 We'll just go right into the reports of the board. All right, so you have my superintendent report in hand. I mean, I would add that. And I mentioned it in the report that we've had COVID-19 positivity, specifically on the buckle campus. The way that this typically works is that we have positivity. We do our contact tracing. And then you have to wait for testing to occur. And based on close contacts, it's typically been the case where we have additional positivity. So that is where we're at right now. We have a lot of siblings in our buildings and things of that nature. So sometimes that's the case. Where a sibling will turn up positive. And so what I would say to you is that we continue to navigate this via pods in grade levels, specifically at the elementary in the middle school. Frankly, if this were at the high school right now, we might have a different situation or we're just pausing going remote. We still have a pretty significant situation that without the state of emergency, that unless we have 51% of the student body in the building, I can't count it as a school day. And so we would be then wrestling with that if we felt like we're at a place that we had enough contacts at an example at the high school level, we may need to pause for a day while we do contact tracing before we bring students back. If I was to pause for that day at this point, that would just be no school. I just wanted to clarify that with the board. We can go remote and we mark attendance as remote present. I am keeping track of that when we go remote with a grade level, with the hope being that guidance is going to change at some point that when we go remote, that those students actually will count toward the 51%. At this point, I don't have that clarification. Nor do I think it's worth us risking when we look at, we have a master agreement that specifies the number of days that our faculty can work. And so I know there's been, I've had a few emails and I've responded directly to them. I will clarify this with the community next week. Some superintendents have chosen to go remote. Everybody has a different master agreement. So some master agreements, for example, Washington Central, I have 180 student days. You only have to go 175 without requesting a waiver. So they had a little flexibility to roll that dice. So even when they went remote, those days aren't counted. Teachers worked on students learned. They wanted to be in a situation with management versus the negotiating master agreement that they may have to be paying people per DM and they were working on a set agreement to bring folks back in. So we have two days with a little flexibility, but that's it. We contract for 177 student days. So we have less flexibility in that regard. So I just wanted to try to provide a little clarity, specifically for Rudd in the sense of all the other schools, close contacts typically are limited to a grade level at our high school. That wouldn't be the case. So we may have to shut down for a day or we did contact tracing and then we would ramp back up. So I hope that that provides some additional clarity. Ray, I saw you looking like you wanted to talk. Oh, OK. Just everybody who's as far away as Jamie has just talked a little bit. All right, sorry, I apologize about that. Any questions? One thing I'd be wondering about is like if you did have a lot of contacts or worries about specific worries about COVID, if we could change our in-person, like have everybody spend the day outside distanced, we've got all these tents and stuff. Like would it be possible to do a lot more outside to more worried about it to make sure that it doesn't? And we definitely want to leverage outdoor learning as much as possible and being outside. I would say if we're in the midst of contact tracing, we definitely wouldn't bring people in because we wouldn't want to bring close contacts into the building. What I mean by that is you know you've had close contacts. You've asked to stay at home, but there's other people and you're concerned that there could be, you know what I mean, where you've asked the close contacts to stay at home, but there is a potential siblings or something like that could be getting into other classrooms, you know. Yeah, so it's on the agenda about outdoor classroom time. I met with the principals today to talk about that. I think they're prepared to talk about what we're doing around outdoor learning. I would say we are trying to leverage outdoor learning as much as possible with the fact that, especially at the elementary levels, with the fact that we're still down staff, that's a reality, which is impacting our ability, for example, to even have coverage to do lunch outside in certain buildings because they don't have the folks to cover the lunchtime blocks and ensure that I can provide teachers with their duty-free lunch. That's something we're trying to navigate right now as we're trying to still increase staffing. And then also, of course, at the elementary level, specifically, teachers are working really diligently to try to teach routines, which will include outdoor time, but we are still just in our first full week of school. So I think, especially for our primary grades, like K-1-2, they're still in the midst of that as well. But certainly, when we want to leverage outdoor learning, I think the principals will speak to that under that discussion. I would agree with that. I was more thinking, like, yeah, Peggy's here, so we'll start meeting her, but I was more thinking, you know, like, what do you have? Like, if we have different alert levels or something like that, you can't share remote, everything's closed, then we've got our, some portion is closed, but like, if we have some alert level where we change some of the things that we do, try and really mitigate the risk. I like the concept, and I'm bringing it back to the COVID team to see if we can put that into, like, a procedure. So that's, it's clear cut. Like, everything else so far, we know what we do when we do it, and so I'll think about if there's a different approach to that when we know that we have additional concerns for the specific building. Okay. All right, so with Peggy here, we'll, I think it's on there too, and Pam is sticking with me. Oh, okay, awesome. All right. Hello, yeah, I'm here. We'll go to the start of our agenda now. Do we have any adjustments to the agenda while we're... I was just gonna mention to the boards, we actually have a few candidates for your vacant position. So in the past, you've interviewed and then gone into an executive session and came out and appointed. So I don't know if you wanna move 8.4 down after the outdoor classroom time. Do you see what I'm saying? And then put an executive session in the middle of that. And then a point. Sure. Or is there a part, all the candidates are able to hang around, or like, would it be better to get it done at the beginning and then we can decide again. Give me a two candidates. So you guys cool with hanging around? I'll find it. We'll move 8.4 to 8.6. I'd like to, if it's appropriate, to introduce the two student council representatives who are with us tonight from the high school. Alex Kenneson is a 10th grader and Grace Collin is a 11th grader. And I'm glad to have their voice here to report to the board and answer questions about what's going on at the high school and be able to bring information from our work together here back to the student body. They were elected last spring as a school-wide election. So excited that they're willing to be here and give up their evening to learn more about school board work and how boards function and more about being a citizen and leader in our democracy. Welcome to the end. Very happy to have you. Thank you. Okay. Any other adjustments to the agenda? Do we have public comments at this time? Here in London, we're gonna move to our consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes of the 17th from the two meetings, the special ever treat and the regular meeting? I would make a motion to pass those two next. I am. In all second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Either way, any board comments this time? Okay. Jamie, did you have more in your superintendent's report? No, other than just, I wanted to say that the buildings are feeling in the due to the fact that we are still faced with a pandemic, which I think a lot of folks were hoping we were gonna be in a much better place than we are right now. And the fact that we are short staffed, I wanna say that the staff is doing an incredible job. They're unbelievably dedicated. They're flexible, they're working tirelessly to provide the best education for our kids again. And our buildings feel positive. I was in this building several times last week. I've been in South Royalton now several times. I was there after school today, talking to teachers in general morale was up based on what I can read through firsthand conversations that folks are working incredibly hard. But I do wanna acknowledge it's really difficult work. And I just want the board to keep that in mind. And I know you do, but just anytime we can thank the teacher, please do, because it's really challenging right now. Jamie, I know we've talked about this at the last meeting. How many staff are we down right now? Well, we're down, it's on the special end department. And so, and we will talk to you about and in your admin assistance at the South Royalton campus. So for you directly run reports, it really is, we're still looking for part-time math interventionist here based on some shuffling that we did, we hired internally, which freed up that math interventionist position. So you're still looking for a .5 math interventionist at the middle school level. And we need two admin assistants at South Royalton. As far as support staff go across the SU, which does impact you, we still would like to hire four support staff. And some of that has to do with move-ins, frankly, too. In the sense that we had some students move in with some additional significant need. So on top of being short staff, we had some folks move in that needed more intensive supports. So we're still looking for our pairs there. And we would like to hire three special educators for the supervised reunion. I think we may have one coming on board hopefully next week that we'll have hired and get started here in the next couple of weeks. I would say I'm much more confident our ability to fill out support staff at this time. I'm not optimistic about special educators. There's a shortage across the state. But in addition to that, folks who have entered contracts are locked in. So now we're really looking at folks who maybe were thinking about going into special education and have decided, yeah, maybe they'll take the jump and we support them with their licensure. Or we're looking at someone moves in from out of state or someone's retired and decides to come back on the field. So I would say to you, I'm still very optimistic about the other positions. And Prinsil has been interviewing for your admin assistant positions as well. I'm less optimistic right now about the special educator shortage. And I really do believe that in general, that is a state issue that we need the agency to help us with around recruitment for special educators. It's really hard work. Special education is really hard work. And what I have said to just meeting with the union leadership today is that with this influx of money came a lot of intervention positions. And we did lose a couple of special educators to become interventionists. And so if I can intervene and support students academically but