 I think we're about ready. So we'll convene the meeting at 6.30. Focus of tonight's meeting actually is two-fold. The first part of the meeting is time for a conversation with our legislature, legislators, as well as Vermont School Board Association and our school board. The second part of the meeting has to do with reorganizing the school board after the recent town elections. Before we get started, however, do we have anyone who's willing to do the board assessment or evaluation? I'll do it. I contact where it's... I was diverting when I met you. All right, so I invite Jeff and Nicole to come up if you'd like and begin our conversation. We also have Ben and Jay here, our local legislators. We can probably speak from here, so that we're all included in the... This is a similar pattern to prior years, even though it's a conversation with legislators, neither of these gentlemen are on the Education Committee. So they'll look to us probably. I'm sure they are tracking the issues in Montpelier, but I think, is it healthcare and forest and agriculture? Tagging for a few. Right, so let me say this. It's always a pleasure to come and meet with you. It's probably the sixth or seventh year, I think. Every year, we look for a legislative session that's less dynamic around education issues, and it never is, and this year, despite our call for sort of let's implement Act 46, which you all are a head of, we are looking at major education policy initiatives, particularly in the areas of funding. So I came from the House Education Committee today, where there is a bill H911, which would rewrite the Education Funding Formula, and we can give you a little bit of detail on that. There's a bill that would change the way we fund special education to a census block model, which I think is quite appealing to education officials and leaders at every level, because it promises to lessen administrative requirements and give more flexibility in terms of how dollars are utilized within the schools. There is a piece of legislation which is intended to modify the implementation of Act 166, which is the universal pre-K law that's been in place for a couple of years, which I would say based on my observations is not being implemented as well as we hoped it would. That's a bill that features both a mixed delivery model for pre-K kids, private settings in public schools, and also relies on the agency of human services and the agency of education to administer that law. I think that there's been some complications with regard to the legislation, its implementation, that the general assembly wants to work on. What are, Nicole, what are some of the other major pieces that we're working with right now? Hi, everybody. So I'm with the School Boards Association. I believe there's a couple of new school board members and so a lot of what we're covering, as soon as we get your email information, you'll start to receive our legislative reports. So I think some of you on the board may be fairly familiar with some of these issues because we just sent out a report at the end of last week. But in addition to the bills that Jeff was talking about, the Senate Education Committee also moved forward a bill that would require independent schools that accept public dollars to serve students with disabilities if an IEP team determines that that school is the appropriate placement, which is something that we have as organizations really pushed for in terms of equal access to students. For students with disabilities to access the same educational opportunities that our non-disabled peers have. However, the bill needs some more work because the current version says that if an independent school does not have the staffing resources to serve a particular child, that the LEA has to staff that school. And so hiring, supervision, et cetera, would all be done by the LEA. So we have the local education agency, so it's usually the super district or supervisory union, thank you. So they would do that for the private school then? Yes, so it's a time limited obligation. So the private school would need to obtain the resources necessary, including licensed educator, special educator, and other resources within the school year that the student is first enrolled. The bill also doesn't include the kinds of protections we were seeking in terms of open enrollment processes so that all students can access and do process requirements. So a lot of the concerns we've heard from folks in the field have had to do less with enrollment and more with once a child is enrolled if he or she exhibits behaviors that are not consistent with the expectations of the school, they are often asked to leave without due process. So we've been asking for those protections so it's likely to pass the Senate and then it'll move to the house education committee for further review and tweaks. Mandatory radon testing is another issue we've been following. The Senate Education Committee moved from requiring radon testing to a committee that would explore funding for radon mitigation. We've had a couple of instances of schools testing positive for radon and we're interested in working with the Department of Health and making sure that schools are safe but if the state has an interest in pushing for the testing then it ought to ensure that there are resources in place to support mitigation efforts. And then the last bill is early, being in early stages of consideration and that is ethnic and social equity standards in schools. And so this would require two things, one new standards for schools to adopt relative to ethnic and social equity and a policy that would seek to address issues around implicit bias and equity in schools. And so not exactly clear where the house education committee is going to go with that. We have some, believe that there are some current things in place like the harassment and bullying policy that could be improved so that we don't have a whole other sort of construct and policy for dealing with some issues through policy and then, you know, how can the state board improve its standards process to address some of the current concerns that have been raised. So that's a work in progress. Not exactly sure where that will end up but there's definitely a lot of support in the building for doing something with that bill. Anything going on with any gun legislation as it pertains to schools? There's definitely movement on gun legislation but it's primarily in the areas of universal background check or allowing the court to issue an extreme risk protection order so it's less school specific. The activity in schools is being directed by the administration who has said that in the month of March, every school will have a safety assessment conducted by county or local law enforcement. So communication went out to your administrators sort of giving you all the heads up that you will be contacted. I don't know if that's happened yet but they're trying to move that process forward and then identify based on those assessments what the needs might be for schools around the state. I would just add that the gun debate is extremely fluid. So a ton of details have not been hammered out yet. We got a ton of stuff from the Senate that's coming over this week to the outside and I know that there's gonna be a lot of pressure to get something out but the shape of it is still very much up in the air. So I think not right now there's discussion around education what happens in schools but it's hard to predict what will happen the next week or two around where this debate goes because I think it could go a number of different ways. I understand that there's a nationwide student walkout scheduled for tomorrow. Tomorrow, the 14th, the Wednesday. So there's a. There's actually three or four different coming up this. Yeah, there's several and the one, the earliest one is this Wednesday at 10 a.m. Received a lot of media. That, you know, when we had lengthy conversations among superintendents on Friday and Lane can probably speak to it because I had to leave the meeting but in general what we see here that schools are working to support student voice so that if students make a decision that they wanna go it's better if they go in a coordinated and organized way with participation and support by the administration. But the fact of the matter is that school districts may have policies against kids getting up and walking out irrespective of the purpose or the validity of the cause. So that each school is going to contend with but we also see schools engaged in an array of other activities to support student voice around that issue in different forms. So the way I look at it is differentiated learning. I think it's instructive that we would and useful that we would have students participate in democracy and there's a range of activities that they can participate in from activities that are fully supported and sanctioned by the school to those students who say well we're going to go and we might violate a policy in which case there'll be a consequence but like any act of civil disobedience there's often a consequence. So it's a learning experience across the board and as you point out there will be a series of these because what we're seeing nationally is a lot of activity and interest around what folks recognize as a and young people in particular recognize as a compelling issue that they wanna be heard on and I think as educators we support that. So. It makes sense. I mean some of our standards for the kids themselves are to be civic minded but there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. Burke and I were talking I think a little bit earlier about it. It's like you know if the students have to be after those 17 minutes they're gonna do it in a way that's not disruptive to the maintenance of the regular school to what's going on during the school day and if they follow the same procedure that's in place for any other time or how do your parents call it out? Have them send in a note. That shows some responsibility on their part and I think it's a good thing because kids learn the best when there are real consequences for the decisions that they make. Make this decision. Yeah, if my parent didn't call me out there I might be facing some a little bit in terms of discipline afterwards but by the same token the students gotta judge in their own mind what their level of belief in that value is versus the potential consequences and that stuff that we all face every day. So I think it's a good thing. Have you seen a general interest in engagement here in Randolph? The principal at the high school here would be a better spokesperson for it but the students have come forward as a group, as a body to actually try to work it out with administration to make sure that it does the job that they are attempting to accomplish while being minimally disruptive at the school. So they have done an absolutely fantastic job of stepping up to the plate, having the right conversations with the right people to do it in the best way possible. So yeah, so there's been quite a bit. Their focus is more on the school safety side of things. It's not so much a statement about guns. It is a little bit but it's really more about safety and feeling safe in schools. I had heard that there was a small group of students that are planning on going to Washington for the March. I was a dozen maybe is what I heard or something like that. So they are committed to being heard. I think it would be a good experience for them. That's great. Especially in a town where the ability to get out and see other parts of the world sometimes is limited depending upon the students. I think it's a great experience. About the funding bill or any other major? One that was a little off. We've been having some discussions amongst the cabinet about trying to implement a full day preschool. And there was some discussion, I remember reading through one of the briefs a while back about upping the reimbursement beyond the 10 hours. I didn't know if there had been any progress on that if that had changed, if anybody is aware. So the current method for administering pre-k provides the school district, which is the resident school district for a three or four year old, irrespective of whether the child goes to a public or private setting, the resident school district counts the child in their ADM count and then pays tuition in the case of a private provider in the amount, I think it's around $30, $200 to the private provider. And if the school district operates the program, then it utilizes the ADM and thus the equalized pupil count in its regular education funding method. The proposal that emerged from the Senate Education Committee would have the entire program administered by the agency of education. So the involvement of the school district is retracted somewhat. And the school district would receive a tuition amount for students that were in their program just like the private provider. It's a controversial proposal because when you consider the utilization of ADM and when it's equalized, it really is reflective of the education funding system pre-k to 12, schools do a lot in terms of the overall complement of the facility and the educational environment on a pre-k to 12 basis. So we're not sure, but we've had conversations among the business managers, the school board association, the superintendent's association and the special administrators. We're not sure that we agree with tuition to public schools and to independent schools or private providers. To answer your question directly, the legislation as it's currently constituted would have a tuition paid for the first 10 hours of public or private. And then if a school district offered up to 10 hours in addition to create a full day opportunity, then you would then you would get an ADM count. 