 but I just wanted to mention for folks on the board to take a look at the draft questionnaire. Off the call and join from the email. Okay, yeah, that's an appropriate thing to say in board comments. Anyone else? Lindy, Bonnie, Jamie? I do not. So a times and a timekeeper. Charles, sorry, sorry, I was muted. Are we doing an executive session tonight? Does it say join now in the board? No. I put out an email that I thought we should talk about the real estate dealings. Can you hear the other? If we don't have time for that, we need to talk in a fairly timely matter about some of the updates as I talked to Pat. Okay. Yeah, can we add to the agenda the executive session? I don't think it'll be long, but I don't think it'll be long. That's fine, let's do it at the end and then we'll jump into the info. Are we ready? Great, thank you. And if we have to, if we can't get to it, we can always do it after the info. Table the irregular meeting to adjourn to a time certain and then come back and finish the executive session after the info, after the information. Yeah, that'd be fine with me. I just wanna keep people posted and there's some priorities to talk about. Okay, that is certainly fine. So let's add after item nine, let's add an item 10 executive session to discuss real estate transactions, the public disclosure of which could hurt the board's position. Okay, assign times and timekeeper. We have three minutes, we should be very mindful of the fact that we do have, I would very much like us to get through our regular business before we get into the informational meeting. I think that if we had to co-mingle public comment on both the content of the regular meeting and the informational meeting, that would be okay. I'm not as concerned that we have completely discreet public comment, but I really think we should the only piece that I would say that I would want us to consider would be if we could move 7.3, the COVID task force update to the end of the list, knowing that that would be certainly an appropriate thing to add to the contents of the public informational meeting because all our public is hopefully gonna be at that meeting and reporting that sort of thing out then, I think would be just as appropriate as trying to get to it now. So let's move that to the end, but that said, times and timekeeper, five minutes for the consent agenda, reports to the board. Lenny, can you add beyond what you published? Nope, we're just gonna ask if there's any questions. Okay, beautiful, is Tara in the same boat? Same. Tara, we'll have a couple of quick comments and that's it, yep. Okay, all right, so let's give all of reports to the board. Can we try to get that done in 10 minutes? Easy. Discussion items, labor negotiations, I have an update on that, I think that's gonna take five at the most. Discussing the interim board member and how that procedure goes, I think that is probably about a 10 to 15 minute discussion. School building maintenance and next steps. Let's put 10 minutes on that. New hires, is that just a five minute report or is there actually we need to tell them anything to report, it's just a placeholder? Okay, beautiful, all right, then I think we've got... What about 7.3? What's that? Carl, what about 7.3? 7.3, did not assign a time for it. Right, let's put 10 minutes on that and know that we can bump that into the public informational because that's really, I think, more of a public informational than the board. I don't believe, as I understand it, you guys aren't gonna ask us to take action, correct? That's correct. You're gonna report out, tell us how it's gonna be come September 9th. Great, I agree. I'm sorry, I missed that part when you were talking about my phone right here. I can be the timekeeper if you'd like. Okay, that'd be cool, thank you. The minutes for the three listed meetings, June 2nd, June 16th and June 23rd. So, Carl, we approved those, I got the minutes late. Those approved on July 7th, but we will be needing to approve the minutes from July 7th, 14th and 21st. Exactly, I was about to just say that because I flipped over from my agenda screen to my screen where I had your meeting notes up and I'm like, oh, those are July minutes. Yes, Carl, this is August. So, we are going to entertain the three sets of open draft minutes that are the 7.7, 7.14 and 7.21 minutes that are in Jenny's email from Friday. Does anyone have any comments? I don't think we can do that. Sorry, any? They're not on the agenda, Carl. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I don't know why that type will happen, I apologize. No worries, let the minutes reflect that or I would entertain a motion to table approving the 7.7, 7.14 and 7.21 minutes until such time as they can be appropriately listed on an agenda. So moved. They're here a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, so we will table the consent agenda and we will move into board comments. Does anyone have any questions for Jamie and his report? Oh, can I just do a quick word comment? Absolutely, I'm here. Yep. Yeah, just one update about the tents. Tents are in place, three in Stockbridge, six in Rochester. We have the buckets over at Carrera Cement in Middlebury where they're getting filled for free. These are the ballasts and the Ratcheter should be arriving tomorrow at Rochester Hardware so that all this can be set up and be in use before the beginning of school. Complete. That is really, really awesome. And it's, I would have to say that we think it is 95% complete. The last 5% is when this whole thing gets up, we really need to take some great pictures of that and get them to Martha Harreld. Your Martha Slater read the Harreld and get them posted on our website and get that out there because we think the more that we can pull that we're not scrambling, that we're being thoughtful, we're being timely, and we're being appropriate in the comfort of bringing to our parents. So thank you and thank you Linnie and Ethan and thank you Linnie and Bonnie