 below a quorum, so but maybe would it be okay before we figure out what's going on and maybe let the play finish? I would love to hear what's going on with with the administrative team just to kind of give us a tell me how they're ending the year. Yeah, how are you ending your year apart from with great joy and happiness? I hope. Busy. I know at Calis we are so, like, fast-paced. We have sixth grade trip coming up in the coming week. There's a lot of culminating activities. We have the project for some of the projects happening in the 34th grade, the ideas that some of those kids have come up with, that they are passionate about and want to research. I'm learning about some Japanese artist who does anime. Spiders, there's a weird spider that's become a theme. Kids are fighting over who gets to pick which project nicely. What else is happening at Calis? I'm sure I'm not the only school that has a lot happening at this time of year. We have our art walk and concert coming up in another week. I'd love to see you all come out for that. Field days is always fun if it will warm up and the black flies can stop in Calis. Field days will be great. Carry some water around our field. That would be great. And then splash it on a teacher? Yeah, not me because I would ruin my hair, right? But, yeah, everybody else. Everybody else is good. I think one thing that's been in our favor, being in school, is the weather. Because Springfield hasn't really kicked in yet. Right, so that has been very helpful. And yes, we're very busy. Are you getting any sort of expressions of, not disgruntlement, but, um, grousing about the long school year? Or is it helping? Does that help? Yeah, a little bit. But, yeah, it helps to develop too many nice days. Yeah, so they don't notice that we're actually in early June. I think Alicia wanted things, I was asked that a couple weeks ago. I said to somebody, they said, when do you lose instructional effectiveness towards the end of the school year? And they asked people for a date. In my mind, it's never a date. It's on a weather shift. It's true. Yeah. Even one really nice, warm, beautiful day makes it tricky. They want to be outside, running around. And we haven't had a bunch of that, so I feel like we haven't really lost them or the momentum for learning yet. So that's a plus. Get ready for a downturn. I just heard the weather that when I came in that's after tomorrow, we're on an upward shift. Yeah, I saw it. Warm and sunny for like five or six days in a row. I'll believe it when that happens. We do need a little of that, but otherwise we can't get on the field for graduation because it's a sponge right now. So we're worried about that, but if we get a little bit of breeze, a little bit of sun, we'll be good for that. I don't even think I can list everything that's happening between right now and next Friday when we graduate. There's a lot of stuff going on. We're still seeing good learning going on in the building. There's some really fun stuff that we're seeing kids do. We've got the 8th graders on the trip right now. So that relieves the middle school of some pressure here at the end of the year. It's always a good life. And then the move up day, we were just saying. Next Tuesday? Yeah, see you next Tuesday. So that would be all of our 6th graders coming up for the day. Experience U32 and all the other kids experiencing their schedule for next year. That's great. Donnie scored the cover of the time variance yesterday. That was, thanks, Dave. But we did our Oskal play last week and it's awesome. I really love it. The kids love it. The whole community loves it. It's a fully custom production with songs written by the kids and local community volunteers just come in and create a play for us with us. And it's really fun. And the group of volunteers that we have working on the play right now are really focused on making it a more student-driven production. We have some elements of the student's voice in it but they really want more. And our literacy specialist I think next year is going to try and writing workshop, the script, a little bit more. So it's just, it's really great. So that was Thursday night and then Friday we really put the pedal to the metal and did an all school hike in the morning. And then by Friday afternoon things were pretty mellow, which was great. And we really are kind of focusing right now on just wrapping up the end of the year, trying to capture our assessment data that we need to at the end of the year, these two weeks. And then we go into exploratories where kids can choose some activities, those final three days of school. And it's just, it's a fun time and fun way to spend the end of the year. So you kind of use them out that way. We do. So for Berlin, similarly, you know, a lot of end of the year activities, of course we have our production tonight. Yeah, yeah, they're finishing up. You know, we had the daytime performance today and it's just an amazing job that the kids and the parents helping did. Yeah, just starting to wrap up the year. We have a end of the year picnic that the PTNA puts on. So it's always exciting getting ready for sixth grade graduation. One of the things that I shared with students and staff is this idea of finishing strong. And I relate it to a basketball coach I had in high school and kind of tell the story around, you know, persevering to the end. So in light of a longer end of the year, just this idea of not coasting the last week of school and just kind of kicking back, you know, keeping the routine. You're doing your best to the bitter end and kind of inspiring that in the kids and help with some teacher sanity, I think, too. So that's a message we've been trying to communicate to everybody. Do you all have a lot of turnover among your teachers? This is one of the lowest years by far. We listed it today at Central Office. I think it's up to 10. People will be all of us. And several of them are retirements for us. We don't have any case with one retirement account. So people are not voting for the exits? Okay, that's good. No, we have good places to work. I mean, we're seeing that people are choosing to be with us. And so, I mean, I think for us, we have three retirements. One person whose spouse was relocated out of state. And so those are the kinds of things we're experiencing. People that are finding other jobs in the state. In fact, I don't know any of my people that are leaving because they are moving to another school system in the state. Currently, one of the boards will need to approve some on the 17th for hires. But past my interview or past the HR process, so we're ready for the board. And I'm including certified staff and non-certified staff, which the board doesn't need to approve the non-certified. I think we had five or six. I'm looking at Lori, Kelly, and Jim because we were talking about this day. We're down to like five or six. You know, about an employee full-time, full-time workforce of about 329 people. That's open right now. So that's the smallest by far. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if Flora or Jonas or Dorothy or Vera. Do you have any questions? I know you know what's going on in your own schools, our sort of own-town schools. But I don't know if you have questions for other schools or... What are the end-of-year assessments that you do? Because I imagine that's not just a... Yeah. We're thinking we need to take stock of our assessment plan again. We've been doing a lot of end-of-year assessment. We do a Star 360, which is a universal screener. And we this year chose to try that four times a year in reading and math because last year we had experienced a number of our teachers told us that the gap between December and June was too much, so we snuck in another one in March. So we're wrapping that up. There are end-of-year literacy assessments that we are doing for students, especially students who had not yet met the standard in the winter. We've just completed the smart balance in grades 3 through 9. That was done at U32 prior to April break, but the elementary did that in the month of May. The statewide science assessment is in May administration. That's grades 5, 8, and 11. The fitness program is now a statewide PE assessment in grades 4, 7, and 11, also mostly done in May and at the beginning of May. We have students who have taken college entrance exams. It's outside of school, but that's still part of the time and students who took AP courses and decided to take the advanced placement exam. What am I missing? That's a good list. But the Star 360 is low invasive. Computer-based, 15, 20 minutes. Students in grades 3 through 6. 7, 8, 9, and 10. 3 through 10 in literacy and 1 through 10 in math. Is that correct? And we can use it as a screening tool, but also a progress monitoring tool. So if a student is below the benchmark on one assessment, on one window, they can take it again a month later to see if they've made that incremental growth. It's a really powerful tool for us to get some more real-time information because as soon as a student hits done, I can pull it up on my end and see how they did. Is that required or is that something you do on your own to do that? Star 360 we've chosen to do. Where's that data? Where's the data from all of that sort of constellation? So the data is housed in our information system. It's something that we share with the boards at least twice a year. I would love to see previous examples of that just so I know what I'm looking at. Sure. I think some of those slide shows are probably... Yeah. Yeah. I bet you October, the October SU meeting. SU meeting. So, Jin, you said that the teachers about the period is too long between December and June. They're actually using these assessments themselves to kind of keep track of how things are going. We use them to put kids into some of the interventions and we have a callback which U32 is a block of time where kids can work with an individual teacher in small groups. So that's how they use that data to kind of schedule kids into the callbacks, particularly the middle school level so that they can catch up on some skills. And the STAR program can generate a seemingly infinite number of reports. So it can, and where we use it, a lot of our teachers use it at the classroom level is they can pull a report for a standard and find students who were at various levels of achievement for a single standard, say counting to 10. And so it can make instructional groups based on that information. And when used well, it's an incredibly powerful tool. It's not just a tool that we look at and say, okay, X number of kids met the benchmark, X number of kids didn't, let's wait till the next window. We're using it constantly to get different bits of information. Yeah, that's great. That sounds like sort of a model of how metrics should be used by the people who are actually doing the teaching and not just to generate reports for school boards to satisfy our, you know, insatiable curiosity. It's an instructional tool, for sure. Can you talk a little bit about that translation of data of the 3D system and the kid talk about what