 Great. Okay, good. Well then, I'm going to go ahead and call the meeting to order at 6.04 on Monday, November 6th. And we do have a few adjustments to the agenda for timing-wise. We want to move 7.1, 7.3, and 8.1 to before the celebration of learning so that those folks will be able to participate in the next Hancock Grandville School Board meeting. And then Robert has requested to add in probably 8.5 temperature sensors for the high school. Is there any other additions or adjustments to the agenda? Okay, we look for a motion to approve the minutes from Monday, October 2nd, 2023. Let's go move 2nd. Moved and seconded. All in favor? Is there any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Did Cynthia say aye? Okay, great. Okay, do we have any public comment? Public on? No? Okay. Do we have any board comment? Okay. Then we're going to move right on to the superintendent's report. So you have my reported hand. We did have a nice discussion in dinner last Monday in place of the full board retreat. I think coming out of that, Amy Bill, thanks for being there. I think coming out of that, the full board is going to be taking and creating a committee that will be working on draft goals for the full board, and we'll go about that work as a committee. For 23-24, with hopefully the full board being able to review those and look to adopt them in December. It would be my timeline, it's tight, but I think that that's what we should be pushing for. And then I also, Tara will certainly mention this, you're going to see it in the budget. I mentioned this to some board members last week. At the retreat is that the insurance rates, we received those from the statewide bargain plan, and medical insurance is looking that it's going to be about 16.4%. We have budgeted in your last draft, 13. And so you're going to see some of those impacts in this next draft of your budget. So I just wanted to mention that. Also, I wanted to mention to the board, folks heard me talk about the small schools grant going away as part of the new ED funding, the cost equity weighted model. They do weight small school students more. We're waiting to see what all those final numbers are going to be in regards to what our weighted average daily membership number is. And remember before we would get our equalized pupils, there's this weighted model now that's going to replace equalized pupils. The initial projections that we've been receiving the last one was in August shows that I believe that if that number stays true, it should offset the difference of not having that revenue stream, meaning that our divisor is going to increase pretty significantly around the weighted pupils, which should then result in our cost per pupil being fairly consistent in regards to like if we had had that offsetting small schools revenue. You'll get all that information at the next budget draft in December. We have none of that data yet. Yeah, upsetting the five years ago when we merged that was the carrot. If you merge, you'll get to keep your small school grant. That's not even five years ago. No, I hear you. That's frustrating. And the other thing that we'll be following really closely is the yield. And the good news for our district here is we get to dial those numbers only really tight before we go to adopting our budget. It's a really uncertain time. I would say where I sit right now is for some of our districts that need to be adopting budgets by the middle of January. You're like fully adopting. I'm just worried about having all that data in a manner that I feel really good about it specifically that weighted pupil number because that's a new one that's in front of us. So anyway, so I just wanted to share that with the board but know that we're following it really closely. And then I would say I have heard no updates. I have a soup meeting on Friday in regards to where the state board is in regards to a new secretary. So I think I'll get an update on Friday. And then I'll be able to report that out afterwards. I'll take any questions folks may have. Just a comment on your working with Tri Valley to enhance our travel options so that kids from. Grandville Hancock can participate and get home safely. And I just think that's that's it's great for the kids and it's also great for us to be able to provide that level of service to keep the kids with us. So I really like that. And my sense is Tri Valley is is trying to help as well. Yeah, I found it to be a really great partner with trying to support needs that we have after school specifically late runs. But they got a but you know I think we're still trying to you know we're able to strike this partnership. I think there's some system aspects around scheduling things that we can do to make even better use of this. I mean specifically a midday run that we have going on between our middle and high school. I don't think we're really capitalizing on that the way we could be yet. But certainly it's filled a void. We're down a bus driver still in Bethel. And it's filled a void to help us with tuition students getting to the high school into the middle school from Rochester. And you know we have students utilizing it after school for for late runs after doing after school activities. So yeah, it's been good. And they definitely have been been great at trying to work on our schedule. Yeah, that's fantastic. Thank you. There are any other comments or questions for our superintendent. Okay, then let's move on to the business managers report. Good evening everyone. You have my report which outlines the package and the business office throughout the month of November. Sorry, I got to change the date there. That's over important dates. Auditors have wrapped up in our office. They will be coming back either this week or next week to complete our federal single audit for the supervisor union. But otherwise they're working on the financial statements for all the districts. So I will be seeing those soon. And then if there's any questions on any of that, otherwise I'll come back when we talk about the budget. I had a question, 11-1 allowable tuition report provided by the AOE. So is that a number that has been provided to us? The allowable tuition rate, which they haven't provided to us yet still, is the allowable rate for the prior year of fiscal year 23. So that's the bill back if within the 3%. Okay, but they've not provided that yet. No. Okay. All right, is there any further questions for Tara on her report? Okay. Great. Well then let's move on to the draft budget. So I'll start just giving updates as to what changed in draft two of the support staff. Jamie mentioned we did receive the health insurance rates from behind. So I have increased all the rates to reflect that increase. But also we just wrapped up open enrollment. So if you had any of your staff that needed to change their health plans, dental plans, anything of that nature, that's also reflected here in the draft two of the student support budget. And I also added FICA, which I normally include in the benefits and I didn't have that in draft one. So that's also been added here as well. And then draft the first draft of the general education. I'll let them speak to the actual staff. But again, that's based on the staff that you have in place today and what their current salary and benefits are with these projections for fiscal year 25. Yeah. So for our general education staffing, this teacher keeps our classroom teacher staffing the same. Obviously we weren't able to fill one position. This is with the idea that we would still fill one classroom teaching position for next school year. Because when you look at the balancing of numbers, that's what's best instructionally. The other thing that I'll know is originally when we proposed our music programming last year, we said 0.6. We ended up cutting that to 0.4. But keeping our instrumental lesson partnership with our summer for music instructor instructors because that has been a great ongoing partnership to keep as a contracted service. So it still keeps our programming musically for students as is now. So they have general music and then students four through six can take instrumental lessons. But that will be in a different part of our budget next month. And then that should keep everything about the