not have the case management on top of it, it's really hard to convince someone to go from that type of teaching position to now you're gonna intervene and have case management. And that I think is part of the battle we're facing as well as at some special educators in the state decided to become interventionists but not have the case management. Part of what we've done to stay in compliance is right now we are contracting some services around temporarily for case management and virtual instruction via licensed special educators to try to stay in compliance. So we're still looking to hire the number I just said but do know it's not like that that's just not happening. We have contracted folks to do that work. It's not ideal, it's not what we wanna do. And on top of that special educators are being really flexible. And interventionists and you said a lot of that I wrote is we gotta make sure we're staying in compliance with IEPs but certainly as much work as we've tried to do to strengthen our system of supports. Frankly, it's not operating at the way I like it to because we're just, we don't have the number of bodies we need. Earlier you said that we didn't have the staff to do like outdoor lunch. We can talk about this later if you want during that discussion time. But what you just outlined was more special educators. Well, we do use paraprofessionals to help with duties, right? So when I said we need another four that those four would certainly support with supports of students, but also they help us with those duty coverages. What does that SU, that was SUY? SUY, but we would designate two immediately to South Wales. All right, any other questions for Jamie? We'll move to the principal. Okay, Andrea, were you gonna leave? You rehearsed, right? I can, I'm sorry. Is it getting presented? Yep. For some reason it's not, it's me, it's me. Okay. I think just we wanted to report out our goals and that we are continuing to roll out our MTSS work. I know you've probably already read all this. So maybe I don't really need to read it for you. I don't know if people have questions about the first goal and about how we're working on some of this stuff or if you want me to read it to you because I'm happy to send Ryzen read it to you. Andrea, maybe just point out the highlights in each for each goal. Sure. Well, I don't think I get to do them all. I think I get to share. So mostly that we're working hard on our alternative classrooms and making sure that they're supported and more integrated into the school. And so I feel like that's going really well. And I feel like there's a lot, we've dialed up the educational opportunities for those three different classrooms and being able to support a lot of those kids ourselves in-house. Yeah. And so I think it just sort of spells out what it looks like within each classroom. So there's a special educator, a lead teacher and we're still working on filling these positions but there's most places have a case manager from Clara Martin also within those classrooms. All right, goal two. Goal two, last Friday, the elementary schools, students went to stations around the buildings to talk about respect, responsibility, safety and kindness, the four key principles of our PBIS system. It's always a fun day and you hear some really interesting comments from students about how they think they should behave and what it means to be in different parts of the room. Like I overheard one students, when they went into the principal's office to learn about how to behave in the office, one of the students explained, I knew that Wildcat wasn't real. It was just kind of a priceless moment. The other thing we've got going on is the high school, we finished our first lead them up unit and tomorrow we transitioned to the next one. I don't know if either one of our students wanna share with the board what that's all about or we could wait to see student role on the board later. You guys wanna say anything about lead them up and what we're doing? Sure, we were working on, what is that? Basically self-assessment on how you're coming to school and your participation and overall respect to everyone around you and how you conduct yourself. And I feel like that's actually been really helpful as I was sitting in the classroom listening to everybody talking about what would be like not good examples of how to behave and some people were actually like pointing out that it was not great experiences when that had ever happened. So we were just starting on how to make that better. And I feel like some people actually took it to heart and trying to go to a better community altogether is really what we're working on. Thanks, Alex. Another big focus and their goal too is our work towards personalizing, learning through flexible pathways. So we really expanded the work we're doing with students both in the middle school and the high school. Really exciting to be looking at new models that I think are not just out of the box but maybe just like kind of knocking down the box and really creating some different ways for students to learn and access their education. So we had a consultant in at the high school on Friday afternoon during our in-service, Alicia Roman-Jerry who used to work with Jamie and Williamstown and she worked with some of our teachers who have some small group of students in that personalized learning model as we tried to get them an alternative to the traditional curriculum in a way that allows them to be successful where maybe there've been challenges before. So we're really excited about that. And our personalized learning classroom space is going pretty well. We're still missing our flexible pathways coordinator which is a key piece in this whole program but despite that we're still making progress. We're excited about that and I wanted to talk about the big community news. Well, good evening everybody. And I look forward to being with you tonight. I'll review goal three and as you know it's expanding our community outreach in ways that help us effectively engage and partner with students, parents and our broader community. You know, a big part of what we got this booster is a major grant for one of five groups that school groups that got this grant and a super short timeline and really great help from some community members and from central office to making sure this happened. We're pretty excited about what's gonna come out of this. This is a three year grant and we see it as a way to extend what we're doing with the community and broaden it. We're also working with McLean as a communications person and she's helped us including with a press release for this. And I've embedded that in this grant. It's in the agenda for a little later. So I think it might be appropriate for me to either take questions now or I'm happy to wait when it comes up in the agenda. You'll all love it. You may have heard about all of this through the Herald or Facebook. Yeah, why don't we get into that once we get through it on agenda? Do we have any questions for the principals? On the grant side of things. Something that's happened since the report was written is that we had a meeting of the Performing Arts Center Committee. We could see the committee's staff and Grace is one of the students on that committee. I don't know, Grace, if you wanna give everybody a snapshot of what the Performing Arts Committee is doing and where we're at. Yeah, so we just had our first meeting last week and we met with the two architects that will be heading up the project. And we kind of talked about budget, we talked about the design, we talked about the location and we kind of just like set all the ground rules really before we start moving on with the whole thing. So I've always kind of thought in my head this might be a three year or longer project as CEDA fruition, but after meeting with the architects on Friday, it sounds like they think they can turn something around pretty quickly to be in a development phase. Again, we got a grant for $23,000 to engage architects to come up with a concept. And so with the community partnership, we'll work on that concept and then have something that we can bring around to you for your approval. And then once we have gotten that, begin the development phase to try to find some private funders who might want to put their name on the Performing Arts Center at the high school. And the architects thought this could be from now until 18 months so we could have a Performing Arts Center which seemed like a really aggressive timeline, but it's pretty exciting to think that students who are sophomores now could be having the benefit of a much improved art space for performances they're seeing here. Grace might unfortunately miss out on that, but maybe she'll come back in a little bit. Grace will come back in a little bit. She'll come back in a little bit. Great, that sounds great. Okay, nobody has more questions for the principal to live on to the business manager report. Good evening, everyone. You have my report. I'll move down to the discussion items. I shared with you via email last week, our current FY21 year-end projections prior to any adjusting audit entries which we are currently undergoing as we speak right now. Revenue was $11,939,913.63. Your expenditures were $10,555,319.00 and 20 cents, leaving a projected surplus in the general fund of $1,384,594.43. Picking your deficit from FY20 in the general fund of $399,151. It's leaving you with a current projected general fund balance at the close of FY21 of $985,443. Any questions on that? I mean, that's pretty great that we've kind of turned it around that much. I am a little worried about how far off we were from the projections. I mean, it's great to be off in this direction but like our last projected surplus was gonna be around like $400 to $500,000. So going from that to 1.3 is a good surprise but it'd be nice to not have surprises. So that was a lot of that was Andrew. We still had to reconcile the closing out of the ESSER and CRF funds for FY21 as well as the additional grant funds and where we were able to offset general fund expenses. So that work still needed to be done when I provided that last projection. So that's part of this additional change is the additional federal funding that we had available to the district. