three or four terms that are very common that you know would be fine focus on so you don't have to feel like oh when you got to kick out 50 definitions you know you don't have to 50 you know you could just do like you know some 49 would be good that's right and you know have some time to do it but i think linley's right and that's what i had said to oan and christie and jerry in an email was hey you know oan was like you know when can i get the stuff to you and i'm like and i need i try to kick the packets out by friday and noon and and it is it's tight for people to you know to read you know we'll make a so if i if i heard you right linley you'd like to have the information for the may 10th meeting in your packet for our meeting that is next week not necessarily just the so the additional you know whatever the eic decides to come up with and and i wouldn't make it a lofty goal just something small like teres was saying like a handful of terms that give us a good starting place but i don't know because they don't meet until next monday anyway so i'd want to give them some time oh got you okay but i'm assuming that could be emailed to us like they could get it to teres and she could email it to us in the last week of april or you're first week of may yeah oh and could you do that if you could get them to me by the first week in may or the last week in april first week i can get them to the select board so that they have some time to mull it over and ask you know kind of make a list of their own questions based on that so if you could get them to me the beginning of may that first week and i'll be gone last week in april so so if you did the first week in may i could get it to the select board so hopefully they'd have five seven days to digest it that sounds good um and i'm hope christy and dav do you think that's good yeah i think that should be fine but i did hear something that i think would be great to just say out loud too um just because oan made suggested pairings for the may 10 like i'm hearing that limley and gene they're prepared to pair up now why couldn't you hang out together huh why not right so i can't bail on teres i can't bail on teres all right i could pick up why i could get one of somebody else or i still could meet with you too so i think yeah you still can meet i think everybody's schedule right is sometimes our schedules are more compatible with a different so i'm you right everybody's an adult they could pair up with somebody else and and as gene had suggested if people do multiple pairings then so be it can i just say one thing because i know that we're about you guys are about to move on um i feel like a lot of times when it comes to the eic it tends to become a focus of race um but i also feel as a member of that committee it's my obligation to also point out that a lot of the local acts aren't necessarily pointed towards black people or people of color but towards gay and transgender community um who literally have done a lot for this community and in return they get bashed day in day out they literally and they do nothing but try to bring this town together so i don't really think you need to look that far to see the hate that does live in vermont and i'm gonna leave it on that so again you know we thank you all for attending this evening and we look forward to our discussion on the 10th um you know feel free to you know you guys are always welcome to reach out to us individually we're always available um or seen throughout the community we're always around somewhere so um i'll just think that you have to reach out during the meeting time so um but again thank you this evening um fortunately we get to get uh terry's put together quite the long list for us this evening um she wanted to make sure that dave stayed up later tonight so but we thank you all for attending this evening and thank you all so um so at some point jamie will be uh jumping on to talk to us in regards to school um in the meantime like to hammer out as many of the other agenda items as we can and i'll just um i'll try to keep an eye on as well as you terry's if you see jamie pop on we'll just yep we'll try to just you know come and where we're at um okay and i just check my email just to make sure he had an email on the link when i don't see okay so okay so well um it looks like probably a bunch of these we can kind of go through kind of quickly i try to set him up so that you could um okay so we just have um a couple of different appointments uh resignation uh to go through so the first one uh cindy met cap um in regards to appointing for the emergency shelter director um it's talking about having a new shelter director and yep she spoke with paul and she picked up the box of forms today to take a look at that and so she's going to go through that information and you know talk she wants to reach out to all the existing volunteers and see you know see how much time people spend so i mean obviously cindy was excellent uh during covid and so helpful especially with the vermont strong and you know she maintains that website and she'd obviously be a tremendous asset um as the emergency shelter director so unless anybody has any comments um all i need is an emotion to a point moved second moved by paul and second by lindley so all in favor i'm moved by dav oh moved by dav yep okay and then second by lindley so you're all set did you get that lisa now i confused everybody people are changing my boxes and my um my squares are changing so i think somebody's on the right now they're on the left and i'm like where we just lost lisa no i don't know why it keeps changing maybe somebody left uh and then we had uh pennie griffin uh we had talked about last time in regards to uh potentially for the the solid waste board which um she has now put her letter of interest in so um we just do we need to act on that last one first we need to vote we had a move a motion a move it was moved and seconded do we need to vote yeah that i asked all in favor hi again i saw one thumb up so then at that point we had three yep um so we had pennie griffin in regards to the solid waste board so i just need a motion to appoint pennie so i'll move i'll second paul and lindley hey all in favor all right all right so just a quick note that meeting with the world board is definitely on the 20th the 21st oh it is the 21st yeah it says that in your town managers report it's uh the 21st at 6 30 okay uh which one day of the week's that one Wednesday it's the Wednesday oh it is Wednesday okay because last time i talked to you it seemed like we were going Tuesday on that one oh sorry no no it is it's Tuesday April 21st i think they gave us two choices right what 21st is not confused oh i'm sorry okay Wednesday i'm sorry so it is Wednesday the 21st so sorry well i had five people i'm trying to figure out who works better the 20 the 21st but it was the 21st that worked the best for the moment okay so sorry that was the 21st at what time 6 30 at the beffel town hall we're gonna be in person but we're gonna obviously socially distance and i had told them that we would do the agenda so we'll get to that later tonight okay um just to let you all know i'm gonna be teaching that day in wadesfield so i'll i'll scoot over the mountain as fast as i can but i may be a little bit late just because i teach right up till about five or five thirty yeah if i was you linley i'd drive slow yeah like as a new board member it'd be really then you won't have to worry about drive really slow and then we had uh chris fours uh i believe it's a re-appointment to the conservation commission for three years does that sound right chris it did yeah it did re-appointment assume it's re-appointment moved by linley second second by gene all in favor hi okay hi chris is staying with the conservation commission and then we did have a resignation um so uh tristan