0.1 for every hour offered. So if it was a 20 hour program, you'd get a tuition amount plus an ADM. The ADM of course gets equalized back down to the equivalent of 0.46 because that's the multiplier for pre-k kids. Without getting into a lot of detail, our thinking is evolving to the point that the bill that's been suggested by the Senate Education Committee may respond to a set of problems that don't exist. So we think that it may be that in an effort to improve the implementation of Act 166, the General Assembly or the Senate Education Committee has sort of missed the opportunity to improve the law. That is a piece of public policy that's heavily lobbied, particularly by private providers. It's a bill that was not allowed to mature in terms of its implementation before people wanted to evaluate it and make corrections to it. Our associations had several concerns early in the implementation of Act 166. The first was that a 10 hour voucher for children from the most challenging socioeconomic circumstances might not be able to get complimentary supports in a private setting to augment the 10 hours. So if you imagine a household that has a child who's three or four years old and they're challenged on socioeconomic or some other circumstances, they may not be able to utilize 10 hours because they don't have the supports in place to go beyond that. So that was something we were interested in. We also were concerned that if you take children who have special needs, who are in a pre-K age group and you utilize a voucher to transport them away from their resident school district, then the continuity in terms of the supports that would come from the school system could be impeded. So the way that education system works is if you can have a child accessing the full resources from the school, then in most instances he or she is going to benefit from that in terms of their entire education experience because the pre-K bill is a voucher model, it may be that a child will go away to a private provider, let's say from Randolph to Montpelier and the ability for the school to gain the continuity in supporting that family is impeded. We were concerned about that. We were also concerned that while the bill technically allows for the establishment of a region between the school district and private providers for purposes of creating a, for lack of a better term, an ecosystem between the school district and the private providers in a tuition model, that's challenged too because you don't have a critical mass sometimes of kids. And an ancillary point to that one is it also makes it difficult for the school system that might be operating a public program to know how many kids they're gonna have from year to year. So when you think about how capacity works in a public education system, if you can't predict how many kids you're gonna have in any given year, and this is an issue in Vermont because of declines in enrollment, that's problematic. We raised those points, our associations, six months in and the legislature, they said let's wait to see how this plays out a little longer and then some of you may be familiar, there was a huge debacle around criminal record checks and trying to get that done. I don't know whether you were aware of it or are familiar with it. It was at that point the legislature said maybe we need to take a harder look at this. The place they focus was on whether joint administration by AHS, because they have a child development division and AOE, because this is now public education, was melding in the most healthy way is what I would describe it. So now we're at a place where the problems associated with the implementation are becoming more well known. Some of them are looming larger than they should. Others are diminished in terms of what the actual effects are and to the general assembly who said let's work this out. I think we have a long way to go before we get the state implementation of this law perfected. My, what I would suggest to you as a school system is that if you've got the capacity to have a strong pre-K program and to do it on a full day basis, then serious consideration should be given to doing that because I think either under the current model and administration or if the law changes along the lines that I've discussed, tuition and then an ADM, then I would be thinking about trying to have the highest quality pre-K associated with your school because I think in many communities Randolph included that that would be attractive to families who had kids in the pre-K age cohort who wanted to make sure that they were getting very good education for their kids and having them do it in the continuity of this public education system. Yeah, because a lot of the students, the emotional disabilities, especially at that age to have them go out to another provider and then come back destroys that therapeutic environment. It's a restarting and that makes a lot of sense. And the way the early childhood system evolved in Vermont, it was logical that private providers would be included because the capacities were uneven and also I think it could be accurately stated that the early childhood system in the state has not had the same access to resources that the K-12 system has had. So part of the issue was okay, how do we make these providers who play an extraordinarily important role more viable? And one way to do it was to give them access when they were providing education to education fund dollars. A challenge associated with this law is that it's pretty theoretical and as you all know, theory and practice are two different things and there are especially two different things when you try to take a law like this and implement it over until Act 46 really took all, we had more than 270 school districts in Vermont. So I think we didn't come to talk about Act 46 but Act 46 from a system standpoint is causing the organization of public education in the state to be much more adaptable and receptive to what we're trying to do educationally but you couldn't wait, nor would you have waited to implement other policies so we're still sorting a lot. I mean, there's a lot that's being worked out. So in terms of the potential changes to the preschool laws, not on the horizon anytime soon. Well, if they move ahead with eliminating ADM, yep. You know, not every public school district can move to offer 20 hours a week of pre-K and the law, the corresponding loss of ADM could be pretty devastating for local budgets and tax rates. So our organization's position is if that stays in there, it's better to have no bill passed this session than to have one that would eliminate ADM for pre-K. It remains to be seen what the House Education Committee will do. They've taken some testimony on it but have not developed their own draft. I know that they have concerns about the loss of ADM. And it's, I mean, it's kind of, it is, I've been engaged in the education policy I mean, for quite some time. This is as complicated an issue because of the multifaceted, multi-dimensional nature of it. So, but I, you know, that stated, if you've got a school system that's operating at scale and you're in a community that, or communities that would benefit from having high quality pre-K, I think I would encourage you to do what you can to make sure it's available. One of the ironies of the implementation of Act 166 was that our organizations were probably among the stronger, if not the strongest advocates for the passage of 166. You know, you can't find, I don't believe you can find an educator who doesn't think that early education is one of the top strategies educationally. So we had a lot of optimism about what this law would be and it hasn't quite played out the way that we hoped it would and we're gonna, we're trying to get a course correction. Nicole, can you explain about your comment on ADM because just so that we understand a little bit more about that, we have new board members. Sure, so. As an old board member, I'm kind of familiar with what you're talking about. Sure, sure, I'll do my best. So as Jeff said, the current framework for pre-K is that the school district administers the program. So whether they're operating an actual pre-K classroom in their school buildings or paying tuition to private providers, the school district is responsible for ensuring access for all resident three and four-year-olds. In exchange for that, school districts can count those resident children as part of their average daily membership. Because it's only 10 hours a week. It's not a full kid, it's just less than half of a kid. But those numbers, that infusion of new student count has been I think really critical over the last couple of years for some school districts that we're facing declines in enrollment and increasing tax rates. So our tax rates are a function of spending per equalized student. Your equalized student count builds off of your average daily membership. So new students coming in through the pre-K program and being counted as part of the school district's student count has allowed districts to develop systems around pre-kindergarten. If those students, the proposal now is to say the agency of education is gonna administer the program. So it's taking it away from school boards and school districts. And thereby eliminating the ability of a school district to count those resident children. The only way they could count those resident children would be if they offer more than 10 hours a week. And every hour in addition to the 10 is prorated against the .46. So it arguably could have a direct impact on property tax. But just as importantly, it removes the school district entirely from the relationship it now has with both public and private programs in terms of there are pre-K coordinators that have been hired by school districts that really are overseeing the development of a system. This basically blows out the notion of any kind of a system and converts it to a pure voucher model. Is this all just because of the background checks? Is the state gonna do it or the local school board or the superintendent gonna do it? Is that why? It came about, the conversations between the agency of education and the agency of human services came about because of the record check problem. But again, as Jeff said, we identified, our associations identified a set of problems that were over here, some of which touched upon dual regulation and oversight not working well. When you've got two agencies trying to jointly administer a program as complex as this one is. Opportunities for inefficiencies and mistakes and chaos abound, which is what we saw. But we identified a pretty discrete set of issues, none of which are addressed by this proposal. In fact, I think this proposal creates new issues. What about the new funding? What are they looking at? Where does it look like it's headed if change, does it look like there will be change this time or next year? Well, if it gets out of the house, it's going to be headed for Senator McDonald. I'm glad he just came in. Because that's where your advocacy will rest. Do you want to give an overview of what it does? Would you be willing to do that? I just, you have it there, and I just closed it up. Yeah. I'll be able to call. Yeah, absolutely. So it just passed Ways and Means in Education. That looks, it's really small. Yeah. So, in that... We're late reading, I'll tell you. In the report that we sent on Friday, there's a link to a summary that is just a few pages long, couple pages, I think. So that might be a useful resource. So, week and a half before town meeting day, the Ways and Means Committee said we're not going to make changes to the funding formula for FY19. Literally four days later, they were voting on this totally new proposal. So I can't predict what's going to happen. Then the original proposal that they wrestled with for eight weeks, six weeks, would have done, made some pretty fundamental changes to the funding formula, including the elimination of income sensitivity, moving to create a new income tax and a variety of other changes. This new version retains, first of all applies to FY19, moves to a base spending amount that gets phased in over three years, but for FY19, it would be just under $12,000 for equalized people. Any amount that a district spends above that would be divided by a property dollar equivalent yield of 8,500. So, one of the goals originally was to simplify the funding formula. This does not accomplish that goal. It sort of melds two concepts. One is an old concept of base spending with this new concept that's only been in place for a year or two, which is the yield. It's intended to make it more expensive for districts to spend more than the base spending amount. So it basically shifts the curve, the slope of the curve on the tax consequences of education spending on the higher end. So the question that I have with a proposal like that is doesn't that get the state back into the equity issues that it had when it went to an Ed fund to begin with? Because more wealthier districts are gonna be able to spend more of that extra than more of the districts. So it still, attorneys for the legislature have said that they do not believe it runs afoul of our constitutional obligations to ensure equal access to educational resources because it's still based on you spend the same