 I took the leadership team to an RTI summit, the RTI's response to intervention summit, and it is an enormous, very big conference around multi-tier system supports, which is the same thing as saying response to intervention, which is what we call it in Vermont. And it truly put the leadership team on the same course for our belief system around what makes an effective system, as well as have a much clearer idea of the components that need to be in place in order to have an effective system. So that was my goal overall. We've got surveys out to the principals to make sure we've gotten to that goal, and the rest of our leadership time for the next few weeks going forward will be us reflecting and talking about exactly where we are, really specifying goals, and then targeting where each school is currently and what we need to ensure up by the end of this year, so that we can really get jump started on the next year. It was across the board incredibly well received by our leadership team. It was money well spent, and it will help influence our direction going forward. So I was very pleased that we chose to do it as soon as we did. I was trying, I was going to do it later, and then we choose your mind and said, now we need to do it now. So I'm really excited about that, about that piece. I still don't know what RTI means, even though you told me what it means. Response to intervention or multi-tiered system of support. Oh, it's MSS, okay. MTSS, same thing. So I'd be happy to field any questions about that. There's also some policy monitoring reports. Tina asked when I sat down, if we have a schedule, Heather made up a schedule of all the policies that have been adopted, and so I'll monitor those pretty much based on the date that they were adopted, and then we started the idea of when we will bring policies back to renew and revise, we have a schedule for that as well. Can we have a copy of that schedule? Any questions? Comments, other things we're going to check on? Great, thanks, Libby. So, on to budget. So we're going to have a discussion about transportation. So why don't we reopen the mic now for public comment? Do you want to talk a little bit about how public comment is separate from board discussion? Yes. I think they're okay with that. Yeah, I'll give a little context. First off, I just want to say the board has received quite a bit of comment already in email form. The themes have been quite consistent that there is a need, particularly the middle school, for expanded busing, that there are sections of town that are simply not walkable or at least not safely or practically walkable. I'd say we've probably gotten 15 plus such emails, give or take, all supportive. We haven't received, at least I haven't received anyone saying don't expand busing. So with that open public comment, public comment is meant for the purpose of the board listening. It's not a dialogue back and forth. So if we're not verbally engaging, it doesn't mean that we're not listening and taking your perspectives into account. So since we've got a fair amount of people, if you can limit it to about a minute of peace, that would be great. So whoever wants to go first, go ahead. And you don't have to, so. So because of the nature of my job, I'm testifying as a private citizen and not in my capacity as a government official. My son Owen is 10 years old. Can you introduce yourself? Sarah Truckel. So my son Owen is 10 years old. He's a student at Main Street Middle School. He was always bus eligible at UES. He, we live on the top of Berlin Street, so he used to take the bus. This year's been a really big transition for that. Our house is not probably walkable. Both from a safety standpoint, he'd have to cross down through the bottom of Berlin Street over to the co-op and then down through town that way. So on days like today where it's icy, there are accidents always at the bottom of Berlin Street and that's really dangerous. So I think if you know where I live, you could picture that. I also sent around a petition. We had 207 signatures when I checked coming in here all in support of busing from Montpelier residents and we did that in a week and a half on Facebook. So we didn't go door to door. We just shared the news. So I think that speaks for itself. I also heard from a previous Montpelier high school student who had stressed their times of walking from Gallison Hill Road and how much they would have appreciated busing, which they've let me share. So if you're okay with it, I can read that. Sure. I think sometimes the student perspective would be different than those of us, so. And just for perspective, that's up near U32. Yes, yes, actually they point that out. So they said, as a student who lives on Gallison Hill in Montpelier, the same street as U32 is located, but for some reason, still within the Montpelier public school system, this spoke to me. Thankful for the times I had to walk to school were few, but the long hour at least with many questionable street crossings and conditions, the number of times my parents had to juggle rides or carpooling were innumerable. Buses would have been amazing alternative for those kids who live in the outskirts of town and thank you for your thoughts on this matter. So I think there's a lot of support from parents. I think there's support from students who are actually in the conditions now where they're walking or they're seeing their parents struggling to carpool. And I also think we read in the news tragic stories of kids getting hit and kids getting hit on lining up to wait for a bus. I can't imagine how much more unsafe it is for them to have to walk across really these roads. That's my piece. Thanks Sarah. All the next. My name's Carrie Staler, my family's Montpelier residents. We live up off of Town Hill Road. We live beyond the end of the sidewalk, but close enough that we can kind of scuttle along the edge and get to the sidewalk relatively easily, but we've only had that sidewalk for about two years. I have always lived, oh, I have a six year old and a nine year old, so they're both in union. They both ride the bus on a regular basis. Maybe not every single day, but I would say 9% of the time. I work in Montpelier and I have, with a few exceptions for the past 18 years, I used to walk to work and the first winter that we lived there, I walked to work and realized that the snow banks were so big on the side of the road that they went right into Town Hill Road and I actually had several times dive into a snow bank to get out of the way of oncoming traffic. Knowing that my children would have to do that even for a few feet on their way to school on a winter day is really terrifying. So I can't imagine that I would ask them to walk the mile in three quarters that it takes to get to school. Occasionally in the spring and fall, I will walk with them, it takes about 45 minutes on a really nice day to get the whole way to Union Elementary School with both of my kids. That's a really long walk downhill. We don't walk home because we tried two once and it took us an hour and 20 minutes. That's a lot of time for a 10 year old kid to be alone by themselves wandering around town, particularly in this space where there really aren't a lot of people. Town Hill