brown's resignation from the equity and inclusion committee so we just need um i know you don't normally you don't have to do motions to accept resignations but i kind of like doing it so that it's in the records so we have we kind of have a clear record of it so if we deny it then that means they have to stay on yeah right you wish so is that how it goes yeah how'd you know you can send a letter we're sorry to inform you that your resignation did not go through last night that'd be pretty funny all right so do we have someone move that one move to accept the resignation okay paul moved second second linley all in favor hi all right that's what's gonna happen to you linley you and david when you try to get off the solid waste board we're gonna say nope not happening all right and then we had still looking don't see anything don't see anything jayme um so we had revolving bone fund yes it's a modification agreement they'd had a balloon payment due and then they approached you know the revolving loan committee so they made a recommendation to extend it so you know made total sense i did the amortization schedule for them and and um it you know makes sense so um okay and it's the recommendation of the revolving loan fund committee so they've already met with you know the Crowley's and done the heavy lifting yep okay unless anybody has an issue with that just need a motion to approve the modifications to the revolving loan fund for Crowley and Gonzales that was linley and Dave Dave okay thank you they moved it linley second it all in favor hi reason through them yeah and jayme's here all right i didn't see anything in my oh there we go so we've just been uh going through some motions here uh jayme while we were waiting so uh just wanted to thank you for coming on this evening and maybe we'll just we'll get you caught up a little bit jayme on last time our discussion the that came up and um we we had during the public comment period we were talking about um you know right now with the real estate market what it is and um you know people from out of state or out of community are coming into the community to buy up homes and it was brought to our attention in regards to uh you know a couple of potential buyers that um had frowned upon some of the latest um education testing um in the area on you know maybe committing to buy home here so um which was kind of a lot of it was kind of um you know i wouldn't say surprising news but new news to us so um rather than kick the can we decided to reach out see what uh i know you're in a new uh for anybody doesn't know jayme he's the superintendent of schools for white river valley and i believe you're just about a year now so fairly new so he's only you know just getting his feet wet um so we wanted to reach out to jayme and say hey you know um not really to put you on the spot or make you defend yourself just kind of you know hey what's going on at the school level what's coming down the pipeline what are you guys working on um i'm sure that test scores are not you know nothing that uh that we're shocking you know um you know how how we're moving forward to improve them you know that kind of stuff so um so um so that's kind of kind of where we're at i mean we the other good thing is we don't normally you know the town doesn't usually talk to the school and the school doesn't usually talk to the town and so it's kind of nice to hear hear something from the school um you know probably should be a little bit more communications between the two fronts but so welcome hey thanks for having me um and uh i appreciate the invite and i just i also want to let folks know you're more than welcome to join our white river valley meetings and we have one coming up uh for the school uh next tuesday night and those are at six their virtual via google meets um the links on the agenda and feel free to join us um and so they are on the uh third tuesday of the month at six p.m. and we definitely welcome public and appreciate the feedback and comments so i joined officially um last march just prior to the pandemic i think was about a week prior to school closure and so uh i came on full tilt pretty quickly afterwards and for those of you who don't know me i grew up in south royalton on a dairy farm um and have roots in the area and so um i came here because of what you're discussing is that um it was clear that we had work to do um the educators here are amazing they work incredibly hard and um what i was looking to do is come on board to say as a supervisor at union how can we best support our teachers which then is going to give them the tools they need to best support our students um and so you're right the academic data does show that we're not performing at a level that we'd like to be um i'll remind folks that that data is from two springs ago um we didn't have s back testing your curve um this last year um for that the standardized testing that i think folks are probably referencing um which is a line to the common core state standards and it's called the smarter balance assessment consortium we are testing currently right now across the schools of the su so we will have some updated data um and we're hopeful that we're going to see a bump even in the midst of a pandemic and i mentioned that because we do um our own universal assessments throughout the school year and we just had the highest literacy score for the su that we've had it over five years um in the face of a pandemic are they good enough still no they were only 60 per cent proficient but they were headed in the right direction which is good um and so an area that i'm very concerned in is mathematics in general across the supervisor union we've not invested in professional development in mathematics nor resources um and so we're in we we did do a full push on literacy that we've been engaged in over the last two years um we're going to continue our momentum with that we're actually going to invest some additional resources with the stern center out of broonton limont around structured literacy um to ensure that our teachers have the tools and expertise they need to provide explicit instruction and phonemic awareness and phonological awareness um for our students in grades k12 um and so you may say well jamie how are you gonna invest in all this work you're talking about and really um the we have an opportune time we're receiving several millions in esser funds around covid relief and they're gonna be earmarked for us in regards to professional development in resources we will add a few positions across the su um to combat the lack of math intervention right now if a student's struggling in math in the supervisor union we have very limited access to folks who are highly trained in mathematics provide explicit instruction in math um so that is an area we're going to look to prioritize across the supervisor union and for those of you who don't know i do serve penthouse so i serve uh grandville handcock rochester stockbridge f l south royalton tumbridge chelsea sharing and strapping um and there's eight schools within those 10 pounds and so what we've seen is is that um in general across the supervisor union we have significant gaps um in math at and it's not from folks not working what we haven't done is a great job of curriculum alignment and consistent expectations um so that when you walk into a math classroom you would expect to see um consistent teaching practices and right now we haven't even identified those as a supervisory but that's work that's underway and it will be addressed before next fall as well and as an investment in our teachers to deepen their content area expertise in math when you think about uh elementary teachers a majority of folks go into elementary education because they love to teach reading and literacy um a few of folks like to teach math too so what we're looking to do is create