they're doing in general? Because it helps them set goals for individual students? So at the beginning of the year, those of you who are on the board saw the goal setting that our teachers did. They used the star data in the fall to kind of, there is a measure in the star data that kind of predicts students' growth over a year. Those students who should make a year's worth of growth, maybe those who aren't. And as Matt and Stephen were saying, we used that information to help guide our instruction, make groupings, think about interventions. So one thing that I don't, I'm not sure how much the other schools have focused on it, but we've gone deeper with the data this year at East Montpelier and triangulated it, so not just looking at one measure, but comparing maybe ESPAC assessments to the reading assessments to the star reading assessment to teacher judgment. So we're using multiple methods in kind of comparing and saying, does this make sense? Does this confirm what we know about the student? Are there any red flags? The nice thing about star, and we've done this a number of times, kids can have bad days, right? So they could take an assessment and totally bomb it. And if it doesn't look like kind of what their profile is showing, like you know what, this doesn't make sense. We might meet with a student. We actually just did it the other day with a student whose star score didn't kind of match what the teacher was seeing or matched the recent ESPAC assessment and sat with the student and said, was this your best? How are you feeling? No, I kind of just didn't give it my best. Let's try it again. And then we'll look at that data again and say yeah, this actually does confirm what I'm seeing in the classroom. So what we're going to be doing next Wednesday afternoon actually, as a whole staff is looking at the ESPAC data from this spring and the reading data and the report card data and kind of comparing, do all of these measures kind of, are they aligned and do they make sense for each of our students? That's great. George Gonzalez in about 20 minutes. He needs to do a few more things. In about 20 minutes. Okay, well, this, thanks for that. Can I just point something out? Yeah. And people run board, I've been with twice since accepting a position with them. They just call this principal voices where the principals don't give reports but they kind of give updates. You got a little more detailed questions as you got into the assessment but just kind of like what's going on. Yeah, I like this. I think about that as you think about the meeting. I just wanted to point that out directly as you think we're talking about meeting protocols. I would also like to say that if I be helpful to have central office voice in some of that. We're pretty busy too. Yeah. But to follow that, we had a question on our last board meeting. So how are the trauma-informed practices that you're doing now when I inform the aspects, you know, like we could talk. We're just really starting to think we should be one of our goals. Yeah. One of our goals. We're developing quite a list. Great parent things of celebrating the teachers there and the kids. I said please do that, George. That's really important. So how do you all feel? Do you want to talk about retreat, for example? Just maybe bad a few thoughts around. Up for that? Okay. So, board retreat on floor. I know this is a topic that's near and dear to your heart. Would you like to jump off on it? Sure. I think you and I had a conversation of trying to find a common ground for a board retreat and maybe having John join us if that's what I would do and come up with something to learn this summer. And then we could I don't want to be the one that picks the goals, but how do we operate and be a more informed board so that we can operate at a higher level to keep up with the work that they're doing at this school. So the more informed that we are the better that we can set up our kids and our administrators. So I would like to have a smaller meeting, but maybe we could set goals at large as a board in what we want to focus on the meeting and I think we have a lot of work to do in governance and how we want to how we want to governance and learning for the entire board. I shared with you I had that book that I would like to share, but it doesn't have to be that book. I understand. I would like to have maybe a date today, but we don't have enough for it, so maybe at the next meeting because that would work for everybody and have like an old morning retreat or an independent people's schedules or an afternoon retreat. Last year, but this time the federal government last year, the IMG do it more on governance and how we're going to operate together but also focus on equity quality and facilities. The range of possible topics is pretty vast, it seems to me. Dorothy, did you catch that? Are you able to take it? Sorry, I always forget that I have to be louder for you. Or sit next to you. Yeah, I got them. Do you have any thoughts about the retreat? My personal feeling is this time of year I am not eager to give up a cathedric whatever to spend a lot of time setting goals or whatever we decide to do before we've heard from the courts to for us to spend a whole lot of time getting more organized and we have to get more organized but spending a lot of time before the court decision I just think it might not be useful of our time. I would go with something that happens in July but I know July is sort of a special time when the school is kind of like, ahhhh. So they don't want to do anything then either but again you don't want to put it off to August so that's where we are. Vera? I would love to do a retreat I think it's beneficial for multiple reasons. And I hear what you're saying Dorothy with the court hearing but I think it can be beneficial regardless of what the court decides as far as how we move forward whether we're no matter what the configuration of governments is. The ones that have been done in the past have been held one at Conrad's house and I think what we bring to the retreat makes it or breaks it and I think there's so much work and so much organization and so much that needs to be done in a short time to make sure that August starts smoothly for our administration and our schools that I would hate to see us put that work off later on into the fall when other things at school are happening for us that have kids still in school. So I would rather see us do it sooner than later and be very mindful about what we're doing at the retreat so everybody has their voice everybody has their time to speak and make it a useful time and not get so down into the weeds of things that we don't make any progress. Yeah. Thanks. I think Dorothy's point is well taken. When do we expect resolution from the courts? Well the discretion agenda item 3.9 is litigation update. Yes. We could jump to that very quickly if you... Just a ballpark estimate would be great. Probability that I've heard and Dorothy please correct me is that before the end of June Judge Mello will will dispose of the remaining counts of the appeal that are before him. In fact I've heard that it could be like the third week of June or first I heard July, June 12th I heard June well for this last year last week was the first day I heard June 12th then somebody said June 15th and I thought I don't think so because that's a Saturday but so there you have it. I heard July 1st who knows what's going to happen but I think until Mello's present decision on the past hearing will then decide if that is going to be appealed immediately to the Supreme Court or what's going to happen. And is that two weeks it will be correct the last two weeks of June? And is your impression that the attorneys are expecting it to go to the Supreme Court one way or the other? So we can expect uncertainty Right and it seems with the budget with the policies and having to do a lot of communication because I think your email was really good made it was really good I think it was Paul Hanlon who asked if we were going to hold budget information sessions which that was a thing but yes we should totally do that the time it doesn't look like June is a good time to do that to do a to do a retreat Oh to do a retreat, no I don't think so You and I talked about this and I was thinking early August didn't have anything and I think June is probably not a great time for No Not the time for them for school this June is packed more than any June has been I would also say that one of the things that is on the agenda that I was going to ask to add was meeting dates and I thank Dorothy for recognizing that July is a time for rejuvenation for administrators I wanted to just check in about board meetings I think the board at least one board member could use some rejuvenation I think I would recommend that July there aren't meetings because you're transitioning superintendents your new superintendent will not be here until the 15th of July and let's and that not be a time for meeting and then pick it back up in August I think if we can do the work we need to do here in June I'm kind of looking at my colleague across the table Lori from our checklist that we have of things that must have to have a minimum operation up and running with the policies and the financials that we have laid out for here in June for work the organization should be able to run I'm going to talk more about policies in a little bit with work that Aaron and Jody Emerson and I are doing as a subcommittee of the leadership team but there's some things that have to be in place so student handbooks get printed correctly and things like that but I think that's what we can do in June yeah I mean does that does that seem okay you're fresh yeah I'm not I'm not thrilled about the idea of having a month off from this because there is a lot to do there's an unbelievable amount to do but there I mean we have to we have to respect the open meeting law but we don't live far from each other we could meet up at the PO cafe and I can you know just sort of place myself at your disposal for a debriefing and might I suggest that maybe next meeting on the 12th and hopefully we have all 10 board members here we might add to the agenda we always have on the agenda future items but maybe we try to carve out a little bit heavy agenda with operational actions that need to be done but that we try to think about what does July look like without board means and what is the work that may go on yeah that's right that's a great idea so that it's a way of we do that as a team we've usually met in June and then we split our retreat in half and there's subcommittee there are groups of people that get together to do a little bit of work to the whole group to learn from each other yeah and I think that's also a way to rejuvenate it's like working in the garden you know good yeah we just want to make sure that we're doing everything right so we can talk more about that at the next meeting but I think that would be good to have everyone on the table good good so we kind of took a long scenic route around still talking about the retreat exactly and Jonas I