 We can call the meeting to order for the regular school board meeting. Any adjustments to the agenda? There's just not a celebration of learning tonight. No celebration, right? That's number nine. We'll just cross it out. There's lots to celebrate. Lots to celebrate, not a special presentation. Lots to celebrate. Nothing else? Well, amending taking number nine off, any other adjustments? If not, just need a motion to approve the agenda as amended. Motion to approve the adjustments to the agenda. Hey, all in favor? Aye. So first up, to approve the meeting minutes of Tuesday, January 16th, which was the regular school board meeting. Motion to approve the minutes of Tuesday, January 16th. Second, any discussion on it? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. You and I, Rodney. He was amazing. All right, gotcha. And public comment, probably won't necessarily be going over the budget, but anything else? Tammy? Yeah, we can barely hear you at this point, Tammy. OK, hold on. Oh, it's getting better, a little better. OK, can you hear me now? Yeah, really good. OK, there's no coverage of budget items in the agenda. Which is a change from last month's projection. Like, we were estimating to be covering those things, but it's not here. So because it's silent, there was a change of some sort. Will it be discussed at the facilities task force update later on in the agenda? What is she talking about? Can you repeat that again, Tammy? I think we lost you a little bit on that. I'll try to type it out. I'm having computer problems. Are you looking for an update on the upcoming bond vote? Is that what you're asking? Yes. Yeah, we can cover that under facilities task force. It just wasn't an agenda item that last month it was projected to be. That's correct. Yeah, and we will explain that. It's been a little busy with budget season. Yeah, so we'll get to that about midway through, Tammy. Have there a public comment? Can I speak as public? Sure. OK, group parent, grandparent. I'm concerned about our one bus. We seem to be having a problem with it, hitting a few roads if it screws everybody else up, especially the people who live on Mill Road, that area in Derry Hill Road. So I don't know what's being done to try and deal with that issue. What is the specific issues that they're having there? The roads of that. The road itself or the bus? OK, I guess. Well, it's the roads. It might be the bus driver. I don't know, because the last one was we get a notice that the very last minute, well, he can't do Happy Hollow Road because they're working on the road. But my understanding was they were just york raking it, so it was no big deal. But sometimes I think the bus could have gone, but hasn't. So do we feel that that's a bussing thing, or is that an attempt? Yeah, so I've been trying to navigate this. Thank you, Peggy. I've had the same question, right? And it's the one bus that we've been having issues with across the SU, in general, that's the one roof. It's the only bus. The only bus that keeps getting routes canceled. So the bus company had concerns as well. And they are navigating it with the town, but also the driver to make certain that that they have been very clear that there should be no unilateral canceling of a bus route. They are in agreement with that, the bus company. So yes, it's a concern. After my last conversation with the general manager of the bus company, I think we've gotten this sorted out. But thank you. I agree. My kids do like getting home earlier. Yeah, no, I've been really concerned in general for the whole route. Yeah, it's horrible. Yeah, it's not good. So did that start out as a normal, like, the thaw mud season, you know? There's been issues. There's been issues with a couple storms in that particular route. And then this week, or was it this week or was it last week? Late last week. Was it this week? Monday? Monday, I guess? Was it Monday? I don't know. That there was road work being done. But I think we were looking into, like, the sense that the bus could have still passed, even though there was road work being done. I know. Well, I mean, we can't keep up with the seasons right now. It's mud winter back to mud again. It's sugaring now. Yeah. It's no storm tomorrow. Yeah, so. Any other public comment? OK, he's seeing none. We'll close public comment, the move to board comment. I was just going to throw out there. And Jeff, luckily, was able to come in, like, at the very end, but, like, the middle school has been hopping here in that gym. Like, it's cool. It is an experience like any other experience. It's been fun. When we finally were able to have home games, thank you, Jamie, for stop canceling them. We were, I mean, we, it's rocking. Like, it's, I mean, it's always a tight gym anyway. So you don't fit a lot of people, but it becomes really loud. And you have the cheerleaders in there. I mean, we've had really good support from parents and friends and neighbors. And everybody's come out to the games. And it's pretty exciting that, you know, really close one tonight. And what's really exciting is we have large numbers of kids, which, you know, Jeff and I have been talking about, like, how do we move those kids up through? But, I mean, and it goes back to the budget and stuff like that is, you know, this is the place to be right now in the area. And we have large amounts of kids. I mean, you know, 16, 17 kids on a team come out and play basketball or soccer. You know, I mean, they're large numbers. Now, it's gonna take a little doing because it can be kind of, it's a good complicated problem to solve. But we have awesome numbers. We have cheerleaders. The cheerleaders mostly are all eighth graders. So they're gonna be moving to the high school level. So we're just talking about, you know, how do we receive them up through? And then we have the youth sports cheerleaders that will be coming back up through. So it's like, you know, we've established kind of a, a pretty good pattern of cheerleading that hopefully will be sustainable for a while. So that it's another activity that is available for kids. So. I'd like to tag on to that, that I see that a lot of other really great things are happening here too for kids after school that maybe sports isn't their thing. Like I know that Dungeon and Dragons on Tuesday afternoons, they've been having a big crowd in here. Drama club on Fridays, I believe it is, I don't know. But anyways, there seems to be a lot going on here after school and it's great because middle schoolers especially, they need something to do after school. And so they're getting opportunities that are fantastic. Okay, any other board comment? Okay, here none, we'll move on. That the reports of the board start with Jamie. So you have my written report in hand. I talked quite a bit about 127 and things. I mean, in general, you know, in the legislature, I expect H850 to have action and a governor signature by the end of next week, I would think, one would hope, you know, we do actually, we had our first district in the supervisor union, canceled their warned vote under act one of a provision of COVID-19 that was provided last year, tonight, actually. And so the good news in White River Unified District is, is that we have a budget that was well under a cap and that I believe that any changes provided via H850 is gonna result in an increased yield, which is a positive result on the tax rates for Bethel and Williamson. So that's really good. Other legislative business, they took testimony in the House Ed Committee today on this proposed cell phone bill banned. And I can't quote that number right now of that bill, I'm sorry, it came out of the Senate. And in the Senate Ed Committee, Dr. Levine actually gave the testimony today. I would say that there's pieces of that bill that make some sense to me in regards to how much of a distraction technology can be within our school walls. The notion though, that schools couldn't communicate the good work it's doing via social media to the outside community, which I think is one of the ways we give parents a picture into what we're doing is our pictures via social media. I just can't imagine not allowing us to do that. That's part of that bill. Another piece of that bill is it would require us to essentially provide a whole pathway for kids