some math ambassadors at the elementary level where folks who are interested in deepening their expertise and invest in them in a master's program through vmi the remount math initiative to deepen their expertise and then they can become resources to their colleagues so that works underway we're continuing to strengthen our social emotional system we know that we need students who feel connection with their teachers so that they're ready and able to work um and so what i was i talk about uh the work in core academics i don't want folks to think that we're taking our eye off of the fact that we need to make sure we're supporting um and then the other big component for us is um to ensure that we're continuing to provide rigor around personalized learning and so across all schools we're engaged in currently um work that's going to be focused on different types of um legacy projects and or known as capstones and or known as different passion projects so that we have our students engaging in reading and writing that's informational but relevant to them so that we can increase the rigor and expectations around that and then really celebrate their work um you know an area of concern for me too is still written expression and i think the way that you increase um demands on written expression is you get students reading and writing about what they're passionate about and so that works on your way as well and your middle school really is ahead of the curve in regards to that type of work by really tapping into personalized learning um and looking at the student as an individual and how do we connect uh reading and writing and rigor and alignment to that um there's still work to be done in different levels of the organization around that but it's certainly a focus for us um so i appreciate the opportunity to say you know our big area is a focus on k12 literacy we're looking to continue our momentum around literacy and the rest of the grades but we need to make certain students um know how to decode um and really be able to chunk words apart in attack words and so um we're going to make certain that all students get those skills um we're going to make certain that uh we're investing in our teachers and our programs that's something that folks have heard me say if as you get to know me and what do i mean by that i don't believe a program a book teaches kids teachers teach kids and so i want to make certain we're investing in our teachers so that they're experts so that when a student is struggling they can they can use data and information they glean from assessments to inform their practice um and i think you have to be an expert in order to do that not just i research shows um and so that's an area that we're focusing on as well as just it's been as i dug in it's been several years um really over a decade we had a a full on attack around math instruction um and so that's something that we're looking to really dedicate our time and resources into as we move forward and so the ESSER funds um are going to be put to work to ensure that we have the resources we need to do that um and to invest in our faculty and staff and uh another area that we recognize that we have not done a great job in is training all staff so that we have consistent language so our paraprofessionals are going to be engaged in PD um on a regular basis too starting next year if you look at the calendar that came out from the su for next school year that was adopted by the su board you'll see that there are two half-day PDs every month and that's so we can make certain that we're providing explicit professional development staff that's um keyed into folks in regards to whether or not they're supporting students in reading math or social in those folks will engage in that those PD strands um you know i let the principals know that i was coming here i want you to know the principals are working incredibly hard to meet the needs of the community and to ensure that our students are growing you know as i think about regression and recovery plans i'm proud that we've been in school five days a week since september eight um we're one of the few i don't know if folks realize that uh minority minority across the state it's up over 60 still that are still in hybrid modes um and our middle and high school will be back to a full five days a week after april vacation we also did implement um our own fully staff virtual learning academy to our students in grades k through 12 have wrbsu license teacher did not subcontract that instruction now and instructions come from our own um and we've been able to do this all while addressing um some major debt as you know and so i think you'll be pleased as you start to look at the 2021 audits you're going to see that we have surpluses in our district and at the supervisor union um and that i fully expect that by the end of next year that we'll have almost all that debt paid off without having to come back to taxpayers too impressive while filling academic gaps and so there's been good work done i think my educators are incredibly tired um those of you who do know me some of you do like lisa taught for me um i won't apologize for having incredibly high standards and expectations um and do know that that's definitely the case i hold myself to a high standard and certainly hold the staff to a high standard and they smile and do um we don't get second chances with students and our students that are in our classrooms in front of us deserve our best and that's what we're going to give them at least during my tenure so i'm happy to be here having a blast i've been uh i feel incredibly supported by the communities and um thanks again for inviting me tonight and i can take questions chris if folks haven't sure yeah and i just gotta say you know i think it's great i mean i've been on well on the longest tenure on the board now um not toot my own horn but you know five years long time um you know but you know i don't think we've ever in lisa's you know been with me as as long as i've been here and you know we've never really had any um real outreach from the schools nor have we outreach to the school um you know it's kind of a two identities that don't talk um so i think it's it's really exciting and um you know i want to kind of thank uh uh thomas and Leonard for kind of bringing the question up last time not put you guys on the spot but it was a fair question and um and instead of just um you know given an answer you know we've decided that hey i don't know let's let's ask uh somebody that knows um i will say that you know i do have kids at the school and um i'm never um bashful to let the school know what i think i think everybody knows that but at the same time i do want to i was gonna point out that you know that a majority of the schools are not back to um you know in-person learning uh five days a week which is you know i think all of us parents would like to see our kids at school all the time but there's a lot of schools that are still at distance learning which you know um so i kind of wanted to thank the school for uh you know trying to trying to get through this and be in-person as much as we possibly can so of course i see Lindley and thomas and Leonard both have their hands up sure well we'll let thomas and Leonard go first means they had the questions last time um i just wanted to say um number one and i didn't say that the last time very clearly i have a amazing amount of respect for teachers uh the the work that teachers do the amount of hours they're putting in personal time etc it's it's it really baffles me every time i hear stories and i see stories about teachers so i mean really really thank you to all the teachers um thank you jamie for coming here tonight i think that's a step in the absolutely right direction because i think it's very important that the town talks to the school and