Road is mostly vehicles. It really, there's no one, there are no neighbors looking out for people. It's just kind of a road that connects Montpelier to Routou. I've also brought some comments from some other folks who couldn't make it tonight and I hope that you'll give me a quick second to just share some of their points. Suzanne Aikenberry lives on Elm Street and brought up a few points for me. She actually is able to walk her son to school every day. She's not within the bus route, but she asks that I point out that she strongly supports creating bus service for the middle school because the large number of people dropping off their children at Bean Street Middle School actually makes it a walking hazard for people walking to school, either children walking to the elementary school or children walking to the middle school. They'll often go to Franklin Street and cross by the middle school because there's a crossing guard there, but even in that case, it's still often really difficult to see short people crossing the road. So that's a danger, not just for the students who are there, but for the people driving and regular, anyone walking across the street. The same thing she said, they often bike in the same thing as an issue because bike crossing is even more dangerous. And she said that often the car line at both of the schools, both Union and the middle school is actually, she said an environmental hazard, but also her son has asthma and he'll often get an asthma attack if it's a really cloudy day and there's a lot of exhaust. And much of that car line is caused by parents not being able to leave their elementary school child at home to catch the elementary school bus because there's no middle school bus, so they have to bring the middle school student down. So it's this catch 22 that parents are in with scheduling that causes this weird transportation crunch around both schools, not just the middle school, so adding a middle school bus would allow parents to actually put more kids on the elementary school bus and have higher usage for that too. And then another parent asked me to just, just one more thing, I don't want to take too much time, but Sue Parris wanted to be here tonight. Her son, Erikson just graduated from Montpelier High School, I believe last year, she has a child about to go up into fifth grade and they live on Hackmore Road, which is at the end of Town Hill Road. They have no sidewalk. There's a very sharp S curve with no shoulders and low visibility and another road, Murray Road, coming right into it. That's the only space that her son will have to walk to school. It's absolutely impossible to walk on a nice day in the summer. It's extremely dangerous. And in the winter, I just can't imagine putting a child there. So if he didn't walk that way, he would have to walk through people's backyards, scuttle over to Sabin's pasture, go down to Berry Street. It would be a really roundabout way to get a kid to school safely. And for two parents who are working, she and her husband both work, but she has an off schedule. She's a midwife and she's still having a baby right now. I can't be here. She would like to. But for her with an unpredictable schedule, it's often very difficult for her to tell if she'll even be home to take her kids to school. And having a bus that was reliably there at a scheduled time to pick up her children would make it a lot easier for both parents and her household to continue working. So those are my points. Thank you so much. All right, thanks. Hi, I'm Sarah Rosenthal. I'm a parent of a 10th grader and a fifth grader. I think since my fifth graders in school, they've been able to take the bus for one year when they were both at the same, at elementary school together when the fifth grade was at the elementary school. Other than that, I have been shuttling my kids back and forth since then either mainly from what Carrie had said before because you can't have my younger one wait for the bus and get the other child to school on time. So my mornings start with having to drive both kids to school and doing the, well it used to be UES and then Main Street. And it's, I'm gonna just echo what everybody else says. It's very congested. There's small streets. It's hard to get your kids around UES and Main Street, middle school safely. And it causes a hazard for all of the walkers as well. What we know and what there's been research to show and I didn't bring it today. I apologize, I can get it to the board is that the research shows that when kids take buses, all kids are safe. You got the stop sign that goes with the bus. More kids are transporting that way around so you have less just traffic around and the kids coming and going are safer. So all of our children will be safer if we have school buses and I will bring that, I will send that information to everyone. And I mean, we all know that idling cars around UES and Main Street, middle school is not good for anyone. Hasmatic kids, good climate, our whole community, our whole planet. So that's another piece I wanted to say. But I think for me one of the biggest issues and is equity. Oh no, cool. As we know most of the houses in the walkable parts of town are more expensive to live in. And the houses in Montpelier on the outskirts of town are more for lower to middle class families who are working hard to make money for their family to support their family. And we don't have that and people on the outskirts of town and I'll say where I live in a minute don't have that same luxury as other families to be able to have their kids just come go to school on their own. We have to transport our kids. There's no way. Carrie made that clear. Sarah made that clear. I could keep telling you where I live and what's going on. But it's not walkable. That's just the reality of it. I live at the top of Berlin Street past the sidewalks right where Sherwood meets Berlin. It is extremely dangerous. There's traffic, there's accidents there quite frequently. When people start just flying by because they're getting to the Berlin border it's just not safe. There's no way I can let my little guy go. I can't let him cross the street to go visit his buddy at his house. So it's safety but it really is putting families who are at a lower income at a disadvantage of other families. I have not been able to work full time. Last year I tried for a year because I had a blessing for one more year for my fifth grader and I only had to worry about my high school student getting to school. But now with the lack of consistent after school programming at Main Street and morning programming I'm really stuck. And I think I'm not the only family in that situation. So I think it's very important for the board to consider is Montpelier a community for everyone? Are we supporting all of the children who attend schools here? And I really feel like that is including the high school. Are we fair? Are we caring as much about these kids? Their safety, their families, financial well-being? And are we really caring about the environment? I think we need to put, you know, we really all have to take care of all of our kids and all of us. Thank you. Thank you. Hi there. I'm Kathleen Bryant. I have a daughter who's an eighth and a daughter who's