same. World languages up. And world languages up, yes. We increased it. Hoping to attract someone for that position. And then in student support, it's essentially the same. The big thing, your budget driver there are really two things. I think you probably talked about this last month. It's making certain we get all the math intervention covered completely in the local budget. We had done part of that last year. This is the last remaining piece of that from Esther. And then it's also the school based clinician, which was also funded by Esther. I'm a little nervous that, you know, because there's so much unknown with yield with our weighted and, you know, living small schools. And, you know, we need to educate our kids though in the manner that they need to be educated. So it's going to be tight. It's going to be tight. Yeah. And I think the direct, you know, I'd like to say I don't want to see a large increase, you know? Yeah. I mean, you have every component of your budget next month, which means everything. All line items. And this, thus far, what I've really said to principals is let's put out everything you feel like you really, really need. That's been our attack this year. And, you know, as we're putting, you know, I feel like it's like it's like an art piece, right? Like every year, that's what the budget is. And we build it up as we go. And I feel like next month, you know, you get the full narrative around the expenditure side. Yeah. Early in December, we probably will still be trying to dial in what all those other numbers are. Yeah. But we'll have the full expenditure side. And then from there, you'll get to really see what does that mean overall as your bottom line. Yeah. Okay. And then, you know, what we'll be looking for you at that point is to give us a better sense of where you're comfortable in the expenditure side. Got it. Okay. Because then we'll come back in January with a tighter budget based on, you know, priorities. Mm-hmm. You know, principals are creating priority lists. Yeah. And then, you know, we're looking for what they've been looking like whatever they're like that they felt like was going to create the strongest programming for them next year. That has all been included in budgets this year. Okay. We have not, we have not at our level stopped that, meaning like questioned that. I've said to principals, put forward everything that you think you need to make the system run as effective as you think you can. And then, but you know, knowing that folks are going to be prioritizing those things and knowing that there's going to probably be some places where we're going to have to tighten our belts. Okay. And that's great to know what the progression of this is. Does anybody have any questions for Lindy or Tara? Yes. Go ahead. First on regular education, does that in the proposed FY 25 regular education budget include the salary increases? Okay. So how do we, and we're not, and we're not cutting any level of service. So last year we would have budgeted for some teachers we've hired new. Yeah. For a few positions, right? And so the number we use last year, because we didn't know we were going to be hiring for new positions could have been higher than the people we hired, right? And these are all salary and benefits. So that includes salary benefits. And it's really an adjusting of the budget rather than staffing levels, levels of support. It's adjusting of the actuals. We're not cutting. Is that correct? Correct. Same question on music. Looks like it's up 13th K, but we're down 0.2 FTEs. Again, that's a budget adjustment rather than a diminution of service. It's, music's really important. We want to keep that going. And so we are keeping it going. The level of service. Yes. Okay. Well, that's. Now these are good questions, Bill. This is exactly why we go through each individual employee every year versus saying we're going to just add on whatever the negotiated increases were, right? And just add on the health insurance. That's why you see these numbers start to fluctuate annually versus we just tack it on. Okay. So just to kind of pay back on that, we, we, the budget for 24 was for a 0.6 music at 20,000 and now it's at 0.4 for 33. My sense is, is that we, we were budgeting for 0.6, then we went down to 0.4 at the late version of this budget and we. Of 24. Yes. Okay. We're really getting a lot out of it. Yeah. I just, I'm trying to reconcile those numbers in my, in my head. So really 24 probably is at a 0.4. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. A lot of questions on rural language. What's, what are we doing here? Nothing right now because we haven't found one. Right. But we're going to go from one day a week to two days a week. So it's not split between the buildings. And I think the board, some members of the board were encouraging that to take place. So I appreciate that. And the definition of rural language is. Any world language that we feel like could give our kids cultural experience. Yeah. Yeah. We really haven't limited it. Yeah. And if you're more familiar with the term foreign language, the world language is more, more inclusive, right? It's not just about languages that are spoken in other countries. These are languages that are spoken in our country. Right. It's not necessarily foreign to us. It also could include American Sign Language. American what? Sign Language. Yeah. You know, I think the exposure of multiple languages is, does better actually than just concentrating on like one language as a elementary child. I mean, you guys are the experts, I don't know. But I would just seem that like if they were exposed to ASL, they were exposed to Spanish. They were exposed to Chinese. They would really provide the kids with some great culture. Yeah. Now there's a lot of different models out there depending on sort of timing and schedules that you could, that would work. And it could be done for kids. I like it. Thank you. Robert. With regard to the world language, if you are unable to find someone as you have so well done in other areas, can you augment with artists-in-residence or some other method to bring that into the school? Yeah. Yeah, we were piloting a program in one of our districts. I got to find out how that's going in Mandarin. You have a sense on it? Yeah. I think we did it through, I don't think I got a really good, robust tryout. The date? No, I think there wasn't enough sign-up, so I think we had to figure out a different one. Okay. Delivery. Just, we have been starting to try to figure out our other approaches. Okay. Good stuff. Any other questions for regarding the budget? Okay. Thank you for your work on this, guys. Yeah, thanks, Doris. I think it's a seal of yours. And I'm going to skip over to Jihad, so. I'll be on in a few minutes, Tara. Okay, great. So we will now, so we'll go back to six, the celebration of learning literacy in the upper elementary. Yep. So we have a video of a direct instruction lesson in our fourth grade, and when this student started mid-year last year, he was a non-reader. He didn't want to be filmed, which is why you see her teacher, and she is at a parent teacher conference right now. I don't see her, but she sent this quote from both her and the student, saying that the student has been working with direct instruction curriculum reading programs since we've piloted it. He could not read or sound out any words when we began, and this is the growth he's been able to show in the last year. He's not interested in showing his face, but he wants everyone to know. Now, I really like the new reading program, and I can actually read a book independently now. I like that I was able to learn to read, and then Miss H, or Natalie, goes on to say he's shown a lot of persistence and is so eager to advance further each day and even asks when it's his turn to read with her. Nice. Oh, that's great. This is like a five-minute clip of him going through the lesson just so you can see what this looks like in upper elementary. Those two letters make the first word in part three. What word came? Remember that E is going to help it say its name. So what word again? Came. Came. Next word. What word? Gave. Yes, gave. Next word. What word? Make. Yes, make. Next word. What word? Plant. Look at that one again. What word? Get