the school talks to the town and keep the conversation open because we are we are one town our kids for those who have kids go to school here um and so it's important in in the sense of equality you know because kids who don't learn and kids who don't uh have knowledge they can't go anywhere in this world these days so uh what what you said jamie makes me really hopeful you know to go into the future with with the schools and i know that the past year with covid and everything has been a huge challenge to everybody and um thank you for that as well putting pulling everybody through i was wondering if i could maybe uh get uh lauren's opinion so she's in the call uh about what she heard tonight uh because she has two kids and one of them is soon going to be in in elementary school so i don't know if she wants to talk about it i'm putting her into spatio but so i was just wondering uh yeah i can say a word without my my video is not on because my kids are crazy um but yeah i um jamie thank you so much for um just such a concise summary of all of the work that you've been doing and the school district and the teachers um obviously it's amazing um and i had a fantastic conversation also with linley today um just about all of the work that has been going on so um it's awesome to be a part of the school district here thank you i'll just add your if i could chris in my letter when i applied for my position here as the superintendent i spoke to the fact that one of the reasons i applied is because i think that the ten communities i represent really have never leveraged um what they what they could be as towns in regards to bringing young families to those towns we have eighty nine run right through most of our communities um you can get to mob pillier you can get to the upper valley and i do believe that one of the things that stood in the way was us not promoting what we were doing well as an educational system and celebrating those successes and not addressing our shortcomings and so i did um i committed to that when i came aboard and know that our strategic plan or what i call our roadmap for success is all focused on just that because these communities should be thriving based on where we're located geographically and we we have school choice in many of the towns we have an opportunity at the white river valley high school to try to recruit from our school choice towns if we get this right we could really lay out a sustainable um and so do know that i think that's and i think that lindley did you have something and before lindley goes we just want to put in a plug just to make sure that the budget for the wood shop is increased um but other than that we'll let lindley speak thanks chris we didn't coordinate that at all um no jamie i really appreciate um just how how well you addressed the the sort of larger picture um i i appreciated hearing it even though i know bits and pieces of it it was really nice to hear the whole thing um i actually just wanted to say a little positive thing which is that um one of our eighth graders just won a state one third place in a statewide essay writing competition and it was actually it's doug's granddaughter and so it's really all doug he's pulling his weight here but no it's just a testament that we have students entering statewide competitions and and achieving recognition in them so it's it's there and i agree with jamie that it really is we just got to get word out in a more you know extensive way so people know what cool stuff we're doing but thank you jamie yeah and i think that and we actually had uh the first and second place finisher in the um remote science math science math and science fair as well last week and we'll we're look we're getting a press release out about that too for the supervisory sounds good and i and i'll say from you know being here um my family moved here in 2006 um you know and i guess what i've seen over the years is and everybody probably can vouch for it here's you know just a a pretty inconsistency of not just the school here but the supervisory union you know we've seen a lot of faces we've seen um you know a lot of heart break when it comes to um deficits um you know we've seen a lot of teachers come and go so i you know hopefully you know through your leadership we'll see more consistency and more you know long term buy-in um at the school system chris it looks like gene and thomas and lennard have their hands back up okay gene won't you go i just uh a question uh we hear stories about the inadequate education being conducted this year all over the country because of covid remote learning and so on and so forth i have a grandson who continues with the virtual academy uh and i just i'm just curious as to whether you think we're keeping up or how far back we're being set by the covid crisis it's a great question gene it's good to see you again i think i saw you on an early community forum i had back in the fall maybe um is that true i think so maybe not um so the what i what i would say is is that there's a reason we're pushing toward in-person learning for next fall and what we found is is if the students have significant support and i'm talking about elementary students significant support at home that our students have been growing and we've got lots of data points to measure that we've seen a full year's growth with some students but if students don't have that support in intensity of support at home that at best we've been able to stop them from having regression but there is regression because they're not growing a full year right we've just held them where they were um and so that's a worry of mine it's i put a plea out to folks um in my last weekly correspondence with families that i really hope they consider using our five-week summer program we're going to provide intervention and explicit instruction in core academics for students um and part of that is to try to address that regression but to also ensure our students don't fall back over the summer months um for those students that wouldn't be able to address the achievement gap so we're going to invest a great deal of resources um in that we're going to have um 20 licensed teachers who we are going to be providing explicit instruction in those throughout my eight schools um across the su so that's pretty exciting and we're going to earmark um some of our recovery funds to do that work because it's important work but we will be back fully in person in the fall gene because i do worry about that there's some students who have not been in our buildings for over a year and um you know the inequity is is that not all those students have the same support at home and what we found with virtual learning is without the support at home um that we can't meet the need um so i do have some students that i'm concerned about in that regard it's something we're trying to bring them back um which has been great we've partnered yeah thank you i i am his sensei sensei here monitoring his uh making sure that he gets what he needs here okay well i just want to say thank you thank you i don't have children in the school but i am a citizen of this town um and i worry about the growth of children and the learning of children and all of that um what i want to know and what i want to eventually talk to you about is how do we get the community to so to support the school more how do we rally this what can what devices can we use to get this community the people in this community me parents non-parents you know to really come together and support what you're doing and support the kids outside of school for this for learning um is it is it like a community center can be started think that we can maybe think about to build that well i think we're all i think we need to do a better job of reaching out and looking at uh volunteers to get them in our buildings um because many hands make