an tenth and we live out on Elm Street. We started having this conversation with the board about six years ago and it's been, I echo what everyone else has said in terms of being far enough out but it's hard for my kids to walk. They like as much as they can but obviously now we can't do that. And they think it's really affected decisions about our careers and our work and we haven't, I hope, and I haven't been able to work full time because we have to always be there to take our kids back and forth. And I just wanted to speak to that that I think that it affects people's work schedules and I think everybody else has said the other points but I also think that there's been some questions about high school kids and they take the bus and I definitely think that they would. So I just want to say that I think it's for everybody it needs to not just be the middle school but the high school as well and be really inclusive about everyone. So, thanks. Thank you. Hi, my name is Amy Gendron and I have three kids. One is in preschool but not at Union and then I have a first grader and a fourth grader right now. So, you know, the child who's going to be going to middle school next year this really interests me and it has since I moved to town but we live up Northfield Street off of Colonial Drive. It's about a mile and a half to the middle school and there are sidewalks which I'm grateful for. They just redid them in the past couple of years but regardless, you know, when you get to the bottom of Northfield Street there's a four lane highway more or less. So that even with the crossing signals it still makes me very nervous for my will be 10 year old at that time. So, you know, people don't always stop and they go right on red even when the blinking thing I see it all the time and so that makes me quite nervous and it's a mile and a half is pretty far in the snow and the wetness and down a steep hill in snow and rain and whatnot. So that's one of my concerns and you know, this affects me and like others have said, I feel like my careers and my work schedule, I mean, you know, my husband goes to work very early. I should be at work by eight o'clock so that I can take care of patients but, you know, running late for that is quite stressful but I wanna be able to continue to serve, you know, people when they're ill. So, you know, it's just quite stressful and then I heard, I was excited by the idea that there were maybe some morning programs at Main Street Middle School but now I understand those have ended. So, there's not really any early drop off, that's an option and the idea of driving into that area to drop my kids off seems really intimidating. There's so many cars and sometimes like, I just, I don't even know what to do. Like, I find myself in that area on occasion in the morning and there's so much going on that, you know, even for a kid to be crossing through there seems quite scary and that a bus drop off would be a lot safer. And, you know, just seeing the buses go by, I've never been on them to count the numbers but they don't look from the outside, particularly full, that maybe there is room for some middle schoolers, you know, for my middle schooler to get on the bus with my elementary student. Maybe it wouldn't work out that way but maybe that would be the possibility. Let me just look at the other points I had made up. And, you know, I had thought about the idea of the public taking the public transportation bus but my understanding is that service that goes down Northfield Street is gonna be possibly changing and no longer going down our road and maybe everything is gonna be going out in national life instead and then down this way so that doesn't seem like an option either for my child. So, and my children to be coming through. So, thank you for your consideration. I think it's, you know, would be a great service to all parents, not just working parents. You know, if you say have a newborn baby at home or something like that, but you gotta scuttle your, you know, your middle schooler, that's a lot of stress as well and it seems like we should be able to offer some things. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. I can speak, you know. My name's Jim Hotton. I've obviously been before you guys a number of other times. I think at this point, people have made the point that transportation is desired and needed beyond elementary school. The Transportation Committee that I was a part of, I think went through a very thoughtful process of, you know, trying to figure out why there's this need, you know, okay. When the kid turns 10, they can't automatically just get their cells around town. We know that there's a need for transportation because we have three buses that do three bus routes and they're essentially full. I think Olivia and Jim, both at this point, have checked that. So we know there's a need. Just because those kids go into fifth grade or just because they come to the high school doesn't mean that they no longer need that transportation. So I appreciate you guys finally, you know, really taking this topic under consideration and moving forward with it. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, Jim. Yes, everyone. So, did you want to give an update on what you've been looking at and what you've been considering or do you want to get quick reactions to the board first? How are the reactions, yeah. Reactions? My only question I think is, has there been much consideration about the equity with Roxbury? It's something that we have, you know, we talk about equity between where folks live and incomes and all that kind of thing and we kind of made a statement early on when we did the merger that we'd be okay with not busing Roxbury families directly from their doors but instead having them show up at a concentration location where they could, we could pick folks up and then get them in here from there. So using kind of a hub system in that way. I think we, I mean, I think the Roxbury folks felt like that was adequate but it's certainly a very different model than what we have in Montpelier and we're talking about changing Montpelier model to make it even more, offer even more services in Montpelier and I really have some concerns about what does this mean for, you know, I think all the parents here and what we've heard from our Montpelier folks and advocating for Montpelier equity within Montpelier and I think that it's our job as a board to be considering equity district wide. So we just have to really make sure it passes that filter for us. The thoughts or comments? Just to take Steve's comment just a little bit farther. I wanna make sure, make sure middle school has really been the focus of a lot of the feedback we've received as a board so far but again, whole district, all the schools was not just focused on conversations strictly on mainstream middle school. All the elementary is high school middle school really need to consider the entire picture. And I would add that I think you've got a good point, Steve and I also from everything I know about Roxbury busing I'm not sure where it comes from as a bus company or who makes that decision around what parts of the town are passable by bus or not. And so there's sort of that logistical element