guess you were sort of into the retreat thing that posed the question about the appeal so do you have any and I understand your uneasiness with letting July kind of life out of that's for me if the board and the administration are comfortable with the things that we need to do then we'll do that for me it's losing four weeks sitting with you guys right there is so many questions that I need to ask right and so I mean when you talk about how we do governance I need to know what that means I need to know what the options are yeah if we can spend time having coffee down at the post office please I'm up for it I just wonder what the options are I think if we could and maybe not impose on the administrators but if we could have maybe split the retreat two parts and in July to do governance we have sort of that basic basic start of the board and we could put our heads together and start it off I don't I truly don't think that I agree with Vera that regardless of the court the more learning that we do even if then we're split apart it's just we need to move forward and I feel really really strongly that the job of this board is not to at this point stand on a posting at 46 but on running our schools like this shouldn't be like every time that we meet should be like about how to move forward we have spent so much time talking about the negative parts that I want to spend a little more time talking about the positive parts what could we achieve and try to move away as best as we can this is the cars that we've been dealt just make the best out of and we can do it I really want to move away from this I don't want to split board I always figure you're for a poker player and it's not even a play like that communication you and I went back and forth and I feel really strongly after you send that email I actually called I spent a half an hour at Kara's she was the chair of the board for Stowe and I know how strong they were about at their last meeting they didn't even have people say they knew that they were going to lose their appeal and that's their independent case but they had made it really clear that at this meeting sort of unified board they are positive they are like strong together and they're moving forward together not because that's where they were going because they really felt like their alternative was better that's why they had a separate lawyer because they wanted to control their narrative they were very persuasive at the end they decided that they were going to set goals together and it's not going to be easy but passing that that they had that responsibility for students and I know that we all feel that but we're still a little split into trying to preserve that isn't that because at any point the cards could be redoubted to Dorothy's point but regardless of that right now we're learning more about our commonalities and then we could still be around but we can we have our kids they don't have three months to lose we need to keep moving forward in this board if people outside this board when I continue and come and report to us on how the appeal is going I just feel like the work of this board shouldn't be that's just personal it's not I don't intend to make everybody feel the same way I just feel like at some point this board at least and everybody else could continue to fight a meeting to represent I don't know no that's great thanks Lord, Jonas if I might we have George and with George we acquire the magic number of six which allows me to call the meeting to order formally and if do you mind if we just sort of put a like a caesura on this and then we can come back to it so reception of guests we have David David is our guest welcome David I'm glad to have you you're our biggest fan or something agenda revisions and comments any agenda revisions anyone? all I would say is under meeting pro calls 3.3 if we could add a meeting dates to that and we start talking about that already but just so we can get clarity on some dates and some locations and I have a proposal for you okay thank you now in 3.8 we have talked about doing that on the 12th right we're gonna we'll get there and yeah I haven't forgotten for thank you public comments and correspondence David will make his own comments in his own manner and time I have heard from a bunch of people who are also both members of the public and colleagues you mentioned Brian and his email about the Stowe Elmore Morrisville board's approach Alan Gilbert I think you've all received his at some point I'd like Laura to talk about that because there's some incorrect information in that email great yeah good okay that sounds good so when I didn't know if you wanted to do that under public comments or if you wanted to do that under budget and election communication plan because Lori brought information about the tax rates and what she said last time in the way Alan responded to that because we all know Lori knows tax detail very deep to a high degree of competency yeah yeah absolutely um so she can do that there yeah I think if there's no if there's no problem with doing it under that agenda item budget communication will work the Alan Gilbert thing Chris McVeigh sent his regrets for this meeting and then a long email of what he would have said if he had been here so I have the pleasure of presenting that Matthew DeGroote mentioned his hope that we would be able to include Susanna Kovar and Chinese Waterhouse in as sort of members of the public augmenting negotiation team I don't know if that's possible you can appoint whoever you want to your negotiation team great that's great so I'm just mentioning it now we're not taking action on that just so that you know that that communication has happened and other people seem very interested gratifyingly so in the possibilities that may be open now with this sort of fresh start and are brimming with ideas so they I'm not going to get into them well I told them that they should be the ones to you know to bring them more to you know encourage the students that they've been talking to be even better for them to bring up these ideas and that's basically what I've heard from the public since last time I don't know if any of you have anything to add or would like to lindy said an email apologizing to for not coming she just had two sentences do you want me to read them right now oh no she's her apology is about communication oh oh she had a bad it is very important to me that it stays positive and leave out the force type language the article was positive and I think they had a nice tone Tony's so important in messages out I know you understand it's interesting to me understand this but others I want others to hear that I want a positive tone great okay thanks anything else it's good alright then if you don't mind our going to the consent agenda there's quite a bit here including are there border there are not borders I was going to say when you're doing it the gender revisions there are not border okay okay that's fine it just was on the template good yeah that's fine once you cross it off the template then it won't be on the template so let's keep it on the template I rather make this mistake no that's fine what are border orders ah sorry I got you borders are another way for saying those are the checks that we issue to pay bills thank you this is before the issue correct um they're printed they're not distributed or signed and distributed until after you approve them um we do have what we call a blanket order which then like if the board doesn't meet or they change their meeting dates we're still allowed to pay vendors um to help prevent these so next meeting we'll be talking about is authorizing us to run checks in the summer if you didn't meet and Lori um I know from just the U32 side of things that those border orders can actually add up to some impressive um you know lists so how how do you foresee this board how much in a way of what we have to kind of sift through or look at next meeting we would be discussing the procedures you know the procedures you all signed on your individual boards on who touches what so there's an internal control process that would continue and be very similar to what we currently do um having said that um then the board would see the summary of the internal control so basically a purchase order happens and we can review this at the next meeting when you see that document but it talks about the purchase order process the invoice process who sees it who signs it and gives you a little bit more comfort that by the time you see it it's actually been scrutinized by you know staff, principals, secretaries our office and the treasurer great thank you good thanks very much okay so we have minutes to approve um a lot of minutes to approve and I I don't know if should we make it on this later you want to do it one by one please if you want to make a motion to approve the consent agenda as a whole then we can talk about everything together we probably have to separate okay I'll move to approve the consent agenda thank you Flora and Dorothy second so um first I'll ask if there are any changes I have just one on the May 31st my last name is yes the only and they were actually others but I think they actually got fixed before this packet came out most likely they did because there was a a few spelling errors that I think very good okay thank you Flora does anybody else have anything that they'd like to see changed I would then just defer to Bill my impression was that on page 6 Bill um the second and last paragraph the last sentence um what I heard you say was not that the state board of education is the only entity that can levy tax rates but that the state that state government state government the state tax department education taxes it's not individual the sort of it's all done it's all done from the state tax department and the state the state is the one that levy's taxes and I'm already telling you I'm saying something wrong but the towns do not levy taxes for educational purposes yes um so Lisa so if you say the state department of taxation I'm just trying to find it oh page 6 it's the second and last paragraph the very last sentence that says it was the 22nd right that would be the 22nd correct and which section would it be because I'm not going by the same name oh yeah this is after Dorothy Naylor moved to approve the budget in the amount of 33 million et cetera it's 3.1 on the agenda 3.1.4 oh yeah okay and now what am I changing Bill Kimball stated that he believes yes the state department of department of taxes yeah in fact because his belief is true we could even say stated that the state department of taxes is the only entity that can um yeah levy is a funny word because I think the legislature levy's taxes but sets tax rates that would be fine sets tax rates sets and collects sets and collects tax rates great yeah because I know this is an important point so Bill Kimball stated that the state department of taxes is the only entity that sets tax rates and collects taxes education tax dollars would be the best way to say it that's a lot of tax where am I putting in a special tax dollars after