light work i also look at i think we have a lot of folks and i look in front of me who are experts in different areas and fields and as i start to talk about legacy projects and passion projects having community volunteers that are willing to mentor a student um so that the student can learn about that expertise that that person has i think it's another connection for our student we know it's all about relationships and then what i have experienced from my time working at the williams town schools where at one point we were in the bottom three percent of the state and then we moved to the top third is that when we had students engaged in something that they were passionate about we were able to increase rigor and expectations uh Leonard so that's an area as we look to start to engaging in more of that work i know we need to build because you all have expertise that our students need to be engaging with um and so we're going to be looking to build that menu of different options for students as we go into next fall and really look to capitalize that the following does the su currently have a mentoring program in place i've seen one advertised on front porch forum i think the brookfield librarian i'm not sure if she works for you or another district organizes the mentoring program no one's got his hand up we do not have a formal mentoring program and it maybe we did prior but course covid put a kibosh to them yeah certainly well i i know the high school before it you know when it was here in bethle well actually right as it was transitioning the high school here had started a i don't want to say a placement program it was kind of kind kind of between an internship and a placement program for juniors or seniors to be able to like you were saying get that passionate career that they're looking at and maybe spend some time at the veterinarian clinic or the gw plastics or you know and we had that going and i don't know if it's still going or not because i'm not as as connected with the high school now the high school's in rilton but is that as those things still happening jamie yeah chris they have a community-based learning coordinator and we also budgeted for a pathways coordinator that can help facilitate students who want to do individualized and personalized learning and connect it to its experiences out within the community for proficiency what we don't have are benchmarks that say you're going to complete that type of learning experience at the end of eighth grade you're going to have to do a senior project like randolph has for example that really puts on a demonstration of learning and you kind of defend your work that's a direction we're looking to head to because i i think that that type of rigor is good for everyone and it's it's the type of skills that you all as business owners want to see our students have right you want us to think creatively you want us to demonstrate grit you want students to have effective expression both in written and oral those are the those are the predictors of success in post-secondary pursuits so those are the things we need to start engaging our kids more and we have unfortunately we only have four minutes maybe we can take another question or two but before we do that jamie i just want to know your thoughts on you know and keeping the communications open between the school and the town you know how how would we best you know going forward do that is i know and sometimes we've offered um you know quarterly check-ins where either somebody from our board will check in at the school meeting or vice versa where either yourself or you know maybe on or andra would check in with us um do you think that something like that would be beneficial or i would love to allow um teachers admin to come quarterly one of the things that we're launching at the at the school district boards are celebrations of learning every month where teachers and students will display their learning um and so what i would also say though to folks is my door is always open if you reach out to me and you email and you want to engage in you know how can you support the school um and or what's occurring in the school please don't be hesitant to reach out um but i would also welcome opportunity to come quarterly um and then again i invite you to come to our meetings as well on the third tuesday of the month i think we uh paul had his hand up yeah just just a quick comment i mean i i've never had kids in the school system and so from my point of view a lot of the folks that i chat with they concentrate a lot on the budget issues over the past several years and they forget about the positive things that are happening so it was really great for you to come along jamie and and put more emphasis on the on the good things that are happening uh you know our tax dollars the the bulk of our tax bill is it goes towards supporting our school system and it's great to see the positive things that are that are coming out of it um the second thing i wanted to mention it asks you about you know we hear a lot on the news about the isolation that's happening with kids that are totally involved in virtual learning not being out with their peers and some of the effects the mental effects the emotional effects that are taking place on the younger kids especially but also on the high school kids uh the specific programs that you folks are working to develop that may help to address some of those uh situations so paul our um virtual learning academy um administrator lindy stetson um so we we devoted admin to that she's also the stock bridge and rochester principal her team of teachers her and her staff and teachers have been great we're trying to make certain we're connecting students um on a daily basis but if if they fall through the cracks we've been setting up meetings with their home school and having conversations around doesn't make sense for them to re-enter back to in person um and some students have but we know that we still have students who happen so one of the things too that we've done is with our recovery funds we're trying to strengthen our relationship with the claire martin center um they really are a regional mental health hub and so we are looking to contract for six school-based clinicians for the next two years um to provide therapeutic supports for our students across our schools um and those folks will the funding mechanisms connected the medicaid but we're able to get full-time employees who can serve our students therapeutically for um a really significant decrease in regards to funds it's under 40 000 um and so it makes sense for us to invest in that work um when we look to making certain we're addressing our students uh social emotional health and wellness um and those will our recovery funds will be earmarked marked to that that won't be coming from the taxpayer and so we are looking to put that in place for next we have uh we have ads up right now actually if you were to go to the claire martin site um the issue we have is finding qualified folks so we do have a school-based clinician in place already um and i'm remaining optimistic that we'll have that number of six come up no later than the fall a lot any plus any of the board members have any other questions i'll let owen i saw his hand up i'll let him be the last public comment on it um so go ahead owen hey thank you so much jamie you are awesome and i've heard from so many parents in the district that it's been a really significant noticeable shift in your leadership and people are just really excited about you so like thank you for being awesome um and being an awesome leader um my question is really again an offering of support i have been in touch with lisa floyd um but before you join this call just so you know some of us are um inaugural members of an equity and inclusion committee that was inspired by some of the