that resulted in them not engaging in the use of technology as an instructional tool in the classroom. It says they cannot access a computer and or other methods of technology for instruction. I don't think that that's setting up ourselves up for kids to be college and career ready. I think they need to know how to use technology. So there are provisions of that bill that the VSA and the VPA have spoken against. And you said that's in the Senate? That's coming out of the Senate. Yeah, and the Senate Ed committee took testimony on that bill today. So that's just one to follow. And then the other big one of course is HH 50. There's one of the ones we got to watch closely too is the house is still looking at how do we try to create opportunity for funding to deal with school facilities and deferred maintenance. There has not been any state funding specifically for capital improvements since 2007. And so the house, the house head committee is the one that's really taken the lead on that. I'm gonna be curious to see if once we get H 50 passed can they actually start to focus on some other work? I would say in general the Ed committees have been very, very focused on this HH 50 in regards to 127. And some of the other things that they were trying to take up has sort of been paused. The only other thing I would say that is worth noting is out of appropriations there's some marijuana tax money that was linked to the Ed fund. And it's not a lot, it's like three and a half million but that they wanna take out of the Ed fund for after school programming and set aside in the general fund that private entities could apply to get. It's a curious thing of why they wanna take this sum of revenue that was devoted toward the Ed fund for after school activities and put it in this other pot that could be accessed by a broader stroke of individuals. And I just say it's worth watching because just this whole notion of pulling money out of LEAs and the type of after school programming you're all talking about that we're providing kids and then cutting down on some of that revenue that we could use to then be accessed by private and independent entities is just a concern for me as a public educator. And in general, we're the game in town for providing our kids after school opportunities. I don't see someone coming in here and being able to do that. And so that money being to support our 21 C programming or our club things, I think it's really important. So that's just one that I've been paying quite a bit of attention to even though it's not a big sum of money because I do worry about what's that trajectory if you play it out. So I just wanted to mention that one. Otherwise, I'm excited about the group that we're pulling together to start to look at. I wanted to highlight this to you. A new student information system we're really interested in getting a system that's easier for our teachers and our admin to use but also that's easier for our families to use that we're able to better communicate in real time with families about how kids are achieving and doing. And so we are interested in being able to start to implement a new program after the first and next year. This is something we've budgeted for that then would take solid effect in school year 25, 26. I only wanna add something because I know I'm gonna forget it if I wait. And it doesn't really have, it has something to do with information for parents. No, that's all right. So when we take, when we set out the text messages for parents, sometimes if you have kids that are in both campuses, the text message you don't necessarily know which campus it's from. So. It's good to know. There were some texts that were sent out within the last day or two and I had to actually scroll up the text message pretty far to find out which campus it was from. So it doesn't come through and say like high school or Royalton campus or Bethel campus. So if you have children in both campuses, sometimes it's kind of, you're trying to figure it out where it's coming from. I guess. Thank you. Yeah, it's good feedback. Especially if it doesn't have like a click link. Like it might have been yours that you sent out saying that something was gonna be fall. Oh, it was the incident at school. I said something would be falling, but I'm like, which campus is this? I'm like, what's campus? It's good enough. Maybe something to think about. Note it. Yeah, we do it. Oh, and then the other thing I really wanted to highlight. This is one plan has been working on this. It's part of what Principal Bowen started working with is that for the first time we're actually offering after school programming on the Royalton campus during the February break to pilot this. It is something that we're just starting. The idea is to grow that. And possibly be able to have programming at multiple campuses across the SU for February and April moving forward. But also we're looking at the idea of being up our summer programming up to seven weeks. And so I just wanted to note that. I know that was concerns folks had about how could we expand and just want folks to know that we're working to make that happen. I'll take any questions folks have. All right, seeing no questions. We will move forward with the principal's update. I'm happy to go with the elementary first. Just summarizing that the beginning for elementary is just summarizing what we've been doing on our half days on those PLC times. Working on training up more on some of our assessments. Listed out some of the classes our teachers have been signing up for to take. Also highlighting what our Wildcat groups have been working on on Fridays. So the character strengths of love, cheering on others for goodness, social intelligence and perseverance. And we've been applying that yesterday specifically during the spelling bee. We had people persevering and sharing other ones, others on. We just finished our track by progress. And so we've been working on looking at that data with our data teams. And then if you click the link, you can see all of our fantastic students in the month and elementary there. Our math team wrapped up our math pilot and we have a clear winner, but we are gonna transition to Bridges Math. Even though our scores are amazing, we, I think the determination is that we want a more hands-on approach to teaching math for kids. So we're gonna do a three-year transition from Envision Math to the Bridges Math, which was one of those things we've already budgeted for but that's just the update on that. And finally, what was the final thing? We are just so happy to have the highlights that we got in the Herald for our snow cats program. Wish if you didn't see that, you should look it up because it was a really lovely article written by one of our parents at the Royalton campus who's been helping out with their skating program. She also works at the Herald and she's been given Thursday afternoons off to help, so she also took it upon herself to write a nice article. We also were highlighted for our Francies leaders great work with the farm school and all the grants she's received. And yeah, finally, we're gonna be working with the local library in Royalton to celebrate the works of Dr. Seuss on March 1st. So we're excited to do that. It's also gonna be in partnership with some of our high school students who are coming down and leading those activities which is always fun to mix it up with our high school friends. And then I think the final thing was we had some microaggression training with Dana Decker who's leading us through education around equity and that was really eye-opening and thoughtful for our elementary teachers also. So that's the elementary section of the report. Pardon me. Good evening. A few things I would like to highlight in the middle school principal's report. Tried to give you a snapshot of where folks are now. So in terms of how we're using data, the kinds of deep dives we're doing right now we're looking at our winner assessments and benchmarks compared to fall in seeing if some of the universal instructional pieces that we put in the place have had an effect as well as some of the targeting interventions. So that work continues. I do wanna clarify one of the points I had put in my principal's report. This district is phenomenally what it offers