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I mean, I think this is definitely a strange year with the COVID relief funds and all that stuff. Yeah, that's just my one comment on it but it is really nice to be able to get that done. And I know this is a combination of those relief funds but also a lot of hard work from the staff and administration to really focus on our fiscal footing. So I congratulate you guys on that. I think when we come to budget calendar and stuff, like if, you know, once this is audited, which is good is the audits underway. So we'll get confirmation but certainly then we need to talk about paying off food service debt, right? That we've been carrying in that enterprise fund which will be good. And then talking about as we build the budget for next year, the idea of going to the town to actually put some money away now in reserve funds as we discussed. I think that we've still got S or three which we have not even tapped into yet. We were hoping to use more of that to do, you know, work within the building and I think we can do some of that work in the building although there seems to be more and more pressure from the agency to use that to deal with focus on student achievement and learning about regression. And so what I think we need to do is just strategically both at this district but across the SU makes some determinations around and communicate to our communities that we've got some additional revenue that we may be using to offset what would typically be local costs that we would keep in the budget and that's permissible with S or three, you can supply it but looking to build up our building reserve funds to do the needed work that we have to around delay maintenance. So I just think as we're talking about this the communication plan for that will be critical and it's why we try to leverage as much S or two as we could in CRF to build up a surplus to not only pay off your debt but knowing that we had some pretty big capital improvements that we needed to do. So I just, I think in general those are things that we have to continue to communicate and help folks understand. I mean, this is exciting news and I want to be excited about this but we have done through some wild oscillation. Absolutely. And so it makes it, I don't know, it makes me this question until we get the audit. Agreed and that's why we're doing the audit, right? Right. But kind of just leave that to you. I think the way, I guess what I'm wrapping my head around right now is that we're in the black. So as your superintendent, I'm wrapping my head around that we're in the black but I believe we're gonna pay off our debt and that hopefully we'll have some money to set aside for capital improvements. That's where I'm at as far as I might head around at this point. And then as the audit gets completed then we'll have real numbers and confirmed numbers. The good news is the audit's happening this week and so we'll have those during the budget making season. Yeah, because how are things looking with like the pace of the audit process? Does it look like things are hopefully going more on schedule and on time with events that are happening? Derek can speak more specific. I'm feeling confident that we're gonna be all right. So they're starting with the SU as that's the main entity that then has impact on each of the member districts. The audit officially started yesterday. So they are working through the auditors will be here in our office Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of this week. Like I said, their primary focus is to start with the SU and then they'll work through each of the member districts as they go through that process. So as of right now, we are on target with our schedule. How's the projection for the SU looking too? Because that's one that depending on what direction that goes, that will adjust our numbers some too, right? I'll be sharing that with the full board next week. Yeah, I mean, the SU is looking in like and Tara can jump in. The last I knew is we were looking at a break even. But not a significant direction either way, but right around break even, which you're right as significantly impacted you in the past, you're 44% of the SU share. Do you think at some point we will be able to have something like the projection that you had where we list out exactly what that 1.3 million is kind of composed of? And more than just like the budget thing, but like this teacher, this, whatever those kind of things. Yeah, you mean like we were doing the two page projection? Yes. Like get into the nitty gritty about what actually resulted in the surplus? Right. Once it's confirmed, yeah, and we could do that. And then the plan is to give you that type of projection quarterly as well for this year. Just cause it wasn't adjusting much. And I felt like we were reaching at times to change the projection rather than be a true projection and have it be quarterly. If you want your statements monthly, you can get those on top of it. But I think to try to project a projection to me would be quarterly. And again, we can give you your expenditure reports monthly and the finance committee can talk more in depth about that. But in general, I felt like at times that wasn't changing much. And I just wanted to, again, like you said, Andrew be as accurate as possible and be a projection. Right, presumably like this. I would think that this is kind of a living document where you have somebody who is, you know, staffing changes, you update that document. Now that's kind of back to budget. Not necessarily like once a quarter, say, okay, well, we've done. I would think it'd be more. I'm happy to when a change comes bringing to you. Okay, it's just a living document. You can have monthly just know that it may not change. I think there's boards expecting it was gonna change every month. So just knowing that it may not change. And yeah, that could be like, we talk about it at the finance committee. Yeah, quarterly talk about it here. Yeah. Yeah, and I just want to say I do appreciate that the administration and the teachers, everyone has really pulled together if you could fully responsible, knowing that we had the deficit that we had. And I think that led to some of the projected surpluses that we were talking about that we're much more conservative than that. So I appreciate that sort of community response. You know, really challenging time. Does anybody have any more questions for Tara? All right, we're gonna get a report from the policy committee. You were at the most recent policy committee meeting. I couldn't make the second one where we looked at Tara. Oh, you weren't at the last one. Right, that was good. Andrew and I, would you like to talk about it? Sure, hello. So I guess at the last policy committee meeting, there were some revisions to the, I guess the main topic was the, I can't even remember the official name of it, the policy on equity. Anti-racism. Anti-racism policy. And so there's a draft, a fifth draft that I guess there will be coming out for us to review. It's out. It's out. Yeah. We should have got it. I sent it to the full board. It'll be in your packet again, though, for next week's meeting. Oh yeah, full of C4 data. Okay. It's on the website too, if folks want to reference it. The process would be that we'll be up for discussion at the full board and then see what happens from there and then I would come to us as a local board once the full board considers it. Any questions or anything on that policy committee? Okay. Moving on to our discussion items. We'll go with eight more on the task force developments. Pre-create and recruitment and marketing. Far as I know, we haven't really done anything on this yet. No, so I guess what I was looking to, we talked is admin. And so Andrew's willing to be the admin rep on the pre-K committee that just seemed natural. And Owen would take a lead on the marketing and recruitment slash marketing task force. And so what we need to just get a sense from the board is how many board members wanted to join. I think we have to have at least one. And then, you know, I really think it's important in the pre-K task force to have our pre-K coordinator, Renee Hinton, as part of that conversation. She's new to us. And certainly pre-K teacher, hopefully. And so we'd have a couple of faculty members within community. I think we should solicit community members that have a passion about this to join to start this important work as a task force. And same thing with recruitment and marketing, other than I'd like the board to think about extending the invitation around recruitment and marketing to some of the member towns within the supervisory union to give input on how we could do a better job of communicating to our families because I think that they're the ones that are gonna help give us input on how we can be more effective around this. And I will tell you that I've had community members reach out to me and principals within the organization who are interested in helping you with this work. And so I think that that perspective would be helpful. And I'd like you to just consider that. That's a good idea. And certainly some students too. I think that in general, I've been saying this, but I don't think I've said it publicly in a board meeting, the sustainability of this supervisory union in our member districts is certainly on, for me, the goal of keeping a third of our students within the organization, where we have some control around cost. That is not the case right now. I think that that should be something that the board talks about as a goal, both locally and at the SU level potentially, because in general, that to me is the best sustainable way forward based into the type of organization we are around many districts within a larger WRVSU, but we do have a central middle and high school. And so when we know that families are driving by currently right now, and I think we have a lot to offer. So it's definitely part of the work bringing on someone to help do some additional communication work with Kate McLean, that's part of the ESSER grant. And she should be on that task force as well, because I think she will help us spearhead how do we do a better job of promoting? Because in general, there's some great things happening, I still don't think outside of our communities that folks know. I'm sorry, what was her name? Kate McLean, Shannon. Kate McLean, okay, thank you. Yeah. Do you think it makes sense to look out some of the employers in the Bethel, Royalton region and find out the demographics of where their employees are coming from? And so when we're looking at two-way recruitment, you know, really focusing on communities where you know the parents are coming to work in our community. I don't know if that's- You're saying for members of the, on the task force. For members of the task force. Yeah. Just if that's the place to collect data to know where to target some of our efforts. So really, I just need to know from the board what level of like, Jamie, let's pull this together and get a going you need from me, right? And the principles or how much of a leadership role do you want to take as each member to pull it together and get it going? That's really what I'm looking for. And when I say Jamie, get it going, I'm going to look to Kate to help me get one of the task force going. And then Andrew, we'll talk to Renee Hinton about assisting us to get the pre-K group up and running. But again, if you want to take the lead and say, no, we're going to spearhead that as the board member, that's fine too. I just need to know what you're trying to say. I was going to be the pre-K board member. If anybody else wants to step up on that, I'm happy to let somebody else do it just because, you know, with coaching in the middle school, it has been difficult in the fall to find time. But I'm still happy to do it, but it would be helpful if somebody could get that organized. Because I do think we need to have that, like in the next couple of months of recommendation of what we want to do so that we can include it in whatever budget. I don't want to go through another budget season without figuring out what we want to do on that. Because otherwise, you know, we're waiting for another year. What I think in order to pull this together quickly, Andrew, I think it's meeting with Renee. I think she's going to call to help us do some of this work. And I think we just have to be clear that we say to folks, here's the task force. Here are the meeting dates. We just articulate them and we say to folks, if you can commit, just know already, like here's the times we're meeting. And we're rolling with it. Do you know what I mean? Like it's a standing regular meeting because I think sometimes what holds us up is, and that's why I want it to be a task force, not a committee of the board, is that we're trying to figure out who can make it. Do we have a quorum? I think we just, we need a task force and go and then allow the task force to come back and report out to the board. That sounds good. Does that make sense? Yeah. So Jamie, I was the board member on the recruitment side and working with Owen, which seems like a dynamic duo right there or in trouble. But it appears that you have some contacts that are interested. If you wanted to work on getting that sort of first meeting set up and then we can take it from there, that seems like it might work pretty well. Yeah, no, so Shayna, what I'll do is I'll email you and Owen who have shown interest from that by you and then we could work on an email. And I think in general too, just a, I think we should put a blurb out to the community about both of these to see if we can solicit some other interest as well. Does that make sense too? So it just- Sure. Yeah. Yep. Okay, let's plan to get that out by next week and then next week we'll get that letter out, but we'll start by that and what I mean, just so we're clear is that we've already identified one of the meeting times because I think that needs to go in the letter. Mm-hmm. So we'll start submitting too. Sounds good. Okay, anything else you need from us on that? No, I appreciate it. I'm excited. I think that both of these things are really very important and I'm looking forward to it. Okay, budget and calendar. 