the tax rates yes it's tax rates and collects education tax dollars thanks very much that's all that I have no other changes ready for a vote on the consent agenda as moved by floor and second and by Dorothy all in favor please say aye aye any opposed none good alright so we pick up where we left off before you arrived George we were just before you got here we just were kind of chatting with the principals and with the department heads at the central office about how things were going at this stage of the school year and we started in talking about the retreat and different ideas about the retreat and you know the work that needs to be done there are basically some really good ideas about what we can do what kind of perhaps visioning can be done what what sorts of goal setting we might consider doing Dorothy made I think an important practical point that there's still this appeal sitting in the courts and the possibility as Jonas noted too that the hand that we're currently doubt may be brought up and read out differently but Vera I thought also said something interesting that it could still be a valuable thing to do if we essentially interrupt with our sort of two track policy if whatever if we invest our energies in advancing the agenda of this merged board in a way that would also if it doesn't continue and we get a stay or a delay or whatever a serious dispensation that it would still be valuable for that am I sort of yeah and that kind of makes sense to me to try to it's consistent with what we've been trying to do all along and what I'm thinking also is that the nature of the concept of a retreat it's basically I'm not mistaken it's sort of a a step back from engagement at the battlefront basically and an opportunity to take stock but also an opportunity to kind of not be so laser focused as we typically are on the day to day business so I'm thinking goal setting and visioning are really important and I don't want to set those aside for any length of time but maybe considering that we're just running so fast and trying to do so much in so little time the possibility of actually taking a step back and thinking about you know something that Chris said I mentioned to you Bill here in after the candidate forum here in Berlin he said yeah maybe it's not the best way how we got here but now that we are here this could be a great opportunity and I think if we were to have consider a retreat where we just think about opportunities not necessarily a you know thoroughly structured way and I know this is for managers this is a hard thing because we always want to get things done and want to have time be valuable in that way but if we were able to just share amongst ourselves what opportunities we see out of this and you know not just board members but also including members of the leadership team including of course the new superintendent that's my only pause from our earlier conversation is that I don't think you should have a board meeting until even if the aggressive leadership team doesn't have to come and that's one thing you need to talk about is what is the attendance requirements I've told the team you need to be here at every meeting that may or may not be the case and there may be good reason to do it or not to do it I'm not trying to put a value judgment on it either way but you need to have that discussion and your formats are your meetings and until that's decided we have that time to have that discussion but I think you shouldn't have a meeting she's not here until July 15 you shouldn't meet as a board without your leadership superintendent yes agree we'd be following July 1st following July 1st she doesn't come back she isn't here on job by her contract until July 15 there's like a 15 day and we're figuring Debra and I met today and we're figuring that out working with the team so anyway what I meant about maybe having a part of the retreat without is exactly what you were saying maybe you could use the meeting after July 15 use the meeting to get to know because it's a new board it's part of that retreat to get to know each other better and how we make decisions so do that that part too and bring it because they've been operating together for a while and this is kind of new for us maybe there is some advantage just having a basic a basic training and basic get to know each other, so basic retreat how we make decisions that was with being super attentive of course but you know I appreciate that yeah so I don't know we've sort of been talking again about mixing goals and who should attend willy nilly but George do you have any thoughts about this or I mean just taking it a high school board I'm not one for an all day event but that's asking me but I do see value in maybe an evening or a couple of series of evening events that we can talk goals and get to know each other because you know we are entering kind of a new era here that I think we need to spend some time and figure out yeah great so one of the very next agenda sub agenda sub item or whatever is established planning group and I mean the initial thought was that Flora Jonas and I could maybe do this unless unless there one of you would like to be involved in it and I would be happy to you know step back and just look at it I just want to be able to have the conversation as to we're only a board of 10 and as many of you are very mindful of the sub committees that we create to start with only a minimal amount of perspectives versus I think this is why I go back to the retreat I would like to be able to do some of this work in retreat where we're all there all bring our perspectives and our input versus a small subcommittee of different groups and I'm not sure how many subcommittees will be created but I'm sure there will be over time but I just I'm very leery to create all these subcommittees of smaller groups of three or less or already minimize it and be pretty judgment yeah and if we if we deliberately can I ask you a question I think I and I want to check what I heard from Vera because I thought I heard something different than what you intended to ask so I'm wondering if there's a comprehension we're missing some comprehension in what you asked so Vera stop me if I think you're talking about just a planning a group of different plans to plan the retreat like to figure out what sandwiches to get at actually building like the agenda and the topics that we're going to discuss I think we all need to absolutely agree and I think what you I was so kind of focused on what you were saying that thank you for stepping into I didn't realize that there was any sort of of liquidity there but yeah we should all be involved in the in the agenda and my thought is that the agenda should be as simple and open and basically disengaged from the you know the fraying as possible and you know a big picture with an opportunity for everyone to participate and to share what they really want out of this and what they want to see out of this so may I suggest that the next meeting on the 12th week and maybe Scott you and I may have to put some time on things because it's going to be so much in the next meeting but that Jonathan Floor anyone to email you thoughts or idea and maybe you can bring a working sheet that has options out on the next Wednesday everyone can look at it and say is it too detailed or not enough detail of what we're doing and just kind of more as a laundry list not necessarily any order in which it's going to be done because what I've suggested and I did in the last meeting with that you look at a facility or help make that sure or that may even be a further later on this may even be more basic but I'm just trying to think of a way to allow you to get some like playing like when do we think here are a couple of possible dates to bring that back next time here people please email if the three of you are doing that what they are just compile them and bring them back and what do we like and what do we don't like and have a quick so we're not starting from scratch and we have to brainstorm here for 45 minutes I don't know if that helps kind of give a little process to putting this together you okay with that great so if Jonas Floor yeah we'll just sort of kind of be the coordinating group or whatever just to be clear we're allowed to email between three or up to five people but once we get six people on an email chain yeah even then we don't want to get too cute I think we can especially if it's just organizational we're good alright anything more on the retreat for now nope okay so this is the big enchilada the required policies which run from page 27 to page 2003 so I want to apologize and this will be this way for the next couple of meetings but I wanted to ensure that everyone had access to the policies I wrote you a memo on page 27 and hopefully you all had a chance to look at this ahead of time really we have a we're using the VSBA's language and the way they group policies and how they code policies and while it may be that the VSBA right now is changing, the whole state of Vermont is recoding their policy manuals so these may not look like familiar codes but you can see the table the tables on pages 28 through 30 and these numbers might look different than what you're used to seeing in your formal local policies but if you look under there there are the required policies which are on the left-hand side the recommended policies which are in the center and then policies to consider on the right-hand side if you look at any of those pages we're not here tonight and with the whole leadership team because we talked about this at first and then we said hey subgroup gets this we're reviewing all the existing policies in Washington Central so in this packet there are all required policies plus one plus one is for those of you who've been on the board we'd love to call the policies on policies which is A1 which is the first one in the whole packet but that's really important for you to set how you will adopt policies going into it and I think it should be purposely as we go to adoption at the next meeting that that be the first one you adopt now if you look at page 32 you'll see a table that lists all the required policies all the required policies and this policy M policy is the same through all the Washington Central supervisory union schools so there isn't any language derivation there is some language derivation from the BSBA models but between the schools the only one that's a little different is weapons and it's the definition of what a knife is and I have it on strong recommendation from the leadership team because we talked about this that we want the definition of a knife to be any knife not a length just a knife it makes it a lot easier in schools for operations so the rest of them they are in unison so I'm hoping that this isn't a very that we don't need to have a lot of debate on this because we have these policies already we're really switching the title and what we gave you in the packet shows it in the old form we have our land in there you might see a Washington Central player for the next meeting we would reformat them with