people for professional development. For example, what we have access to college outside agencies, agencies of education, other partners looking at how we dive into data, how we structure our curriculum, how we look for those ties between content areas. I was trying to highlight that in addition to the offerings of this district, we also have a phenomenal crew of educators who are taking advantage well beyond what the district offers in engaging in some professional development that has direct application to their work here. We have people that are becoming certified in a wildlife interpretation and bringing that into science classrooms. People that are looking at how functional everyday math can be tied into more abstract concepts. Just something to be proud of that we truly do have a group of lifelong learners. In terms of how we're serving the community and how we're building stronger connections to various things out there, our food service program deserves some celebration. Often you hear about quality of food. It could be better. Not unique to this campus. Just generally said about schools. I have to give Misha and her crew a big thank you. We were finding that students coming in in the morning weren't accessing breakfast necessarily for a variety of reasons and she and her crew came up with a solution that offers. We call it the second chance breakfast but in reality for many of the students it's the first breakfast and we've increased the number of students who are actually taking breakfast by 50% a pretty substantial rise. And not only are we giving them nutritious food but it's also minimized the amount of transitions during those first two blocks of the day. Students aren't getting hungry and going out for a snack. They're present for class. There's a specific time they're getting that food. And I know it's a question on a lot of our campuses. How do we feed our students and make sure they're fueled up for the day? Couple of other things I would like to highlight. Holding at a loose thread, trying to find pictures of this campus back in the day meeting back from the 50s, 60s, 70s I reached out to this historical society just pay what do you have in your coffers, in your archives. They gave it some thought, they did some searching and then they came back at us with two wonderful opportunities. One is an essay contest for our students writing about what Memorial Day actually means to them as it relate to their lives and also figuratively throwing open their doors for any group that wants to go down to a tour of the archives. And we're really looking at how we can capitalize on that opportunity. It's important for students to see themselves carrying on a positive tradition, having links back to things that this town, this community, these towns are proud of. So we're very thankful for those kinds of relationships I've seen to be built in. The last thing I would note is we continue to look at how to involve our flexible pathways program to meet a variety of different needs and really find ways students can engage in those fashion projects. We see clear links between that pathways program and where we're headed with capstone projects. And recently, we've begun, I'm not begun, recently we've had a number of outside professionals for a wide range of different job settings coming in and talking to students. Quite often there are former students so we have people that have gone on to a variety of careers coming back in and talking about preparedness. What did I need to know then? What track do you need to start thinking about? How do you prepare yourself to broaden your options? I think we have an opportunity to look at an even wider range of different career paths as we start taking into various things that this community surrounding area of the county is known for. And I do have something for you. It's not a gift. It's a thank you for your support with Makerspace. Andrew and Rodney, you'll have to collect yours at a different time, but they're right here. These were produced on our epilogue laser engraver. Look at that. This is a very simple, this is here is Rodney. It's a very simple task and you get down to it but it requires a number of technical skills. The reason I'm handing these out is a reminder that the adults are learning how to use this set up but we've already had students become engaged in what we're doing in there. Some out of simple periodicity. We have a number of students who are now doing some tech repair, learning how to use the programming. It's pretty exciting. I started to see a report on that investment in the energy. Thank you. These are little 3D etched tokens. That was a student idea. They saw something they were working on as a prototype and said, hey, you know what would be really nice? How about you make one large enough that we could put it on a key chain? Hey, voila. So we thank you for your support. Do a tough act to follow there. I don't think that happened. Yeah, what do you have for us? You're telling us? Yeah. Oh, boy. All right, so I just got a couple highlights from high school. All right, so I'm pretty excited about the fast bridge assessments that we've been working on. Our high school did some professional development on the AMS supported them and got some resources. So our English and math permits spent four hours with that. Our leadership team is looking into a new schedule to help support our students. And one of them, we had a scheduling meeting today and it was, what's important in your schedule and it's lunch and it's funny, you know, and you say, well, why is it lunch? And it's because if you've been to our lunch and you've seen that line, we had a lot of kids now trying to get through that lunch line and a lot of them aren't eating because there's not enough time. So one of the big schedule changes would be to have two lunches so that kids have time, proper time to eat because kids are just blowing it off because they don't want to wait in line. So that's one of our initiatives. We have started transition math to help support our student needs, Lit Lab to help support and that was from the data, that was from the fast bridge assessments. One of the interesting things just in our faculty meeting on Tuesday, Makayla Martin came in and as a parent, you know, you have those moments where you're just kind of really proud of your kids and they just make you like tingle. Well, the other day at our faculty meeting, I actually tingled. It was like Makayla was up there and everyone moved their chairs up and they were all engaged and they were all interested in finding ways to help our students improve. And it was just like, wow, I'm still excited about that. And when I mentioned it to one of the teachers, they're like, yeah, well, we really care, but we just have never had this opportunity to know how to use this data. So it's pretty exciting. We celebrated, I love celebrations. We celebrated at Tanner Drury 1000th Point. It was a huge night. I think anytime you can showcase your school and invite people, I was definitely well attended. And then it wasn't just last weekend or the weekend before the cancer awareness games. Again, the packed house, having all those people come through our doors, you know, and it's like, again, you can't sell our school any better than those games and have opportunities. And it wasn't hot in there. Not this year. We got that filter working well. But it was standing arm only. At one point, people were sitting in the aisles. It was awesome. Yeah, if you have never been, it's just, you guys just go and see that. Which one was packed? It was 1000th Point for the cancer awareness. Both, actually, yeah. They both were. I mean, the cancer awareness was. Yeah. Probably the most three times I've ever seen, yeah. It was literally a standing arm moment. Yeah. 1000th Point's two, though. I know through COVID, that's a big one. So is the 1000th Point's following you guys around? Yeah. No, just like school. And it's just far too long. And it was COVID. So she's just off one year and she's like, I'll come back. She's like, it's great. It's great. Like, how do you even like do that? Like, you get like, what, 50 points a game, seven, six, wow. That was close. Yeah. Too long. Did we want to take some time to go through the winter data assessment