2021-22 and a rural priorities. Tara, do you want to talk about this? Since that's like the year again to start our budget process. So in the month of September for the budget timeline, we look to the board to give us their bottom line direction so we can start our meetings with the leadership team to start developing the budget as we did last year. So is there any thoughts on the board? I think this is gonna be a tricky year because we've got a million dollar surplus that we gotta figure out. I do not think we should set as much as we can into reserve funds and use some of it for tax relief, but it would be nice to be able to get off of the kind of austerity footing that we've been on. Like I'm curious to hear from you guys. We've kind of been on the spending freeze for the last couple of years. Like do we have pent up stuff that needs to happen at this point as far as supplies of books or whatever else? Is that something we should use some of those surplus for now? Or the priority from a board perspective is always to do the best we can while keeping tax rates under control. So that is where I'm coming from. That would be my key points. I'm curious to hear from you guys about where we're at kind of from your perspective after now that we're kind of through the deficit time. I think after the austerity, especially of last year with the budget freeze that started at the end of the first quarter, that having a budget to spend it all feels really great. And while we did cut chunks of our budget to come in where we did with a level funded budget last year, there are still significant resources in the budget that was passed. So I feel good about that. I think teachers are feeling good that they can resupply some supply closets that has really gotten kind of error in the last, especially the last year. But I think we're also optimistic because this S or two grant provides a lot of extra resources that will make it feel like we're making investments in things. For example, there's $30,000 in the S or two grant for outdoor education that will be able to really upgrade the outdoor high ropes, low ropes course. It's here in Bethel and add some features in South Royalton, which will be really exciting and we'll have a nice high impact. I think our two of our PE teachers went down to Grattleboro and spent the day learning about high ropes courses and they're actually trying to get some help with Green Mountain Power to install some poles to start building stuff. So that's exciting stuff. The other thing is that we've got a lot of money coming in for math. So we're putting in a new math program this year in the elementary school and where that would have come out of our normal operating budget. It's now being paid for with grant money. So we're not gonna have to find the money within the budget to pay for new elementary math materials. Likewise at the high school, we've got $20,000 of math supplies of which 10,000 was written into the budget. So we're gonna have $10,000 left over in our local budget this year. It was supplanted by this S or two grant that were allowed to supplant with us where it usually grants don't allow you to supplant. So I think there's room to move and make some good investments. This is how I go. Yeah, man, I guess now in Andrea and Owen speak up, I think from where I sit, I think the delayed maintenance of our buildings is something that really concerns me. I think the heating system in here is very urgent. We did repair over the summer to get us through this upcoming winter. But I would say that while our consultant say that was to get through this winter and that we really need to be planning for what are we doing next summer? And so I think that that's one of those areas that we're gonna be thinking about full board is gonna hear me talk about PCV testing that is starting to happen across the state. I'm concerned about that because a lot of our schools are dated in the area where PCVs could come up. And as you know, we have a high school already in the state that's vacant because of PCVs. The legislature passed this required testing. And I don't know if Lisa's concerned about it and ran off or not, but. Thank you. If you're working in a school and you're not concerned about it. But there's no funding tied to currently right now of how to mitigate it if we're high. And so I just, I think there's some significant unknown costs potentially for us in our facilities that we just have to keep a real close eye on. I think that that for me is something that I'm certainly cognizant of. I think we just have to continue to prioritize this year. If you're asking people to jump in. Go for it. Okay. I totally agree with that, but I would also say that since Jamie has become our superintendent, there's been a real shift to investing in our teachers and investing in their professional development and really bringing the access to PD home. So people aren't having to travel here and there and everywhere. And I think that's made some nice beginning changes. And I would love to see that to be continued as a priority because I think it's gonna benefit the kids in the long run. With the SR3 and SR2 and this money that's supplanting the local budget money, like I'd be a little concerned about not funding areas of the budget and then the next year, you know, like we're not touching that. Yeah, okay. That's how we can make certain what we're doing sustainable. Right. Yeah, so no, we would not be looking to change that. And again, we'll have to explain that. Why is revenue up? You know, why are we still budgeting the way we are? And it's really to ensure we can be sustainable what we got. So yeah, I know I'm in complete agreement with what you're saying Andrew. Okay. The other thing I would bring up as we're going into budgeting is just it does seem like there's staffing shortages everywhere and are we going to need to budget more for staffing in order to be able to attract? Like it's one thing to budget for a position but you can't fill it. That's not, you're helpful. So, is that something you need to take into consideration as we get on the budget? Well, we're opening negotiations of course with our teaching staff. I think that the contract that we have with the support staff was a really positive one been ratified. So also support staff that they engage in professional development that we offer can see a buck raise next year which is pretty significant. For us, I don't think we've done a buck raise an hour in a long, long time. And so we did take that into account and we knew that we could budget accordingly for it and that's why the increase in pay was year two of that master agreement because we knew we could budget. So certainly Tara knows to be budgeting for that. And then like I said, we're going to be starting teacher contract negotiations hopefully in the next couple of months. Does anybody have anything else? Just remember last year, we really looked at our goals but we looked at our goals as a way to guide the budgeting process. And when I read through your report, I found myself thinking about like the MTSS and those pieces, if we were fully staffed how those programs would be needed to do that. And so I'm just looking forward to that. So I'm glad to hear that we're still going to budget for those things. And hopefully starting the hiring process early next year we'll build some of those gaps. I don't know. Excuse me. No, I was just going to say, I think it's important in our budget that because we've got all the supplemental monies coming in that we not really budget for any new continuing programs because once that extra money's gone, we're not going to have the money to keep those programs going. I think it's important that we do a lot of things that are one time things that will really make a huge difference. Yeah, I agree Peggy, thank you. I think it's important though for us to continue to say that. And of course, in addition, when we think about the excitement around what Owen's going to talk to you about is we expect that that's going to bring in close to three quarters of a million dollars too over the next three years for us to look to expand some things and do some exciting things in the community. What's the status of the RFQ for... That is out? Okay. Yeah, so that's good news. Tara, do you know how long folks had in that request? October 8th. Okay, there you go. Yeah, so we need to get that wrapped up too. Was that what you were looking for for us for? Yeah, I mean, I think my sense is, is that you want us to continue, I'm just going to paraphrase you, tell me if I got it wrong. Instructing that you want us to continue to focus on investment of our goals. And part of that I did hear clearly just so folks know is looking at opportunities to expand childcare and support both before and after school hours and in the summer. That's a bigger conversation, of course, too with one planet, but I certainly have heard that. So that is something that I think we need to be looking at when we think about student support. And, but doing it in a way that's sustainable. And so, how do we strategically budget to keep programming, if not increase it, but in a sustainable approach? That's what I'm hearing. And of course, as far as the tax burden things go, we find out a lot more about that as December approaches, of course, as we start to get projected yields, equalize pupils, things of that number. Right, you want to say something? Yeah, you mentioned, I'm going to resume the project, committee meetings. Finance committees? They have been happening. Oh, you have been having, yeah. Move on. Ready, ready, three, four, at least, sorry for it, and... Bob Gray's off, but Rob is on, in this place. Thank you, Owen, you want to tell us about the community school grant? I am happy to talk about that. What good news? It's not often we get to talk like this about this kind of good news, but I'll tell you, let me give you the first, there's five points in structure that the agency laid out, and I'll just read them out to you, and you'll get to know this because I think we're going to be bringing it back to you a lot more. So one is integrated student support. So how do we support students? So we do that a lot already, but this is to help support that even more. Number two is expanded and enriched learning time and