activism that happened last year and also honestly um the letter that your district um sent acknowledging that equity inclusion is important in our schools and we really want to match what the school is doing with what the town is doing and vice versa um so i i we've reached out to lisa floyd and offered if there's any way that our equity inclusion committee can be supportive to y'all in your efforts around equity inclusion and i just wanted to say that to you as well thanks owen um as you saw the hero covered we are very close to releasing our third draft of our anti-racism policy i'm still hopeful of adoption for that in june um and what the boards decided is that we are going to have a set of policies under equity the category equity so um you know feel free to join our policy committee meetings um and those are on the uh you guys know what i do every night now i haven't been there for four thursday of the month at six and those will continue to be virtual so we can make certain we get participation across the su we found that our participation up we may start to move back to some in person meeting soon at the district level but the committee and su level meetings will continue to be virtual awesome cool thank you well we love we would love to be a resource to you and we're excited to learn from you and the kiddos as they're going to teach us things so thank you thank you so unless anybody on the board has any further questions for jamie um i just wanted to thank you for your time this evening definitely have been more than helpful um you know i think it is important that uh you know that the town and the school establish a stronger relationship um so anyway of you know uh maybe i'll have terese reach out to um to you or your office um maybe we could put together like a quarterly drop in where you can we'll invite you uh it maybe doesn't necessarily have to be you jamie maybe it could be owen or andra or somebody else that could drop in and you know maybe give us a lowdown on what's happening in the school or what you might need for help coming or um and vice versa um you know we'd be more and happy to drop into one of your meetings as well so hey thank you all so much that would be great i'd love that opportunity if you have anything you want the select board to have jamie just email me obviously you and i've exchanged emails now so just send me an email if there's something you want the board to have or you want us to put out on our facebook page website or something to promote just send it along to me and i'll i'll get it out there for you that would be great thank you yeah we're looking at how do we do a better job communicating so that would be hard i know we do it it's it's struggle it's tough all right unless we have anything further uh thank you jamie for attending this evening have a good night everyone thank you thank you jamie uh any further discussion in regards to the school and the things that didn't seem like we had any other so we will move along get right back into the fun stuff so i tried to set up the licenses so you could do it in one motion i see that and i was just kind of looking through all the different licenses here to make sure that they were what we have them on here as yeah but we do have um locust creek store with a second class license um and then sandbore enterprises with second class creek house diner first class and tessie's tavern first class and third class licenses yeah i don't know when they're reopening that i don't know um but obviously they are and um i haven't heard exactly when yet so so unless anybody has any objections uh i just need a motion to approve those licenses so moved back and they moved by dave second by paul all in favor all right so i have tomorrow there'll be a clipboard at the back door for you guys so you'll have to come in and sign all of these um liquor licenses thank you thanks for the reminder i do have a question about the form okay um there is a line that talks about uh training or yep there is and i notice different dates what's the is there an expectation or requirement that there be training within a certain period of time i don't know what the what the date is but yes the liquor control anyone who serves alcohol whether you're bartender or you work at a convenience store then the person who's selling the alcohol has to have training and i don't know what the dlc rule is whether it has to be within you know two years or what but and it may differ for bartenders the versus retail i don't know but there is and that's why the dlc puts that on there they're the ones who follow that they have to have training before they ever serve anyone they cannot serve without the training right but don't they have you also have to keep it up right it's not one and done every two years yep so it's two years gene thanks oh one okay all right and we had our local emergency management plan so this is something that we update every year kelly and dave all drugetti and i did it obviously this year because of covet i'm just making sure that all the information was still up to date um that is something that um we buy we have to have done every year and adopted by may 1st so um chris you need i have to sign it because i had taken i've taken you know multiple ics trainings so um i sign it one place and you sign it in another so it'd be a motion to adopt and authorize my signature yes okay need a motion for that okay moved by paul second by dave all in favor okay i i have another question going back to uh the sambore liquor license they did not indicate that they did not answer two questions one about uh criminal activity or motor vehicle expense and elective or a point of state county those questions are not answered on that form well the good news is it goes to the dlc so if the liquor control wants more information than what they have on file then they will reach out to dave or bill and and make them comply okay yeah the liquor licenses are always kind of an odd one gene because you you know i i know it goes on to the board but yeah yeah i was just curious that they hadn't answered those two things well the thing that's more curious is actually the state of vermont generates the liquor licenses yeah it sends them to the town clerk and then the town clerk forwards them so this is their information so i don't know we're a little out of the loop sometimes i think okay and then we had um uh discussion in regards to commercial trucks on camp broke bethle mountain road so i was reached out to by frank sevry he is a select board member in rochester and he and i have had a phone conversation or two and and exchanged several emails so um he has reached out and i reached out as well so we've reached out together i guess we could say to dmv um regarding you know the commercial trucks on camp broke obviously i placed a new sign at the base of camp broke last year saying this is not a truck route and it's a little salt area etc etc so aside from spike strips and neon sign it's hard to keep factor trailers off that hill so i actually went on the federal website and found contact information for garmin um map quest google in all these people to try to get bethle mountain off the map zone for trucks and actually a very nice gentleman from map quest reached out to me and said here's the problem the problem is everybody uses the same maps and no one has developed a truck route app yet so they don't even have the ability to really flag that and say it's not a truck route so he said they are developing it currently working on developing something like that but of course it's all about money so we spoke to the dmv about putting more signage where people should be going on route 100 route 107 so that trucks can get the signage before bethle mountain to say oh this is where i should have gone and then we also uh frank's question was besides weight limit because