now, or? Yeah. I don't know if people want to take a few minutes to look at it first, or if people want us to talk about it first, because I couldn't either. Let's talk about it. I will talk while you look. So it's a group, yeah, celebrate that. I'm here to celebrate. So I think what you'll see in the elementary is the greatest growth is both in literacy and math in the kindergarten through second grades. But we know that all the data in the elementary exceeds the winter expectations based on the state estimates. So we're really happy. We don't have any data to support this, but anecdotally, the last two years, we've been doing a bridges math in our preschools. And so we think that that is, our kids are coming with a better baseline knowledge of math when they get to kindergarten. So we think that's one of the things that's helped us out in the math department. And overall, our numbers of kids that are scoring below the standard has decreased. So generally, it's elementary. We are seeing growth in all areas and are super proud of our progress. Super proud. Knockin' it up, though, just so we can do better still, but. So in terms of the middle school, we do have some things we'd like to celebrate in math and ELA. Specifically, I'd like to point out so why we think that's happening. It might just my tenure in this district, I've seen a number of opportunities provided to collaborate. What I mean specifically is getting cross departments together and really look at how they're approaching a piece of literature and making sure things like what they call mentor texts are in place. So students have an on-rack of complex ideas. I think we are likely seeing students come in with stronger and stronger foundational skills. If I was gonna make a bold prediction, I would think we're gonna continue to see, you can call it a gap, you can call it missing foundational skills. We're gonna start to see those diminished more and more given the work that they're doing in the elementary school in particular by using a very highly functioning data team, diving in, matching appropriate intervention and supports, identifying those foundational skills. Our students are showing up in sixth grade stronger and stronger. And I see that in students that are coming from our sister schools as well. So not only is it the investment really focused intentional identifying texts that are accessible, engaging and bridge that gap between the concrete and the abstract. In terms of math, not only is it having that collaborative time as a math department, it's looking at different ways that can make math real, keeping that real world connection to the concepts that they're dealing with and also taking the time to step back and say, okay, X number of students are missing this particular skill, let's focus on that. Let's pre-teach, teach, come back to it, and then move on. So intentionality and collaboration, I think is one of the reasons why you're seeing significant, when I say significant, that's in my perception. I'm not talking about statistically significant. We did one Chi-square routines on these, but we're looking at 10% or better between fall and winter improvements. I'm across the board in terms of students who are approaching meeting or even exceeding the efficiency. So we'd like to celebrate the fact that in just a few short months, the hard work and efforts, the support of the district, the work they're doing in the elementary school, I think we're seeing the dividends and it's kind of a privilege to see in just my short time here. At the high school, we're excited to see what the change is gonna be in the spring because this is really our first go of the fast bridges assessment. So we'll have more data in the spring. Are you, even though we don't have internal data to compare, is there data that you can compare with like regionally or statewide? Yeah, I believe there is actually. And how we can dug into that so much. That would love to. Yeah. I know it's tough when you don't have a benchmark, you know, the gradients, but maybe you can compare it versus, you know, neighboring schools if they're using the same program. It's interesting to note that not many high schools are using this fast bridge. I think we're kind of the one, you know, so it's hard to get some data from other schools, but that's something I'll ask. I probably should know this, but do we, I imagine we keep track of placement with high schoolers as they move, you know, who enters the workforce, who goes to a trade school, who goes to college, et cetera. We keep track of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'll add in the high school. This is like baseline for them because remember we used star 360, we moved to track my progress, which was just, it's K through eight. And then so we've been trying to search of what we were gonna use for the high school. And so we're using fast bridge now. One of the things though that I was incredibly proud about with the high school faculty is that they're very interested in the work that their colleagues are doing around analyzing data at the elementary level. And so Jeff had teachers from his leadership team come observe an elementary data team so that they can then use those skills to put them into practice at the high school. And as someone who's been pre-K through 12 as an administrator, I used to say to my high school teachers all the time like, if you wanna go see classroom management, go watch your colleague in kindergarten. Because what kindergarten teachers can do is magical. When you look at how they are able to run their classes, facilitate learning with a small group, all the other kids are engaged in on task activities, right? And they're not directing the learning like they're facilitating it. And so to see high school teachers take the opportunity to actually come to the Bethel campus to observe some elementary teachers. I just think it really spoke to our high school teachers commitment to use data to best try to meet their kids where they're at. I think we're gaining all the time in that work, but there's a real appetite to do the work. And I'll say to you, that's not always common in high schools. But our high school staff is very, very committed to meeting our kids where they're at and to try to best support them. And that type of climate culture goes a really long ways in the work we're trying to do. That we have that commitment to wanna do that work. And so I'm pretty excited. And I know that they were talking about data teams and meeting in it earlier this week too. And there seemed like there was some excitement from that. So I think there's the real, the right mindset to really leverage this data to result in better outcomes for our kids. And that's good. And the other thing is I think, Andra, I looked at the data, I don't hand out acknowledgement easily. You know. No. No. But I gotta say, I was so excited and proud about the gains that we're seeing at the elementary now. Specifically, if you look at our math, we had set some goals to be above the state benchmark by 2025, and we're essentially there on each grade level at the elementary now. That's really exciting. And you can see the literacy work that we're really focusing on in those primary grades. It looks like it's paying off. So yeah, I'm feeling optimistic about the direction we're headed academically. So it's good. And definitely looking at the data from fall to winter. I mean, you can see pretty much across the board the improvements at all three levels. So one question I have a question slash concern I had is we had identified a year and a half ago, we identified the group, which at that time were seventh and eighth graders, that they were in math was an issue with proficiency. Obviously you have the ninth graders, they're now eighth and ninth graders. And it does still show that the eighth graders, math anyways, are still lagging behind. So what is our game plan for them as Jeff receives them for next year to continue that improvement with them? Yeah, so middle school is working continuously to fill gaps. And what I would say is that the high school now has implemented during their pathway band in intervention block, but that also kids are gonna earn proficiency and credit and through a new program that we've started this year called