for getting together and let's make sure that we get it out there once this ball was put away. And we should just add that each campus has the same number of total tents. We just already had some in Stockbridge that we're able to reuse for this outdoor education purpose. So everybody has the same number of outdoor spaces to meet the need. I just want to clarify that. We had to order some more, but... Excellent, excellent. These are, I mean, from what I understood from Tara's comments, these are COVID cares money eligible, right? And given the age of our kids, expecting them, even if we had the indoor space, expecting them to stay inside and be masked for that much time, I had little kids. Okay, any other board comment? Quick comment just on the question that we're gonna be doing. I sent a draft out to the board and Linnie and Bonnie and Jamie. If you can get me a possible comments before Friday so that we can get that ready to have for Tuesday, that would be great or earlier if possible. So I can send it around to people before so that people get a chance to see the final survey. Right, no, I think that's, I would love us to be able to get that out by end of day Friday. So I know I'm a big procrastinator and I'll commit to getting my comments to you by then. If we can all do that. And then, Jenny, you can just get it out there. I think that's important. Okay, any other board comments? All right, reports to the board. The superintendent's report is in our email. It went, does anyone have any questions or comments for Jamie? As I try to find his letter. And I'll certainly expand on some things when we get to some of the discussion items. There it is, superintendent report. I was searching under your name. It's under Christie's from Thursday, July 30th. Ah, Ray, you are excellent. Thank you for being there. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Okay. Hold on, I know it's just looking for my unmute button. So due to the fact that we are, right, just virtually now, is there a place that the public can go and read these reports? They are great. They're on the, in your guys' board info. Right, where people find those, these are also linked in there. Okay, that's great. Because I think there's wonderful information in it. And the public would, it'd be great for the public to be able to read them as well. Yeah, no, I agree, Amy. Thank you for mentioning that. One comment actually that Amy just prompted me to make, which is that if you, if everyone looks in their email, the Vermont School Board's Association has sent around their latest report and they actually addressed a comment that Ethan brought up at our last meeting about getting back together and meeting in person. And it references the Governor's 623 guidance that still says that basically unnecessary meetings in the unnecessary public meetings should not be held. It raises the question of even if we could say segment off the gym, it still would necessarily be potentially limiting the number of people that could attend because if you said, okay, the first 20 could come if we had a crowd that was interested in talking about our building issues or something like that, we would be basically only able to seat the first 20 that showed up and then send people away. So the guidance from the state and the Vermont School Board's Association is for the near future. And by that, they suggested it into October, the idea that public meetings, we could gather as a body. If there were things that we wanted to discuss in person, in person, we could gather as a body and record it and provide virtual access to the public for that. But the guidance from the state and from the Vermont School Board's Association at this point is that school board meetings should be held virtually or perhaps in person by just the school board members, but televised to the public virtually. So I wanted to make sure that got put in the right place. I'll just add, I brought that up to the SU board early in July and said that if board members would like, there are procedures and safety protocols in place. And it would make sense if the board needed to attend in person to do it here at the SU office because the technology is set up such that I feel comfortable that we can ensure that the public could attend that way. Excellent. Plus we went, I'm sorry. We plus we will, well, the building is going to be very limited and we wouldn't to have a lot of extra public, including ourselves, accessing our school buildings. So the SU gives a very good option. Right, the idea is parents are not, parents are not to enter school buildings. Unnecessary personnel, if possible, aren't supposed to be at school buildings. So if, for example, we had the business office was occupying spare rooms at Royalton High School, for example, just to pull an example out of the air, they would be told, don't work there because you're an infection vector for the kids. So, you know, and like while the grounds can be accessed by parents, parents can't even come inside to use restrooms. So there is some really pretty strict guidelines about keeping the school population of students and the core teachers and the core staff members segregated from the bigger populations of parents and PTO and things like that. But I think we'll cover a lot more of that in the COVID-19 report. Your fitness will be on the video. Does anyone have any further questions for the superintendent or comments about his report? Okay, we also got a report from Bonnie and Lindy that, I'll figure out which tab that was, it's called P-T-T, we got a tab, hopefully you all found it, we have a tab that has a principal report from them that we can give them questions or comments about. Does anyone have any feedback around that or Bonnie and Lindy, do you have anything you want to emphasize or pull out of that for us? It is linked in the agenda. We just linked it in the chat too if you need to see it. Ah, beautiful, that is very helpful. Thank you, Ray, or thank you, Jamie, whichever