ready. Plates. Plates. Next word. What word? Here. Yes, here. Four. That's the first word. That word is your. What word? Your. Spell your. Get ready. Y-O-U-R. What word again? Your. The next word is other. What word? Other. Spell other. Get ready. O-T-H-E-R. The next word is answer. What word? Answer. Spell answer. Get ready. U-E-R. Okay. The next word is care. What word? Care. Get ready. C-A-R-E. Yes. The next word is boards. What word? Spell boards. Get ready. E-O-R-A-R. Starting. Yep. Start over. E-O-A-R. And the next word is broken. What word? Broken. Spell broken. Get ready. E-O-R-E-A. Yes. The next word is table. What word? Table. Spell table. Get ready. So what's the title? Yep. Okay. So we're going to read a little bit. Remember to follow along with your finger and read loudly. So champ at the camp. What do you think this story is going to be about? You don't know. I guess we're going to have to find out. Let's do it. Follow along with your finger. Champ went down a road. Good. A man named champ went down a road. Okay. He came to a camp. He stopped. Good. Said to work. Good. Okay. So go back to he stopped. And I want you to say that as smoothly as you can. He stopped and said. Wait. Wait. Right here. He stopped and said, I paid to work. But I need to eat. There you go. So I will see if I can get a job at camp. So. Nice. That's great. Yeah. Wow. It means we've had progress in how much time. He started last January. So not even a full year. Well. Yeah. So it's truly an example. That's great. Yeah. Does anybody have any questions or comments on the celebration of learning? Just remind me again. Donna Gaunt's. Roll. Correct. Not only is she guiding the direct instruction ever here and in Rochester, but also helping elsewhere or what's. So her role with us is she's our literacy interventionist here in Stockbridge. Yes. And that's part time. And then she works in other school districts coaching and working with Janie Feinberg. Okay. And you have a different person in Rochester that's the same same role. Right. There's a literacy interventionist in Rochester. Yes. And are they doing basically the same? I mean, they're caseload and the groups of kids they see are different. But I mean, using the same. Everybody's using direct instruction. Yep. Thank you. And just to clarify, that was our four, five, six literacy teacher in Rochester message. That wasn't that interventionist. Literacy. Teacher. Teacher. Yes. This is an interventionist. Right. So it's two different things. Right. So she works with all four, five, six students on literacy. Okay. Versus a literacy interventionist just works with specific students. Okay. Yep. We're learning. Yeah. I know. Oh my gosh. Okay. Great. Is there any other questions or comments? Okay. Well, then we'll move on to the principal fall 2023 academic data report. Yeah. First we'll start with the principal's report before we go into data. It's kind of merged into one, but just a couple additions to the report. We are in the middle of parent teacher conferences right now for the fall. So those started last Wednesday and we'll go through this Wednesday. And parents were able to sign up for slots. Meet with all the students, teachers in some, some grade level students are going with to show what they're learning about. And in other grade levels, it's direct meeting between parent and classroom teacher. So those are ongoing right now. And then I will share on Wednesday, all our sixth graders from both Rochester and Stockbridge are traveling to White River Valley High School to see their fall performance murders. Murder in the air. Murder in the air. Thank you. H-E-I-R. Oh. And it's a who done it. It's a little bit of a clue. Like the audience has to solve today. Oh cool. So they're doing a performance during the day and all the sixth graders were invited to go try that out. That's great. Yes. Thank you very much for this. I encourage anybody watching our public to go and read these reports. Lindy really talks very intensely about what our MTSS leadership team and our target support teams and our universal support teams and our intense support teams. The work that they have been doing and what they do. And so I definitely would encourage the public to read this. So you really get good behind the scenes. Yeah. And then the last thing I'll highlight is on the 20th of October we did a fall field day with buildings K through six. The students came over. Everybody was here in Stockbridge. We had lunch together. It was raining so we skipped recess and went right to the games. And the most popular were tug of war and then trying to eat a donut off a string. It's always entertaining. But they had a great time. And that's by Gregor. So all the K students from both Rochester and Stockbridge are together and vice versa. So kind of divides them up from the normal. Nice. Yeah. That's great. That's about it. Unless people have questions just about that part and then we can talk about that. No. It's exciting that the Rochester Stockbridge are doing a virtual book club. Yes. I think that's a really, really cool idea too. Very cool. Yeah. It's definitely, it's wonderful. Okay. Does anybody have any questions or comments for Lindy on her report? No. Okay. Incredible. Yeah. Okay. So then moving on to our academic fall data. So you have in front of you kind of page one shows some test, like some score windows just so you're familiar. So well below anything in red is first to the 39th percentile. Below expected is 40th to 59th percentile. Expected is 60th to 79th percentile. And above is 80 to 99 percentile. And then scale score, which this will be important when we go to the next couple pages because it helps give you a range of where students are at. So the percentile score is 1 to 39 percent of what? The students, the entire class, the everybody. Right. So if you look at that definition to kind of summarize the second one down, see where is the percentile score. So it's ranking students among their peers. We have the test in the same test window this year. So it's national or national? National. Right. And so it's not just how many questions they answered, like percentage correct. It's actually that if a kid's in the 30th percentile, it means they did better than 29% of the students that are their age that took the test during the same test window as theirs. Does that make sense? Yep. Make more sense. That's a good question. Thank you. I think it's important too that you see that that yellow window, right, is it extends on both sides of the 50th percentile. And we want all our kids to be up, right, up getting, as close as they can, but 50th percentile is still, right, like that is... The national. The national. So when we're talking about sort of the most, like where we're focused our most catching up to do, it's really looking at those students who are well belowed, that 1 to 39. And then really trying to serve the kids' needs in, you know, a yellow, blue, and green, mostly through universal instruction with some other needs as needed. So if you go to the next page, you're going to see our mathematics. We're going to start off kind of with our scale score average. And the unique piece about this in terms of how you read this chart, right, is so grade one in fall of 2022, their scale score was at 534. You want to go at an angle to follow them. Oh, right. Because they've moved up. Yeah. And that's kind of the... There's no easy way to write that direction. Right. So fall 2023, their scale score is 631. So we're trying to make sure that as we go up on each, so then if we look at grade two, and we go over at an angle to fall 2023, we want to make sure that each group is growing. Yeah. In general, which they are, just summer faster growth rates than others on that. So you do see each group improve from last fall to this fall, which is essentially what this bottom graph shows you is our rate of growth and how quickly we're growing. Let me look at the bottom in mathematics. And here we want to see each cohort growing one or higher because that means they're closing gaps. Right? So then the national growth rate average is to be at a 1.0. But because we know most of our cohorts started off below meeting expectations for their grade level, we want their rate of growth to be higher. To get caught up. To make sure we're closing any gaps that existed in there. And so for the most part, we are moving along on that. The other thing to note about this, so this compares it from last fall to this fall, that bottom chart as well does. Okay. And it's only kiddos who tested with us last fall to this fall. So if they weren't a student that was with us this time last fall when we tested, they're not included in this growth rate because there's nothing to compare. So this grade 2, you are comparing it to grade 1 of 22. Yes, exactly. That they increased. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Great. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. So we're definitely making the right amount of progress. Our grade 3 can make a little bit more, but we're in the right direction. If you flip to page 3 of this, this is where you're getting kind of probably something you're a little more familiar with. The top is showing us who's meeting and exceeding expectations for the fall. And what you'll notice is we were at 75% of our students meeting or exceeding in the spring. And I do a quick math. And now we're at about 50% of our students meeting or exceeding, and that is down a little bit, but that's because we're being tested on new information, right? Like that group of kids in kindergarten now as first graders are being tested on beginning of the year, first grade information. So they may not have all those skills. It's not that we necessarily lost information over this summer. Sometimes that can be the common mistake. And then we also break it out by grade level there, as well as just our domains or our focus skill areas or proficiencies within math. And so our two focal points coming out of this, so we spent our October 13th in service as a staff data coming up with an action plan. And our two focal points are really number and operations in base 10 and number and operations in fractions. And just to give you a comparison of where kiddo, our proficiency was last year in those two areas and number and operations and fractions, 26% of the population was in the red and 40% was in the yellow. So we see a little bit of a gain that we've made there in a year. And in number and operations in base 10, 30% was in red and 32% was in yellow. So we're making some slow gains in those areas. We made some other jumps, but those are still the two focal points because those are such foundational skills that we don't want kids leaving. Like number and operations in base 10, you really don't want to leave fourth grade in the red because that just creates such a huge gap later on in the very red. One of the ways that we're focusing this, like even more specifically is building students additive reasoning, so ability to automatically recall our addition facts and subtraction facts. And then also in making sure that students by the end of third grade know all their multiplication facts or their multiplicative reasoning because then you can't build on those after that. What about expressions and equations? So that's a sixth grade skill that we're really working on but until we have some of the other foundational skills first that we necessary that's starting to get into some of that pre-algebraic thinking. So that expressions and equations is only sixth grade. Yeah, I've seen the different students, number of students assist in it. So anywhere that's 17, that's really our sixth grade population that was assessed in that. And then counting and cardinality is only in our kindergarten. And then there's overlap of multiple grades after that. Anybody have any math questions? Literacy, just because it's a lot. But basically you're reporting that we're going in the right direction. We are. Right in the right direction. That's great. Absolutely. I had a question for Ana. I was looking at this material. I hate to say how much time I spend on it and my head still spins and I'm confused. But when we go back to our goals, our academic goals, one in mathematics and one in this language, ours going to 2025. I was reading the numbers. We're talking about 50% of the benchmark numbers, the starting numbers. And I'm reading them as kind of SU numbers, starting numbers. And by the time we get to 2025, the SU are going to reach these goals. Does that also mean that for each district, that we're also based on the district's beginning number going to reach those goals? In other words, sure we be, because the district results are different than ours. And I like to think when I'm reading that, we're very, very strong. So that's a clear question. In other words, are the goals SU, that's what we're going to pledge to meet by 2025 or is it each district going to try to meet those goals as well? I think the way that goals were adopted, they were adopted at the SU level. I think that's the one that makes the most sense for that body to be talking about and assessing. I will say those goals were all based on something called the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium. And so we can't even translate those numbers over. I sat trying. The scale scores, they're not even on the same range anymore. So I think the goal behind those, the goals that still exist, the actual numbers will have to be redone. We're talking about the average is proficient or better, regardless of the measurement tool. That's still our goal. Yes, I think so. And the level one percentage, we were shooting to cut that in half. So that still seems to be... Yes, I think the sentiment behind all of them makes complete sense. And I'm sorry to take this thing, while I think I'm on a roll here. The third goal was on K through 2. 100% of our kids are going to achieve proficient, I think, foundational skills. That was the terminology. I'm not sure any of us have asked you, are the foundational skills the same as math and English language arts, something different that we haven't seen measured to the state? No, they're within those content areas. Those students are not assessed on the state assessment, so we have to use other tools to get at that. Like track in our progress. Like track my progress is one of the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills, also known as DIBLS is another way that we get at those. And the curriculum based measures that we use in our math program is another way. So if you look at our proficiencies, you'll see like counting and cardinality, that's a foundational skill. I think we get a pretty good read on that here in track my progress. I think we do need to use DIBLS as an additional piece for literacy to get at really those skills around decoding that we won't make sure all kids have. So that's why we use some other tools there. All right, thank you. Any other questions on this math portion of the report? No, the only thing I'll say is that of the 33% of students that are in the yellow, about half of them are exploring between the 50th to the 59th percentile. So we're very close and anticipate that hopefully we'll make a good healthy name in January when we do this again. Because that's a math equation in and of itself. That's 33% that's for math. Moving on to English language arts, which is on page, it starts on page four. I just want to point out again, this is where, again, we go at this diagonal. So when we look at grade one from last fall, we see their scale score is 466. And their scale score this fall is 480, or 584, excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm reading. And it keeps going at a diagonal with our now third graders making some of the greatest gains. Where their scale score last fall was 589 and now it's 788 this fall, which is great. So making some good jumps in the right direction on our scale score. And again, when you flip over to page five and you see this progress rate, again, it's only kiddos that were with us last fall to this fall. And you're not going to see kindergarten or first grade yet. We did not assess. Because we didn't do K1 to start with. Not in the fall. Not in the fall. Now we do. Again, we want that growth rate to be higher than 1.0 and we are well above that in each grade level making gains, which is great to see. Yeah, it's well above the 1. It's well above the 1. And that's what we needed to see based on our fall data last year when we made some switches after we saw that. So 