amount of money, you have the same tax rate. So that truth doesn't go away. It's how that tax rate gets calculated is different. But it's still keys off of, if you spend the same amount per student, no matter what town you're in, your tax rate's the same. And that's what to date has passed the Brigham test. Brigham is the financial analysis as opposed to a qualitative determination. Right, right. It seems like a very low-based spending amount though. Seeing that right now, it's about 14 something. State average is this, I think was predicted this year, 15, 9. Yeah, so it's not intended to say this is what you should be spending or this is what the average should be. It's literally as it is every year or in every sort of iteration of this formula, it's a math problem. And these are different figures that are used to get to a result. But it should not be taken as school districts ought to be spending $12,000 for students. So it's not like this is what we've determined would provide a adequate education. Right, no, it's the number that works for the math problem that we have to work our way through in order to get to a tax rate. So one of the interesting aspects of this are what happens in the public policy process when you start down a road and decide you have to keep going. I mean, that's basically what's transpiring here. There's been a lot of interest in the recent years about shifting more on the income. We were, they were predicting the administration and the General Assembly in general were predicting extraordinarily steep property tax increases largely because they were predicting 3.5% growth and at spending and they used a lot of one time money at the end of the last session in order to lower property tax rates. So I wouldn't assert that it was a manufactured crisis but there was an expectation that they were heading into this budget cycle with heavy pressure on budgets. The tax commissioner suggested that budgets would go up three and a half and spending would go up three and a half percent. Governor Scott said we really want you to give it the good old college try and see if you can't keep at spending per pupil, equalized pupil at 2.5 as a result of the work that you and other school boards did around the state and spending is going up one and a half percent and at spending per equalized pupils up less than 1%. So the position that our associations have taken is that you've met your obligation. So because you've met your obligation we're really asking for two things. One is if you want to adjust public policy around education funding and have a full set of deliberations around how to do that in Vermont, fantastic but don't change the rules of the game for the places that have passed their budget. So you looked at your budgets in one context you ought to be allowed to continue that context. I'll come back to that point. And then secondly, we have a history in the state in recent years of cost containment features that get implemented one year and then repeal the next. So what we said was let's not get carried away with cost containment. We think that local school officials are doing a pretty good job, particularly in the context of opportunities now that there's a lot more unified school districts. So let's let that course run its course. The challenge is there's still property tax pressures now largely attributable to use of that one time money. So I think that the general assembly has an interest in mitigating that influence and one way to do it is to make adjustments to the funding formula. So the proposal that Nicole was talking about has an income feature intended to generate about $60 million through a surcharge. So the conversation that's happening in the general assembly right now is can you use the change in the education funding formula to lower tax rates in FY19? The answer is yes. But for taxpayers, many would have to calculate what their property tax bill will be and also what their income surcharge that they haven't had for education before will be. So I think it could be persuasively argued that we're taking a fairly complicated application of the head funding formula, which is what we have currently. In principle, it's relatively simple when you try to understand for all these elements that gets more complex. I would say that you're making it more complex through the, this is my opinion, through these changes when really a better approach might be school districts did pretty well this year. Let's let them continue to do well. If you wanna slow down the conversations about changes to the education funding formula, sure. But let's not hastily try to affect public policy around that funding because I believe that if you do it this year, you won't do it again for perhaps another five years. We're not gonna get engaged in. And if you're trending it toward cost containment because the unified districts are responding because they now have opportunities for better management of dollars while they expand student opportunities, let's run that course as opposed to the course that they seem to be on, again, my opinion. And I would also say school districts held their end to the bargain. So if you wanna like focus on cost containment, why not take a look at cost containment over a let's be more planful, let's work together. Maybe we'll get some strategies that will take one or two or three years to arrive at rather than come back. So in what was a what have you done for me lately move, the governor's administration, I didn't hear the governor himself say this, but his administration said, yeah, it's great that school districts came in less than 1% net spending for people. And it's great that they came in one and a half percent net spending overall, but we're still looking for another 40 million. 40 million can only get accomplished or be accomplished if you reduce personnel. And I think that a lot of contracts have been settled with letters of agreement being an issue right around now. The other, or you could change the funding formula and create a new revenue source under the very $60 million. Also adds to this, the fact that I think the politics behind it are what's been driving, right? You had ways and means. We don't know anything about policy. Been taking testimony on this other formula for eight weeks. Two months thought they were on the right track. Then they said, oh, there's major holes in this. They were going around the state saying, oh, we're cutting your property taxes in half. And then they said, wait, these have a lot of unintended consequences that are gonna be really challenging for a lot of districts. So they backed off that. School boards did their job and said, we're gonna really take a hard look at our budgets this year. But now they're trying to say, oh, let's, we started this conversation, we gotta produce something. But my opinion, I'm not deeply in education. I'm doing healthcare, which is also pretty complicated. Good policy's not made in four days. Good policy's not made in two weeks. So I think that the School Board Association is on the right track about saying, listen, if we're pursuing, whether it's cost containment, whether it's a broader view at how we fund education in the state, it's gotta be a lengthy discussion. A couple of other little surprises that emerged in that bill that, again, had not been discussed. No testimony taken. Well, as it eliminates the 5% provisions in Acts 153, 156, and 46, so those of you that have voted to merge and one of the incentives to merge was that your tax rate won't go up or down more than 5% during the years in which you're receiving incentives, repeals those provisions. Also would require school districts to take on the cost of teachers' retirement in their local budgets. So it's not that it came out of nowhere because that concept has been discussed. The language emerged out of nowhere and it's not clear to me how it interacts with the $1,000 penalty per new hire. School districts are already paying towards the teachers' retirement system or assessment of the penalty or how the Treasurer's Office would calculate how much of the annual payment for teachers' retirement would get assigned or allocated to a specific district. But last year, they moved the annual cost of the retirement system into the Education Fund for the first time, but it was coming off the top of the Ed Fund, meaning it was a shared obligation for all districts. This shift could have significant impacts on local budgets. And I had a conversation with folks from the NEA that it really could pit active employees versus retirees in terms of percentage of the butt. So that is troubling that that type of a proposal made it out of committee with no testimony from those impacted. So we'll be working on that as well. You alluded at the beginning to a new form of funding of special ed. Block lamp, was that? And what does that mean for us? So we successfully worked with the House Education Committee to delay implementation of moving to a census block grant model until fiscal year 21 and created an implementation work group comprised of folks from on the ground in the field and from our association to look into what the, appropriate funding amounts should be and how they should be calculated in terms of weighting of students. So there's been several studies done on the way we deliver and fund special education in Vermont. And we clearly have room for improvement. And special ed administrators are also working on having room for improvement. And special ed administrators and superintendents and principals believe that moving to a more flexible funding model will allow them to actually invest in the types of early interventions, instructional supports that are critical to supporting all struggling learners. And so, which will then lead to fewer special education students being identified. So we were very clear that just changing the funding model is not sufficient, you need supports for changing practice within schools. And so, the way the bill is constructed, it really is intended to focus on both pieces. And I think it adds three positions to the agency of education, has appropriations for technical assistance to school districts and tasks this work group with advising the agency of education on what the funding model should be. So, that was a big improvement from the first draft of the bill, which just put the funding model from one study, sort of picked one assumption that put it into statute without taking the kind of time that we think really needs to happen to number one, build a lot of buy-in around the state, understanding of what does this mean. So, we are optimistic. Unfortunately, the bill is also being, was it early on built in some cases by the leadership as a cost containment bill. And so, now it's in the House of Appropriations Committee and they wanna know where the savings is. And there's a lot of investments in the bill to staff the agency and do some of the technical assistance. So, I'm concerned that we may see some things get added to the bill that are designed to claw back some money earlier rather than wait until 21. What I would add is that the basis for the legislation that we're discussing was these two studies. So, UVM did a study on the Education Funding Formula in Vermont that seemed to conclude that census-based model would be preferable and the district management group did 10 pilots in terms of educational practices and supports struggling students, including in this district supervisor unit. So, both of those are online. So, if you had a real interest in how this was all unfolding, you could look at both of those reports. As Nicole pointed out, the intent is to align utilization of resources with best practice in order to get higher value for dollar in terms of supporting it all students. And our organizations are, I think, we've been persuaded that it is a change that would be helpful, as Nicole indicated, it's FY21, and we want a strong involvement of education practitioners from teachers and special educators right through school boards so that we can get a full implementation of the law because it constitutes a change in practice. People will have to think differently about the educational process. And so we're suggesting that we do it, but we take our time to make sure that we get really solid implementation. To go back to something I said earlier, we're, and I believe that under the Act 46 construct and Unified Districts, we're going to be better able to implement a law like this than we otherwise would have done. But it's inherently problematic to be moving to change the way we fund special education in a pretty dramatic way. At the same time, we're talking about an overhaul of the funding formula generally, which is being done in a pretty rushed manner, and looking to change ADM through a pre-K bill. All three things impact how education is funded and nobody's talking to one another that I can tell in a way that's like, okay, let's identify some unintended consequences. Let's think through how all of these different interventions will intersect. So how can we best support your work and engage? Obviously we have wonderful local legislators who take the time to understand the impacts of our system, but this idea of the rub being pulled out from under us after the promises made for Act 46, all of the time, effort, and resources that were devoted to that effort, and we had many people in our community say, come on, they're saying that they're gonna do, they're gonna give you a tax break, but you just wait and see that's not gonna end up happening. And now it