opportunities. So this is helping kids engage in after school, before school, out of school activity. This might even be some of that childcare stuff we were talking about. This does not just land in the middle school. This is a RUD grant. It's starting in the middle school. Our plan is to, in the three years, just have the first one focused in the middle school and then add the rest of the pre-K12 portions, and then also keep adding to those and join in with some of the SU partners. So the first one is supporting students. The second one is creating enrichment opportunities. The third one is active family and community engagement. This is a piece where we know we can always increase and do better. But to have this kind of support is going to be lovely. The fourth one is collaborative leadership and practices. This plays right into the restorative practices work we've been doing, the work that we've been doing, and that we would reach that into the community. And the fifth one is safe, inclusive, and equitable learning environments. Again, this is a great place for us to partner with the community. As we saw with our recent anti-racist policy readings, that folks are very interested in the equity and safety and inclusion opportunities. One of the things that we are looking at, and we put into the grant as an example, is a community-wide book read, or several of them, where everybody in the community starting in Bethel, no matter who you are, whether you have kids in the school or not, we would get books, we would all read them, and very much like the Bethel University model, we would reach out and connect with each other and talk about the book and the subjects that are raised. So again, as much as it says Bethel this year, we're not looking at that as our only boundary. We're going right up into the other campus at the high school and into the elementary as we can. Just so you know, Tara and Jamie have been incredibly helpful. This is the biggest grant I've ever been involved in this closely, and I'm really happy to say that I got a good team supporting me because I'm ready to spend the money, and they're like, there is no money yet. Slow down, dude. And it really helped for me because I'm a go-go guy. I don't know if you realize that, but one big part of this annually is we hire a position that would coordinate this whole piece. And we put a good amount of money in there so we can attract somebody. And attracting somebody is gonna be the key because we know there's not a lot of people available. So we need somebody that, and they've offered that you can have part-time two different people, three different people, just gotta tell them how you're gonna do it. But that's a bunch of parts. I can tell you some more stuff. There's lots of cool, juicy things in there. One of the things that we put in there was ski and snowboarding that families would be able to go together, maybe on weekends. Kids would go in the winter like a full day during January, at least once a week. And so how about that? We'll start there and I'll back down and see if there's any questions or comments. They go for a full day once a week? Say it again? You said they go skiing a full day once a week? Yeah, in the middle school we used to do that where, and then in more, that a full day would be spent at the mountain. And students, of course, there's some stuff about you having to have your work done in on time, at least made a major effort depending on your abilities. That also included rentals and a, safety training and a ski instructor. So one of the first things there was student support. What, could you elaborate on that a little bit? What do you mean? Sure. Yeah, it's a good one. So integrated student support, and one of the ways we wrote our smart poll was that by the end of year three, 50% of our students will meet the expectations in reading and math up from our very low numbers now. We still feel like that might be a low bar for us, but we're going to hit that bar. That's an example. So the way we might support that, Andrew, is to run an after school academic club or to create summer boosters where kids could join into some sort of academic programming that also had a camp atmosphere. Then with, like, curious how we engage the kids that need to be engaged to that. So part of, one part of this grant that I really like is there's a call for a pretty comprehensive stakeholder group, including students. And part of that is, you know, the students and anybody, the community members, faculty, staff, whoever on that are going to receive a stipend for being on that committee. And one of the things they're pushing, and we know is really powerful, is if students are helping make these decisions, so we ask students and teachers and faculty and community members, what's going to bring kids to this? They're going to know and they're going to share it with us. And we're going to then also reach out to students and give them some, like, SM for survey feedback of what would it take to engage you in a summer reading or math program. And it might be that you, very much like we do now, you do a morning section of academics and an afternoon section of team-building collaborative work. Is there something in the chat? Tammy had a question in the chat. So you identified integrated student support, expanded and enriched learning time and opportunities, active family and community engagement, collaborative leadership and practices, but what was the fifth one? Safety and inclusion. Pardon? Safety and inclusion. Thank you. Safe as safe includes an equitable learning environment. One of the things we're going to do at the front end of this is gather information from people. We're coordinating with a few of the Bethel initiatives that are going on right now, because they're also, there's two grants in Bethel Town Proper that are to build community. And we're going to work with those folks that have received those grants that are managing them to try to weave our pieces together so we don't go out and ask people in town the same questions three different times. Well, I'd be interested in seeing everything that went into the grant application or, you know, share whatever you've got as far as what the implementation is actually going to look like. Sure, I would love to do that. It might be something that I would work with Jamie and Tara on. And it could be maybe, I'm going to throw this out there with anybody. Maybe before the next board meeting, we do a little grant presentation. Peggy. Here we go. I was just going to say that I've liked everything that I have heard, the opportunities that are going to be presented. My concern is that when this grant is done, that we don't lose those things because we can't afford them anymore because we don't have the grant. Well, what you need to do and we need to make sure of is that these things are sustainable. If we're talking about taking eighth graders to Washington, D.C., we not only want to do it this year, we want to do it every year because everybody should be able to do that. So we need to make sure that's something that we can sustain in our normal budgets when this grant is done. We'll do more. And I have a new superintendent who won't let me do any less. Peggy. He heard this throughout the process. Don't box me in, Bradley. Don't box me in. And you know, it's a good point and we know the high value of these things and I couldn't agree more. One of the things we're talking about is at least in the middle school, trying to create some sort of trip for each of them and getting it bigger like you're going to ninth grade, your last trip at middle school, you go to D.C. But we go to Holbert with the seventh graders now and do some overnight stuff with them and we're talking about a consideration for the sixth grade. And those things are important as you know and they do need to be built in. And Jamie's been really clear. You want something? Tell me what you can't have. And you know, you've got to balance the scales. I am so behind that. It was very embarrassing to be a part of that budget that ended up in Red Ink and I look forward to never living that life again. We've also had this conversation in the grant or shared this in the grant that we want to honor our elders. You know, the majority of Vermonters now are gray-haired people. I know them well. I see one in the mirror every morning. And these folks have, not me, these folks have so much information that's just sitting there at home. We want them to come into our schools and us to go into their settings and learn from them. The idea may be that everybody has an elder mentor or we have some sort of honor, maybe even monthly, that they come in for lunch and that we learn from them. So it's pretty exciting and I think that's important to bring people into that kind of stuff and not just be done with people. So we're pretty excited about it. Thanks for your work on it. Does anybody else have questions or comments? There will be. Owen, did you thank the faculty that also worked on this? I did very much so. Tony Snow was very instrumental in this just so you know. And Onda was very helpful. There was a heavy lift and folks came up with ideas and some details and they have been thanked but thank you for reminding me on that. Yeah, I just wanted to do it publicly. When did you care about this grant? How did we get the idea to apply for it? Well, the agency put it out in either late July or early August and it was due August 27. No, it was August 17. I'm sorry. We had about a two-week 10-day turnaround on it and it ended up being 25 pages. And we got it in. I actually pushed the button for it to go in at 3.59 on the day it was due at 4 o'clock. And then they told us that we were awarded this on September 1. This was a major fast turnaround from some federal money that ended up at the agency. And it's also really a pilot because right now out of there's a group up at Shelburne Farms that's organizing a way for the five groups, five schools that got this money to get together out, how to create community school institutions and also how to work together. So it's been a fast turn. This has been like really fast. Meanwhile, we open school and we're living in a pandemic. Yeah. Wow, thanks so much for putting in the effort. It's great. Okay. Well, the next thing was going to be the student representatives on the board and this was just here so they could meet you guys. So thank you for coming on the board. We're very pleased to be able to hear from the students and have you guys be with us. Andrew, just real quick. We had talked about the students being on reports to the board and we talked about bringing them back so I know that Principal McCracken sorry, let's call him McCormick Principal McCracken is getting laid I guess. The kind of prep for you for tonight. I would like to sit down too and we'll just talk about I would really like you to have a monthly report that you can provide the board so that there's really some purpose around you being here and I think we'll get better as we go to ensure that your voices is incorporated into the conversation and that the work is relevant to you as well. So just know that and thanks as we get better about this I hope that you'll find that it's you're really feeling like you're part of the conversation. I'm not saying you weren't tonight but I'm just saying I think we'll get better and better about it. We have yet to kind of discuss anything into the council. Cool, so yeah let's connect and we'll talk about that. Feel free to raise your hand or whatever during the meeting if you have questions or comments that you want to bring up during