that can't be helped. And then the other side of the coin is is that Roxbury and Montpelier by nature are different geographically and population density. And so I would be interested in the administration exploring all the possibilities within Roxbury as far as how likely is it that we could bus every kid from their door. However, I'm not, my understanding is that's never happened and it's partly because of the distance between, you've got five students spread out from one end of the town to the other. So in some ways it's hard to have equal but it's like the, you can't have exactly the same thing for the two different towns because there's just differences in the towns. Or maybe you can, but as far as, I'm not sure we can compare them on the same exact plane. Becky and then Bridger. My last one graduated last year but for years I'm very sympathetic to what happens to your career when your children are not able to take the bus. I was working in Montpelier for the most part and the bus was great for union and then they transitioned to middle school and I wound up taking like, I had a big car and so I wound up caravanning four other kids to school and I was able to do that for a couple of years but then my work closed its Montpelier office and moved everybody to Burlington and I wound up having to find a new job because I could not figure out how to get my kids to school and get to work and I think it happens a lot around here and I think it's actually born more if I may say so by single parents. I didn't have an option, I didn't have anybody else to pick up the slack for me so speaking as a parent is separate from school board, I would really like to see this move forward. I just wanted to respond to the other threat of the district-wide approach to just say that I don't think transportation is ever gonna be a one-size-fits-all solution in a rural state and although it's important to be looking at the district as a whole I don't think that necessarily means that you implement the same approach in every part of the district because the nature of the area, the age of the kids, the nature of the school and whether it's an open campus or a physical school during all day versus a physical school all of those things are gonna matter when you make transportation choices so I agree with that. Yes, big picture but not necessarily identical solutions all the way across the district and across every school. I think I'll say I do live at the top of Berlin Street that we don't now necessarily pick you up at your door. So considering the possibility of pickup places that were closer so you weren't working, walking a mile and a half but were closer to your house might be a plus for you. Like where Berlin and Evert come together for that effort. That happens already. Right, so it's not a lot different. It actually feels like the Roxbury framework could probably be applied on the situation also. Well I'm extremely sympathetic to this as an individual who walks a mile or two in front of work every day and fell twice on my way to work today and fortunately a neighbor came by and gave me a ride on the icy streets and I was definitely thinking of our students as I was heading into the office today. One thing though that I keep thinking about throughout this all and it ties into some of what Steve and Bridget were just talking about is whatever approach we take and I'm sure this is on Libby's mind and the administration's mind. I really want us to also consider the environmental sustainability of it. If we have a bus that's picking up three or five kids and isn't totally full, I wanna be able to provide a transportation solution whatever it is but however we do it I want it to be environmentally and economically sustainable for our community and I think there are plenty of options to do that but that's my piece on that. I wonder and we haven't heard from Libby but whether you talked about the bus system that's the city bus system whether we can't talk to city bus system so perhaps they could help us out with this issue. I don't know what we're talking about. I've talked to them already and it's pretty much a moot point. They're not gonna change their system for us. They'd have to do that. They made that pretty clear. Okay, yeah. Now we've been trying to engage them for a while because it's difficult. I know. Yeah and it's, yeah. That's the way Burlington gets their children to school. Public transportation. A lot of cities do that. Right, Libby, I don't mean to put you on the spot but a potential data question. So thinking about the parents and kids and buses and cars, do you have any idea how we're doing for the students in UES and mainstream middle school getting to school on time? I don't have exact data. I couldn't pull out exact numbers from my head. I would say that there's probably a bit of weakness because of transportation issues. Or kids on their own to get themselves to school with lots of fun places to stop in. Distractions might be a good word. Particularly here at the high school. And a little bit at the middle school too. I'd have to ask Pam and Mike for exact numbers around that. And we wouldn't be able to name the exact reason. Sure. The changes throughout the year have been December and January and the streets are really nasty but it gets worse or better in the spring. Yeah, I don't know if we could really nail it down to that great size. But I could ask their perspective and I can imagine what they said. I was just trying to figure out whether or not there was something that's worked. Yes, it's not working at all. Yeah, just anecdotal having, you know, when you've got a day like today. It's slower. Yeah, I mean, I passed by Union after dropping off my child at Main Street at 818 and there was a line pretty much all the way down to School Street of people wanting to drop their kids off and that was three minutes after start. And the, you know, the walking school bus which is kind of the one like guided walking option was also about at Mangies. So they were going to be five minutes late and you know, the kids were slipping all up in places. You know, weather definitely makes it worse. Adam. Sorry, that was a bit roomy. On Wednesdays they do start 20 minutes later at MSMS. I don't know about UAS. UAS starts at same time and MSMS starts at... 8.29 Wednesdays. 8.28, 15. 