seems like they were right. Our protections that were the quid pro quo of going through that unification process is now at risk. What can we do is, I mean, who is driving the bus here? Not sure where that is coming from. The 5%, as I said, came out of nowhere, no testimony. I really don't know who's driving that. So it is now in the House Education Committee. They're expected to vote on it in the next day or so. At this point, if it's useful, we're going to send an alert out before it goes to the floor so that you all can contact all members, but at this point in time, contacting the members of the House Education Committee is the best way to try to get a change before it goes to the floor. And you have all that information on our website. You know, getting a real handle on this, though, is a bit elusive because if you look at it straight up in terms of tax rates, the FY19 implementation drops tax rates on average by 15 cents. So when we testify tomorrow, they're likely to say to us, how can you testify against the 15-cent tax reduction? And the response to that is it's still hurried. It's still, you know, we don't know what the ultimate consequences will be and there's a $60 million in income taxes that hadn't been collected as an income tax before so that you would need as a taxpayer to understand what's happening to your property tax liability, what's happening to your income tax liability. And the packaging of this law is H911, which is intended to respond to the tax cuts at the federal level. At the same time, we adjust the education taxes. So I mean, I think it would be harsh of me to talk about the prospects for obfuscation, but it's not readily apparent to somebody who can look at sort of the cause and effect. And people would say, well, folks are challenged to be, to understand the cause and effect under the current system. That may or may not be true, but that doesn't justify another confusing law. If you think that this one's confusing. The other thing that this does that we didn't mention is it would split the billing for municipal taxes and education taxes. So now in communities, it's a combined bill. Taxpayers would now get two bills that get a municipal bill and an education bill. So there's a lot to it. And we're gonna, we'll weigh in tomorrow. It's difficult to predict where exactly it's gonna end up and the Senate will take a fresh look at it if it gets to the Senate. About five minutes left for this portion. If there's probably one more question. I would just also add to that that Jay and I both had been working with some of our colleagues on house education throughout this whole process. We raised some concerns about what the original bill was, at least communicating with some of them about what this could mean for at least some of our district and some of the things that were worrying, but I would add these things, they'd slap this together with some pieces of the old, some of these new, some things that came out of the blue kind of. So tracking this is making it extremely hard. Bills generally don't go through in two days through an education committee, especially one with such large, large reaching ramifications as this. So. For 20 years since Act 60 passed for 18 years, Gold Towns have been upset with it, that they were being taxed to pay for everyone else. And I was, last year for the first time, the statement was no longer that the Gold Towns were supporting the Port Towns, whereas the Port Towns are being forced to support the Gold Towns, the high spenders. And I was absolutely flabbergasted. And I could only think that after 18 years of saying the same thing, that the Gold Towns were getting a bad deal. And that wasn't resonating with anybody, that they sort of changed the story. And soon as you tell the legislature that all the Port Towns are supporting the wealthy towns, they begin to quiver, what are we gonna do? I've been speaking with Jen Ancel since the chair of Ways and Means since the beginning, and I said, what you're telling me is that the property tax rates are gonna go down and the people whose property is the most valuable are gonna get most of the money. And that's the gold places. Now you could argue that the Gold Towns have higher incomes, so they might be contributing more on the income tax there, but it disconnects the connection between your spending and your tax rate from the original bill that the House proposed. Makes the less of a connection. More, there's no more, the 70% of people who pay based on their income on their house in two acres don't get to do that anymore. That whole thing scared me, and I wasn't surprised on Wednesday or Thursday when Jen had said, well, we actually ran the numbers and they don't look quite as good as we thought they would. So now there's a bit of a panic. The other reason, last year the legislature got burned, perhaps the governor feels that he got burned, but we got to the end of the year and when you veto the appropriations bill because of what local taxpayers voted, that's a tough connection to make. And we've been saying to ourselves, the governor suggested that property tax rates don't go down, that he's gonna veto something in the legislature. Well, Towns decide what they're gonna spend. And just over 1%, this has been as frugal as you were between 2009 and 2012, when they were three years in a row where it was about 1.5%. So I've been away for a couple of days and Jeff was catching me up on the numbers. I apologized, I came home and I did all my chores and cleaned out the driveway and the election. I said, oh, I have time to take a nap. I hadn't said that clock. I apologize. So, I apologize. Thank you, Jan and Ansel, we've got you in the bus. Yeah. I'm gonna sue maybe Dave Sharp. So, I wanna thank our guests. Thank you. Mark, Ben, Jane, Cole, and Jeff, safe journeys. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Thank you guys. Thank you. This is for your work. Thank you. Don't forget there's coffee in the food and water. Have fun reorganizing. Ha ha ha. Jane also sent me a text. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Yeah, you got it. Shh. Say again? Yeah, I gave it back to him. Okay. You know, you're still on here to mark my next practice. You bet. I'm gonna greet you. I didn't mind out. Ready? Take it. Okay. Okay. Do you see it? It's some sports. All right. Ha ha ha. It's melody in the old rule. Remember? Great job, Rachel, too. You have a great job. Thank you. See you later. Looks like you're gonna have a lot of fun today. Thank you, Jane. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And then the board does welcome input from the community. I don't know if anyone would like to speak. So, hope the floor now for the board to discuss anything that they feel was pertinent and important that came out of the town meeting. At the three different towns. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Straight. Want to talk about magnesium water? I don't think so. That wasn't on the meeting, because that was on the poll. Yeah, Chris Reckier, we're here. He could explain the difference between magnesium and manganese, but. Ha ha ha. I'll talk about Randolph. We had, I guess I'll suffice it to say that there were some concerns about select board in Randolph and executive sessions and how the board was operating and how their employee was being met with. And it really goes to the heart of governance. And so I spoke later in the meeting and just to really give a voice to the idea that we as public officials hold a public trust and it is essential that our work is transparent so that the citizens of our town understand and know how we're making our decisions, what we're basing them on, so that citizens feel that they have input and they can observe and participate in our government. I also talked about, because there was an accusation made about something or other happened in executive session. It was made by a private citizen. And so I raised the question, how would a private citizen know what is occurring in executive session? That is a confidential meeting that we meet in executive session for very narrow reasons. And it's important in certain instances such as dealing with an employee issue. In our setting, we deal with student issues and other issues like mediation, litigation where premature public knowledge would put the board at a substantial disadvantage. But I really tried to drive home the point that we as public officials have to safeguard that public trust and their two parts of it, transparency, but then also making sure that we protect the confidential information that for very narrow reasons requires confidentiality. And so I just would reiterate that to this board. I think that with our governance model, we are very acutely aware of our responsibilities of confidentiality and transparency. And I think that we do good work in that regard. So I would say that while we're endeavoring to enhance public participation, we need to also be sure that we regularly remind ourselves that we are, this isn't, you know, us individually making decisions. It's us as a board, we are a body and it is the board that makes decisions not one individual person. So I would say for my years on the board we do an excellent job at that, but we have to be vigilant in terms of making sure that we're communicating and people understand how the board operates. Probably from the other terms. And Braintree did, and she got recognized, he did. He wasn't there, but he was right. He heard about it, I talked about it. The other thing I mentioned from Brookfield is there was a little bit of confusion and I don't know where it stemmed from around there being discussion after the regular town meeting. Many of you guys, you know, until we did sort of transition the school board, you know, would have its own meeting after the town meeting was done. And so there was a little bit of confusion about whether or not that was gonna happen. It was a funny thing. It was a new consolidation. Well, there was an article. There was a line in, I don't know whether it was your report or sort of a board report that said something like, you know, that discussion would follow at the meeting. There was, in the administrators, the elementary administrators, because I thought I striked it. Yeah, well, it was in there, and so the moderator brought the book up. It says that there's discussion following. Yeah. And of course- No, because a lot of the discussion too with me being new was it sounded like everything was now consolidated in that one meeting that we had. A little bit. Yeah, I'm right. Yeah, so that was a mistake in the town, in the book that went out, and I'm not sure what that was, what should be to do. The only other thing I think we needed to be clearer about in your report, by the way, was people came up and asked whether they should be voting for just Brookfield school board reps and not voting for the UPS. And it was too late because I was at the, they had just voted, but they said, oh, I just left the rest blank because I thought, you know. So I think we need to better advertise or publicize what the role of, how the school board people are elected, chosen and sort of the makeup of the board. We all vote, that was a very conscious decision. I've had that conversation as well with a couple people, but I don't think that it really, I don't know whether they voted prior to or after, I just don't know, but it was more of a clarification. I think maybe at the top of the ballot should have been a very clear, every resident votes for every district, but we really should also have that probably in some materials prior to the town meeting. Yeah, to the vote. Maybe there's an opportunity to do some outreach or share some information either through front porch forum or another new school newsletters or other avenues to just make sure that voters understand the process. The makeup of the board, too. And then also the informational meeting. I mean, I think part of the conversations that I was engaged in after that question came up, but meaning there were some people who didn't necessarily understand that that Monday night informational meeting was for the full budget for OSSD. And so I think we're in a year transition, little bit of confusion is just completely to be expected, but maybe just if we were to capture any lessons learned, there's just an opportunity I think to maybe share more information before town meeting day. I think the reflection of that is incredibly valuable to make sure that we can obviously with the district itself, us, myself, and any other administrators can make sure that that works out. That's great. Yeah, of course, I was a clerk, so I tallied him and there were a lot of blanks and I'm like, yeah, we really need to work on that. So I put that into, in my notes, I keep kind of a monthly calendar and so when we get close to this time, next time around. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Who do we talk to to change the wording on the ballot to just clarify that we can go ahead and make the ballot? So, you know, I've only taken what we had from previous years and so I'm up for any suggestion as long as I may have to run it by like Joyce to make sure it's legal or whatever. So I think just the statement that it all counts to be to vote on, there should be a way that the people handing out the ballots to just explain. I mean, usually they explain to me you have to do the front and back and then put these out and just add something to say. Also, you vote for every time. Put the comment on the total board makeup as well. I think it's important to make sure the points are educated. Other? So in terms of Calvin Terrell, this was actually supported by the board and I thank them very much for this, for the district. Calvin is a speaker that is going to come in on the 27th to the 28th of March. He, his focus and his job is to work on improving school climate at the student bubble. The students kind of involved in their own work around improving the climate at Randolph Union High School as well as the Technical Center. He talks a lot with the students about the foundations of hate. He gives an incredibly powerful and moving presentation for about two to two and a half hours that focuses on where the path of hate leads if folks aren't careful. And so we built a whole two day program around this and I have to thank the National Honor Society and the National Honor Society students for actually doing probably 99% of the logistical work around Calvin. On the 27th, he will be coming in, spending some time going through classrooms in the morning, checking in with students, checking in with faculty. He is set up in the media conference room as well for a bit of time for people that just wanna drop in and have a private conversation with him. And that time is meant for him to get a real feel from the actual school community of what they feel their issues are on what needs to be addressed. And he will tailor his conversation that he has somewhat with them later that afternoon around what they've identified as their needs. He will meet at lunchtime on the first day with the cohort of students that he will be working on the second day, which I will get into. That'll be the first time that they meet and kind of do a little bit of planning and kind of a good to know ya. From 1230 to 222, he will have his presentation in the auditorium for the high school as well as the tech center together and all the faculty. Afterwards, he will be working with the faculty and doing some work around climate, ways that they can interact with the kids that will help things in ways that they can interact a little better with each other. After that, we will be having a dinner at 530 for the communities. For anyone who wants to attend, the dinner will be free. Give an opportunity for the parents to come in, sit down, relax a little bit, give Calvin some time to kind of circle the light around and talk with the parents, talk with the community members about what their concerns are, if any, about the climate, the high school and the tech center. And then that evening around seven o'clock, he will put on a full presentation for the community. As follow up to make sure that the good work that has started on the 27th does not die, he has set up with three different student groups at the high school. The National Honor Society, STATS, which is one that I hadn't heard of before, but I guess that's what their leadership, student leadership group has evolved into, as well as a school climate club, will be three separate cohorts that he will spend a day training in terms of how to better connect with the community, how to better connect with other students and how to lead the climate change after he is gone. So there's a lot of good work that will come out of that. So we're very excited about that and very thankful to the board for supporting that funding because it came out of your discretionary fund. Questions on Calvin? Is it high school, middle school and high school? Middle school and high school, let me say that. I think about it as the building. I should be thinking about the kids. And how's publicity going to run for that evening event? So we've actually got Ben Merrill working on a brochure that is gonna go out and get posted. He's very excited about that and the kids are working with him to develop that. They're getting Calvin's bio. There is also an opt out form that needs to go out to the community. His presentation is pretty powerful just to give people kind of an idea about the details of what he's gonna go into and give parents and students who may have some pretty strong sensitivities to the heads up about it. So that will go out. Also, we were planning on getting something in the paper as well, two or three communities. He is also, it's actually, the students worked a little faster than I anticipated. The climate club wanted to bring in Edgarity and we were actually planning on Edgarity as being a follow up to Calvin Terrell. They were able to get it done. They had his presentation last Friday, which was incredible. There was a lot of good positive comments from the community already that came in this morning about it. And he deals with the power of positive thinking and small acts of kindness and how they can change that sort of thing. So we've got a year or two worth of some pretty strong speakers, some pretty strong ideas come in and a lot of it's student based to really have an impact that's coming up. Money set aside for any defamation league training for the students, for the World of Difference program. And they are also talking about the reachers challenge at this point in time, which is good. In terms of the kids you were talking about that would be trained for the future. Is that from the National Honor Society group or? What the National Honor Society did was they reached out to the other groups, other clubs and committees around the school and the ones that have stepped up to the plate. Is that the list here? There were three so far. The National Honor Society was the school climate. Yeah, sorry about that, Y-A-T-S-T. And the other one potentially is the Interact Club that is expressed in interest at this point in time. And so those will be groups of kids. What he did at Marble Head, which was kind of neat when he had three or four groups is they each kind of focused on the climate in a different aspect. These folks were working with some faculty members the climate amongst the faculty. These guys are more student-based. This cohort was more about connecting better with the community and improving the interactions at the school with the community and improving the community climate. So he really put on a pretty good training for them and they're continuing to work in this day. That was three years ago now, so. I was wondering if the National Honor Society is junior and seniors, I think? No. So seniors are two months from graduating when this happened. So I was just wondering, when do they invite the sophomores that would be rising to juniors at some point? Don't they invite new membership? Yep. I don't know if the timing would work, but are we capable of getting any of our. I think a lot of that's through the school climate, but I can have the discussion with it. I mean, this is not closed off. It's not meant to be that selective. This was just the easiest way to kind of reach out to folks. So I think it's a good point. And I thought the YATS was a all-grade student. That was the old, they said that was the old student leadership. Yeah, but there may be some kids that don't wanna, that's sort of still perceived as student government and there may be kids who didn't have an interest in that, but they might have an interest in this. Individual. You know, individually. So if there's any way to attract more ambassadors, more kids that would be interested in delving a little bit deeper into those, whatever they, we're gonna be teaching them in terms of ways to help or to be in the school for supporting this effort. It seems like that would really be who-bust. Cause a lot of these kids are about to. Right, maybe thinking about it in terms of representation across the ages, that maybe there's a handful of kids at each, probably can't do each grade level. No, we'll figure out a way. I'll talk again with Kelly, talk her pretty soon to see if we can do the reach out. The other piece, when we did the planning for the Anti-Defamation League work, was really reaching out more to the younger grades. And those are our peers, teaching peers with the World of Difference Program. The students go through the week-long training and then they come back, excuse me, during the advisory periods and they actually, it's student to student delivered training. And so because that one, the activities typically go on kind of a two-year cycle that they do. On that one, we were looking more for kind of sophomores and juniors, people that were gonna be around long enough and then they can help integrate the newer kids that come up in a year or two. That would be helpful. So we've got some good ideas, but yeah, I like the idea about that. It's nice to have the input too because we get so focused sometimes on the logistics and the details that we get to bigger picture sometimes. That's good. So other questions on, all right. Board management and governance, reorganizing board and committees. The first rule of business is to elect a board chair. So the process will be nominations. And then once we get to the point where there's been seconds or seconds, is to move into discussion and then vote. At that point in time, once a board chair has been elected, I will hand off the chairmanship duties for tonight to that person to continue the meeting. So I wanna open up to nominations for school board chair. Would like to nominate Laura Ruschhoff for chair. Like a second that. Discussion, doesn't mean you have to, but it's appropriate. I said I would do it. That's important. Is this better than having them? Yeah. I was wondering, do we have, you know, I just, just thinking about this, like I mean, obviously you've been around so you know what the role of the chair is, but do we have anywhere like in our documentation, kind of a position description, and they're like, you know, what the role of the chair is versus the vice chair. We do. I've read it. I can, I can see if I can pull it up. And it should be appropriate for kind of a sit down kind of conversation. One of the policies it says role of the board chair. Yeah, no, I just, I don't feel like I've ever seen it. So maybe circulating. So we look at the exact limitations all the time. Yeah. But there's also the board governance, it's part of the board governance policy. Can't spit out the number, but it's there. And I didn't bring it with me tonight, but we have a board chair guidance document from Carver. Yeah. And that's about that. Yeah. Got a lot to learn. Yeah. I love the book. That's great. Yeah, when I was, when I was cleaning out the office over vacation, I found the little Carver manuals, they're like nine of them, they're very thin, but they focus on different aspects. And there is kind of a, I guess an abbreviated version of the clip notes. Great. I just wanted to make sure that that existed. I have more information than you. I don't want to. Just looking at for Laura. And, you know, I would be happy to go to agenda meetings, you know, for a couple months, just if there's any guidance or questions or whatever you needed, happy to do it. Just some training wheels. Yeah. It makes me feel comfortable and I can tell me to go what? That's great. So if no more discussion, all those in favor say aye. Aye. And your nays, so your nannies, congratulations. You get the gavel. There you go. Oh, that's the gavel. I don't know, I don't know if anybody I've ever saw before. Like I said, Angelou came to the last meeting said I've had this for a while. I've got some young people at home, I couldn't use that. I don't know. Instead of a tube, I prefer when you go to Knoxville. Right. That's right, thank you. So the next order of business is to elect the vice chair, Kirk and Brooke, if you have any nominations for vice chair. I would nominate, I'll put me, I would second that nomination. Is there any other? Is there any other? You want it? I said I would do it. I love this. I love this. No. No. But I said I would do it because it didn't sound like anybody else wanted this. Yeah. Any other discussion necessary? We probably have a booklet for you two. There is. Great. Any other nominations? All right. Okay, Linda, we do it at the same time. Okay. How about for a clerk currently, Ann Howard, are you willing to serve again? Sir. We have nominations for a clerk? I'll make a nomination for Ann, be the clerk. I'll second it. All right. We need to approve the schedule for regular meetings which came out as part of our packet. Generally, not a second, Monday of the month. It's 6.30 and we rotate locations throughout our district. We need to assign a member to sign official documents in my absence. Currently broke at Paul. Are you two still willing to do that? Yes. Okay. A point representative to RTCC. Currently, I am that. I thought you were also. Yeah, I am the alternate it says, but yeah, I thought we were both doing it. I'm not sure that is there only one from my board all of a sudden? I'm not sure. We've typically had more than one. Yeah, we've typically had two or three. I thought we had three before. We had one from. Is it because of Angela? Yeah, it was two from the OSSD and then there was one from the high school. And then we wait. That was before the consolidation. Now that we consolidated, is there just one? I haven't, I don't know. You could ask Ann, but I recall from the minutes last year that you were like a backup. Yeah, right. And he had one. He had said, when he got done. I think it would be better to have two of us on that board for certain years. Yeah, I mean, it's up to you guys. I would appreciate it. Yeah. I didn't go the last one because I said that was back up in the 5-1. There was only one other person besides myself. Yeah, normally it's just the two of us and then