Washington Central unified union school district and dates of the meeting to be adopted so that's my short condensed version of the overall process which I outline with you in the memo we are doing tomorrow literally Aaron, Jody and I at 10 o'clock I have asked Aaron and Jody to look at the handbooks and see if there's anything that isn't in the required policies that we need adopted by July 1 to support the student handbook so we're going to have that on it for the next meeting great Aaron did I miss anything from our work or anyone else but Aaron and Jody's not here I would ask the two folks that are helping with and Chris is doing a really large lift on this yeah any questions I guess I have one yep apart from the firearms weapons are there any other policies that are that have variants between schools so from our reading we didn't find anyone there is one new one here that I forgot to say that was new as of last year freedom of expression so we've taken the VSDA model policy and just put it right in so I need to note that but the rest are besides the weapons I don't remember I've seen anything as we read through them could we have had a policy committee that's done this work yeah so just a question about the way these are coded in the left in the table under board operations A1 conflict of interest is identified as A1 but it appears that A1 is the policy on policies and conflict of interest is B3 that doesn't matter that's what I was saying is that they're recoding so we're going to recodify for the next time when Jody and Aaron and Chris and I met we deliberately decided to give you this time what it looks like from the current organizations there are some times that there were policies that were enacted across the SUs that were deliberately at Washington Central but not at the schools the conflict of interest is a good example you see that in that table where it says WCSUY it means the policy reside in Washington Central there are other ones that were in all the schools but not at Washington Central hazing, harassment, and bullying is one of those it's the same policy but as Ford just said a lot of this work was done in the policy committee as they've been going through the policies great may I just ask which schools have still allowed you know, modestly sized knives Vigil Calis the policy I think the current policy still says something like it has to be under two and a quarter inches under two and a quarter inches ours says two and a half but there is a piece in there about brandishing that sort of takes out the length requirement if it is brandished I just remember when U32 when we banned knives out together I got a very interesting email from Paul Hannon and talking about growing up and the farm and you know so I just wanted to be aware of the cultural dimension of this I think for where we it's actually me to get into the cultural dimension and Steve and tell me if I'm wrong I want to hear we've had very few issues since we actually said no knives you know we have an occasional piece but it's gotten less and less and less as we communicated more and more the distinction between a two and a quarter and a two and a half or a two and three quarter there's really no distinction in the knife and we really aren't going to split hairs about this they're weapons if you recall at U32 we had it in our procedures that if a student arrived on campus and realized that they still had a knife with them that they just needed to turn it into the office upon arrival at school and I've actually had a couple of kids who come from you know actually the tech center is they don't allow me there but they arrived they were doing something the night before they threw on the same pants and they're like whoops and so we just we keep it we do have to have a parent come and get it you can't just hand it back to them but the issues are so few and far between distinguishing between a knife that is considered a weapon and one increment and another is just impossible so if they check their knives at the door yeah the chair, you know put your guns here I figured it was a text and you would pull out your text and just check them at the door as you know this year we've had very well I'm trying to think back I don't know that we've had a bearing on a knife on a knife we're fine they know now there's no weeks to go yeah I'm very happy to hear that for those of you who have who allow knives right now do you think there needs to be an information campaign so I want to make a difference between a weapons policy violation and knives being allowed so knives are not allowed in school at all but what you are seeing is the procedures that we would follow as per a weapons policy violation and so there is a difference there what was the question again whether you think there's an informational thing to parents I think it's pretty clear at least in my building that knives are not allowed in school I would say the same and we have situations like they may come for Cub Scouts in the evening and want to show their Cub Scouts a tool what they think of as a tool we have a conversation we teach them about it we call the parents they come and get it I feel like kids know knives are not allowed in school but sometimes there are young students who wanted to carve wood out of recess and brought a steak knife like that does happen and it's not for whittling and wanted to use it more as a tool than anything else and so we deal with it what happens just to Matt's point there is a way to distinguish between bringing a knife to school and a weapons violation so then there is the student freedom of expression in school sponsored media which hasn't yet been bedded through the policy community we don't have a policy community I mean through the supervisory it did not go to there it was on the list to get to but it just came through the previous legislative session that just happened last year and then we have this school year to get it enacted so question about that so you say it comes through legislator and we rely solely on their legal so what happens is there are three entities that come together to draft policy that come through BSBA it is the joint legislative council which are the folks that wrote the legislation so have the intent there are the attorneys that work for the agency of education and then there is the attorney for the Vermont school board association they all meet and pull together and write draft policy that may be used so then how much say or sway do we have as a policy committee on these things you can make it more stringent or in this case more I'd have to look at it and read with the policy but it really outlies it really depends on the legislation George like in the easy harassment bully you have about you don't have really any say or you make it more I guess I was more curious as to what real work does the policy committee have to do so it depends on which policy more legal jargon is taken care of and we're covered that's why part that's one of the services that BSBA provides is being part of that member you have access to those model templates because they're at the table you can't be stripped of what comes out of the legislation out of joint legislative council or the agency of education but then the models get developed and are given to boards through BSBA got it so anyway what I would suggest as and unless I'm shot down on this is that we go with the continuity of policies that are already approved and in place and being followed in the schools with with the one exception of the student freedom of expression that one we should pay closer attention to but but otherwise you know pass on first reading all of the others and if anybody wants to and I suppose we could even pass the freedom of expression and then change it in a second I would suggest that okay that is the one that we should really look at okay so if you don't mind if I skip to action agenda 4.1 for approved first reading of required policies is there a motion I'm happy to make a motion okay with special words or can I just say I approve first reading of required policies yeah move to approve the first reading of required policies for our second any further discussion just real quick why we're paying special attention to the freedom of expression has been adopted we haven't had it in the prior it has been a policy that we've been using we haven't to the end of this school to June 30th this year I don't want to take up a lot of time but is this why is this policy now the state and state law was passed a year in the previous session requiring all schools to have a policy on student freedom of expression if you remember the Burlington where I was gone this is why we have and I think I can say for all my colleagues we're in favor of what's here we believe in the way the policies are written in the prior to that's good that helps we know what you mean Steve here any other points discussion no in that case all in favor of the motion to approve the first reading of required policies please say aye aye all opposed any opposed none so that passes good now meeting protocols I know perhaps there's one meeting protocol that it's already kind of eight so we may I was going to ask you maybe this is a good place to open that up if we could and it's obviously up to the board but if we could try to keep this to two hours we've got two weeks in a row of these meetings if we have 40 minutes left of when we were to start any objection to ending at 8.30 really? how do you guys get this stuff done an hour a week two hours every two weeks most people talk a lot faster than I do okay and they aren't they're not this packed we have a lot we have to do because of the formation of the of the organization and so I know I will be pushing on you for the next couple of meetings to say yeah we have a lot to do okay so meeting protocols we just talked about the setup we did yeah this was our brainchild here is mine my hope would be that someday we might have a gallery instead of sort of Eastwood Memorial but how does how does this feel to you the configuration the configuration and I think scrambling us up so that we don't have town sitting next to each other a little bit you know mix it up a bit it's okay alright you are one impressive block however very intimidating that just intensifies it good well let's keep trying that then it's supposed to be more of an arc but it's the best I can do yeah okay and meeting dates we are having a meeting next Wednesday and Matthew has been gracious enough to offer Dodie as the next place we will be so we'll be at Dodie next Wednesday for some of you that's a very close drive for others I can walk further is there an SU meeting on Wednesday the next the supervisor union carousel meeting is Monday the 17th at U32 there would not be a meeting on the 19th because there are many graduation and other ceremonies that are happening that night so we are going to try not to have a meeting on the Wednesday the 19th and I would ask you all to hold the 26th the day after the budget election there may need to be a meeting that night on the 26th don't we have to have a public hearing