38% of our students in K36 are meeting or exceeding the standards in English language arts. We're closing that gap. The other thing that I would say, and I know it's in two different places. When you look at this by domain, and that's on page six, our focal point was reading foundational skills in our instruction. And last year at this time, 58% of our students were in the red. Now it's only 28%. And 17% of our students were in the yellow and it's 31%. So we're headed in the right direction. It continues to be a focal point because if you cannot decode, you're not going to be able to understand what you're reading. And to be able to do the other pieces, we're still at an area that we're working on adding to is our vocabulary, acquisition and use, which comes with lots of practice. So while it wasn't a focal point last year, we did see some improvements in that area as well. But out of our October 13th in-service again, those were the two areas that we're going to continue to press on. Questions? As far as I can tell, the goal of cutting the level one and a half and we're well on our way to that objective, which is really, really, really, really hard. Yeah. And we heard, we saw it tonight on Celebrations of Learning. Makes sense, wasn't it? Right. We're getting there. That's for sure. Great. Is there any other questions or comments for Lindy on this academic data report? Okay. Thank you. Policy committee. Patrick's on the policy committee, right? And so, I don't have any inside information on that. Yeah. And since Jamie's not here, I guess... I don't think... Yeah. Rather, the last updates at the SU-wide board would be the same. They haven't met since. So there's a big tracking sheet of all of the policies and sort of what order in which we might tackle the revisions of them. I don't think there's any new policies right now. So I think it's more about taking a lay of the land on all of that. Which is great because one of our goals, one of the things we discussed in our board is to get more familiar with all of the policies. And I think actually using the policy committee as a tool to help us with that review and bring them to us, I think is very appropriate and will work out really great. Okay. Great. Let's move on to 8-2, board protocol score sheet. So this is a sheet that we filled out and gave Bill to Tally, shall we say, at our retreat. These are questions that were directly that are evaluating how well we feel we've done. The board has done with the governance principles and our specific protocols. And then there's some good comments at the bottom. And I'm going to let Bill take it away because he's that close and familiar with this. Yeah. Yeah, we'd love to have all great, 100% all great, but we don't walk on water just like anybody else in this world does. My reading of this is that we're doing well. We've got some that are less than great. It shows that we've got opinions, feelings, a sense that we can do better. And I think all of us should just look at this, kind of try to think about why that those scores might be not to the great and just be aware of that. And to be open to members of the board that want us to either refocus or pay more attention to some of these areas. They're important. They're important. The principles is just that's what guides us and the protocols is how we behave and how we respect each other. And I think the nice thing about this board is that we do and we try to practice what we preach and we learn from each other. Finally, the comments I thought is a very valuable part of this exercise. It gives specifics, suggestions on strengthening our board going forward. And I took several of those in my draft for the goals, the board goals, which we're going to discuss later. Is anybody on the board want to comment about the results of the board protocol evaluation or going forward? From looking at this, like you said, we're doing okay, we're doing well. I do immediately see the number one board governance principle to establish a vision, create policies and assure accountability. So I see that as an area that we can work on. We had a goal to do that, to revisit. And that's one of the things we didn't get to. So I think this was a reflection of we didn't do what we hoped to do. We never can do everything. But I think to revisit it doesn't mean to change it. It means to look at it again as this, our vision is this, our mission statement that represent what we're trying to do. So I've tried to incorporate that again in the goals going forward. Excellent. I definitely... I feel that vision and mission statement work is done well in the retreat type setting where it's an open conversation and at the end of our retreat, last time we had talked about, we had more work that we wanted to do and so we felt that maybe we should try to meet again. And I think that would be appropriate to try to meet again on early winter here at the turn of the year, specifically to revisit and take a look at that mission and vision statement. Maybe between now and our next board meeting we can come up with some dates. That maybe. The minutes I had for the retreat said there was a consensus to have a second retreat. And we're tentatively appointed towards January at the turn of the new year, depending on the budget and everything else. But I think it's a reflection that we, all of us, learn from and appreciate the ability to talk within a retreat setting. Absolutely. And we might want to add that to a future agenda item, whatever it is, just so that we don't lose sight of wanting to do that. I think that by next, definitely, that next December meeting we should set a date. Okay. Is there any other comments that the board wants to make on this score sheet? Score card? Do we want to revisit 7-4? Okay. Well, we can look back to 7-4 if there was any policy committee update. Yeah, so the policy committee is reviewing, we're going to review every policy that we have on the books over the next year and a half. We started by reviewing personnel policies this past month and we were able to get through three. And there will be some changes to at least one of them that will be coming forward for a reading here and probably your December meeting. And so that's how we'll go about that work, is that we'll review policies, bring forward edits and revisions based on those reviews, then they'll come in front of boards for one reading. That's all they'll need because they're revisions. And so you'll start to see some revised policies coming forward starting in December. So yeah, that's the update. It's a good process. I'm interested. I strongly encourage any of the board members who are invited to join that committee. It's at 5.30 prior to the full board meeting. Yeah, I think that's a very wise time to have capture people. Yeah, that's worked pretty well for us actually, having it piggyback. And I'll bring it up at this next meeting just because there's a lot of work happening at the committee level. I'm going to actually see if they're willing that there's an effort of a group that can start at 5 because there's enough work around the revision process that I feel like we can stay pretty busy for an hour. Absolutely. Okay, great. We'll look forward to seeing what comes out of the policy committee. All right. I jump back to 8-3, board goals for 23-24. So the first sheet is with revisions already made. The second is with the revisions underlined so you can see what had changed. This was the one that I had a comment on, okay. So in the financial management portion of this goal, enrollment and tuition revenue growth, recruit, retain and build social capital, develop and promote our son's individual and unique identity. The measure would be enrollment and tuition revenues up and tuition payments down. I clarify for me how tuition payments would be down. These don't believe that for our tuition students, we have any control over tuition payments. Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think it probably could be written clearer by tuition payments down. It doesn't mean that the cost per student that we're being charged is going down. It means the number of our students that have chosen to go elsewhere outside of our SU, that that number of students that go elsewhere, which we pay for, goes down. So the example I use is the number of kids that graduated this June going to Middlebury. Each student going to Middlebury costs us in our budget approximately $20,000. So by this goal, what we're trying to say is, okay, if we could reduce that number, every student that stays within the SU will be saving that tuition cost of $20,000. Plus, you still pay the White River Unified District. We're paying the White River Unified District, but it's staying within the SU. It's staying within the SU. It's not $20,000. And that money can be used to support the SU administrative staff. It can be used for any number of things. The tuition payment is still going not to the SU. It's going to the White River School District. Okay. And that helps them keep their... to offset increases, inflationary increases, like 16% for health insurance, for instance. So every student that we can keep in, wherever that student is going within the SU, it helps that SU district keep their cost to their taxpayers down. And it's an enormous challenge if we're going to be able to sustain our ability to have the best education that we can deliver if our enrollments are declining. The cost per student is increasing, therefore, by definition. That's the other part of this piece. One is trying to recruit kids to come to the RSU. Recruit kids to come to our SU. And that's what we're really looking at here. The second thing is every student that leaves, our cost per student automatically goes up. If you've got 10 students and you've got $100, the average cost per student is $10. If you lose a student, then the average cost for nine students is more than $10. And that's where the state... There's great sensitivity. That's why they have these caps on cost per student. Remember that? We used to have to do that. Now we move that. That's going to come back with declining enrollments because it's going to be almost mission impossible to keep cost per students down if there's not enough students. And the national surveys on enrollment say that between now and 2030 nationally, enrollments are going to go down 8% and in Vermont, 8%. So how do we offset that so that we can have the cost per students reasonable and fill our classrooms and get our job done? And that's where the emphasis on trying to recruit kids to get kids here because we're not only good but their parents know that we can meet their needs. And then keep the kids within the SU. It's just huge. And we're doing a lot of that now. But all my readings that over the summer are that it's got to be much more focused and targeted. And so I, and I'm quite honest and I'm advocating this for the SU Board too because it's, as I've said to other people, the private sector model when you have a declining market, there's two models. One is you cut, cut, cut efficiency, okay? And they can finesse whether the product is declined or not and they just keep the bottom line up until they can sell the company. That's the, to me that's a death spiral. That, we can't do that. The other one is we, through our marketing and quality product, we increase our market share. But it takes a concerted effort and that's where it's a little different than what we used to doing. Everything we've done tonight to make sure that things are happening well. But if we can't grow our student body, then it's going to be more and more difficult to have budgets that are attainable. So maybe to clarify rather than tuition payments down, we retain more in-district tuition students. I would like to be interested to see some real numbers on that, though, the different costs to our district. I hear what you're saying. Yeah, and that's where part of this effort is, is that we don't have those numbers. And part of this effort is to generate those numbers so that we can guide us further on this effort. And it's going to be something that's going to need support from the administration. No question. We can't do it alone. Robert. So just to clarify, I mean, we get revenue up and attract students. We're talking about students that have choice. Yep, they can choose to... Elementary students. Elementary students that can come here or go elsewhere. And how does it factor in for homeschooling? How does that... We lose this, student. I do think that that is an area that at least in central office and some principals we've been talking about is looking at just getting a better sense of the why. And I know in some districts we have principals starting to pilot this notion of regular communication with homeschool families that desire to, like, just putting out their opportunities that we have within the district for families to participate in. And looking to see if there are, you know... Certainly, too, we have lots of students across the ASU who will participate part-time in our programming in homeschool the rest, but we still get to count them as a percentage. That's what I was wondering is, so that is certainly a piece of this. If they participate to a certain extent. Yes, we can get to count them. Yes, to help them. There was a recent article that said growth in educational enrollment. And the highest growth was in homeschooling. That was, like, 7% or 8% up. The second highest was private schools. That was, like, 3% or 4%. Public schools weren't up. They were down 2% or 3%. So, I mean, you're seeing our competition. And this is... They're all good choices. We want our parents and our townspeople to choose what's best for their child. That doesn't mean that we can't reinforce what we're doing well and reach out to them so they totally understand what we've got going. So that's why this is here. Other comments? Tear it up. This is my best shot, and I don't own any of this. And I guess I suggest that we spend more than one night on this and get everybody thinking about it. Yeah, absolutely. I think that... You highlighted one that was new. And capital facilities. I think it's fairly straightforward, but the language is different than our current goal there. And a third one is under Goals number four. No, excuse me. Communication? No, excuse me. Goal number one. Right now, our goal is academic achievement. And we've talked about that, and we've got a reporting system that comes in the fall, the letter in the spring, for mathematics and for English language arts. The superintendent has a goal to expand that, not only in the academic area, but the social-emotional area so that we have a way to measure how are we doing? And so this is a reflection of that goal, which will... is going to come down from the administration to us later this academic year. But it's to highlight that we have a dual function in academic. We also have social-emotional. The kids will. We're all wellness. And so this is a suggestion that we broaden our goal beyond academics to how are we doing social-emotionally. And that's my attempt to articulate that. JC or Cynthia, do you have... Yeah, I am still on my phone. I didn't switch the computer. And I don't see... I think we should add to this the advertising piece. Sorry, baby. It's okay. We like hearing the baby, so that's fine. What's that? It's cute hearing the baby, so it's fine. Oh, yeah. Advertising. Yeah, I think you should add that to this, like maybe to the beginning, like advertising. PR, Facebook. That's... that's mentally covered under enrollment and enrollment and tuition revenue growth. We're currently developing, promoting our SUD's individual unique identity. It doesn't say how we're going to do it, and what you're saying is, we need to market better, more precisely, more focused. So that's kind of built right into that goal. And we could be more explicit about that, but that's absolutely part of how we're going to keep our recruit and retain so our enrollments can be as high as possible. And so it's... I can make that more explicit, I certainly can. The other thing I want to mention that came from the feedback from the protocol, our self-assessment was somebody suggested developing an our SUD board handbook. And I thought that was a terrific idea. We have, for new members, we've got a handbook for, which is very, very well written and everything else. But I took it from this saying, this idea is that we've got specific stuff that is relating to our SUD that could be helpful to us. So I have that down under this draft, under