8.15. Other questions or comments? I'll just say, I mean, I've run a lot. And I've been on all the roads and kind of all the, you know, the far ends of Montpelier in all sorts of conditions. And you know, places like Allison Hill Road, Bliss Road, there's no way you can safely walk. A 10-year-old can safely walk from some of those places to school. So there are real safety issues and equity issues too. That's where a lot of the more affordable housing is. I think there's, I don't have data to back this up, but my guess is there's probably higher levels of single-parent homes in some of those areas. You know, some of the challenges to the families that live in some of the places that are more challenging to begin with, I think are steeper. Are you okay? Tell us what you've looked at. I might have a deck where that carry was nice enough to drive me around, Montpelier. And I was amazed that we have such a rural city in some spots, I didn't know that, it was great. So I've been looking into, Grant and I have been looking into a couple different options. And we have a meeting actually with Stacey at STA, which is our busing company on Tuesday. And the only reason why it's on Tuesday is it was the first time that Stacey, Grant and I could get in a room together based on schedules. I mean, I also have a, Jim and I have a meeting on a Tuesday morning with several people who were here that was just planned for the Main Street Middle School. We have budgeted for two buses. We don't know if we'll need two buses, right? The high school question is interesting because we haven't necessarily dug into high school as of yet. And I think if I'm talking to Mike McCraith, I'm not sure how much of a, maybe in the ninth grade for our high school students, there'd be a desire or a need high school is just a different beast. For many things you can point it out, Bridget, of kids coming and going and different places that they're going to and the wonderful community programs that we have here at the high school. It's just a different world. And we have students from other schools for school choice coming in as well. So I'm not sure about the high school. We haven't necessarily put that on our radar just yet. If the board tells me to, then we will. We've really been focusing around Main Street and those far corners of our town. And we're going to propose to Stacey to not necessarily pick up every Main Street middle schooler but the ones who live outside of certain areas of our town. That's what we're gonna propose. And we would change the bus routes of UES so that even out the kids on the buses, we wouldn't just add to the current UES route. So what we're gonna propose to her is if we add more buses that would level out more UES kiddos on those buses so we could fit Main Street middle school kids on them as well. In our policy now, don't we not pick up closer to school? We pick up all our UES kids have access to the bus whether they take that or not. Yeah, whether they choose to take that or not. I think there's a start. There's no bus routes in the first mile or whatever. I think I'm gonna say mile out. Because I was thinking if you think a mile out for everybody. Yeah. And it's not an even mile. Yeah, that's the problem. Our town's not that even. But I mean, if we've got a parameter determined by I don't know what for the little kids, then it seems like that could be also a parameter for the older kids. And we very well could think that way, right? There are places like, I don't wanna butcher the street, it's a berry street that is pretty city like still. And with a relatively easy way to get to town that could be a mile on a mile point three outside of the score away from Main Street middle school. But it's still a pretty easy walk through town to get there. So there's some things to consider. Do you still pick up kids out there or not? So there's just many things to consider in this. And I wanna talk to Stacy to see if our plan is even a viable one for the bus company. Another option is to do change school times considerably and do two bus routes. So pick up elementary school kids, get them to school, then pick up middle school kids, get them to school. That's another option. I think if the principals watch this video and hear me suggest that option, they'd be shaking. That's changing school schedules is like, that's a big deal. So how would they do that? Well, it would be a very big question for us. That would change a lot of things in the school system. So there's multiple options that we're considering. We're just, we have to get with the bus company now to say what's the most feasible, economically sustainable and best for our kids. I guess I just have one question when you're figuring it out. Have you assessed at Union how many kids would actually line up on the bus if there were buses for middle school too? Like in the situation, there's many parents in the situation that I'm in here, my elementary school student couldn't take the bus because I had to bring the other ones in main street. So I'm thinking that your bus use is gonna get higher at Union and I didn't know if that was factored in. Not yet. Thinking, but it will change the bus ridership. What we do know from Union from the STA is that, because we asked them if our buses were full, if there were any room just on the Union buses, right? And they said that if every kid were on the bus, they would be full. So it's not just adding kids on to the buses we already have. I guess I'm a little not clear on process here in terms. I mean, we definitely want to delegate the fine decision making to the administration on this, but we wanna have it since we are in the process of policy rewrite. We're also thinking about the values that come to this and how those values guide your decision making. And I guess I'm sensitive to the values you all are kind of considering as you put this together where those values come from and which values you're prioritizing over others. I'm really concerned about this Roxbury thing and I think that I would like us to make sure that we have really processed that we have no participation from the Roxbury community in this conversation. When we even our language in this is very much about our town rather than our towns. And I really think that we need to be cautious about moving forward with a new busing expenditure without having a really rational value system that creates whatever we create. In other words, we need to basically be able to document why we're doing it the way we're doing it. So I just want to caution us not to do this because we're hearing a lot of concern about this in the community right now, but I think that most of us would like to bless everyone and that we believe that it's environmentally better and it's better for equity and all those other reasons. And the problem is we're actually leaving a lot of people out of the busing and we're having to choose who we're leaving out. So I don't know if it's a question so much is just a caution is just that we can all make sure that we agree on the values we're using as we go forward. I think I would need to know more, I would need to know more about that because I'm not positive with, I don't know what you mean when you say which Roxbury students were leaving off buses. So, and I'm not sure I haven't heard while I've heard from Peeler community members, I've heard from Roxbury community members but more because the bus is late. Sometimes I'm crappy weathered like yesterday or the bus driver was driving too fast but not in terms of the service that we're offering them. So I need to know more. Right, no, and all I mean by that is that, if a parent has, there's an expectation for it. If we want to talk about the equity of, where people live and their income, we have to look at Roxbury as an even lower income community than Montpelier in many areas. And in terms of the ability, the requirement in the economics of a family unit in terms of having to allocate time to move their children around, their kids are not gonna be walking from their home to the Roxbury Village School so that they can get picked up by a bus. They're gonna be dropped off there. I