about that yes yes you do 10 days prior and I was kind of holding that until we got to that item about communications plan unless it fits with meeting dates so that we would have it would not meet with the 12 it would have to be after the 15th and before so the night up to the night up to the night before has to be 10 days prior so Dorothy is exactly where she was going but I was holding that for the budget election communication plan we can do that and then for July it was my only next piece I know I will speak for my colleagues that they deserve to have July to themselves certainly don't begrudge them and we can we can do things ourselves and Debra talked to me that was Debra this morning she will be here starting July 15 and if there is something in July she will make it work for herself to be there be part of a meeting at the board so it chooses but I told her I would push not to have one on July 3rd the day before July 4th she asked me when to register so she could be here for July 3rd so choose but you may want to talk about that again at the next meeting great I should let you know that I will be unavailable from the 15th to the 23rd June 15th to the 23rd questions I know we talked about having one meeting at school and then the other meeting on July 32 my only question is that I had talked to Scott about having some PSBA board members and some are coming from very far away at the next meeting so we have a retreat of the PSBA all day and they are already coming from really far so I'm just wondering if it's possible to have that meeting at U32 I had talked to Scott so if not they are already coming from really far away yeah and then we had talked as a board maybe because everybody is around doing one at a school and one at U32 and one at U32 at our last meeting I don't know any preference and it doesn't matter to me I would hate to deprive of the we really have a lovely space I know you do but it would be I have to check the U32 calendar which you can't do right now you can't do that on that phone he's already trying to get his camera you're talking about the next week we have to look I'd say have to look I'm not opposed to it I come away from the meeting with the thought of that that we were rotating around so I just started doing that you were going to mention at the last meeting going back and forth because the administrators were that's why we talked at the last meeting so I was planning it doesn't have to be that way but so there's five people coming that's one thing I that's it Thor was referring to the meeting or to talk about VSBA dues so that this would be part of the VSBA dues agenda item discussion which would be next time well we would be able to at least dig into it next time because there would be people here who could contribute to the discussion I need to think about that okay Scott I would just offer we already put it in our calendar for the room so if we need it it's there thank you good and I'll keep that parenthesis open Dorothy regarding we can also talk about it offline so let's just say that you and I will confer by Friday so everyone knows where they're going by Friday does that make sense since you and I will probably have an agenda planning time by the end of the day Friday is what you should be doing alright any other sort of protocolary stuff regarding meetings we have an item on committee makeup and there have been a number of ideas on this but given the you know the ticking clock maybe this is something that can be again deferred to another discussion keeping in mind various comments of earlier don't first have to decide what committees we want yeah I think that's what you're talking about that's what I'm talking about you know we never did get to when we're going to have a public hearing oh we will at 3.5 at agenda at 2.5 I just didn't want to no no no I appreciate that thanks so if we punt committee makeup no one will object too loudly I hope good so moving on to general funding capital fund all I was going to say is we're going to talk a lot more about this on the 17th when we have a carousel meeting for Washington Central and the local boards Scott and I were talking just to be good for me to mention for two minutes that Lori and I are still working on getting what the needs to be left at the local budget local general funds and then what can be the amounts for each local board to transfer to their capital funds so that and as you all have heard they you know we've been told through legal advice that those can stay we'll stay for the use of the buildings in which they're appropriated to so that way I think it was more a reminder for when we developed the agenda we just had a reminder for me to say that and not really getting too much to it exactly yes so it's just sort of you know taking the box just to keep it kind of on the back burner of your minds we'll be talking about it further so moving on to budget and election communication plan here we are Dorothy well we know when it should take place so have anybody given us a good date other than the Sunday night oh geez yeah that would not qualify as a good date so I haven't looked at dates yet for that I actually have to say Dorothy even though I know it's there was that I've put any thought into right now I was getting really up to 12 o'clock today was making sure the ballot was coming out right so you will see I gave all of you at your location on the table I'm sorry Scott I didn't leave one for myself a copy of what the annual report is it is printed as you can see they have been taken out I believe to town clerks and to schools there postcards we're supposed to have postcards by Friday going in the mail to everyone they were being printed today knowing jet service they probably means they'll go out tomorrow instead of Friday they're very quick they do our printing for us so that is happening so the electorate should receive postcards in the next three to five days so that's that's that piece by Dorothy thank you for saying that you need at least one form yeah yeah I one way of doing it what if we were to combine a form with a meeting on the 19th is there many graduations I would have to say for the team they need to be doing the work of serving the students of parents of course, of course, yeah apologies so what dates what dates the night before is typically when the crickets are heard chirping at U32 I don't know school will be closed yeah under the 24th there's a special school board meeting here for our measurements for your easements the floor vote so it's a floor vote wow just like we had in Canada yeah yeah, I was tempted to ask if we could piggyback on that but that doesn't sound like it would work either we get a lot of Berlin people which would be nice actually do we have to have one session no, you can have as many as you want you need to have at least one so maybe that should be our strategy is to fan out and figure out what works in our different areas I think we should have at least one that is all together I think the first one should be all together the first one should be all together yeah and make sure that we're all sometimes we've done and I know it might be crazy but we've done it before town meeting we do that Saturday to make sure that everybody can come I just think it's important to have it before the 21st because a lot of people are already going to be headed out of town and a lot of especially parents disconnect after the 21st they're like done and we want them to we want them to be informed and to know that you know the vote is coming up and it is important to come and vote what about the 18th what's going on man 8th grade what's 8th grade Steven? 20th so yeah, so the 18th is a possible day 18th 18th so unfortunately Jonas won't be here for that I can't I can't be here for any of this except the Monday except the Monday right before oh the 17th the 24th, yeah well, I mean it's just a hearing, we're not going to be voting we're not going to be voting I want to be there I understand we want you there but we just have to work time it's a hard task what's happening in the 20th there's 8th grade so the 18th should we tentatively pencil it in? yep, I think we should and where? the 32nd full of fervor so we'll be fine great if we're expecting a crowd we can answer Jim yeah, still entertain them at 6.30 yeah, at 6.30 a bunch of information yes it is and the amendments and variables yep we should definitely incorporate that Dorothy's right on, you need to have an information hearing for most you have to warn it as both yeah, that's why so we're doing basically at 3.5 and 3.6 and I've found a block what time? 6.30 anything else that we need to some information from our last meeting just to clear some things up that seem a little foggy oh right, the Alan Gilbert thing and also I came prepared to talk a little bit more about the tax impacts I realized that we could do a better job explaining the tax rate changes and so what I did was I kind of stayed myself a few talking points I'll keep it brief at the last meeting there was a lot of talk about the Cal tax impact and I think your memo on front porch forum kind of clarified that the town had already voted for a tax increase prior to the merger conversation so we needed to kind of work on splitting things into pieces and so when I was doing that and looking at Alan's memo I realized that it's true for every town that not all of the tax impact is due to the merger so maybe when we do these informational meetings I could put together a little bit of a summary by town to kind of show what is the impact by town for the budget that was previously voted on and actually Dave Delcourt brought it to my attention so thank you Dave too that that was part of it should be an other appointment and you know the question that I was answering at the meeting was who would be paying for the $123 projected tax increase at the town of Calis at town meeting had charts that showed the income sensitivity by town and in Calis's case I said it was over 50% it was actually 63% of the town has income sensitivity what is that for the other towns I have it by town I would put it together for you for the next meeting so that we could everyone is different yeah so for the example that I would use that I could come prepared to do by town it would be who pays that $123 on $100,000 house for the 63% of the Calis residents how many wouldn't be paying how many how much are they really paying right so 24% would be capped at 5% so they would not see a tax increase 39% would be capped at around 2.8% so they would be paying like $3 of the $123 tax increase and then other people would be paying the full $123 as well as people who own land beyond the 2 acres so I was going to do my typical and I think viewers heard me do this when you had a budget vote on bonding kind of breaking it down into how does that really work for people and if that would help I would be happy to do that so you're saying they would pay $123 more and so Alan sent you some an email trying to that it was proportional and it really isn't proportional and so I asked Laura today if you could kind of help correct because