number five, under board governments. And in that, years ago, actually a board member started a calendar. And I think it would be great to have... I mean, this is a general calendar so that, you know, we know when budget season is. This is kind of the progression on the budget. This is when we have our annual meeting. You know, just some of the things that we know is coming up. Yeah, that's it. Like I said, it doesn't have to be all the nitty-gritty, you know, like, the retreat start planning for the retreat. Another thing I was thinking is maybe we could have a small committee kind of revamp this a little bit based on what we talked about in our retreat and what we're talking about tonight and then bring it back. Do you think that would be helpful? I'm all for it. I just, this is... Yeah. I just came up with the first draft, so... I love it. I love it. I greatly appreciate the work that you've done on it so far. JC, is that something you're interested in? You and Bill... Yeah, that's what I was thinking before coming to this meeting. I'm like, we should get, you know, a little bit of work done on this because I think it's easy to bring something like this, this huge thing to the board and then we're like, yeah! Right. I agree. Bill, is that something you're willing to work with JC on? Absolutely. Sound okay to you? We worked together last year. I think that would be really great. Thank you. Great. Any other specifics on the goals and really that's what you're working on is the goals because the mission and vision statement we need to well, I mean, you can start talking about it, but I think it's something that we need to do at our retreat and really, you know, maybe you can have some ideas, of course, but really what we're going to try to accomplish is the goals for this. Okay, that sounds great. Yeah, that sounds good. Awesome, thank you. Okay, then let's move on to board survey of the community and that's what I printed out and it's not in our packet. In our packet, okay. We got it later. You what? We received that later. Yeah, okay. Let me just see if I can get us to copies. Maybe we can have one. We've got one if you want. Both look at it. So the idea is really to Lennie, have you seen it? No. I can make some copies and have it be helpful. Those guys to see it too. Is it just this one sheet? So proposed focus groups, we have the parents, the our said teachers, administrators, sports staff, they are sub-board and our said students. The survey that's been put together so far is open-ended questions which I really like what are your school's greatest strengths. And the idea is to get community student feedback on what some of our community's goals are for our school. What are some of our their goals? I don't know how we would get this out to everybody or the cost of getting it out and the cost of returning it out. You mentioned about a self-addressed stamped envelope. I don't know. So we're doing some surveying of folks right now for portrait of a graduate which are similar questions. We've done it with a QR code in some districts. Just take a picture of it with your phone and then you can submit the survey into the Google form. Where's the QR code though I guess? It goes on that page. And hung around town. That's what I was going to say. We've put them around towns right now to get information back. One district is doing it right now for their school colors and mascot. That's one angle you could do. You can mail a postcard and ask people to follow the QR code. I just want to be conscious of the cost. You can mail a little postcard and ask people to fill it out and turn it in. Centralize locations if a QR code is complicated for folks. I'm not that techy. So I would be more apt to fill out a little postcard and drop it off somewhere when my other half would do the QR code in a minute. I just keep in mind there's some folks that a QR code makes complete sense and it's intuitive. And for me it's not that intuitive when I struggle with it. So you could provide both. And we've done mailers like one page mailers in other districts that are postcard size. I could get a quote. We could ask Kate to get us a quote for Rochester Stockbridge to get a sense of what that would cost. My sense is with batch mailing that way it won't be cost prohibitive. Yes we do already have our foundation and we can do the mailing that just goes to every mailbox and every rule. Yeah and we could get these boiled down until like I said a postcard size I think and ask people to they could do it one or two ways drop it off at some centralized locations and or do it through the QR code. Am I making sense? Is that what you were thinking Bill? I like the questions personally. I also think it does hit on enough information that the board could then use to then have the conversation around the merger as is indicated via the Articles of Agreement. Yeah I didn't focus on so much. No I know you did but I think it gets at the information. The delivery mechanism which is important and those and I'm somewhat out of date on it might be Well that's why we're all working together. That is correct. Thank gosh. Yes and I thank Linda for this is basically her her work that I rephrased a couple of things but I think would be helpful for us going forward to here and it doesn't have to be everybody in the community and part of the things which I just had some suggestions on who's going to participate here whether that's the group that we want to or whether I'm missing somebody should this go to everybody in the community. The focus to me on parents are the ones that have the most direct information on really what's went on, what happened and could give us the most feedback based on kind of direct interaction. Maybe I could send it home in like Friday folders or something. That would be a thing there I'm more than familiar with reaching out to an entire or a sample set of the whole community. In this case I thought it's open for discussion. I think we'd get a lot of valuable stuff from the focus groups we talked about there I caught some place there was going to be some opportunity to hear from the kids, are they older kids or something on this? I wasn't suggesting this Yeah I did mention it in my principal's report are two student representatives on the portrait of a graduate have run something similar They went to both all the kindergarten through sixth grade classrooms in both Rochester and Stockbridge and collected some of these same things We can get that and so we'll have the benefit of that as well I do think as you're just talking about these groups of maybe as part of the survey we can have them circle who they are Are you a parent? Are you just a community member? Just so then we can have better when we're looking at it and evaluating it just because that that's the hard part with an unnamed survey you don't know exactly what group is filling it out Yeah Bill were you suggesting that we don't push it out to everybody? Um I do think there's an opportunity to engage with the greater community through this survey Yeah I just wasn't clear to me how we do that and get a random results so it's and if it's really random then it really helps you interpreting the strength of the opinion so it's both size and that's also just a random distribution so I don't know I have a question on that Well also specifically you mentioned at the annual meeting that people were amazed and didn't know a lot of what we've been doing here so that always is hard to take a survey on people that maybe don't have all the information Yeah and that's part of this enrollment strategy what I'm talking about is that getting that information out in as effective fashion as possible we're doing a lot of that now so I don't know James I don't have a I could swing either way Maybe if it's going out to families you'll get the information back quicker we're going to have some steps to take to get it out to the whole community Could it be could we just like host it and tell people to go to go to your local town clerk or your post office or go to the website and get it from the website or use the QR code like it's that You know we could in Stockbridge the town clerk's office seems to have a robo-list that they email out meeting dates and information to they email and text so I'm sure we