one you linked that. That was Ray. Okay, anything else about the principal's report? It's 6.2, the Tara, the business manager's report. Hello everybody, just wanted to give you an update as to the happenings in the business office. We are working through some restructuring in the business office, moving people around, so we'll be updating the boards once we get a final plan together for all of that. And we have started working with the auditors, we had a three hour call with them today on the FY20 pre-audits, so those are already in the works and well on their way. May I say anything else? No. Jamie and I have met to develop the updated budget calendar for FY22, so that will be coming out probably later this month to all of you via email. And I can't think of much else right now. I encourage you to please mark the August 24th meeting in your calendar for the SU because there will be an SU-wide financial update in that meeting, and that's a reorganization meeting too. So there'll be two full SU board meetings this month. Yes, yes. Thank you for that. Does anyone have any questions for Tara? Okay, so hearing none, we've moved through the reports to the board, discussion items, labor negotiations. As you all know, we are negotiating contracts with both the professional staff, the teachers, and the support staff. The paraeducators, the general building workers and such. The negotiations with the support staff are still open. There's some clarifying questions that they've asked of us. We've given them answers and we're waiting for their response. The negotiations, the open negotiations with the teachers, we can report have been closed. The board has officially gone to impasse. With the teachers, with the teachers union, which means that their last best offer and our last best offer were too far apart. We felt that there was no value in us negotiating with each other independently. The way that this works by statute is that we now get a mediator in and we've reached out to find a mediator. The mediator will look at our last best offer, their last best offer will be probably in this COVID day, will be in virtual breakout rooms, and the mediator will jump between our Zoom meeting or our Google Meet and the union's Google Meet and get opinions and take temperatures and communicate things back and forth. Once that happens, if that's successful, then we get a tentative agreement that we bring back to the SU and to all the boards for a vote. If that is not successful, and in my personal experience, and I've been doing this for 15 years, mediation has worked once, but if that is not successful, you go to something called fact finding, which is where we present our last best argument and our reasons why that's the position that should be in supported with data from comparables across the state and so on and so forth, the union and their representatives present their last best offer and the reason they think that should be with their comparables and their supporting evidence as to why that's the fairer wage or the more equitable wage or the more equitable work hours or whatever the points of contention in the contract are and the fact finder then produces the decision. People can accept it or not, if they do not, there's a required, another mediated, usually mediated, but there's another meeting between labor and management to have a last chance to try to resolve that and if that does not work, then management gets to impose a contract for one year and say here's the work terms that you're going to work under for one year and then the union gets to look at that and decide whether or not they're going to strike. I'm saying that to make sure because we have a lot of people on the call and a lot of people that wonder about how that all works and I'm saying that to step through the process that said, mediation, I believe, the last I heard, we're looking at, there's federal mediators that are provided by the government that are trained in this and they work through these matters at no cost to either us or to the teachers and it's a worthwhile conversation and it's part of a process and I began or earlier I said that in my 15 years, I've never seen a, I've only seen one mediation work, I've seen zero strikes. So, you know, this is not to say that we've come to impasse just means that we've moved into the next stage of negotiations, it's just, you know, this is labor negotiations at the beginning of the cycle, there are rules of how negotiations will proceed, they're set up and one of the general things that happens is that there's an overall, it's all done in kind of private in the executive session by agreement of both sides and you can only really have a formal report out when a formal event happens like going to impasse. So, this is not to say, you know, doom and gloom or something that's happening, it's to say, we've reached the formal step where we said that the two sides on their own don't think they can get any closer. We're gonna bring into some, we're gonna bring in someone to help us try to get us to that place and to narrow the conversation down and to move things forward. The way the finances work, I'm sorry? Oh, just to cross, I imagine you probably can't give us any details of the issues at hand or like if it involves COVID or anything like that, that's all executive privilege information. Yeah, I don't wanna go into handy. Correct. Okay, just curious, thank you. Correct, correct. I was myself. We can certainly be an executive, we can certainly have an executive session where I can tell you what the issues are and it'll add about three minutes to the conversation. So why don't we do that? Or, and if we can't do that now because we've already passed the adjustments to the agenda portion, we can do it at our next meeting. Or I can send it to you, I can send it, I can put it, yeah. Why don't I do this? I'll have Dina send us a little summary under attorney client privilege email. We also have an SU meeting Monday. Oh, okay. So yeah, is that okay, Ethan? Okay, anything else on that? You're five minutes is up. Is that okay, Ethan or do you want to try to take it? I think he gave it to us. That is all I had to say about meeting myself. Sorry. Excellent, thank you, Ethan. 