mean, maybe there are some kids, I'm sure there's some kids close in who do that but in many cases the parents are still basically busing their own kids in their family, trucks and cars. And so what we wanna do is think about what, how much are we making them do that and whether that's consistent with what we're doing in Montpelier also. If they're driving them two minutes and there's no big deal, that's great. But it's just, I just wanna make sure we're doing apples to apples. The density questions, the feasibility of those things are important from an economics perspective but not so much from an equity perspective. I think it's interesting that you haven't heard from Roxbury because with a new system, a new busing, it seems like if what we're doing now wasn't working, we would have heard or they would have heard, but I don't know that. And it is safe to say that the middle school and the high school families, what we have right now is a huge load off of those families. We've moved in that direction. We're moving in that direction and it really is, I don't think there is experience on how we're gonna be able to compare the equity between the two communities on this because it's not practical for a Roxbury bus to go door to door and pick up all the kids. It's just not practical. Well, like in Budsies. Could the bus even make it? It was only four years ago that the bus actually went on a single dirt road in town. Before that, it was picking up the children on highway 12, 8 or 12. They had certain locations where the bus would stop and pick the kids up. I mean, I was thinking, I was hoping some of this conversation, one day, two days ago, there was a hiccup with the bus. The bus driver thought it was a holiday, didn't he? It was a strange morning, waiting for the bus to come. That's class. But the interesting thing is, when I asked my son after I picked him up in the bottom of the hill for the walk up, and we were talking, how did school go, were there any kids out because the bus wasn't there? He said, no, everybody in his class was there. And again, it's... We had five students, I do know that. Yeah, there was five students, absolutely. Who knows why they were out? Sorry, six year old perspective is kind of... Exactly, that probably is pretty typical for their student population. Yeah, it really is. I mean, a lot of the parents tonight have said, a lot of the parents on the feedback we've heard before, it's tough managing your schedule to get the kids here and get the kids there. It really is different in Roxbury. When, if you choose to live in Roxbury, you're choosing to drive at some point in time. And not that it's easy or necessarily because you've made that decision, but I think ultimately most families living up on the hill somewhere know that they are gonna be driving and they'll be working schedules out. Whether or not that's always... It's not always easy. It's definitely not. I know that there are families who've had a hard time getting their kids to preschool in town. I'm looking at the UNI, we had a couple conversations about busing for preschool kids to make sure we have some clear expectations there. But I do know that in the past, maybe four or five years, we had heard from families that if they couldn't use the village school, they wouldn't be able to get their kids to preschool somewhere else. So yes, transportation is a tough thing. I guess, but we're expecting those parents to... There's this different set of expectations, right? So we're saying that we would expect a Roxbury parent to just handle it. To make accommodations. But we wouldn't expect a Montpelier parent to handle it. And I don't think that anyone's saying that necessarily, but it's really close to that. And I think that we've added busing services for Roxbury in the merger of the town. So what we've got is some really good will right now, I think, and we've made a good step forward for everyone. And I think we want to do that for Montpelier too. And the question is, is that then throw that on a whack again? And now we all of a sudden we hear from, and say, hey, but you're adding tax dollars, Roxbury tax dollars to do this. And it doesn't seem like an equitable thing. So I think I'm just wanting to be that kind of conscience a little bit about, are we truly being equitable in terms of, if we talk about the economics of family income and distance from schools and the burden replacing on single parents or the burden replacing on people who have to think about their jobs and how that equity, it is still affecting those Roxbury families too. To the credit of Roxbury residents throughout this entire merger process, they have said, we have low expectations. We've heard that over and over again when it comes to transport, we have low expectations. So, there's not like a big selfish demand or anything from Roxbury, it's not that. I'm not sure they said they had low expectations. I don't mean about the whole school system, but the transportation. Well, but I think they were used to, I think Vermont is like the dilemma we're in. There are rural parts of Vermont. If you live out on a dirt road, I can tell you the buses don't go there because they can't during two seasons of the year, that would be the mud seasons. So, equitable is difficult. Yeah, they did say they were, my pillar residents were actually advocating for more busing for Roxbury during the merger conversations. Then we actually brought it up as the problem, hey, how are we gonna do equity in transportation? How's that gonna work? And the Roxbury were like, we don't really have equity in transportation, it's just the way it is when you live in a rural town. And we're like, yeah, but if we're gonna all be together, we're gonna have some equity in transportation, and we're gonna do the after-school bus, the extracurricular bus. That was something that we really, the Montpelier folks really insisted on in that process. So, I think just to be consistent, I wanna make sure we think of these two towns as one district. I actually forgot that piece of, sorry, Brian, I forgot that piece of the planning from earlier that I just thought of, the Colonial Drive area there, like that Roxbury bus already passes through and that certainly is not a full bus. So, that group of kids could easily, so when we're talking about where we'd be picking up, we already used that bus. So, we'd already have that option. I just forgot about that part of the plan. Sorry. That's actually part of the point that I wanted to make in terms of equity. I had had a conversation with a couple folks in town and this has come up, yes. The bus coming from Roxbury is gonna be coming through Montpelier, it's gonna be going past houses and obviously, the Montpelier kids are gonna be going for a longer bus ride. It's inherent by nature. But, I do think we need to be careful to not start using that bus to make a ton of stops in town and essentially start an entire new round. I think what you could do, and I have to talk to Stacey. Feeders. This is beyond my favorite. Like one or two big, yeah. Yeah, you stop right at the bottom of Colonial Drive, where those neighborhoods let out for the middle schoolers and just have the middle schoolers get on because it goes up into the neighborhoods