Transition Math that gets kids one, it assesses them, it helps the teachers place them around where their actual gaps are. Meaning, is their gaps actually multiplicative reasoning and that's what's getting in the way of their understanding of fractions, right? If we don't have good sense of fractional reasoning, it makes algebra really hard. And so what we've done is, is that we've got, I was actually pretty excited to see it at the high school last week, is that we have multiple math teachers working with a group of students who we've identified that have those gaps and they're all being placed and then supported by not just one teacher in a room of 20, we've got three folks working with a group of 20 to work with those kids specifically on the skills that they're lacking in. And so this is our first time using Transitional Math, we just started in January, but our hope Chris is based on some work we've done with that in our personalized learning classroom, is that the goal really is within a 12 month period that we will have closed those gaps and that those students are gonna be successful on Algebra 1. And what we saw was in Algebra 1, kids just didn't have the skills and you know, Algebra starts off slowly, but then it goes and if you lose them here, then they're gone. And so they kinda gave up and the comments and I'm not even asking kids, they're coming to me and saying thanks for this Transitional Math. I feel like I'm successful and I'm moving forward and I'm understanding and it's just like, these are kids coming to me, I'm not even asking. So I think this is really exciting and then they'll be prepared to take Algebra next year. And do we feel that the now ninth graders that we had identified last year, do we feel that they are up two standards now or are they still sort of lagging behind? They're still lagging, but they're getting those skills that they need so that they'll be prepared next year for Algebra 1. That's all lagging, right? But a subset, absolutely. Oh yeah, yeah, that group that we're talking about. Yeah, I'd like to add a piece to that and really highlight something, Jeff just said that's really a key when a student's coming up to a principal and saying I feel successful, that's the litmus test. That's the canary in the coal mine in the best possible way that that student is likely to be engaged is can be asking questions and applying it to the world around them. This year, we looked at a group in terms of how they were making progress, not on this kind of chart. Do they fall into proficient or approaching? We looked at the progress that are making relative to where they were. And in many cases, we have students who are missing a wide variety of foundational skills. Like he's using that phrase. We have a math class now that is as large as any other math class. It's a full class where it is team taught with a special educator to really hammer out different ways of approaching those foundational skills. And again, looking at not this kind of a chart, but how is that specific student making progress? Digging down deeply into things like track my progress and tools we have, we can identify where we need to focus on. So long story short, as we have a class built around where those foundational skills are to try and not have cohorts where we say, okay, well that course just not fill the blank. I think it's really, again, trying to get after what Jeff just mentioned. A student can feel successful, can build skills, can see how things tie together, can see the progress that they're making relative to themselves. There's been a lot of success coming in with that one particular class. Just for the record, I'm not taking credit. It was one of those brilliant ideas you just get out of the way of. People ran it. Okay, all right. Anything further in regards to the academic data? Okay, hearing none. We will move forward. We've got the business manager. So you all have my report and outlines what's happening in the business office during the month of February, as well as what I have to do for our school food authority responsibilities. And then what I don't put on here is all the budget stuff that we are doing. I see a lot of you have your mailers. So hopefully all Beckel Royalton residents got their initial mailers in the mail in the last couple of days. Yeah, we actually received our mail. Yep, Spodley Press doesn't need to have it again for us. So yeah, that's what we've been doing. So if there's any questions specific to that part of my report, I'll come back for the audit discussion. I did provide in my report, Parker, if you want to go to the quarter two projection of where we stand in fiscal year 24 currently. And I'll just go over that real quick with you. Which side are you on, Parker? You're on the rev, you're on the, can you go to the expense page? There we go, thanks. You're good. So it's your last page in your packet. It's flipped over in the packet. So through quarter two, we primarily look at your salaries, budget versus contracted. So right now based on the positions that are filled and the contracts that have been issued, we have a projected savings and that line item of just over 300,000. And then health insurance, this is through, I actually used January, which is the close of our open enrollment period. So this is based on that January open enrollment. We could potentially pending any life events that change enrollment. There could potentially be 70, just over 71,000 and savings on the health insurance line item also. And then once we get through quarter three, we look at some of the other areas of the budget. But otherwise on the expenditure side, we're just over 375,000 and savings currently. And then on the revenue side, we actually, a celebration, which Jeff and all have spoken about, the increase in our tuition students that we are receiving. So currently we're just over 100,000 of potential additional revenue pending all residency verifications come through in our tuition line item on the revenue side. So that's really exciting. And then obviously on the interest income, we have a substantial increase there and that's because we've had additional cash and we haven't had to borrow as much on our tax anticipation note. So that allows that money that we get from the tax anticipation note to actually earn interest because it's not being drawn down from. So that's where we've seen that additional interest income. And then we haven't had any rental fees come in that I'm aware of at this point in time. So there's no revenue projected for that one, same as the adult learning. But otherwise the rest of the revenue should be consistent with what was budgeted. So overall right now we have a surplus projection in the revenue of 154,000, just shy of 155, expense just over 375. So overall right now we could potentially be looking at a surplus pending any changes of 530,000 at the close of the fiscal year. And then down below on this last page, I've just updated those amounts and I've added in fiscal year 23 because hopefully you'll take action on your audit tonight. So I did put that information on here as well so that you have it. So the difference in the salary currently is how many positions are we looking to hire right now? What are those? Yeah, so we're all language. We still have not been able to successfully fill here at the middle school. So there's savings there. Some of the other additional savings that you're seeing in salaries is still some of the leverage that we're able to do with ESSER. So that's some of your savings, right? We're able to offset those costs. And then the other part is just frankly like what we budgeted at based on current personnel last year versus where we hired at. But it's not like just vacant positions. It's really ESSER. What? What's that? The world language. That's the world language here. And then also what we budgeted at versus. Because remember, when we do our budget, we build it based on staffing in that prior year. All right, any questions on that? Here and then we will go to the policy committee update. Yeah, so we have two policies right now that we've been reviewing that are actually gonna have pretty substantive changes. They will probably need two readings from boards. It's they're both personnel policies. It's the harassment policy. And