one or two people. Anyway. So, you know, if you'd be, does anyone else want to serve on the RTCC board? Tech Center. Tech Center board? They only need one. Four times the board. Yeah. Is there any kind of special considerations? One, I mean to, I mean nine. You're an elected official on the school board. That's the special consideration. Well, and RTCC is an advisory board. So, because it's technically under, well, it's under us now. It used to be under the high school board. So, but I've been to a number of meetings over the years and I've found them really interesting. They, I think they do more, you guys know better than I have been to a lot more of it, but often there is a conversation about what programs that we'll be, that they're looking at to bring in or what the enrollment is, or certifications that are issuing and making sure that we're very competitive and we're preparing those students with really great credentials to go out into the job market. So, it's a great board. It got to the point though, where we weren't getting a lot of participation because there's like a member of it from each of the sending communities. We're still not. It's just difficult, yeah. Like the most I've seen is probably three. I'm confident about that. Yeah, it used to be better at 10. It involves business people from the business community and Brown-Gradoff as well. Part of the problem I think has been those school board members from the sending districts have been involved in consolidations that have been very time consuming. So, I think that's been part of the problem. If you guys want to have two people on the board, I don't know if you need to make a motion and vote to change that, but since you, they are under your hospice, I believe you would have the right to do that. If it was Senate one, I'm not sure what it was Senate prior to. Richard was three, I think it was three. Maybe it was two. It was here two or three before. It changed here just last year, I think. It was in the consolidations. I don't remember that we did anything to the board structure. I didn't think we did. I didn't notice it until the last meeting. It had me, it specifically said alternate, and that was the first time I noticed it. It probably said it before, but the first time I noticed it was the last meeting. I was surprised myself. Well, what we could do is, I think that right now, put it one way or the other, either as the primary and an alternate, and then we can go check, and we can re-notice it to amend the reorganization next month. If we find out that we can't have more than one, if we have to change how we've structured the board, is that right? Yeah. That's the statute, unless it is. I don't know. But I would encourage you to come to the next meeting and see what you think. And the next meeting is the most interesting one because it happens half an hour prior to the open house at the tech center. So we have a half hour meeting and then you can tour the tech center and all the faculty there, all the students are presenting their projects, and then you will give you a real flavor for what this center is doing. And then, all right. I don't know if we decided anything. We haven't voted, all right. So I think we should appoint a primary and then a second. Back up and figure those out. You want me to send out the minutes? Right now I'm the chair last year, which makes it, I mean, I don't know whether we have to re-elect if I'm on the backup and he's the primary or, I'm not sure. I guess I would say why don't we just keep the status quo and put you in as the primary so that you can stay chair. Through the year and then, okay. And then we'll figure out if Paul gets a full membership or if he's a step child. I haven't seen anything in documentation I've read or in the statutes, but I'll take a good look. I'll talk with Jason, too. Jason's incredibly knowledgeable. I don't know where it off the bat. I'll get an email out to the board within a day or two, let you know. Yeah, personally, I would prefer to have other people who would be willing to commit to regularly come to the meeting. Lastly, we have a staff contract negotiating committee. Okay. So let's nominate people to be RTCC representatives. Do I have any nominations from the floor? Nominate Laura for the primary. A second floor. A second. Whichever. Okay. And lastly, on our slate here, we have to, we have to appoint a few people to be on the negotiating committee for a staff contract. Is that, are we negotiating that staff contract this year? No, it's next year, it'll open up for the, actually there's two that are open, but the big one is the CBA, the teachers contract. That's next. Yeah, we have to, I think it's October, we have to initiate. And it says staff contracts. Previously we had two different, is this just one now, staff and faculty contract negotiating committee, or is- Support staff. Right, but traditionally we had two different committees. Are we saying that the three people that are on this are gonna be on both committees, or are we just talking about the staff contract, support staff contract here? I think what ended up happening was we had the same people on both. Right. Just by happenstance. Right, this past one we did, yeah. So this is technically correct. There's professional staff and there's support staff, so I think the agenda's okay in terms of the warning that it's been noticed properly and we can take two separate votes. All right. On the two different positions. In reality, I guess it's at the very end of the year that we would start preparing for the negotiations. So do we wanna appoint members then to that committee at this point? Yeah, thank you very much. And there's always the opportunity of something, yeah, yeah, things that's kind of important to have that. So do I have nominations for people who would be willing to serve on the negotiating committee? Are you separating them teachers and then support staff? Shall we? Right now away, because since we have new board members, I think it would be really helpful to, if they're willing to serve in those capacities, have a new board member, maybe on those meetings. Or someone who hasn't served on that committee before, even if they're not, if they're an old board member. Okay. And that way we can have a little bit more variety to give people more experience. That's a good idea. I prefer experience for people. Ew. Sure. You're a baby. Now I'm coming to my teenager. All right, should we start with the staff? Super professional staff. The professional staff in the negotiating committee. So how do we wanna do this? I would be willing to serve on either role or role. I think I probably have the most experience out of it, so that I can try to impart that knowledge. Okay. To have other people have that opportunity. I'd serve on either. Okay. I'd like to continue serving on the teachers. I guess that's professional staff. Yep. I'd like to stop to support staff. Get somebody else to help train you. Anyone else be willing to serve on YouTube, Rachel? Okay. So we'll put Melody on one end, Rachel on the other. Yeah. Do you guys have a preference? And are we still lacking some of the support staff? Mm-hmm. Well, then I think I have to apply too. Okay. So we have Paul, Brooke, Melody on the teachers. Right. So I'll move that group or slate whenever you wanna call it on the professional staff. Okay. That's it. You second that, Jen? Yep. And support staff, we have Ann. Yeah. Rachel. And Brooke. And Brooke's gonna do both? Mm-hmm. Okay. Motion by. I'll make that motion. Second. Second. Okay. So now we have a full slate of committees and all to vote on. Oh, just one question about the regular meetings. Yeah. 6.30 is our normal time. In the past we've had a little bit of discussion back and forth about 6 versus 6.30. Does that, anything that anybody wanted to think about before we vote on the meeting time? My understanding was that that would work for all the people who needed to attend. So it's... Does it say, yeah, I mean, it's hard for me to get here by 6.30 just with our schedule. I just couldn't remember. As was noted in the last meeting, it says I should have been 6.55. Hey. I don't appreciate that. You miss something for me. No, I mean, I, what if I could, I just, I just can't. Just, my husband doesn't get home until 6 a lot of times, so. Yeah. 6.30 it is. Thank you. I appreciate that. All right. Shall we, are we prepared to vote on this slate of nominees? All those in favor? Say aye. Aye. Aye. Any nays? All right. I have it. Let's move on to the, we have monitoring. We have two reports to approve. We have 2.3. Jen, you reviewed, you want to talk about that? So this one in my opinion is the easiest one to review just because there is the external audit that verifies. And also, I didn't put it on here. It was just something that occurred to me today when I was thinking about this meeting. I think that the superintendent is in compliance. And, you know, as we know from previous meetings, he actually, there was a place where it wasn't in best practice and he added an additional signer. So I think based on everything that was presented, it was pretty much the same. Melody, we're talking about in your agenda packet. We basically started at the beginning. And then, so we're at a page like three or four, whatever. I'm going to go now. You're right. So, yeah, you'll get one every meeting. Yes. With the whole bunch. So it was really organized. So each of us are typically asked to review one of Lane's reports. And so we go into the office and look at all the documentation so that sometimes there are pairs of us assigned to one. But basically, so then that person does do diligence to make sure that we're not missing anything. All of Lane, accountable. So this was Jen's. And it's a portion of his evaluation, whether he's in compliance or not. You had nothing else to add then? I had a question about interpretation and we had a conversation. And I forgot to look at the whole picture as opposed to the little bullets. Great. Secondly, it was yield 2.6. And that was broke and am. Sorry. I didn't get it out for the packet. Well, here's my... Do you want to make a motion? 2.3. You do both at the same time? You're good. Whatever. And you could have just signed one. I'm going to do both at the same time. I'm going to do both at the same time. So Ann and I each did our own review sheet for 2.6. And I found everything in compliance. I found the interpretations to be well interpreted and rational and measurable. The evidence was very well organized and was all available so that we could verify. And again, in this area, this is the area of making sure we're financially sound, we're not at risk, we have proper insurance coverage, financial controls are in place, all of that kind of thing. And Wayne did, in fact, discover that there was an amount in terms of our insurance coverage for disability coverage. Long-term disability. Long-term disability for our professional staff and support staff. Our professional staff. Professional staff. And was able to remedy that immediately and I think he discussed it for the last meeting that we were at. So that was really a great accomplishment in terms of making sure that that was caught and he was able to correct it immediately. So I think we both felt that everything was in compliance. And one issue that came up, which I discussed a little bit one time when we were looking at the language of these policies where you get a general statement and then you have enumerated items. Lane indicated all of the enumerated items were completed and he felt that the policies as a whole had been complied with. And I agree even though the general statement is written more broadly and then it's like, and it's not limited to these things but these things all have to be in compliance. But honestly when we wrote that policy and even now I cannot think of any other item that you could possibly come up with that would complies anything else beyond all of the listing of the 11 items. One thing just on the form, number 11 was missing. So Linda, if you could... I did 10 twice in a row instead of saying 10 and 11, so it's just that actual number. If it's the actual... Oh, on that one? Yeah, this doesn't have 11 on it. So if we can just write that in, create another block. I think the form was created before we had investments to market the substantial. I think everything's great. Excellent. So do we have a motion to accept the reports? Those in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right. Onto the consent agenda, we need to approve the minutes from the last OSSD meeting on February 12th, which are in the packet as well. Are there any additions or subtractions that need to be made? Adjustments? I didn't notice anything. Okay. And then also we have the minutes from the budget informational meeting on February 26th. I thought that was a good PowerPoint that you provided. I thought it was great. This was a moral weight that time. All right. Motion to approve the consent agenda. I make the motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. All those in favor? Aye. All right. So now onto the superintendent's report. Do you have something to add? Yeah, a couple of things have kind of popped up in the last couple of days, just more for information out there. A good part of the last round of negotiations dealt with health care. As you guys were involved in, I probably remember. Part of that was discussion about the HSAs, which are the cafeteria plans that reimburse folks for, you know, out of pocket expenses with medical deductibles and things like