this discussion. Thank you guys because it'll be part of it. Thank you. Alright, it's outdoor classroom time during COVID-19. So I know that there's a concern and continues to be a concern about our mitigation efforts to COVID-19 and we've leveraged after learning well last year. I think we learned a lot from that. I would say that we're indoors more this year than we were last year. We'll just acknowledge that. And I think our data in general we continue to track it. Knock on wood, we've had no issues in any buildings in our SU so far this year except for this one. And we do know that outdoors is the safest place to be. The data just speaks to that. And so I did talk to Principal Bowen to highlight some things that are going on in the elementary level right now and also knowing that I think one of the issues that we really are navigating and dealing with is lunchtime just so you know. And how do we navigate lunchtime, stay within the master agreement and ensure that we're keeping kids really safe, right? And so that is something that I would say that we're continuing conversations on. Again, we've just brought in another staff person that we've just onboarded that will start at the Royalton Campus next week. Actually two of them, so that's helping as we start to increase staffing levels. I think we'll be able to do some more creative things once we get those staffing levels up too. But Principal Bowen, you want to jump in? Yeah, I mean I think you said a lot of it. I have tried to make sure that there are accessible outdoor spaces for any of the classes that want to be outside. I know in Bethel just because of the canopy that goes around the elementary they opt for just having access to that and didn't ask for tents. I think in Royalton we have four tents and so those are available for those classes to be outside. I think briefly surveying about how much time people are outside. I think on average most classes are outside for an hour a day for learning and play. But on eco days it can range up to three hours or more depending. I think the layout of the Bethel Campus allows for eating outside easier. The layout of the Royalton Campus is harder to get with trees and little people outside easy. But I think people want to be outside. This is an easy time of year to be outside, easier time of year to be outside. I think the elementary teachers are still also trying to balance the first six weeks of school and we are trying to learn how to be in school. I appreciate the concern about wanting to maybe be outside more and maybe having a protocol around when certain things happen, maybe when we would want to push out a little bit more. I look forward to that kind of direction. Owen? Yeah, I personally spent two and a half hours outdoors today. I was lucky to be able to cover a pod setting in the woods and the kids taught me all about their campsite. And I figured, Jamie asked us this today and I'm estimating about seven to eight hours outdoors for kids. And it's not all at once of course and it's chunks and it depends on the weather and I think one of the things for me with us being in right now, we're being really the kids, in fact, they are amazingly good at this. And schools are about wearing masks and disinfecting. I feel like we're doing an amazing job and we all want to be out more than we are, trust me. But we'll continue to get outside. Oh, if I can just jump into it. I think a really important point is that the positivity that we're seeing, I can't confirm in building spread at this point. So some of the positivity that we're seeing is community spread. I think that the more we can emphasize to our community that we need to be masked and still diligently working to be careful, I think there's a lot of guard let up and in general, the data points to that in school is some of the safest time. Whether we're in or out, but that what we're seeing is folks contracting in the community and then coming into school positive. And then students are identified as close contacts and we send students home and then they have to get tested. But in general at this point, I can't confirm in school contraction that occurred in the first spread. We've had it in the past in one building, but in general the spread seems to our mitigation techniques certainly work. And I'm certainly glad that we came back last. Yeah, I think just informally my own kids. I think the only time they're spending outside is as each day and then the eco class once a week. And I think other parents have their kids the same thing and like your comments about why aren't they spending more time outside and I think especially with some of these having to go remote for COVID, like especially with the kindergarten here, just with the amount of time that's being spent indoors and then it means everybody is close contact. So while there's not any transfer in the building you now have I don't know how many kids are in the kindergarten, but let's say 15 kids. That's 15 families that are getting impacted by that and have to make adjustments. And for some families they have support networks that can help out with that and then for other families they don't. And it's a stressful for all of them but especially for the people that don't have any support beyond their own direct family that's their kids in the school and then their spouse or something like that. And it creates a lot of stress and I think they're wondering are there ways to again get outdoors more and sort of limit the level of what classifies as close contact and I don't know I mean I think maybe the staffing goes to part of that where we just can't go outside enough to really avoid it because staffing and being able to keep an eye on the kids but looking back to things that were happening last year to try to make sure that they stayed outdoors and limited contact time but if there were strategies that could come back in I think people would be happy to hear about that. So I would say and Andrew you can jump in. I think we went into this year really organizing ourselves that we would limit close contact to a great level. I would say you're probably never going to mitigate the risk of if someone comes into intensive in the elementary we're going to deem that grade level a close contact. I also think the definition of close contact is four hours and that's a long day to be outside and I think we're also telling our teachers we want them to raise their test scores and we want them to use some of these programs for fidelity which do kind of need some technology maybe or it's easier to employ inside so while I'm not saying it's not doable if the shift I feel like last year the priority was just trying to be in school and be as normal as possible I feel like this year the shift was to try to really raise the bar and raise our test scores so a close contact definition and trying to stay outside enough to not meet that I think would be a challenge. That's what I was going to finish with and I'm excited as far as just trying to navigate the primary grades K12 outside and provide explicit instruction is really challenging so I would agree that I think we need to break out the day I think we need to get kids outside and fresh air as much as possible and I think we need to continue those conversations but I do think in order to provide explicit instruction especially to our young Miss grades it's really challenging outside not to have them distracted and frankly your cohorts are getting bigger you know you have a first grade class in South Charleston I believe it's got what 19 Andrew I mean that right there that's you know it's exciting that we have cohorts of 1920 again but 19 or 20 with one teacher trying to actually teach outside is child when they are inside are we making sure windows are open and like we're doing what we can yeah now we still are trying to do all those precautions and again I think that those are working if we're noticing spread that's happening within our buildings and I think we need to dig into our protocols again but that's right now I have every reason to believe that the buildings are contracting outside the building and bringing in it and I think that's an important thing for folks to realize and the more we can be diligent as a community I think the less we're going to hit these pause buttons so that means so far the mitigation efforts that are happening in school seem to be effective yeah I think it's important that we keep our eye on the ball though if an end game in sight if the vaccines are able to get to the lower age group then I think it'd be okay to you know like that should be happening soon and then we don't have to worry so much about the spread but like right now our numbers are as high as they were at the peak before and it's a higher percentage of kids that are contracting it so the risks seem to be more than they were last year but if we could kind of buckle down for a month or two then hopefully things would be easier after that yeah I would say that in general our in-person learning hasn't changed much other than the eating right and that's why I brought that up that is the biggest change from what we were doing last year and so that is if I can get staffing enough to cover duties then that will make it easier for us to try to change maybe what our procedures look like I would tell you that that is to me the biggest difference in our procedures right now is how lunch is happening and I've got concerns about that too Demi so Audrey I really appreciated your comment you know the definition of close contact is four hours which is a long time to potentially be outside and at the same time teachers are being asked to raise test scores doing both is difficult but then we keep talking about lunch and staffing and I don't understand the hurdle here about lunch and then in having that you know concern lunch and staffing and then knowing last year we had potentially emergency procedures in getting to the classrooms but now all of that is or isn't in existence I'm having a hard time as a public community member understanding the lunch concern knowing the hurdles that we overcame last year and how they look this year because this year is different we're not in a state of emergency we don't have those education mandates but I don't understand how lunch looks different this year aside from they can now use the cafeteria someone clarify that that's the biggest difference Tammy and I would say we were at full staff last year I'm much shorter staff this year than I was a year ago so I was able to cover duties differently to ensure that students could eat in the classroom where now we're having to utilize eating outside which is good and or in the cafeteria because they don't have the staff to provide coverage both for lunch and for recess and ensure that my teachers get what they deserve in regards to a lunch break which is part of the master agreement and so that's that's the hurdle around lunch okay thank you Andrew do you want to jump in in addition to that I think that the state of emergency really was you know added a different layer to this last year and I know that I hear people saying like this still feels very emergent to them given their kids are in school but last year teachers were willing to sign a memorandum of understanding so that they did some things outside of their teacher contract like they were willing to be potted with their classes all day and so they were happy to eat lunch with their children so they literally stayed with their kids from lunch and brought their own kids out to recess and so that was part of the that same MOU that we were with teachers so