7.2 interim board member. Recall that our regular meeting, Janie resigned. We did not immediately put that on the August 11th ballot because the candidates would have had 36 hours to get onto that ballot appropriately and we didn't think that was right. What we need to decide now, and I sent around a document that you started filling in some interview questions, but what we need to decide formally tonight is do we want to, and we could do the same thing we did with the review of the budget on the primary night. We could simply warn at our September meeting that we were going to elect the interim school board replacement on the November meeting ballot and just piggyback another paper ballot onto the regular presidential election. I've checked with Dina, we don't have to go or do anything with the Secretary of State to do that, but what it means is that we'd be finding an interim person to only influence board decisions between now and November versus through a whole budget cycle, which given the way our budgets have been is something that we might want to consider. We also have to consider how the interview process would work in the past, at least in Stockbridge. We've started a document like I've sent around to you guys already where we've developed the same, eight to 10 questions to ask everyone to respond to and we figured out which one of us asks those same questions so that we're giving the same consistent interview experience and then the board gathers and here's the report of the interview committee, whether it's a committee or the whole board in Stockbridge, it always had to be the whole board because otherwise it wasn't a quorum meeting. The remaining two members had to be there, otherwise it didn't count, but we could conceivably do it with four of the five of us and then report out to the fifth to have a vote or we could just decide it was a whole board decision, but we need to put a procedure together. We've had, I want to say four people at this point, four or five that have expressed interest and I would like to get back to them and set up the interviews and get this resolved so it means we need to decide what our procedure's going to be and what this interim term's going to be. Thoughts? I'll just jump in, I mean, this is your decision but as your superintendent, I would recommend that we have an election coming up in November that you strongly consider appointing someone now and then having an election of the people in November in regards to deciding who's going to fill this position for the remainder of the term because there's going to be a lot of decisions to be made in regards to the upcoming budget and we're going to look to get you the issue to adopt a policy on budgeting that says that it's actually a policy statement and really try to engage the board and community in a deeper level of dive around our budget process. So, Carl, I'm glad you talked about the idea of the budget and having someone who's been elected by the people to be part of that process. I think that that's a good perspective to keep in mind. I agree. I think it was made clear by several comments by others that they felt that Stockbridge needed to be fully represented on the board as soon as possible and that we fill that position with an interim and then a proper election, I think would give us support going forward. So, either way though, we would do interviews at this point to elect a temporary intern till November. Whoops, sorry, I muted myself. Now I'm unmuted. I'm sorry. Yes, at least in Stockbridge, that's been our past practice is that we've had, I mean, there have been times when someone has left in January because of a job change and we've had, we know we've had a May thing and they've recruited a person to replace them. But that was also when it was a much sleepier board. When it's been a board where there's been some differing points of view that have come forward, we have had an interview and we've tried to do it. Again, we've said we have to ask a common questions. We have to treat it like we treat interviewing a teacher or interviewing a principal, where it can't just be an open-ended chit chat where we find someone that just thinks the way we do. So, having similar questions, having a formal sit down, a formal sit down interview, I think Janie and Jenny both, you guys are both interviewed, well, Janie's not here anymore. That's why we're having this conversation. Janie, you've been interviewed, weren't you? I was not interviewed, but I know Janie was. Because I don't think there was anyone else that had expressed interest at the time when I was on. Okay. I think it's also important to make sure that the interim also, the interim has to be a Stockbridge resident. You know, we're just appointing a Stockbridge person versus electing a Stockbridge person. So then I would entertain a motion that we, well, no, we'll warn that in September after we've gone through the interviews. But then that's gonna be what, you know, so we're gonna, we're going to move forward with an interview process that we're gonna develop the questions for and we're gonna let's reach out to these people who wants to do interviews with me. Want to do the whole board or try to at least assume the whole board would try to make it? Yes, I think so. Yeah, I think it's many of us that are interested. Yes. So we won't, we won't try to force us all to be there, but it's the board's consensus then that we would move in. We would move into, we would move into interviews. The board would move into the interview process, develop the questions and move into the interview process. And I would like the board to have this ready to make a recommendation at our next meeting. Absolutely. You know, with that person, with that