that policy hasn't been updated since 18 and there were some new laws 2018 that and there were some new laws that came into effect 2020 to 2021. And we also want to review it to ensure that it's an alignment with Title IX. And some of those changes have occurred between administrations in regards to guidance we've been getting from the US department of that. So our lawyers were working on that. And then our employee alcohol and drug-free workplace policy is actually gonna turn into a more global policy by the looks around a fitness for duty policy. There's a lot of discussion within the committee like, all right, we have alcohol and drug-free workplace. But why happens if someone was prescribed a prescription medication? But that that is resulting in the teacher really not being fit for duty. And our ability to then navigate that through policy in regards to making certain we are getting fitness for duty clearance. Meaning you may actually be using illegal substance but it may be impairing your ability to do your work in front of kids. And it could be that the prescription's off or something of that nature, right? That needs to be adjusted and us having a policy on the books that allows us then to take action around that. Not that we wouldn't if we had a concern, right? But to be able to have it in policy that it's no no. Okay, anything in regards to the policy committee? None, we'll move forward to the facility task force update. Well, I mean, we haven't done anything since. And part of it was it's just been really busy with budgets, but the goal is and it is a plan that EEI will be back in front of the board at the March meeting with more dialed in numbers around cost of the project that we've talked about, the expansion project, the safety, and also improving air quality in the library at Royalton. And so I'm looking forward to that presentation and they're also going to be providing us a real backwards design timeline around what steps we need to take between now in November in regards to having a warned bond vote. And so between now and that March meeting, the facility task force will meet too to review that budget so that we can give the board a better sense of like how those expenses would break out around total cost of the budget versus what's been fundraised, what we might want to use from our capital facilities fund to use as a revenue source, and then what that bond might look like. Tara's run the numbers on the bond. She sent those out to the board, but we'll have a dialed in presentation for the board in March around all that. So that's exciting. I'm pretty excited about that. Will we have any numbers for the annual meeting? I mean, it'd be really nice to be able to present some of the stuff then when we have kind of our biggest audience. I can ask Eric, he was really looking at the March board meeting, but I can ask him to share what he's got. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think it'd be really helpful to have that. He's got, I mean, he's already shared with us 10,000 foot numbers, so yeah. Well, and I guess to piggyback on what Andrew's saying is it may even be nice to have some sort of little table set up with the proposed, you know. We've got the drawings and layouts. What it looks like, you know, so people can look at it, see it, at least. Yeah, I would thank you by the music users, you know, really, you know, they're really proud of the work that they've done, I think, so I'm giving them an opportunity to present, I don't think, really good. Yeah, and I just think, and I'm only basing this off of my experience with another district. Around this is just making sure that our voters understand that night that there's nothing been budgeted for that. Sure, yeah. Well, we could have the performing arts be there as well. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just think we need to make certain we say that during the meet. Yeah, it's great. I'll reach out to Eric tomorrow and copy you on it, Chris. Okay. Anything more on the task force update? On that, let's see. Community engagement task force update? Yeah, so Mary, she's our community school coordinator and I have been meeting on this to really map out in regards to once we form a committee and the goal would be that we're gonna try to form a committee in March two to really get going on this work. And so Mary's been reaching out to some folks that she engages on a regular basis around community engagement. I would ask the board to think about what two members might be interested to serve on that. I think it's gonna be initially some like a couple times a month for the first few months to gain the survey data and then process it. But I would really love with the idea that we get to work in March and that we are really analyzing a report in August is sort of the timeline her and I have been talking about. And remember, this was like about looking at reviewing like the articles of agreement, like are we meeting the goals of the merger, like gaining feedback from all different community stakeholders. This could be another kind of reason. You're all right Peggy. Yeah, that we could talk about at the annual meeting Andrew. I think like having another table at the annual meeting, recruiting people to join would be good. Yep, I agree. Are you interested in volunteers from the board at this point? Yeah, I thought you had said that Nancy. Yeah, I think we could have two board members and Nancy had indicated she was willing. So if there's another one, it'd be great for us to have that identified. And like I said, my goal is to have those list of names so that the board actually takes action on forming the committee at the March meeting. I know one thing that works really well in Bethel, we do some questionnaires around town meeting that we do through Survey Monkey. So that's definitely a good tool to have when you're conducting a survey for those that are technologically savvy or mailer, much easier to get it through Survey Monkey because people can't vote twice because they have a way of capturing your IP address so you can't put 10 of them in. At the same time, it populates it for you so you don't have to go through and count them all. I think you just have to be really careful about the questions because too often with Survey Monkey, people just have yes, no as answers for choices. And there are a lot of things that yes, no does not cover. Yeah, I think that's why taking some time here that like the first four meetings to really dial in the questions will be important. And Mary's working on it too, we definitely want some students on that group. So I think the challenge is like making certain we have a committee that's a workable size but ensuring that we have a good cross-section of stakeholders, meaning students, staff, right? Board representation from both towns, and how do we get it to a place where we're able to hit all those stakeholders but it's not a committee that then spins in place because you can't make decisions. Do you know what I mean? Like that it can actually be a functional working committee too. So. Planning for the annual meeting. Yeah, so we've got another informational meeting coming up, not next week, the week after. That one's at Royalton and that start times at seven. It's in the mailer. If board members have feedback on tweaks to the presentation, I think that that would be great to email to Andrew and Tara. And by then we may, you know, one of the things we could do at that one too because we don't have a meeting afterwards is that I do think we could have some numbers from the EI to put in that. That could probably be really helpful for folks to see what we're even talking about for next year, what that cost is. That was something I had written down just from this past meeting. And then for the actual annual meeting, as I indicated earlier, we'll have the full presentation that has all the celebrations that the administration contributes to it and some more details in that one. We tried to just do the budget information meetings shorter and really to focus on the budget versus everything else that we celebrate during the annual meeting. And if all possible, the one thing that I would add to that, the budget is if we have any sample budgets from other communities that they're looking