Alan the way he was projecting tax rates and the way Laura who has taught me a lot about tax rates and the really nitty gritty of the calculation was like we need to make sure at least the board is very well educated that how this is really going to impact people via income sensitivity and you're able to do that break that like you did for Cal set 60% down for each of the towns just put together a little chart you could review it at your next meeting and decide if it would be helpful for the informational meetings that's what I'm offering to do if that's your pleasure good income sensitivity is one of these you know I've seen mysteries and hidden secrets of the tax system and anything that contributes to clarifying and improving understanding is welcome and I did get a notification from Jana Ansel's office they're writing calculations too and so they would have the latest tax information so I would want to double check my work with them because the legislature just ended yeah so the chart that we have on page 9 will be somewhat different based on the closing of the legislature that's the one good thing about this a few good things I can say is we have really solid numbers yeah I will say that Jana's last front porch forum posting indicates a $150 increase without income sensitivity on a $200,000 house site so she's dropped it even further so I would be happy to confer with her numbers I just want to have what's totally accurate and if we could put that on the porch forum in our office I'd like to see what she put in there I'm not the number because I don't anything to Alice alright well thank you this was at the end of session so before we leave the communication plan we have the 18th at 6.30 but should we try to have a pro forma night before is that worth doing nobody ever shows up at 9.32 I mean night before we have a supervisory union Jerry Selby on the 7th I'm sorry I'm sorry I mean it's fun it's a nice it's engage comment from the other I don't think fun was really the word okay so I don't know if that's worth exploring it could be just nobody showing up but what is perhaps more to the point is again once we have that meeting all together to fan out into our towns or to the people that we know wherever they may be and engage them on the budget and at least try to get them to vote I think that's going to be the huge thing the election that brought us in I think was less than 6% of registered voters actually turned out and my concern is that with a budget in late June when people have already been voting on budgets for there are a number of questions that why should I vote on another budget and why should I vote on this particular budget and and then there's of course the amendments to the Articles of Agreement that need explaining and Chris will play a big part in that since he is the driving force behind that well I hope tomorrow we find out if he can be there on the 18th before we set that stone fair enough good any other comments on are we sending a unified front porch forum to invite everybody to this meeting and sort of take advantage of that one post to say you know this is what is what is happening we'll sort of do that as a warning of the meeting we can definitely do it as a warning of the meeting of the 18th I was jotting my own notes here was do you want almost an FAQ for this election frequently asked questions why are we having it some of the things that we've done in Berlin and I was wondering if there was someone that could you just did a nice job saying what some of the questions are for voters and if someone could just write down questions I think something that we could quickly write to to say here are the reasons for the election and what needs to go out and then that can as we've done in other elections board members are great to post those out as soon as they get them we're hoping they'll have them by Friday because we're within the window we need to actually get some information sooner than later for those people who are voting to ask Tballot and just don't have any idea what is going on and are more apt to vote no exactly that's the that's the real problem the default vote will be no no so for those absentee ballots that are going to go out I would rather see something more than just on front porch forum definitely sooner than later do you want to do something like the Moyle South did and write the group letter to the paper if so many people tell me they don't buy the paper and they don't get it online I don't think the paper hits it hits some people but I won't say that it won't hit anybody well then I mean forget the paper is their interest in making a group communicate of some kind and speaking with one voice that there's definitely interest the problem is it would have to be coordinated out and that is that's something that we can only do in an open meeting well I would I would take a I would take a lesson for U32 where usually one person writes and that's sent out and everyone posts in their town I'm just at Georgia and Scott I'm thinking about what you guys usually do U32 then that's a different sort of thing then what I had sort of thought you were talking about a coordinated letter to I can certainly draft up something that and share it around and see see how it goes because what also happens at U32 is sometimes the individual board members will take it and shape it and do different things so why don't we submit to you ideas of what we in our respective towns think our towns people would like to see that then could be consolidated and crafted into a board style for yeah I can do that if you want to if you're the focal point you wanted to talk with me you and I bounced it back between each other once or twice and then you hand it back out to everyone to post yeah I'll do that okay because I agree with what you were saying getting it out soon enough and we can do some of those FAQs in there Scott you know here's some topics of things you need to know okay I'll play that as it's due for me okay so are we ready to move on are you feeling okay about at least some of this so we do have some actions yes I know I see we have the insurance yeah I just hope I could speak quickly to the insurance then we can go right down to actions if you want so we can do insurance and accept insurance but in the same yep it's just getting through those pieces then the actions so and Laura you helped me here but on page there's the insurance 99 thank you and I have a handout that I didn't bring over with me it's over there on the crate and I'll get it if you so needed every year the executive committee has been the one to award an insurance bit for the whole supervisory union so for some of you who have not sat on the executive committee you may not have seen something like this but we use Dennis Ricker and Brown to go out and do our bidding force amongst multiple you know how many agencies they try to pull from they try to do with every agency that has a reading aid plus and so Laurie and Michelle did this great work of going out and collecting a bid for us it gives us incredible coverage I think it's less than a 1% increase for this year or about a 1% increase it gives us a $10 million rider overall for coverage last year for those of you who were part of the SU financial forward monitoring report and risk analysis we actually spent much time in that meeting a year ago this past February going over the insurance and how we protect our assets and liabilities here in Washington Central so it's the same policy updated for this year and we're recommending what you see on page 99 I've given you the very abridged version that's great you've worked with these companies before oh yes and it's actually savings of $11,462 in your budget yeah which is yeah so do we have a motion to accept the insurance bid as stated okay Dorothy moved very seconded any further discussion all in favor please say aye aye any opposed no very good motion carries we have we've already approved the first reading of the required policies I'm we've already sorry let me just backtrack for a second 3.8 VSBA dues we've already talked about that yeah and 3.9 we kind of had a enough of a litigation update so and we've approved the first reading of the required policies accepted the insurance bid now in that sandwich there's authorization for the superintendent to accept all state and federal grants um I actually have a question about this bill is this is this vital to approve today yes it is because grants are due the end of this month and some of them are being you signed one today for Kelly and so we deliberately put this here because Kelly and Jen are leading most of our federal grant regulations and if we don't have this authorization we'll be holding up some work and so this is something that's done at every supervisor you did at the supervisor as a supervisor union back in March it's the exact same motion which is you're authorizing the superintendent to accept all federal and state grants right the only reason why I'm just sort of hesitant you know at the statute and having in mind just given this rule of having beaten into my head there's a section that this is a school board power to apply for grants and may accept and expend grants or gifts with this power given to the board this is the board can the board delegate this power and the statute we do have for years and it's required under the law that you do this otherwise we cannot apply for your yearly federal and state grants that we do every year to the tune of over a million dollars to put a final point we would have to be writing those grants you know the statute is very the procedures are very clear that the superintendent I'm the signator for the organization so that I can sign and accept why would that power be granted to the board but then by statute gone to ever ask that question yeah I was breaking new ground every day it's been one that for the past six years the boards and this past March this has been on since I've been here for 25 years so it's an annual thing and we need to because Jen and Kelly said they're both leading this work literally cannot apply without a date before the grants were submitted that this was approved by the board the software wouldn't even allow me to submit if we didn't have the date yeah that's good I mean I just I'm just checking that's fine just to if some Chris Leopold has nothing to do something this is okay never mind not now not now exactly okay so I'll make a motion to authorize the superintendent to accept all okay floor moves to authorize the superintendent to accept all state and federal grants George seconds any further discussion none okay all in favor please say aye all opposed nobody's opposed so the motion carries all right 4.4 meal prices for the 2019 to 2020 square page 100 for the first five years of my work here in Washington Central we increased the meal prices in alignment with the state and federal reimbursement rates it was increasing a quarter every year last year we did not recommend any increase in the meal prices because the reimbursement wasn't changing or I did not ask you this so you can I meant to ask you