person having been informed and you know, participating, participating, you know, at least de facto, if not de jure. I mean, technically after you're appointed, you're supposed to go get sworn in by your town. But I think having that person join us at that meeting offer comments as if they're in the board. The board can allow people to speak at our discretion. And, you know, while they would not quote have a formal vote, we make consent, most of our decisions are consensus based anyways. So, but I would like us, you know, and I'm trying to avoid us having, we already have two SU meetings in August. I was trying, I would like us try to avoid having a special vote or special meeting to appoint the representative before our September meeting. Yep. And then I agree the- Okay. Although we actually supposed to- We should, I would agree, we should, with these things that we should go ahead and put a formal vote to the town residents to the town residents on November 11th to elect at that point, the board member. Okay. Is that a motion and a second I'm hearing? Yes, I'm seconding what Amy just said. Beautiful. All right, a motion has been made and seconded that the board warn a formal election for the replacement Stockbridge board member on November 11th at their September regular meeting. Guys, the election date is November 3rd. So what we're doing is committing to- Just throwing it out there if you're doing important. Election date is November 3rd. No, no, no, that's- August 11th is November 3rd. It is November 3rd and it's August 11th. No, that's the first election. That's where I'm conflating the date. The second election is November 11th. Just going to this stuff, Wendy. 11-3. Okay. It's important for a lot of people. We've got a motion on the floor. We've got a motion on the floor that the board is going to proceed to warn a formal board member election at our September meeting. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries unanimously. To clarify, just because I saw what looked like a confused look, we can't, I mean, if we were going to hold the meeting, if we were going to actually formally warn the election today, we'd have to be able to say where the election was going to happen and what time it was going to happen and all that. And what we've just, all we've done now is we've committed to piggybacking and we formally moved that we're going to have a board member election on the 11-3 national election date without putting that formal warning when the election time is and what the actual question would be. We can still get the actual question and the actual warning from Dina and have that ready for our September meeting. All we've done is that we've said that we're going forward with that process. And I- And I- The rules of order and clear and see Patty Harvey looking at me. And I- I would assume that a Stockbridge resident would get that on the ballot for the November election. And there's a whole process that they can get on ballot. Correct, they have- Okay, we can discuss that in- Correct. They have to- They have to submit a- A petition. Yeah, okay. It's the same problem Megan and I had to go through. There's a good-sized window. You have to do it 20 days before the election. So if we set this up in September, they've got all of September and October to do it. It was just that when we were trying to think about it at our July meeting, there really wasn't a fair time window to get it in before the August meeting. Great. So my- Okay, so let me- I will try to get the agenda back up. I keep track of the time. My time has died, meaning my phone, but I will still try to keep track of time keeping. Okay, so what we have left is- 15 minutes. Okay, let's go into school building maintenance. Next steps, please. So I put this on there because the board had directed the administration to start working on the high school building and what the closure would look like for the use of the school and students this coming school year. I had Lyle Smith come down. He's the maintenance director up in Williston schools. And I was referred to Lyle by Norm. I can't take a Norm's name. He's a consultant through Visbit. And Lyle came down and did a walkthrough with Bonnie and I yesterday. And he's putting together a report of steps we need to take. Few things right off hand is that there are some things in regards to our second boiler that we're concerning that we need to take a look at in the high school that's separate from the actual closure of the high school building. That is something we just need to take care of, period. It's clear that the temperature, the lowest the temperature can get is going to be 55 degrees due to the mechanics of the boilers being in the high school building and the sprinkler system. In addition, he felt the need for us to pursue some heat sensors throughout the building because he said the fact that we're gonna keep it at 55 in the event that something happened to our boilers, we wouldn't have a great deal of time to address it before we would need to get a temporary heater in there so that the building doesn't freeze up. So he recommended that. And he said that one thing that's good is that the folks we've been working with for the heat system really are top notch. And he said that they are definitely the service organization we should continue to work with. He also said that we need to have someone go through that building daily, which we do already anyways, on staff just to ensure that the boilers are up and operating appropriately. And so those were the recommendations he made. We'll look to get you a further report once it's provided to me. We've got three top notch guys working on it. Free of charge, by the way. Bizbit's taking really good care of us and supporting us with this endeavor. So a huge shout out to Lyle. I am greatly appreciative that he came down and spent a few hours with us yesterday. So those are all the reports that I have at this time. And in September, I'll tell you what steps