if you pull a truck over for weight limit two things have to happen one is the officer who pulls them over has has to attend truck training which is really about a week or two so they they're not truck certified it's a no go the other thing is to we don't have scales so it you know sometimes you have to look at what the load slips are and go from there so frank's question was can we make bethle mountain a length for an axle a number of axles or lengths so we're waiting for some response from dmv we also ask them for a plan for you know better signage so whether or not state free to sign their routes to make it more obvious to people that they should be up there um the other the other option i had was once we come up with a plan for this maybe trying to get vendor lists from local businesses who we know put you know not necessarily the local business but whoever their vendors are who they buy from maybe get their vendor list and we could send them all letters saying hey fyi stop going over there here's your better you know better route so we'll see how it goes right now um you know i'm cautiously optimistic that the state will at least give us some assistance with you know signage and and things i also reached out to the 911 board so just kind of a quick update frank did ask me about a traffic ordinance and i said yes it would need to be in your traffic ordinance he wanted ours and i said no you don't ours needs to be updated so um we're gonna wait and you know when i hear from dmv and get some good ideas i'll let you know but that's currently what we're doing and i've been in contact with susan bayness from rochester she lives on the you know the base the other thing too i realized was they were asking me saying oh well you're bethah you guys have a constable i forgot rochester got rid of their constable because of money so how do i remind frank the next time we chat that maybe they ought to put money for a constable back so that's where we stand with that i'm still doing some research and working with frank but it's nice to be collaborating with another town right well as still knows you could put a big blinking flashing sign at the bottom of it and the truck drivers will still drive up the mountain right it's ridiculous really i mean it you know at some point common sense is just should come into play to say well you i mean doug is retired nowadays so he could just stand watch from us when he sees him come and he can flag him down tell him to turn around big fight i'll say turn around turn around and then that's the and that's the sad thing nowadays is truck drivers well not just truck drivers but drivers in general we're so keyed on our gps device that even though you know you may have advanced warning signage up like maybe on 100 it says okay trucks need to go this way they won't even see it they drive right by him because they're still fixated on the route that they're traveling you know and uh and they get to a point where they get stuck you know exactly and then we go out and we have the saying you know rochester has the same problem you get calls in the night because somebody's up there etc but yeah i would say the words rand mcnally and people think you got six heads we're like yeah back in the day you know when i came over on the main floor we used to you know right had maps so uh what's a map i know so we're trying to work it out and come up with maybe the state will be some of assistance maybe not but yeah we're trying is is either on either side of Bethel mountain is there a grade should we be should the grade be posted uh like going into uh very i know i know i don't know i think so gene but honestly i you know and i was just up there on friday too i just can't remember but i think so but i'll have to double check but that could be part of what dmv recommends but right now we have a i have a big huge orange sign at the base that says this is not a truck route you know not a gps route it's a low salt area use route 107 nothing so i don't know i'm just i'll check gene yeah i that that might be a question to to ask whether it should be grade advised and whether it's even possible to put an unsafe for trucks yeah i don't know i'm hoping that they'll because all signage has to adhere to mutcd standards right you know we'll see what hopefully the dmv will lay out a plan and be helpful so we'll see um but anyways i just want to waste any more time i just wanted to let you know i'm working on it and it was nice to hear from frank you know someone from rochester reaching out to us it's nice to partner with another town with the same problem so yeah did we get any pushback from the state and the fact that we're getting paid for a class two road no say we're getting paid for the trucks to use that be able to use that road that's it i see what you're saying no i mean we get paid diddly for the class two roads and best of anyways so it costs us more to maintain that road than any you know they've said but no i don't know and like i said i haven't had a conversation yet with dmv because they haven't gotten back to us so but i don't think so they were we'll see what they say dave no one said anything to me so far and one of the someone from the state helped me with the wording of the sign that i put at the base so yeah we'll see we'll push back dave because they don't give us near enough money to maintain that beast no we should never have taken that thing to begin with true amen it should still be a state road town managers report anything left there therese that we didn't uh the only thing is the um okay yep i guess i put that in there about the hazard mitigation plan so um i finished well i say i finished i got through it today sent it to the state um lady there at the state stephanie smith is being very good she's gonna review it for me this is a monster and um it should have been done two years ago frankly but we're getting it done it's what helps us keep our e-raft from 25 12 so i sent it to the state today but we'll talk about it a future meeting i just made a copy of it and put it in your box today and so and i sent it out today to all the local towns you have to send it to branchry randolph stockbridge barnard roch i'm just i had a guy from barnard call me he's like why did you send me this and uh so you're telling me he's a 25 town yeah well he said to me he goes well i'm gonna be updating this and i said tell me you got a grant because we needed ours done sooner so we couldn't yeah buy for the grant he said he did us i'm good as if you need anything let me know because it's a beast and um but as we know it's well worth half you know well the 12 and a half percent you better believe it is you better believe it is so yeah so the only um yeah so there was some stuff in your the other thing was and i had mentioned this earlier about sand hill obviously we didn't get one grant um we got better connections we did not get the transportation alternatives but then you see the community project funding request so i'm hoping maybe well you know mark you know yeah 100 000 that uh two rivers the progress report and then you saw my questions to tory and how she answered those um the cruiser has been marked timely so there's a picture of that and um also finally um was able to connect with trini at the state after i talked to someone else at the state gave me your number and it looks like we're actually going to be able to get that graffiti painted so saved us like six eight thousand dollars they wanted to charge us an arm and a leg the railroad but so i think we should just put a big paint it in put a big frame around it and leave a sticky note that says if you're going to tag this at least but something tasteful we'd prefer a landscape or something because as soon as this it's going to going to be done again so leave a note and say what we want we have an eta on the water guys