could work with them on that I'm not sure that Rochester uses the same tool they seem to use for a more than they use but we can message and say that this is available exactly so we could do that it's not that part I'm going to go that way for now okay that sounds good so families yeah that's a Stockbridge does have that some people would sign up they get like the agendas of all the public meetings and the minutes of public meetings and things like that and we could tap that that would it's kind of a self-selected group that are interested in telling government that this would be valuable as there's a possibility well I think we could put it if we could have it in some place on the website that we could tell people to go to just to share okay so are we good with these questions are we coming back to this next month where are we at I think the questions are made approval it's just the question of how we to distribute them and get the answers back okay yes I worked on a number of these things within ASU and here's my suggestion I don't know how practical it is over time as a project right if I could do what I wanted to do I would take the student survey results I would then take this give it to the parents wait for that feedback and see if the results from the parent survey gave you any hint about what you might ask the public in general and then I would put it out okay it's kind of like two phases that might be appropriate but I haven't even seen the survey answer I'm sorry I don't know they're pretty they look a lot like the portrait of graduate I apologize I think that would be an appropriate way to go I like that too let's start with that how about we just we'll take it from here and we'll give it out to folks okay that sounds wonderful thank you moving on to 9.1 a point and endowment committee 8.5 oh 8.5 temperature sensors for high school thank you just briefly you want to get approval to basically install Wi-Fi connected temperature sensors throughout the the high school building I've come I mean we can get up to sensors for under $500 and what they do is you set a range for each of them and they email if there's email someone if anything's out of range and it could be me or I can set it up to email me and other people and so that's the first thing is just get general approval for that for us to purchase those actually we're I think I got the commitment from from the re-purposing committee to purchase them so it's just approval to do it to do it and I think we're with Lindy we're there's also other things of maybe of arranging with the re-purposing volunteers to do walk-throughs periodically for the high school we're trying to reduce the load on on Jesse okay sounds good to me anybody have any comments or objections to them going forward with putting sensors Wi-Fi sensors in the high school no my only comment was just to make certain Ray was aware so that they're not functioning on top of it he's where we talk good good thank you 9.1 a point and endowment committee so I had a meeting with Jamie kind of trying to move forward on our endowment stuff and I would like to make a committee that is made up of a couple board members maybe even community members to review how our funds have done over the year you know read those financial statements and then to propose to the board how much they feel would be appropriate for the the principal to spend each year I'd like this I was hoping this committee was something we could set up and then every year at our re-purpose re-organization we would just it would be on that list of committee members so I would volunteer to be on it because I have a lot of that information but I'm looking for help excellent so do we need to make a motion? you would move to a point the three of you and then if you decide that you're going to have some public join next meeting great I'd like to make a motion to appoint myself Amy Wilt Robert Mayer and Bill Edgerton to a new endowment committee second alright all in favor say hi by saying hi hi I think it's a great idea now because I presume this this committee has to abide by open-hating laws right so we'll have to do that but if we can get a meeting set up we can start chatting about it and moving forward I think it's appropriate timing and every year we'll do it early so that Lindy can use it in her budget okay great are these endowments are managed by the by who? so these are specific to the Rochester endowments because the Stockbridge endowments have their own management team they're managed by the trustees of public funds but I don't see why we couldn't learn about them as part of this committee so we have an understanding I think the immediate goal is to take a look at the Rochester endowment they're not managed by the by the Rochester trustees of public funds they are in like once Morgan Stanley there's a financial advisor and so they are the responsibility of the our side board to manage so that'll be another component we'll be looking at moving on to 10 new hires or resignations yep our school nurse Chelsea mayor now Chelsea Hurt has resigned for family and personal reasons currently have a substitute nurse who's coming in for at least once a week sometimes twice a week and we have two applicants and we'll have an interview later this week great okay is there any public comment okay great then we do have an executive session so I yes and how do we do it with our two virtuals it's fine I make a motion to enter executive session for a student matter so moved okay we've exited executive session okay I make a motion that we accept the the superintendent's recommendation on a student matter second all in favor bye thank you okay great our next meeting is Monday December 4th at 6 o'clock not 5 30 as it says at the Rochester campus we will discuss future retreat dates hopefully at that meeting so bring your calendars and if there's any other future agenda I will hopefully Justine and I can get together and if we can come up with a draft tool I like to keep that going the goals also I forgot to bring our new book and Linnea has something for you too summer music for kids but if I could can you put them so I could get them well I just thinking of sending an email and each of you if you're willing to provide me with your address then I would deliver them to your and because it's if you're not comfortable with that we can have a handoff situation or I could give you three for Rochester and do three but I'm more than happy to deliver them but you'll love the book has a bright red cover it's about board governance and it's something that now that we kind of know the terminology and thinking a lot of it should be reassuring and familiar but we'll still be learning from this author this author is very very very well regarded it also isn't venomous we can get through it this year I think there's only eight chapters or seven so my request would be is if it's okay with you get so I could get you the book and ask you to read chapter one for our December meeting and have that on our if that's okay along with the goals and then the other thing is that as you know we were talking about it's the fifth year of a celebration of fact of the our side together and part of that was kind of looking at the articles of agreement and I started doing that and just to give you one nugget and the best one yet was that part of it was one of the appendages was estimated costs before the CLA factored in they were projecting for the merger and I just need one more year which if with your permission I'd like to reach out to Tara she has that document I'm sure it's one of these books but I don't have for the good news is that other than the first year which is the year of consolidation cost are substantially below what was projected great and so I'm still waiting through all the appendages and I'd like to be able at some point maybe as soon as December to share what I've gleaned from it and whether the board wants to do anything with this information or not it's up to the board I thought it was just worthwhile it's certainly helping me to go back in time just wanted to give you a heads up on that super great okay if anybody has any future agenda items just email me or Jamie otherwise we'll entertain a motion to adjourn so move second all in favor hi thank you