we're gonna take. He did think we could find some efficiencies though. Okay, Jamie, was there any discussion about the... Oh. Just Jamie, was there any discussion about him? There was discussion with him about the oil tank. That we need to get it, that he felt like we need to do some more digging into that in regards to addressing it. Good, thank you. Does anyone else have any questions for Jamie on the next steps and the maintenance? Just to, sorry, the question went out of my head. Do we need to take any action at this time about this as far as instructing our administrators? Obviously we cut numbers from the budget for fuel economies, things like that. I don't know if we cut anything for salaries for the maintenance, because we were hopeful that we were not gonna have anybody in there. Nope. Is that... Nope, that's not part of the budget. Okay, okay, thank you. Just clarification. The only other thing I'll add is I did do a walkthrough at the elementary school today, both your elementary schools, and I'm gonna provide some feedback to your lead custodians and principals about just a second set of eyes. I'm touring all the buildings this upcoming week with the lead custodians just to get a sense of the lay of the land and where we're at in regards to maintenance and facilities across the SU. Excellent, thank you, Jamie. That's wonderful. Thank you. All right, that leaves really only the COVID task force updates. We can go home. Sorry, sorry, Carl. I'm not sure if this was... Jamie, is this the area where we wanted to talk about ventilation improvements? I was gonna do that under COVID, but... Oh, you are, okay. Great, great, thank you. So I... Excellent, well, Jamie, nice segue. Well, I just want to point out that we have 15 minutes left of this regular meeting. We had discussed a possible executive session and the possibility of pushing this COVID into the next meeting. I just wanted to point out that we have 15 minutes left. So you can decide what you want to do. Thank you, Ms. Timekeeper. I would suggest if the board has no problem, I would suggest moving the executive session to after the informational. I don't think it'll be long, but I just think it's, I hate to rush it. Okay, that's the valid point. And I would rather have a chance to get more water and visit the little board members room or whatever between these two seconds. So let's go into the COVID task force update and we'll put the executive session into after the informational meeting. Yeah, and your informational meeting is a warm meeting, so you can definitely do that. So the COVID-19 updates are that the admin team has been working diligently in working with teachers in the COVID task force to get as much information out as we can. So I wanted to kind of chunk it up in a few sections. One, the instructional schedules for the SU were shared yesterday for both in-person and virtual, K through 12. The K through eight schedules across the SU, the principals all worked together in regards to implementing a schedule that provided instruction from eight to three, but also provided the opportunity for families if they chose to pick up students at 130. All of these decisions are made based on surveys that we were able to put in place. So essentially we try to provide as much flexibility as we could for in-person instruction five days a week. We're gonna utilize outdoor learning spaces as much as possible to provide students with an opportunity to social distance appropriately outdoors. We've also gone through our classrooms to ensure that students can safely social distance in our classrooms and the event that we need to move inside. And we're taking steps to ensure that that's taken care of. I actually took advantage of working with Lyle Smith to find out what type of cleaning supplies they're using up in the Williston district, and we're gonna look to pilot that in some of our schools. It's a pretty reasonable cost and it's been very effective up there. If you remember, Williston was the first school district that shut down this spring due to a confirmed case of a member of their supervisory union. So they kind of were able to do the guinea pigs and test what it looked like to go into a school and clean in the event that someone did test positive. So I took advantage of a car ride over the mountain with Lyle to talk to him about that. Transportation, we met with the transportation company last week. We are moving forward to provide transportation. Surveys went out about that. We're strongly encouraging families to drop students off if possible. There will be a health assessment that will be virtual that families have to complete daily prior to students boarding the bus. Schools are working to create handbooks for families about exactly what all the procedures look like at the building level because we're trying to use multiple entrances across the SU to bring students in to try to have health checks the timely and speedy. The virtual learning platform is still Google, but that schedule looks significantly different than it did last year. Students will be engaged in instruction throughout the day and regular check-ins with faculty. We've approached it from an SU level in regards to faculty will be assigned to virtual learning. Specifically, if faculty meet the criteria to be COVID exempt, we're gonna prioritize those faculty first to teach in the virtual learning academy and your principal, Lindy Stetson, is going to be the principal that oversees the virtual learning academy so that we have continuity across the SU in regards to ensuring that accountability is the same school to school. I'm unbelievably proud of how the principals across the SU have come together. The fact that we have a unified schedule for in-person instruction and agreed upon schedule for virtual learning was terrific. And we also, Shane Oates is the COVID-19 coordinator. He was the MTS coordinator at RUD. He has taken a leadership role in assisting us to ensure all the nurses have met