they do have a right to a duty free lunch and so that means I have to have some people on recess duty and some people inside covering the lunch duty and there's not enough people to cover separate lunch duties which is I think what Jamie said but just it seems like it should be simple but it's not as simple as I wish it was it's also worth some tax savings and level fund last year we also eliminated a number of para positions at least on each campus those para's were helping to provide elementary lunch and recess coverage but even addition to that we still I think could do it if I was staffed fully with para's I mean we have a number of para's we still need that are special in para's that can do those duties that we just have to fill is the special part of it where you had special teachers that weren't kind of doing like a lot of the special things were happening that certainly helped with the pods and navigating some of that as well right thank you for explaining the MOUs the teachers you know that additional responsibility that the teachers took on in that period of time it's helpful in understanding the broader picture here was the MOU a statewide thing or a local thing local thing would it be possible to just for a couple of months talk to them about another MOU as I said like I think once the vaccines are available to the whole student population a lot of this will be less urgent for para's anyway I certainly could I would again caution the board that I think our teaching staff is pretty thin and we've had resignations already this year across the SU and I just think we have to be a bit cautious of what more we're asking them to do all right anybody have anything else for the outdoor classroom we'll move on to the vacant board representation so we've had two committee members from Bepple Chris Jarvis and Ronnie Brangville have reached out with interest in serving on the board until the next election for representative of Bepple and I can get out of the way and I thought that the board could just allow them to introduce themselves that are interested in as to why and then if you guys had questions and then you could go into executive session and come out on the point that's been our process in the past I'll get out of the way you ready to go first I just had a couple of things that I had picked up a couple of minutes along but first of all can you hear me from over here sorry so my name is Chris Jarvis if you don't know me I'm a lifelong monitor 15 years in the town of Bepple you know I have two bachelors of science degrees I'm just pointing that out because with the last meeting that was kind of debauched by that but the I3 got our one to graduate in 2020 and two that are currently in middle school I'm a very active community member both at the school in the town some examples of that is coaching and donating my time through the youth sports program over the last 15 years middle school coaching basketball for five years I'm an active parent when it comes to field trips and other school related activities I've worked with Principal Bowen over the last 11 years to donate holiday meals for elementary families in need I actually ran for school director in 2012 which won by majority of both but had to pull my name due to the conflicts of interest due to basketball I'm currently the ranking member of the select board and the chair of the select board in town and I've done on the select board since 2016 I have a ton of board related experiences and committee related experiences I have a lot of experience when it comes to budgeting and financial I believe in representing all citizens and not pushing my own selfish agenda anybody that has worked with me or been on a board with me knows that the people come first I don't go on they're thinking that I'm pushing an agenda I typically represent what I call the majority of the citizens which tend to be the silent majority of the citizens and for anybody who doesn't know what the silent majority is is the majority of citizens in our community that rarely talk openly about the issues that they see in the community and they often don't vote we have 2,000 people in the town about 200 people go to here so it's a very small amount I have a lot of conversations with the silent majority through town school activities and some of the concerns that they have are as follows the silent majority have a lot of concerns with the school with regards to the financial path of the school and the tax relationship to them the silent majority has a lot of concerns when it comes to the education of the children and the low current low test scores that we have the silent majority has concerns in regards to the faculty and student family turnover ratios that we see right now the silent majority has concerns in regards to the current COVID policies and the inconsistencies of the policies the silent majority has concerns in regards to just the overall school board functionality not making the tough decisions lack of transparency and not being trustworthy the silent majority has concerns in regards to the teaching of critical race theory and or any part of it with their children the silent majority has concerns in regards to bullying harassing both physically and sexually in our schools and the silent majority at the same time has a confusion of why we can't just have a comprehensive approach to addressing all of these including racism rather than do it separately I'm here because my children education depends on it and the silent majority reasons because they often don't speak up for themselves if you have me if not we will run thank you I'm Rod Neary from Bethel I was on Merge committee for three years and I was on the school board for three years and I decided not to run for reelection last year there was some personal issues I was having it was a rough year for different things I'm over that now things are going on pretty smoothly other than the media that I need to replace next month but my policies haven't really changed much when I work with you and I think I can be an asset to the community questions for the candidates I was wondering because I was not on here last year what exactly your policies were like the brief of review of them I was just curious well I tend to be a moderate with the students first and I do have a lot of concerns also I like to consider all angles I guess before I make a decision and I don't know I like to direct into things that are going on right now in the school I think that has been some improvement over the last couple of years I can't think of it in particular I think decision dot I guess students that would be my policy and I like it nice Chris can you be more specific about what your degrees are in you said they're in healthcare yeah I can only just mention them because I did have some questions with the last school board meeting apparently the people that spoke after me put their credentials for it seems like that your opinion matters more so I have two bachelor's of science one specifically in health science which is a pre-medical degree in sports medicine and both were through the University of Cassington I will say it was a concern of mine that you spoke at that last meeting with a pretty specific point of view and then when other people started speaking you left and that doesn't say to me that you're very willing to hear other people's of view I'm not sure if you want to respond to that at the last meeting I had very limited service I actually was on my phone so I got on just for the public comment to voice my concerns of the matter I actually did listen to the two ladies that had the other two public comments and then I got knocked after them I think if you talk to any of my constituents in regards to the town town manager and the select board members they know that that I've never wanted to put any of my ideas before the committee rather than people as a whole and you say you speak for a silent majority which you speak of like it's a specific group can you tell us how many are in this majority do you have a that concerns me that you have a possible agenda that you're saying is coming from a group but there's no identification of them first I would say to answer that question for anybody that's been in the community for a period of time they know that there are individuals that talk and have concerns and they talk privately amongst themselves which is a majority of people and then there's a few of us like myself that actually have the courage to present those ideas towards a group and those are the differences we see that every day I mean a majority of people in life don't want to speak but they will speak privately to others and I have conversations with people who all walks of life to town or for just normal life these things come up all the time but I think everybody should have the right to voice their own feelings and opinions because that's the only way we are able to work together as a group if you don't bring our own opinions and forward it's kind of the whole group of not getting enough ideas and they make decisions and I think that we would absolutely agree that people have a right to speak their mind and share their opinions and we're happy to hear them I would also say that change is made by the people who show up and so if there are opinions I would hope that you would urge people to come and speak for themselves questions for the candidates if you want to our executive session now how do we want to do this I think you should just move to your new executive session it would just be the board and the rest of us would leave that should work we could do the public comment real quick if you'd like to do that so we're going to jump to the final public comment is there any public comment at this time Demi? Hi I am participating in these meetings as much as I can from a community member perspective and I really appreciate that much of the administration knows the ESSER or SREP or the grants that go with that as a community member I'm really confused by the ESSER 1 and the ESSER 2 is there a resource I can talk to more about that is my first question and I don't know if I should pause to hear a response on that or if I should ask my second question at the same time I could say that there's some DFDA videos that go over the various grants that I could forward to you if you're interested it's all kind of technical but it goes over to different COVID relief grants that have come out and specifically what they were born and where they came from if that's something you want to look at Yes, it sounds like it reads like stereo instructions which would be delightful for me and I mean that, I like those things Thank you, Andra, for providing the link So that was my first question and I'll try to get that link quick The second question is that I find the business manager Tara does a great job of presenting her information and as many times as I try to write it down to capture the information and actually look at the numbers I can't and as a community member who doesn't attend every single meeting I don't know how the community can stay caught up on those updates Is there any suggestions the board members can give so that community members can kind of follow that better I do understand that in a public setting meeting, not all data needs to be listed on the handout, the update that Tara provides to the board but I continue to find myself at a loss in trying to make sense of it I think the projections that she was providing were particularly helpful in that it was a two-pager and a more digestible summary of what was going on with the budget and current