that. The company that we do and most of the state chose future planning has decided that it no longer wants to manage our HRAs or anyone's in the states. They kind of bit off more than they could chew. They weren't able to keep up with the demand and would question about it. They said, well, we were expecting about 5,000 submissions a month, but we were getting 18,000. So at the end of this year, they will no longer be an option. So we will be looking for a replacement from them. We had some discussions about it at the superintendent's meeting that was last Friday that Jeff alluded to when he was here. And the two possibilities, is Datapath is a company that actually manages the cards themselves that the folks use to swipe to pay for their out-of-pocket expenses. And some districts are investigating the possibility of, you know, using that company and then managing the actual paperwork piece ourselves. Brooke brought up a good point earlier today about the fact, is that going to be allowable under HIPAA? So that's worth the discussion and to take a look at. The company that came up was Health Equity. Have them as our administrator. That was probably the second choice of most districts in and around the state and the superintendents that have it are exceptionally happy with it at this point in time. So there are options available. It's just that there's going to be some transition headaches, as well as the fact that if future planning is having trouble keeping up on the number of submissions they're getting a month, you know, are people going to be able to get the work done from their submissions? So that's kind of going on in the background. There also was a statement that came out with changes in the tax law at the federal level about the maximum that could occur for an HSA contribution that changed the limits. I'm going to check with Robin to see if that affects us. I don't believe it does. I don't want to touch that full limit anyway, but just to double check. And then kind of as part of the incidental, the superintendents report the financial information kind of all balled into one, is that we may be looking to talk to the board about tapping some of the facilities surplus. We are at the point where we had started a reassessment of our safety and security protocols for Florida shooting. And we had this bit come out and do the assessments. We have those reports that have been reviewed. Bob and Wes have done an exceptional job with that. We also have the survey that went out that we're collecting data from. But there are some minimal things that we have to do that we should do. And the cost is going to be about $85,000. One of the pieces is making sure that there's buzzers systems for the front doors of all the schools. It also means that at the high school because it's not quite set up for that system that we're going to have to do some major work on the window between the two doors that should come in so that there can be some interaction there as people sign in and sign out. Alarming all the outside doors during the school day when students are present, the doors should all be locked except for one entry way. So that all the traffic is following through and the only problem is is that students have gotten used to especially at the high school coming in and out any door that they can even though they're locked what they'll do is they'll text a friend and say hey I'm coming up the back steps can you meet me at the door and let me in. What the alarms will do is it will allow that if any of those doors open the alarm goes off. We know immediately that it's been broached for whatever reason we can go to the cameras and try to work on the security issue if it happens again there's going to be some severe disadvantages and the word will get out pretty quick and we'll be able to control the traffic flow a lot better that way. One key one of the options that we have that would be nice is that if the building has to go into lockdown we have electronic locks on all the doors but the problem is we don't have a way of turning one key or pushing the button and locking all the doors the outside doors at once so part of this would be you get a system with a key that you can turn the key it'll lock all the outside doors automatically especially if it's after school hours when those doors are typically open or to be able to unlock them all at once and one of the last pieces is the little electronic covers that are on the doors for the swipe cards the problem with them is is that the door is unlocked the teachers don't have a way to lock them so we can swap out all the little covers that will add a button the electronics is already there and the main part of the door that with the new cover on there they can just push the button from the inside the door locks and they know they're good to go if there's an emergency situation and then the last piece is having one door at least on each building outer door that is also accessible by a mechanical key so that if the emergency crews show up and the doors are locked they can get in typically what schools do is have what's called a knockbox outside somewhere the police will show up they'll have a key to the knockbox they'll open it they'll have things in there like the key to access the building as well as any kind of maps and other information that they may need in case there's an emergency but at this point in time I'm short of coming in with a battering random knock in the door open if we're in lockdown mode they won't be able to get in so we'll have to fix that so that 85,000 would cover all of that as well as training we've been talking about the Alice training for the staff and all those pieces will be included in that 85,000 so probably what I'm going to ask is potentially at the next meeting once we have the numbers finalized is the ability for the district to tap into the facilities reserve fund if we need it if there's enough money left over in the regular budget at the end of the year prior to July 1st obviously we use that but if there's not enough then we would take what we need from the facilities so those are my pieces on incidentals and financials questions the budget the food services we've talked about but down here with the school white stuff is that if I had all those numbers up does that equal the food services or are these all separate in addition to the food services they should all add up so all that is for the school wide it's just it's breaking down the food services yeah brain tree, Brookfield Randolph elementary yep so it's not like 150,000 dollars and again you know the hope is is that the pattern falls out the same way that it has in previous years is it usually grows and then somehow magically by the end of the year it's 5,000 dollars down but it's on track it's following the same pattern so far as it has in previous years then an instruction remedio I see it says we're under for 42,000 or over I guess what would that be remedial services in some cases we have an extra contracted services you're talking about we've got remedial services so we just we haven't spent we still have 108,745 is that what it says it looked like it was there's 42,000 down and I think that's is that the driver's headline am I reading it wrong that's the question my feeling is probably that there are fees collected that haven't been collected yet alright so the driver but let me get a definitive answer to you that I'll e-mail out in the next two days come with it I was just wondering for the pre-k stuff you mentioned in your the last paragraph that about pre-k I was wondering kind of what your thoughts were what where we are what we were planning because you were saying that parents would pay for time beyond those 10 hours and so I know Brent had been talking about it for a while so I was just wondering where we are what you're thinking so one of the actually this is coming out of a lot of the good work that the elementary principals have been taking a look at a lot of the questioning about this was trying to feel if the budgetary impact would be one if we went along the path and the ADMPs is important because the higher our enrollments are right more in a sense the more money we get to be able to do our work from the state so what we have been talking about we've been talking about a couple of things one is a full day pre-school so round the clock we've also been in some discussions with like the YMCA the local rec group for an after-school program as well so the parents have a way of dropping the kids off in the morning and having them here until 5, 36 o'clock at night to kind of better match the working hours the benefits to us for this especially for the pre-school one of them is really kind of focused on the trauma piece is the trauma typically happens in the home for the students that we've got that have severe emotional disabilities the more we can remove the students from those homes and put them in a place where they're working with kind and caring adults the better off those students are going to fare you know across the whole 12 years of their educational life the other pieces that allows us to have early kind of access to these students to be able to identify if there are disabilities and be able to begin working with those students earlier on terms of accommodations if they need them so that they hit the ground running in kindergarten and first grade academic work really starts with the strategies in place to be able to access that curriculum the way that they should and plus for some students that are just a little bit nervous and anxious it's a good opportunity for the parents to get to know the school for the students to get to know the school be familiar with it and kind of walk in the door part of that transition process already knowing everybody and everything and where to go plus the step up in terms of so there are a lot of reasons to look at it part of the discussion is with the decreased enrollments that have been happening around the state and here is that it will provide the possibility of we haven't talked too much about this and Elijah wasn't there for the discussion today because he's at an ESC conference the possibility of moving the six grades out of the elementary schools and into the middle school where it typically belongs the reason that the sixth, seventh and eighth grade are usually together because of the developmental level of those students and it would allow for the preschool to take up space within the elementary schools and have them be three through five our possibilities doesn't have to happen with some of the discussions that we've been talking about and so we would end up with an overall increase in enrollment we get the sixth graders up to the high school we open up space at the end of the century we bring in students for the preschool and now our ADM and then there's also the piece that I talked a little bit about with Jeff is that a lot of the students that are especially the severe emotional disabilities if they're out getting services elsewhere and then they come in it may take a year a year and a half to reestablish the therapeutic environment for those students so that they can progress again so those are all, it's all in discussion not a done deal but it's talk. Would the cost be comparable to what parents pay for daycare now for the three to five? Could potentially be free and that's why the discussion is so important about what the the emotional trauma you speak of too often isn't there a correlation with that in socioeconomic status in which case students wouldn't be able to pay if parents can't afford to pay for but if it could be subsidized we also talked about the possibility we were hoping it's a short amount of time to get it done but we were hoping to at least have a part of it up and running next year we did reach out we did the applications the preschool applications with the state we were accepted so we've got a lot of the ground work that's already been done but what we're trying to figure out now is how big of this can we integrate next year the discussion today it looks like it's kind of the three-year plan to potentially get things all the way to where we potentially would like to see them go but I think the I think the service to the community and I think that early junk start for the kids is going to be incredibly powerful we also had done a little bit of discussion about the possibility of creating a Raven style program for elementary students Raven works with our moderate to severe lead disabled students it keeps them here in a very solid very powerful program you know it still costs more than the regular students but it's significantly less than sending the students out to like a Washington County mental health or 10 to 150,000 a year you know we're paying about 27 but the benefit if we headed at the elementary school is we've got the students here it's a continuous environment the therapeutic environment would be incredibly powerful those aren't kids we typically send out but we can really focus in ourselves in the environment the kids are going to be experiencing on helping them get through those disabilities get the strategies you know incorporate them and green them themselves so the kids can use them so that by the time they get to the high school they can go into the regular high school or when they get old enough go into the tech program rather than ending up in the Raven program because what's happening now is it's kind of like a pipeline you know there's some students that go out and they can tell already what's