across the SU. And he's meeting with all principals that had a maintenance to ensure all proper safety checks are in place around cleaning. And we're also looking to do PPE. Across the SU. The pre-K teachers met today in information around what the pre-K schedule is gonna look like for in-person instruction as well as a survey to see if families are interested in a virtual learning opportunity for pre-K. That's coming out tomorrow. On Monday night, I'll be ready to share with the SU board and revised calendar of what in-service time will look like for faculty and staff. I've been working with the union on that. I gotta say our union has been great about meeting with me regularly to ensure that we're all on the same page to ensure a safe opening and return to school. And thus far, the feedback I've been receiving has been fairly positive in regards to folks understand that we're trying to mitigate risk, ensure equity for all students in regards to education. And one of the things out there is I am gonna talk to the SU board on Monday night about the possibility of us addressing the fact that some of our staff are challenged in regards to childcare and some of the surrounding SUs not being in-person five days a week and how we might be able to navigate that. So I'm gonna share a plan with the SU board on that on Monday night and look for you guys to possibly adopt an idea that I have and the admin team has around how we could address childcare for our faculty and staff. Lindy, did I miss anything else? I just wanna clarify, Jamie, that- You're muted, my friend. Am I unmuted now? Okay, sorry. I just wanted to clarify that that 130 to three time for in-person learning daily, five days a week is gonna be in coordination with our one-planet program to offer extra enrichment opportunities for students, more hands-on learning. It could look a lot of different ways depending on numbers just cause I know there's some parents out there listening but in terms of like a reading and math instruction that will happen prior to the 130 time daily. So I just wanna make that- There may be a intervention that happens from 130 to three. Right, that might be the only difference depending on scheduling once we have numbers and things like that. But other than that, I think you covered it all. I can't think of anything else. We are working to best utilize our CARES money and so there's not enough. I just think that the boards need to know that and I'll share that with the SU Board Monday night. I don't suspect that there's gonna be enough with all the expenses we incur. The other thing we are looking to do is utilize CARE money to put in place some regular daily floating subs across the SU that are trained and how we're approaching this and have experience around the routines cause what I don't want is us just bringing folks in and having them not experience what school looks like now in these unprecedented times. So we're trying to build a bench that's with us on a regular basis. Hi, Jamie, I was actually gonna ask you a question specifically about subs because my concern was that looking at the school year going forward, if you're trying to get them on the ad hoc basis and being the first person that calls the sub on the Tuesday morning or whatever, I was going to suggest that we maybe think about having saying that we need to have a X number on quote retainer so to speak and then have them flexible enough to rotate around and it sounds like you're on top of that. So that's great. No, yeah, that's exactly what we're gonna do, Carl. Same with some nurses. Great. We'll get like a member of MOU that they understand they can come every day and that we're, you know, this is the rate we pay them and then that will be tied directly back to our care's money cause it's a new expense. So it's permissible. So that's how we're gonna approach it. So I just wanted to say to Lindy and Bonnie and you, Jamie, it is, I'm very impressed. Thank you. And we're gonna continue to gain, you know, gather feedback and, you know, what I've said to the admin team is this is a really solid plan, I think, for our first trimester and we'll look to adjust if things aren't working. I don't think that this is set in stone for everybody by any means, but it's definitely, if it works, then we're gonna stick with it. If folks aren't happy with how it's going and we need to adjust, then we'll adjust. Excellent. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Lindy. And Lindy, I'm really hoping you're stepping up to be the principal of the virtual academy and not being strong-armed into being the principal of the virtual academy, but I... I am, I volunteer. Excellent. I think it could have been a good answer. Good question. I look forward to making you make a place where we ask you know how good you are. Thank you. Quick question. I was out of the room for a minute. I had to check on a child. Is this included at all upgrading ventilation systems in school? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I missed that part. So we've been working with the efficiency Vermont. There was a grant that went statewide. They prioritized us based on just knowledge that they knew about our current, not tending necessarily to always proactive maintenance. And so efficiency Vermont has been in all of our schools at this point, except for one. I know there's still one on the list. They are providing us recommendations. It looks like we're gonna get some significant funds from efficiency Vermont to ensure that all of our systems are up to snuff before September 8th. Wow. Great. That is a major concern. Certainly. Some of that work is already started in certain buildings. So yeah, I'm feeling confident that that will all be taken care of. Claimed, changed out parts that need to be changed out, and all new filtering. What about the actual, I mean, we've been told that the elementary, Rochester elementary boiler is sketchy and could go at any time, I think is a term that was used at some point. Is