spending and stuff so I think that's one to look for and that's usually included in the packet when it's available and I think we're talking about having that quarterly available I think this, what she provided this time was kind of a very detailed view of things but we're hoping that we'll get a summary that will be more digestible in the future so I that's what I would comment is that sometimes there are the detail things but we are going to try and provide a quarterly more digestible summary of how things are looking okay Shannon, did you have something? I was going to say I think that a lot of different people come to our school website for a lot of different reasons and one of those reasons that would be great to have is a little box on the side is hey how are we doing budget-wise this year because that's why everyone comes to the town meeting every year and the townspeople want to know and they have a right to know so maybe we can work with Tara that quarterly we put up a blurb whatever that blurb is we're on track on the budget or we're running a little bit of a surplus right now but remember this is coming up or God forbid we're running a deficit but here's how we're going to address it and some of those things we have a place to put it so that people can come and see what's happening and some of the initiatives like hey we got this grant and we're going to be doing this community projects and some of the money stuff like in one column would be nice yeah that might be something for the finance committee to work on sorry yeah something in as close to English as possible right I think you all are trying and I appreciate it I don't want to reinvent the wheel you all have enough work to do the insight you provide has been helpful so thank you good comment then thanks I wasn't here for board comment so I want to ask one little tiny question while we're doing public comment if that is okay okay hey Ray and and maybe principles how come we got a blue form that has to be filled out for medical that looks like exactly the same questions we already filled out and is that getting fixed for next year please sure I can answer that I guess the question everybody answered wrong but go ahead we did have an issue with one of the questions and how folks understood it I would also say that the backside of it didn't print for the health that particular health form well so there were some concerns in the nursing department about something getting messed up because of that and so yes we did meet even again on Friday during in service to talk about how could we ensure that this is operating at a distinguished level for next year right is that fair yes because everything we can do to reduce parent abrasion yay so because I did a comment earlier I would follow up on that to say I did like the whole form, the family ID stuff and the way that it did remember things so I thought I was going to have to copy and paste stuff from the previous time so I had a little word document going with stuff to copy and paste but then how it remembered those things so it was very it was very slick to work with after you got through like one kid and started to realize some of the ability that it had after that so it was a good first go at it I would say but having that form come home again was so yeah nurses generally don't work in the summer and a lot of the work leading up to the end happened during the summer and in that case the paper form did not translate well to the online version yeah there were a few fields that looked like that some of those questions were there on the online one but there was a couple things that maybe weren't there especially like I think there was an update like I my needs a trigger point questions but it seemed like there was a couple questions so the nurses across yes you did do some edits to the form last week that went out recently excuse me I was just going to say that not being as technologically advanced as some people I had a horrible time dealing with all these computer forms for sports or for the health through the general registration I really wanted paper I agree that the sports one is still particularly hard to use you have to print it off and then put it back that one is tough Peggy we always have a paper option I'm not sure how I did get translated sorry when I asked the athletic person about a paper option for the athletic registration I was told there was no paper option sorry I wasn't I was speaking about everything but athletics yeah we have actually had people come in the school and we help them fill them out it's got to be a special appointment of course I'm being serious and that we will make that happen and anybody that has a barrier to filling out forms that's really easily fixed and will help you and I think you said where it's like it's getting better I think if that's an option we should explicitly state it and whatever we send out so that people know if I'm having trouble getting it to work on the computer I can come into the school or whatever and there were a couple of questions I think the more that we can document what we want the parents to do kind of going through the steps like the screenshots and things because there were a couple of times where you know getting from one student back to where you needed to get to for the next student wasn't crystal clear so or which forms were required wasn't necessarily clear yeah that's exactly what we want people to do with the steps they need to take the better thank you but so much better than last year and hopefully we can be more clear on if you want paper forms here's the number to call or want to come in yeah one other question would be right now those are kind of a sign up thing but it's not directly tied into the fact that information stuff is for one blackboard if people want to change the way that they're doing getting their notifications or something like that they still need to contact the school or can they do it through the family ID stuff no family idea is separate from what the school, what the school is what we use to manage student records and that's what information goes to blackboard so rural list so if you should have an online account where you can log in and make those adjustments yeah okay we'll call the office in the meantime yeah yeah as someone who thinks of myself as a pretty savvy and computer literate person I don't know what my webto school account is and I would kind of assume that when I fill out all of that paperwork and I give you my address and my phone number and my email that's the way you'll contact me this year so if it's not we need to be really clear about that in case people have moved and just assume that they've updated so ordinarily I think that I'll call it an onboarding letter for like new sixth grade parents would have gone out by now but given a number of challenges this year there's benefit well Owen knows that my brain is fried and I was a sixth grade parent two years ago we've had COVID since then I have no idea what my webto school stuff says so I haven't moved and I still have the same cell phone so I think we're okay but I'm just I'm a little uncomfortable because families probably think that they're updating their information through Family ID and it's not the same thing so we might want to technically you are updating it's just not updating in real time so we will do Family ID and update our information it just doesn't instantly update and if I'm lying you tell us Ray I'm sorry if I said the wrong thing but I think that's how I believe it to be 100% accurate great it's just we have to manually do it Andrew if you need me for a couple hours of like volunteer type yeah that would be my problem when we say we it's none of us FYI alright I think we can go on to the second session just before we go on to the next I'm just sitting here after some of the comments made by one board members and I'm really feeling disrespected and personally attacked and unfairly waiting and I would say any way that knows me no it's not that way and there's six years of select board board co-videos that you can go back to and you can watch them all and you can see exactly what my character is as well as superintendent has been you know we've invited him into CR meetings and knows exactly how our meetings are and how they function feel good atmosphere how we all come together and work through everything so I was really sitting here after that really taking back part of the comments especially when you know Rodney and I are just you know trying to do our civic duties fill in help the board out and be personally attacked like that I just really felt disrespected I just wanted to get that out thank you Rodney for coming in today yeah so you guys should move to go into executive session just remember over personnel and then you'll come out then you'll make an appointment alright so I'll make a motion that we go into executive session for personnel matters thank you anybody second to me second can we leave now no no yeah Rodney's application for the board thank you both for being here you're up to meet Chris I hope you can still come to meetings and express your review and I'd be happy to talk to you about some of the concerns that you raised you know individually anytime so thank you for coming out and a lot of our decision came down to just being familiar with Rodney and having been on board and having experienced before so I love you congratulations Rodney Rodney just make sure you get sworn in have a good evening have a good evening town clerk town clerk yeah check in with the town clerk and she'll get you all taken care of it's a little different you might not remember right at town meeting they try to catch us before we left okay so I have to actually stop in yeah before the next meeting okay I'll probably actually have to check in virtually the next couple months thank you Rodney thank you see you back we have some committees like facilities or financial I don't know is there a need in it or lack in the committees or they're pretty well built the finance committee the good crew policy committees all set I'll have to reestablish my email and probably we'll go to full board meetings as soon as they come along Peggy I see your manager watches over your shoulder the same way mine likes to oh my gosh would you just oh you're on mute not only be a part of it but get right in the middle of it so I did have another executive session for personnel I don't think it'll take too too long but if we can do that that would be great let's go motion to enter executive session we'll make a motion to enter executive session for a personnel matter seconded alright so that was executive session 6 is now I've been taken the next meeting is Tuesday October 19th 2021 at 6 p.m. and we're out can we talk about that please Andrew we have a game tonight so is there anything that we did tonight and have the meeting start late or we would have a forum with just four or we can move the meeting to the following the following week we're done the 19th is our last week of soccer so the following week we're completely done it's just with both of our on the same team I'm going to jump into like 6 30 and then when you guys get there we get there and we can start we'll have a forum anyway we can meet with the recruits it's in setford at 5 so we may not be there till 7 or we'll make 6 at 5 6 at 15 an hour back so we start at 6 30 we'll be back at 6 45 alright thank you I'm happy to get it over okay so you get a little bit closer true Andrew just can't ride the bus that night has to be John I'm sure you're torn up about it motion through second third