coming back may yep they're going to start some preliminary work obviously before that behind the scenes but they'll be back on this in the street i think the first week of may and what did they have left for work was it a month or two or um i think they're like a month and a half yep so they'll go from um excuse me from the post office uh up past just up past Bethel Mills not very far i know there's a rumor people think we're doing the entire north mainstream i'm sorry to say we are not and there's a Bethel our first Bethel connections meeting grant meeting is tomorrow and for that grant that we were awarded so that's it oh i just want to remind you so we're meeting monday remember so monday we're meeting and then apparently we sort of desire meeting wednesday but monday you have to bring all your comp time and give it to Lindley because it'll be her birthday so chris promised her comp time so we'll do we'll donate i'll donate a thousand yeah we'll pass the hat so when did that happen did that happen at our last select board meeting yeah the changing of the the it did wow man i can't make it at least i can do the minute just email me and let me know we're right over my head that's okay that's it chris you're good okay so next up we had the select board meeting minutes from the 20 seconds the only thing i saw i'm gonna beat paul the punch but it says the meeting minutes are for 323 which i believe should be 322 all right i was probably doing on that day nice catch so it's 321 all right 320 no 22 322 oh sorry okay you had it right you have it right on the of the on the agenda but the meeting minutes themselves say 23 okay all right anybody else have any changes are we good to make a motion to approve as amended prove as amended move we approve as amended second moved by gene second by paul on favor okay please have it and there were a fair amount of other communications in our packets so hopefully had a chance to read through all those as well as the the budget update was in there i've got a question about one of the transfer of station minutes the okay i'm not sure i can answer but i'll try well maybe david linley might might be able to it's uh minutes from march 24th uh it says that the next meeting is going to be on april 10th at 6 p.m that's a saturday was that a is that an incorrect date or did you guys actually meet on a saturday no it's the 14 that's okay correct it's this Wednesday okay thank you i just wanted to mention that i did submit an agenda item for that meeting and had some really good positive responses especially from jerry over in in um rylton um very pleasant and uh i seem it seems to be a lot nicer air there uh than we've seen in the past so i just wanted to throw that out there and compliment all right the energy progress report card uh does that go to the energy committee yes yep and mccole and i shared an email back and forth about it all right because i i would i would welcome some conversation or from the committee especially regarding generation energy generation one of the d's grades yep she um she had though they were here not long ago that she came and and presented to the select board that she's good about checking in um her and i had exchanged about the cars and and that sort of thing because obviously that's a lofty goal i think that's going to require the state to step in and give further tax credits for people um but yes she did receive it and um she emailed me we and i'll have to look back at her email gene to see if she commented on i know she asked me a question about oh i know one of her comments was gene because they only take into consideration generation of power in bethle they don't take into consideration the town in fact that the town is part of a net metering so she even said you know that could look better if they would include um us participating in a net metering um which we do which we do so with solar um located in another town so anyways so there's some there's some weak spots to this that they things they don't take into consideration yeah well i and okay my particular location does not good for solar but if i were if there were available a community-based co-op yeah kind of thing uh that might be attractive to us yeah you might have to reach out to to green mountain power because i know they you know there may be some other net metering that i'm you know that i'm not aware of and to see if you could participate in one okay to put solar panels on all the the back sides of the buildings the businesses here and then disseminated across disseminated across the town there you go because anyway that's have the have the energy committee look at that that's all yeah we have the hydro you know obviously bethle mills has a you know generates money from the dam and they sell it back generates power and they sell it back to gmp right i just have a little side note uh on the cars um i wonder if uh nicole would like to look into the fact of how the heck you're going to charge all these cars we have a weak infrastructure electrical infrastructure as it is and you put a bunch more cars out there that i don't know if you realize how much power those cars require if you travel to montpellier and back every day you're talking about increasing your electric bill somewhere between 150 and 300 a month wow i know that i had referenced asked about um you know the charging stations because there was bethle was considering it at a point i'm not a big fan frankly just because once the money once the grant runs out it's our problem to deal with this thing and um so i had asked nicole about the state because they built that parking lot and we're supposed to have a ton of um charging systems well i think they only have the lowest so it they just have the low ones yeah now if you park there it takes like eight hours she said most vehicles you know to charge so but most vehicles take a full 20 hours yeah so she was saying you know they have different apparent classes of charging stations and they made it sound originally a parking lot was supposed to be full of them and some of the higher speed ones and that's not what they ended up putting in no they put in uh i think they're like a level one where i think that's what she said i believe it's either level two or three are the fast charging yeah um ones but obviously cost a lot more um yeah yeah i don't see i i look all the time and i go through there and i i i have yet to see somebody hooked up to one yeah i mean there's a that's a crazy what are they gonna do sit there down off the interstate for six hours and charge their car yeah well if they if they park there go to work and the state isn't charging them what the heck if you're gone eight nine hours you get a little something that's right true yep you'd think if they were the one with the electric car they'd be the one driving Dave so i'm not sure but so any other business to come before the board before we enter into executive session looks like everybody has gone to bed for the night Doug's getting ready to yep i am on my way out good night guys bye take care you too all right so teres do you want to do us the um oh sure reading us into executive session means you put the paragraph together same thing we're gonna do we did last time so we're to discuss the interlocal contract for operation of the Bethel Royalton solid waste management facility per one vsa 313 a one this is eligible for discussion in executive session as it is the start of a possible contract negotiation and the town of Bethel does not wish to disclose its negotiation strategy and premature general public knowledge puts us at a disadvantage okay we need a motion enter executive session to discuss the town's current contract with the town of Royalton for joint operation of the transfer stage Dave second second by Paul all in favor hi hi have a good night lisa treasel boot orca i thought i did