that not what you're hearing? Based on the information on my phone, based on the information I'm operating off of, one boiler is really solid. Okay. And there's a backup boiler that needs some servicing that we think we can get repaired. Excellent. Okay. I think that the boiler situation, Lyle felt pretty comfortable that we can get that in a good place. Great. That's good to hear. That's very good to hear. Thank you, Jamie. Okay. Does anyone, any comments around the COVID task force school reopening efforts? Hearing none, it is six. Oh, is it time? Maybe it's six to 57. Yeah. No, this maybe can be addressed another time. I just want to bring it up. There has been obviously a lot of discussion about homeschooling as opposed to virtual people people taking out of the program and doing it for themselves. I just don't, I don't know, we probably should talk about this because obviously, well, there's aspects of it affecting the numbers certainly of our daily count. But I don't know, I just, I want to raise the flag because I'm certainly hearing about it. Yeah, I think that, you know, that's not just us. I think that that's across the state and the secretary actually addressed it saying that they're going to look for the legislature to take up how ADMs calculated this upcoming year potentially, because he was concerned about it across the state. Yeah, great. Cause I, I, I want, we, I think we, we want to be as flexible as possible. And that includes homeschool, if people really feel that's the best way to go it. And I would hate to feel like we're penalizing anybody for that choice. As I understand it, Jamie, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have, we do not have a hybrid learning option in place. What we have is we have a five day a week option. And then we have a completely virtual option. That's that virtual academy that Lindy's running. So we, we, we are offering families to formally signing up for homeschooling, correct? There's not a mixed option right now. I, we don't feel we have the staff to provide a third option at the moment. Right, but Lindy's, Lindy's virtual academy is going to have kids be a hundred percent virtual while they're not being formal homeschool students. They'll be still, they'll be still our, our SUD students that are at the virtual academy or, or, or strafford students that are at the virtual academy. Correct? Yeah, that's why we chose to go based on staff Carl. Thank you. Is that we felt like if we were to do in-person and then go hybrid, like both we would lose more students than saying we could provide full virtual learning option for families. And I hope that families that are considering to do homeschool strongly consider reaching out to us and talking to Lindy, because I think their experience in the spring is not what is going to look like this upcoming year. I think we're going to have, we have staffed completely devoted just to virtual learning. I think that's, I think that's very important that, that bit of information right there is very important to make public through the heritage, through whatever. I agree. I think that we need to get this out there to families that, that. Yeah, Jamie. Or Jamie and Lindy, some sort of like primer kind of, you know, FAQ. Here's what you can do if you don't want your kids to go to school and you live in this area. Here's how you go to the, the, the White River Valley Virtual Academy. I am going to, you know, we can put it out again in a different way on Facebook, but I'm going to say I've already gotten inquiries from families, ask you why, since the information went out yesterday, asking, clarifying questions and things like that. So if there's families that were already enrolled in Rochester Stockbridge that have questions, my name's out there as a person to contact and families have already contacted and asked questions. And I know Bonnie and I have also encouraged families, as always, we have an open-door policy to call us and ask those questions and we can walk through, you know, homeschool versus virtual learning versus. I can interview the mayoral today. The mayoral today. So I think you'll see a pretty big story after this next one. Wonderful. Thank you all. It is 7-01. I would like to adjourn this meeting. We will have the public comment for this meeting at the end of the informational meeting. And we'll just, we'll co-mingle that rather than trying to... Are we adjourning? Second. We're adjourning on postponing. I think we're postponing, Carl, because we're coming back for executive session. Yes, or we could add executive set. It's a worn meeting for the 7 o'clock meeting. So we can add an executive session and the adjustments to the agenda of that meeting. Okay. Great. Did we need to go over the new hires? Now, or do we do that later? There's nothing on new hires. That was a place where we did not move hires at this time. Okay. Good. So I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Okay. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay. Let's adjourn this meeting. The Rochester Stockbridge Unified School District Board and the Rochester Select Board, are determining the price tag for their assigned tasks to move forward with the proposed transfer. Once the price tags have been determined, a timeline for moving forward can be set. Thank you, Ethan, for the board's comment. The board has no further comment nor any other action to take. So the board would entertain a motion to adjourn. Thank you all. So moved. Do I have a second? A motion has been made and seconded that the board adjourn this special informational meeting that at least I will editorialize for one quick second. I thought went very, very well. Thank you all. Congratulations, Carl. Hopefully we will see success on the 11th. Thank you, everybody. Our next regular meeting is scheduled for September 1st. It will be met in the internet. Good night, Tammy, Ba Ba or Tara. I don't know why. Farewell. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.