like, it's always easier if we can compare to others. Do you want, are you looking just within our SU or are you looking for? Well, I mean, I think it's always nice to have a couple samples from the SU, but then if you could say, here's some outliers, maybe, you know, like look at these communities. There's Washington and Central's. You know, these ones. It just puts it in perspective to people, I think sometimes. I will add that slide. And then just definitely hit hard on the common level of appraisal education on that. That's great. Jamie, on your act 127 slide, one thing that's confused me and I don't know if it's gonna come up again is on the new weights, kindergarten is a negative. Yeah, I've explained my Friday morning, we can explicitly explain that more. Zero is actually one, but how they were hit, but I've emphasized that in the past and I showed it tonight. Thank you. Anything further on that? Supervisor, board configuration? Yeah, Andrew, do you wanna talk about this? Sure, yeah, I'll talk about it. Give me like 15 seconds just because I just need to transition to where I am for this time. That's it. So when the supervisor union was set up, it was basically set up when all the districts were individual districts, just individual towns and all the districts that operated, schools got three board members as representatives and all the non-operating districts got one. So it was a pretty simple setup, but since then, there's been a lot of mergers and so when our district merged, we went from having six representatives on the supervisor union between Bethel and Royals and down to three. So basically like our representation was supervisor union was had and the same thing happened in FBUD and our side and the didn't do anything, wind up getting a greater representation. So it's, you know, there's that history there. And so they've passed a law basically saying that any town can request to have the state board reapportion members or representation for our supervisory union. And they would do it based on population or something like that. So what I brought this up for was just so that we could kind of like when it was brought up last, it was when we were the only district that emerged and it was kind of not really talked about when we were, there wasn't really much discussion then. So, you know, I really appreciate the way that the supervisor union has been working recently and they've been very supportive of us as a district. So we definitely don't want to rock the boat on the supervisor union level. Like I think it's been really going well there and the board as a whole is really functional, but we do need to have a, to start a process to look at what makes sense rather than just kind of grandfathering in what is done. So I brought it up at the future agenda item at the last meeting, so we'll be coming up at the next meeting, but that's just my general thoughts on it. I'd be curious to hear what other people here think and yeah, where, how we should approach it at the supervisor union level. You know, I think some of the other districts are sensitive to, you know, we are kind of the largest district and they're sensitive to us trying to like, throw our weight around as a largest district or something like that. So, and that's certainly not my intent with bringing this up. It's more just, you know, like, it's something that should be discussed and we should have a discussion, you know. There should be a process to figure out what makes sense now that we kind of have a new configuration and there probably should be a policy that like when things change, like we have to go through the process again so that it's not just like, you know, kind of a fixed thing. And part of the process can also be looking at like how many members make sense, what do we need for forums, how many people are we like to get from different districts and that sort of thing. So, where I was at with this. But I'd be curious to hear from others on their top. So, Andrew, you may know or not know, but what would that look like or what would the difference if we were to weight it by population, let's say, what would be the difference on representation to the board versus now? Do you think? I mean, I think right now we're our assessment, which is somewhat based on student population is like 43%, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's 38, so 38, okay. That's still somewhere around, you know, 40%. Yeah, 40, it's always right around that 40. 40, and what is our current representation percentage to the board or to the SU? It's three out of 16. So not 40% though. Nowhere's near. Yeah, and I'm not saying that we necessarily need to have, you know, I don't think we need to have 40% necessarily, but, you know, just that we should be looking at what makes sense and kind of have a process at the SU board level where people can chime in and kind of come up with a plan or some sort of something to make sense. Gene, are there other examples and other issues on how maybe they dealt with these challenges? Yeah, you know, I'll reach out to some other superintendent colleagues to see if they've made some changes that's not from the standard, like representation of each district board gets so many. I know that this conversation came up recently at Central Vermont Supervisory Union, which is where I used to work, where they have Pay Mountain School District, which is Norfield, Williamstown, and then they have another district, Echo Valley, which is Orange in Washington, right? And so that is, that ratio is even more skewed in regards to population, but at the SU level, each one of those districts have equal representation. And so there was, Pay Mountain had looked into going to actually to the state board because they were not at a place where they were ready to change it by mutual agreement. And the way it works at the state board level is that a district votes to, moves to take action to move it to the state board, and then the state board actually sets up a hearing where each member district would essentially plead their case on why they felt that it would should be one way versus another. They chose not to do that, but I'll reach out to other supervisory union superintendents to get a sense of what other mechanisms maybe they've used. And then I could come back and march on and talk about what I found out too. It's gonna be on the full board agenda as well. I would say, and I've spoken to Andrew about this, my concern is just approaching this conversation at the full board level, where it feels like we're approaching it around just re-looking at it and being like open to just reflecting on what's working and then also thinking about how we might want to go about it differently. Because I do worry about the fact that I think we're pretty interdependent now and that the districts are really supporting each other. And the fact that the full board has 16 members and we tend to only get nine to 10 most nights. Just making certain that we have members that are dedicated to be there that wanna support one another. I think for the first time in a long time in the supervisory union that our member district boards are very thoughtful and supportive around trying to promote your high school and your middle school. And that wasn't always the case in the very recent future, right? The past, sorry, recent past. So, and I think Andrew's being really thoughtful around this but I think the first thing is just talking to this district board around it because I think having some consensus around the why to it is important prior to going in front of the full board. One thing I would say is that I very much appreciate how the rest of the districts have been working really well together. And I think that while we're working well together is the time to have this conversation when we're not, we don't have these other kind of rivalries or whatever going on when we can have a productive conversation about this kind of potentially touchy subject. And hopefully come to something that make, it was mutually agreed upon and everybody agrees with. So, I will, when we bring it up there, definitely bring up that I'm very much appreciative of how the board has been working. And like that they do seem to be supporting our district and really it's been a very productive board