going to happen is by the time they get ready to go over to the high school the middle school level they already know they're going to be in in Eva or Washington so county mental health so if we can get the good work done here that doesn't happen not that those programs aren't effective but we're not getting the return that we like and that's not a criticism of them these are some kids that need some significant work on them but we think we could potentially do a better job of them so my only thought question concern is that currently zero to five so preschool registered and licensed state care centers parents get child care subsidies to help them pay for those programs so if we were offering a program that wasn't free would they qualify would the school qualify for the subsidies to help the parents pay my understanding at this point is yes that discussion came up with Pat last week because it would be the same negative would be that only certain families would be able to do that as opposed to having it and that is and that is not the goal the goal is to be inclusive of everybody I think essentially really with our 10 hour week right now preschool program what is pre-k program what has happened is that only parents who are able to drop their kids off and pick them up and so we already have a high end clientele and our pre-k program which is exactly what we don't want to do those kids already have many of the advantages what we want is to get kids that could use the structure and you know and teaching and training and that preschool would exist at all three schools that would be terrific my daughter did the pre-k program and we should have a hard time integrating into kindergarten because there were all of a sudden more students whereas her preschool class was much smaller and like as you pointed out parents who had the ability to be able to pick up their child part of the discussion was that and that was the idea why it's got to be across the street school has to have its own so that's what the discussion has been I think it would be really valuable the idea of taking our sixth graders and putting them in our middle school I think is something that needs to be very carefully decided with public input because I know I've been hearing this and it's based on my parental experience I would be extremely concerned I think that there is such a sea change of not just the requirements on the child and what a huge transition it is for a seventh grader but I truly feel until we get a good handle in our middle school and our high school I would be loath to bring younger children into the middle school environment because I just think that it's a dramatic shift in terms of even though they're in a different hallway than the high schoolers or whatever it is they're exposed to language that they have not been exposed to and tolerated in the elementary schools behavior etc etc that's a pretty radical change and I think that's something that really needs to be very carefully vetted before it's implemented like I said we're just thrown out ideas we're thinking our way through what's possible what might not what would accommodate things and so we're very in terms of wanting the full day preschool after school program we're committed to that in terms of what the overall structure is these are let me know in the conversations that are happening at this point in time plus some of it depends too on what happens with enrollment you know our hope is that a lot of the work that we're doing to kind of attract students from other districts under school choice is going to pay some dividends especially with the buses and what not shift you know where the physical spaces are open in the schools to be able to put in programming when will we know what sort of results we've had from our outreach it's tough to say I mean they've had quite a few students that have been coming in for for tours individual during the day which is actually kind of neat to see and they're getting students from schools they haven't seen them before which has been kind of nice but typically you don't get solid numbers on anything until October first that would be what I would say because then you know what your own population is doing plus the people that may be coming in from the outside anything else you want to add I had a question on the community safety survey was that shared out through the service looking for communication and outreach around that so that when it was pulled together shortly after the Florida shooting part of it is when you're taking a look at changing security protocols changing structures physical structures to help with security is you want to make sure that it meshes in with kind of the community norms right you don't want to go really extreme if the community feels that I've had some communities where they would feel that if you had a little bit too much it's constantly reminding the kids that they're in danger when these events are really we're in vice versa so it went out it's up on the website and then the principals and of course remember the snow days it's kind of mess things up in the vacation we'll be getting out communications home in the backpack as reminders and we're also thinking to kind of wrap things up of me doing an actual voice communication through the emergency services at least at the elementary school level I don't think word has gotten out yet and with the yeah but a lot of what got in the way of getting the cause usually a lot of the schools will send stuff home in the backpack cause we don't have a better means of communication until April 1st and we've got a system that'll become coming online in April 1st to help out with that has just been the disjointed nature of the days lately just noting the date it says on here that'll be available through the 16th you can always extend it if you could I think that would probably try to get that social media pages they've been putting them up they are up on the Facebook accounts at the elementary schools we've been having some discussion we're taking a look at a listserv system coming in in April that will be able to email stuff out instantly to everybody including attachments and part of it is a piece of whether or not we want to start getting people to start not using the Facebook and rely more on the website I'm guilty no Facebook there's not a problem with it but we've had some things that have gone on that needed to be communicated that just would be a good fit for the media there's some stuff that's delicate that you know might not be the best same thing with the voice communications that's the tough part when stuff comes up we really want to get the message out but this particular message through Blackboard Connect is this really appropriate? because that is an alert system I don't know if you want to mix it too the fact that it's just a survey what ended up happening at like Marblehead is they used it for everything so people would get like four phone calls from the different schools if they had multiple kids they just wouldn't listen to it and so I never used the voice system at Marblehead it was always emails unless it was a true emergency because when people got that message they never does this I think to whatever extent it's possible that even fires home I saw it in the parent newsletter but I've seen it a couple different places and I'm not it was not in the Brookfield one I'll talk with Dave I know I've seen it with two places but between Facebook and our emails but you guys are hitting on hitting on the piece of work and we don't have a good communication if you go to the website people aren't used to it right now with day to day stuff since we're talking about the website can we get the school calendar because this has those half day in service Dave you put it up last week the new one do you mean the current one or the new one the one on the website right now is from March of 2017 it says last updated March 2017 we only put them out once a year once it's finalized this is next year's the only thing that's not on there is that they had it well then can we change the school calendar that's on the website today because it does not have the additional days for this current so it's not accurate I looked at it the other day because I can remember what that half day was even after the calendar was done so we just need to have Dan throw the new one up there well we gotta revise it first okay we could probably do kind of a listing of the half days again I actually have the message that I sent that I can pull yeah just type it in on the these are the half days for this year perfect alright are we ready to move on to the step appreciation Paul you wanna so I plan on probably tomorrow or the next day this week anyway emailing RTCC and making sure that they're ready to put something together for us so background every year we send out platters to the faculty and staff at each school and the platters usually like cheese and crackers vegetables and stuff but it's up to the culinary arts if they have time they can make something else but every year it's on behalf of the board to them so I'll be sending email out to get it ready and usually pretty good it gets back I assume the numbers haven't changed much if I use the same number from last year they'll be alright pretty close we usually use something for the bus drivers as well we did last year I think that was a nice addition are we doing central office yep we did central office last year yep I think I had the bus drivers, central office and then each of those schools I can be a friend if you want the left and right yep if somebody hasn't been included that'd be nice to know I don't know oh you're good we skipped bus drivers one year I don't think we knew last year cookies are you on healthy? no comment especially not on tape right? yeah it's on live TV here it'll be on YouTube alright so next year up again for board evaluation yep it's rolling it out I would say so we do an evaluation every day every time we have a meeting so one being we fail, two being unacceptable three being acceptable, four being commendable and five being met our best expectations I would say going down everything was probably four as in commendable except for the meeting was well attended so that'd be a five I think because everybody's here I don't think anybody's missing in the back I didn't get pulled yet oh we picked a side alright then I'll do the general meeting behavior but this one's about governance principles so I would imagine we'd do both I'd pick a side I'm good I'm good we did well thank you very much we have one other incident which is we talked about recognizing Antelope in front of the legislature how are we doing with that we needed to get some biographical information I hope he's not watching he's not watching who would be a good person to get some information the legislature wanted a little bit of information I saw that in the mail I just didn't have any information myself it was concrete I'll go over I'll figure that out it's a it's going to be a legislative what do you call it to recognize or just ask him no because it's a surprise okay that's what I yes we do not want so maybe you could call Karen I should call Karen you know I've said I've got all these I just want to make sure do you have time to do that in the next few days I just have to remember to do it okay right now that would be great because there's sort of waiting on us well I'll get that there was a person responsible for that I can dig through my emails to you that who sort of collects all that information actually writes out the resolution that's great so I can look for that did you get that too? thank you the other thing was we thought it would be nice since we didn't since I didn't have time to prep anything before his last meeting but I was thinking about having a little drinks refreshments or something at my house just as a small gathering to thank him but didn't know if anyone else had any thoughts about that normally what we do for outgoing board members is we either get a book that we donate in their honor libraries the schools we have some kind of ceremonial gift or something to help recognize and he had been on the board for some decades and just didn't know if anyone had any specific idea about it or should look back in the animals of what we've done in the past you used to have a hierarchy I remember Linda I used to be like they've been on the board for 5 years or less so it's a book in the library the board for more than 10 years I don't remember what it was did we give her a certificate for a restaurant or something like that we got her a watercolor painting and had it framed and gave her the gift I'm doing it framed I'm serious 32 years of crayon play you can certainly talk about I can look at that artist's paintings and see if there's something else it was not expensive it was very or modest in price I think I spent 30 bucks on it and then we had the frame gift certificate you want me to do a little dabbling maybe I'll come up with something and get you to stop that'd be great thank you for doing that and so will you just let us know and when that's been done I'll reply to the email okay thank you and I'm putting Karen's email in my reminder so actually alright so agenda items for next we've got the auditors the report is going to be with us we have a report part report that must be with the administrators facilities plan update the community events report on Kevin Terrell and approved professional staff contracts alright so now we have an executive session excuse our guests