with the UES bus but with the middle schoolers, just stop at the end and have them get on at the end. So it's not considerable. So the concern is just making it even longer. Exactly. Okay. I just said two pieces you had talked about in the map. I had the opportunity to see Chris Hensey five years ago and there are actually, the school district actually has maps with the circles, the radius around each school drawn out and that was used probably in the 90s or the 80s to determine which kids could walk and which kids would be bussed and then I think there's consideration for difficult streets and neighborhoods. But there are some maps and existences that we, our last, last I know Chris Hensey and Brian have, I don't know if I have this thing to say. And just the other point, nobody in the town, I think at this point has ever expected door-to-door service. It doesn't happen now. Our kids go to school buses, school bus stops. Bus stops is the word I've heard before. So go into bus stops. And honestly not having, I don't think it was even asking for anything. In a lot of respects, anything new. We started in the school system, these kids got bussed to school and all of a sudden the buses disappeared. So we had buses and then they could take it away at an age. So it wasn't that you're adding bus routes, it's just incorporating a few schools into the same existing bus routes. And the whole sibling thing is really an amazing factor in all this. And you hear it from a lot of parents, it'll be true for anyone. They're kind of the lunacy of it all with the sibling issue. That we usually don't talk about. I think it's interesting to have a conversation around equity because when you read about equity in white papers and you research it or you think about it from a policy perspective, equity doesn't always mean people. It doesn't always mean the same. It means, well actually, I should reverse that. It doesn't mean the same. It's providing equal access when you think about it from that perspective. I know for me as a mobiliar parent, I would have no problem with my child going across the street, I mean, I'd live right across from Heaver if they had a group stop there. But I think when you're talking about values, I can see for me as a parent where I'm putting my number one value with safety and that's what it comes down to for me of why I wanna see busing at Main Street Middle School because I truly do not feel like my child is a safe way to get to school unless I drop him off. And I would like to see the conversation be more centered around those values around safety and not so much about, I think we have opportunities for public comment. That's such a great process. People are here, people wrote letters, people have sent submitted emails, people have spoken to every one of us who's on the Transportation Committee. But I think we're gonna have that opportunity to have that discussion if that's something that we move forward with. But when you think about values, I think about safety and that to me is the center of all of the comments that I've heard and that's the one thing I think we can all agree that we don't wanna see a child get hit crossing a street. And I saw a bus in Longpillier the other day where they had the stop sign and the kids were running out in front of the bus without the stop sign up because traffic was just so hectic. So we already have problems with safety as it is now. And I just think it's important to bring that value. I think that's where parents really are concerned is looking at these icy days and sitting there thinking how is my child gonna get there? You wouldn't wanna walk the mile this morning. Your neighbor picked you up. I don't want my son getting in a car with a stranger but any decent human being would do that. We tell our kids over and over again, don't talk to strangers. Make sure you're aware of who you're with. Unfortunately, we live in that world. So that's, I think when you talk about values, you have to think about the values that affect all of our students. And I just wanna piggyback on that. It's, it affects the safety. I've lost control. All the students, all the students because of the congestion around low schools and fooding around scary students coming in and out of their buses too. There was just so much congestion around all those schools. There's a lot of safety issues for all students that are coming and going into them off of their schools. And I just know why there's not more talk about the high school too because I see that being an issue too. I mean, I don't think that high school kids can get safely to school most of the time, with living two miles out of town. And I think that affects work too. So I would love to see more conversation at the upper ends. I'm just kind of surprised that hasn't been part of this too. So I'm gonna. Thank you. I've let public comments slip a little bit. Normally we don't do that, but the comments you all raised are very good comments to public comment. But thank you for doing it. This is the topic is transportation and not just busing. I just wanted to raise something and not to ask for an answer now, but it's not in point input. At some point the budget's going about the crossing guard issue and having more crossing guards for a while. I just wanted to like, again, not putting in one spot because I didn't have the time, but it is another transportation and safety issue. I think it's the same, but on the process. That's a good point. In my side of it, it's hard to get and retain people. We've got a few jams who, but you know, some crossing guards come and go. Like for instance, for a while we didn't have one at School Street and Main Street and now we do and. They used to be one of Elm Street. There hasn't been for a long time. I was not sure to start this discussion. There could be a couple more being done. I got it in red. Any other thoughts or comments? We haven't talked really about the activities boss that goes to Roxbury after some of the actual activities at the middle school, but I do think that's also an important service to continue and I've talked to folks about usage and all that and challenges around that, but I think that's one piece where equity is where it's something that Montpelier's not gonna have, but that Roxbury, that it can be really important for Roxbury for that equal access to the extracurriculars. Well, and I think that's where equity doesn't mean equal. I mean, that's, you know, by its nature, I mean, even if we do funnel points in Montpelier, those points are probably gonna be, on average, shorter than funnel points in Roxbury, but there's also things like nobody in Montpelier, even the people out on Bliss Road are not gonna have an activity bus. So are you thinking you're gonna get what you need from SGA by budget deadline? Yeah, great. We'll have a plan. Excellent. Well, thanks everyone for the great input. This has been very helpful and thanks, Libby, for being with us. We're gonna move on to board governance. So I just kind of do a mid-year progress update. I had two items for this. One is kind of how committee structure and how we run committees. And then as part of that, some discussion about the negotiations committee and the makeup of that. And then the third