at the Supervisory Union and we don't wanna rock that boat. So, but yeah, I think that the time to have the discussion is when not when we're at longer heads over something else like when we are working together and all want the best for each other, you know? So, the idea there, we'll just leave that as an ongoing discussion item, okay? Any further discussion on that item this evening? Rodney. Yeah, on the board boat, I mean, I just don't think we should change it, right? I don't see really any need. I just feel like we've been going along, been going smooth and why change it on all the boats? We've never had an issue, not everything going our way. And like the other thing I kinda think is that we've got the only high school in the whole Supervisory Union and the full board is the only time that the other districts have any say in that, I guess, and what's going on in the high school and then if we limit that, sometimes I even think that we should have like other districts not really be on our board, but maybe have a high school, somewhere where they can put their opinion in and ask things, because that way we could help recruit more students. And I just think if we, I don't know, I just don't wanna limit their boat and power, I guess, and whatever. So I just don't keep it just the way it is. That's my opinion. Okay, thanks for having me. So it sounds like we're just gonna do an exercise into what maybe it could look like and then, you know, we can talk about at the board level if we wanna pursue anything or not. Sound right, Andrew? Yeah, I mean, I think we'll see what the full board, we'll talk about what to do. I mean, I'm certainly not anticipating that like we're gonna wind up with like six representatives and everybody else is gonna have three and so we're gonna just be able to dominate that board. Like, that's not what's gonna happen and that's not the goal and, you know, I think there's just been a lot of change in the supervision and so it makes sense to have a process to be what makes sense for representation and, you know, if it is something that everybody else is getting really upset about, then, you know, that's good to know and we can see what, like I don't, we'd probably drop it or something but, you know, if it is something that other people there are willing to talk about and wanna, you know, come up with something different then we'll see where that goes. Sounds good. I do think, you know, like we do have some constituents that are, you know, very touchy about the supervisor union in general and the board representation for it and stuff like that so, you know, I do think if we just leave it as it is we'll have some people who are upset whereas if we have some sort of process to go about, you know, even if it's not like, you know, exact population representation or whatever, like if there's some sort of thought behind how it is and it's not just like this is how it's always been so this is how it should be, I think that'll make people happy. Anything further on that? Okay, so we'll move forward with the FY23 audit. So I sent you all included, I didn't have it printed because it's a lot of paper. I sent you all through my board report and in the packet is just the cover memo but I also shared with you a PowerPoint for people who are new to audits and may not have experience on actually what you wanna look at outside of my memo. So I shared that PowerPoint presentation on what boards to look at in their audits as well as the draft financial statements from the auditors. So the points that I wanted to point out to you all are on page 13 of the audit which are your balance sheets for your governmental funds. The assigned in that section is the $200,000 of surplus funds being used as offsetting revenue in the current fiscal year 24 budget and then your unassigned funds are the surplus funds as we had talked about in our budget presentation that are available for you to either allocate as offsetting revenue or to request from your voters to move that money to the surplus funds. So based on all of our budget conversations, our directive here at this board is to use those funds to put into surplus and not set ourselves up for revenue shortfall if you don't have surplus funds available in the next fiscal year. So not to use it as offsetting revenue. So that page is an important page to look at. The second page that I like to point out is your statement of revenues, expenditures and change in fund balance. And so that's where these numbers come from. So in fiscal year 23, your overall general fund surplus was $1,337,952 and then we back out any changes in any prior year and any offsetting funds so that actually brought it down to a leaving a fund balance of $1,197,660, which again, the $200,000 of that is assigned and the 997 is what's unassigned. So that's where those numbers come from. And then the next page that's really important and which gives you the story of where that money comes from is on page 55, which is your schedule of budget to actuals by function code or by department. Which if you look at your budgets, we do it by function code in the audit, it just gives you the description of the department. And then that shows you the areas of surplus and deficits by department. And then the most important page is page 74 to 75, which is the independent auditor's report on internal control over financial reporting and compliance. And on page 75 of the audit, the sentence says, the results of our test disclose no instances of non-compliance or other matters that are required to be reported under government auditing standards, which means we had no findings. That's our ultimate goal in the business office is to not have findings. So it's very exciting. And then if there's any questions or if you wanna go through the audit page by page, happy to do that with you. Just give me a call, you send me an email. Love talking about audit, just as much as I love talking about budget. You are a true math nerd. I wasn't a math nerd in school. So yes, it's definitely, but this is, I have an amazing team in the business office. We have amazing administrators who are very budget conscious and are planning to do right by our budget. So that's what allows me to come to you and to report this information. So this is definitely an absolute team effort by all parties involved. It just goes to show the power of having cash right now. And I mean, any short-term borrowing right now is expensive and not to mention we're not having to borrow but we're also collecting some interest. And I will say a dozen years ago that wasn't to be had. So it's, especially with interest rates we're getting in the five, five and a half percent to do anything right now at our level. That's a lot of money. We start borrowing large amounts of cash that we had in the past. So we just need a motion to accept. Is that, can I say it just like that? Motion to accept the fiscal year, 23 audit as dictated to us like the business manager. Second. Hey, any discussion further? Thank you. Okay, you're none. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Aye. Good. All set. All right. And then we'll just go back if there's any other public comment at this time. If anybody's left, you're all going to bed. Anybody's left that would like to do it? Any chance? I think it's this you, Tammy. Other than that, it's good. Any new hires or resignations and have anything? No, but we may, we are starting to post on some positions where we've known if somebody was like retiring. And so we may have a new, we could have new hires soon. Meaning like next month. No, we're not waiting to post is what I'm trying to say to you, Link. And so we're trying to get out in front of the hiring curve, if that is the case, if someone's indicated to us. So next month there might be something there, but stay tuned. Future agenda items. There'll be the community engagement task force will be on there. We'll have rework meeting in March. The supervisory board configuration will be on there again. And anything else? Just email Andrew or I. Oh, and the EI will be presenting on the expansion project. Dying. Next meeting dates. We have 28th, February, March 4th and March. Anything further? Just need motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. Thanks for having me, Chris.