this because we were cropping so fast but I totally forgot but I was assuming that reimbursement rates from the feds were increasing as well we needed to rise with them whether it's in the statute I asked her very quick questions I knew she would know my code by being that brief with her is that since we received to keep reimbursement for free and reduce meals we must charge students who are not covered by free and reduce supports the same as the reimbursement rate for the meal so the reimbursement rate is right around $4 we usually do in 25 cent increments to keep it easy on the folks that are running the kitchens but we always do it right at the reimbursement rate and then for the adults we were increasing to try to get comparability and to cover the real cost of the meal and so that work was done I think in consultation with the U32 food service director and the elementary food service agents so that was increasing as well anybody have any questions is the adult breakfast at $5 just in tempo it was it could have been stayed the same so we should have that it should be it should be in a line with everyone else I'm going to catch George that was my bigger question it should be in a line thank you thank you George for catching up it is a heck of a spread though probably worth $5 okay any other questions Laurie is there a budgetary impact to this the new expense well when the expenses are going up it's probably cost neutral I don't think you're going to make a big profit I appreciate the prices because of the meal cost thank you okay so do we need to move to we do need to move to adopt or amend as amended so do we have a motion on the table to adopt meal prices for the 2019-2020 school year I will move to amend this to for duty adult breakfast to be $4 $5 and would you move the whole package as amended and then I would move the whole package as amended the other number should be $3.75 instead of $4.75 oh yes yes so Jonas moves the package the price package as amended any second any further discussion no okay all in favor please say aye opposed none opposed motion carries alright approve adding a student representative or representatives to this board any are there specific representatives in mind well we know we would want to continue me as DS Smith or Smith that's why it's just Smith so if you don't mind before we have not spoken of anything so one of the things that I would think that the board should ask a question of is that first one or two students what we've done at U32 is that we had a junior and a senior and actually so it was a two year appointment for the junior so that they spent two years on the board a new one came on but I would also ask you probably consider whether or not those student representatives can be related to a board member it's yeah I think they're just considerations to make in this case as long as they don't vote understood but I just think that the board no you're right I'm glad you raised that so what I would say is I mean Stephen do you need to know tonight or can you wait until next week I can wait I just want to give this a time and saying I think you bring up some good points and the board needs time to talk about it a little bit so would you like for me to just write up a few things for you along the lines of what we've been doing because we honestly didn't have a real written policy or procedure around it so I could write that up and then the board can consider it is this your daughter this is my daughter but I also don't know that they you know that I know Stephen you talked to her I don't know that she necessarily has to be we haven't approached Stephen and Stephen went faster than where I was going but I was starting with who people were and to say that this is the board we're at so and she's currently in that role she was our junior represent could we grandfather that no no you could and it's fine I just I think I'll bring a write up I think you might want some more discussion and I'm not trying to say no to it I just want you to be thoughtful as a board and to think about I'm in favor of a student representative being on the board but I want you to have some discussion time and we're already at 8.30 so that's good I'll look forward to Stephen's be happy we're meeting regularly that's good excellent speaker okay so then moving on to our last action agenda item approving the telephone systems bid so I'm going to try and do this short longer into this because this and normally Keith McMartin would be here as your technology coordinator to present this to you but I learned this morning that today is a very important day in his household and that he should be husband and father instead of being here with us tonight due to family commitments so he's there but he did all the hard leg work to get you you have the RFP in your and this is something that we've had a technology plan for six years that as you for those of you who've been on the board know that we funded in such a way so then we have big ticket items like a phone system the money is there to do it and we're not borrowing money so the money is there within the budgets the schools that all the schools except for East Montpelier and Romney are having their phone systems replaced and if you need to hear specifics of what's happening I'll turn that over to my colleagues but I can tell you that you cannot buy parts from the manufacturer anymore to repair the systems we have placed in house they're 12 years old we've been told by the companies that produce them they will no longer, the company that produced it will no longer service it our local telephone service provider Twin State said they will do the best they can so it's my strong recommendation that you accept this bid of $99,997 to replace the phone systems at U32 the central office of Berlin, Calis, Doty this summer any discussion? I saw George with a knowing nod what are you going to grab? it's only $99,000 as a business owner you can think about things like that yeah so it was updated when we did it very conveniently below first round of renovations because I thought they incorporated the clock timing and it was the wiring it wasn't the phone it was the wiring no that was before that but they're over 12 years old and first phone system that is ancient and this is in the multi-year cap we're not a plan for technology so the budget's there and it's been planned on for years just like you're not yeah great currently not functioning I can give you a very good I had a student meeting that was really critical for me to be a part of and it was in Morrisville but as you can imagine there's more than one student in my building that needs some attention so it made more sense for me to call in to this meeting and stay in my building and be present for students in order to do that I had to shop around from office to office to find out which one has the line that doesn't have static and that I could read on the screen display did I have the right line and the right person that I was talking to was I ideally positioned within the room for the speaker to work that was a ridiculous amount of time it's not like I'm getting millions of dollars but if you multiply that by all of our buildings and all of our salaries that's a lot of money I get it is there another way around it like a state kind of alternative looked at outside hosting and it's not an alternative we can go to the final phone how much the PA system here is currently still low would that be fixed with the new phone system I don't know I didn't come prepared to answer that question sure but considering yeah for us anyway it's our primary communication if there was an emergency issue so again we're still trying to figure out the source of the problem a lot of the back end equipment is what's got to be replaced in this process and I know that U32 it's old stuff and so if it's the same here Berlin it's that's the part that integrates in with the PA system through the phone system and those servers are Jeff airy put this in because there was a cut at the cost when it was initially put in retrofitted equipment to bring in it was not new at the time and this was eight years ago so I mean it is at that point they're just it's not something we can do for business what's the lifespan of the new system probably six to ten years and then that's accounted for yeah and so before because we have key today he said he's not three years old probably it was in such a state of disrepair they could not assure 911 compliance and so they had to replace it this past year just to keep safety insured in the building we experienced that with the bus accident or that the phone system can ensure safety communication purposes we're coming to the end of year four year four these are great questions I appreciate the critical eye being turned on these things that's very good any further discussion? just one more question is there any protection in the contract or in the aspects for the bid that if they solve wrong or if it breaks we have money protection warranties and we have installations usually in any contract I can't say Jonas that I know it's in this contract but we'll look at it before we sign it usually in most of our contracts Michelle Subka in our office does all our PD and Lori and Keith there I trust they work for that I have not read it but we'll make it sure that great motion for telephone system for our moves Dorothy seconds any further discussion questions was there anything more specific about the motion you just approved approving the telephone systems bid okay all in favor please say aye aye opposed none opposed motion carries do you need to give her the amount or do you have the amount there I think it's in there yeah I think you just set the bid it's in the packet so 5.0 future agenda items we got a lot of them so I don't does anybody want to add anything more no okay thank you summary of meeting we cover a lot of ground next steps for board members I think the most important is the budget getting ready for the budget communication and amendments to articles and slightly secondary priority and then we have meetings lined up so any questions anything unclear about what's to come the 12th next meeting budget piece on the 18th I was just writing myself a note was to get a list out of what was developed tonight for meetings and what was talked about here at the meeting so Scott maybe when you and I meet you and I can just review that and make sure that gets out to everyone so people can get those in their calendars so we are or are not meeting on the 26th I need you to hold it tentatively if the budget does not pass you will need to meet yes okay so everybody okay so we'll know where the meeting next Wednesday is Friday I'll have an email out to you Steven told me that it's open I just want to talk to Scott and so Matt and Steven know who's in charge of setting up believe me we're going to arm wrestle I'm going to tap the lease so come set up wonderful at least you're useful enough to do it yourself okay it's very clear if there is no if there are no further wisecracks insurance by consensus okay thanks everybody thank you all