is just, or the second is chain of communications. I wanna just start with chain of communications and kind of how to communicate with administration members and kind of like what hat you're wearing. The issue, and I think this has kind of been something we did in the past, is there's a pretty loose relationship between communications with the board and communications with administration members that it didn't always funnel through either the superintendent or the board chair. So there was a lot of kind of communication between board members and principals or board members and curriculum directors or board members and special ed directors. The problems with that is it kind of, I think has created some confusion on the part of the administrators about how that board member's speaking, whether they're speaking on behalf of the board, whether they're speaking individually. Sometimes it's been requests for information that I've kind of been taking as directives. So I'd like to tighten that up a little and have requests. If you want information from say, Grant or Mike or Mike McCraith or Mary or whomever, kind of as a board member seeking information to send it to Libby and me and then we can forward it on and just make sure it all gets funneled. If you're speaking as a parent, of course you can go to directly whoever you want to go to. I think given that the line between a board member and a community member is pretty hard to distinguish what's your board member, I think the only way you should go directly to an administration member other than Libby is as a parent and really keep that parent hat on and make sure that your discussion as a parent doesn't slip into a discussion as a board member, which I think can happen if you have like a specific request about something that's going on in the classroom and then you get a response back and then that kind of edges in too well. I kind of think this should happen in the school. Kind of be careful of that and where those lines are. So I just wanted to kind of, you know, set those lines all right. I think it'll be easier on the administration. I think it'll clear up any lines about whether you're speaking as an individual or as a board member and kind of Libby and I can clear that up when we pass the request along. And I think it'll just be neater and I think it's kind of the form that most boards follow and we just have it for several years. So any questions about that? Yes, I'd like clarification because I thought if I had a question, I sent it to you. You can send it to, yes. Not to Libby, unless, well, no one lets. That I send it to you, you make a decision about whether Libby needs to be brought in or whether you have the answer to my question. I think it's okay to CC both of those. I mean, I'm okay just having to go to B. Just having the policy says. The policy, no, it goes to the superintendent, copy to the chair. I think that's what the policy is. You wouldn't have a conversation with somebody besides without including the board chair. Right, makes sense. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think the main thing is to make sure that Libby and I are the funnel. What if you're dealing with, and I realize this is like the exception. But for example, some of the paperwork for becoming a board member, Joanne reached out to me directly because yeah, she just reached out to me directly and so then I need to clarify some things with her. I think that's fine. Okay. I mean, if it's truly like. Logistical. Logistical administrative, but. Not only that, she called you, right? And she also reached out to you. I mean, I think if, yeah, I think if someone reaches out to you, you can answer a question. And if it's really road administrative, you know, just can you drop this form off or whatever. I think the line is, you know, air on the side of going through us. And I think that, you know, the danger of kind of thinking something is just a quick administrative question is it might be looked as a directive. Like, yeah, I'd like to know this number, but this number might be really complicated or, you know, is that a directive? Like I have to get that number to, you know, hammer her right now. So. And so when we're working on the finance committee with Grant, for example, and I think we're copying Libby on pretty much all those communications. I can't think of any that we didn't. Do you want to be copied on those as well, Jim? Because you might get, I'm just thinking. About that, like with some of the subcommittee work where there could be like this past week, for example, with the negotiations committee and with the finance committee, there were a lot of emails bouncing back and forth and Libby was copied on, I think, all of them. But I don't know that you were. I wasn't. And do you really want that to be the case or no, I'm just trying to. I think those questions would come to Jim and I and then we'd bring him to Grant with what Jim's saying. Yeah, go ahead and copy me. I can always do a quick look and ignore contact Libby until there seems to be a lot of traffic around the studio. I think that these are all good things. I guess I have a question about to what extent the onus falls on the professional administrators to be able to navigate this also. You know, our roles as community members, parents, board members, they're very fluid in the sense that we're always talking to other, our neighbors who maybe are also teachers or somebody who might be a former, you know, whatever. And it just, it's, you know, I think, you know, I mean, I can think my own interactions have been pretty, I usually go and say, I'm writing this email as a parent today. You know, I'm always very clear about that. But I think that it would be great if we, if administrators were fluent in how to, in what those roles are and what the, how the board members do not speak for the board when they're approaching somebody individually. They don't actually even have a right to ask for you to do any research or do anything, frankly, that has to go through their loss, basically. You know, I just, I just want to make sure it's clear that like I would really love it if, you know, when I sit down with Pam to go over my daughter's stuff and we start talking about some other issue that she can say, you know, I want to make it clear right now that next, you know, or that I'm here talking to you as a parent. I mean, you know, it's harder for a teacher, right? They're not an administrator. Yeah. I guess I think that it's not important. I think they are important, too. And we need to be careful about it and we need to respect the authority and her role as a superintendent and respect our roles. I don't think it's disrespectful. Well, I think it is because, not intentionally or personally, I just think in terms of how you look at the roles between the board and the superintendent that in fact channels develop with other members of the administrative team that's circumventing the person who runs the district and that's not supposed to work that way. So I mean, I do, I think we really have to own that responsibility as board members to make sure we understand that we hide and we have to own the power structure, too. Yeah. I was just going to say, you are their boss. Yeah. And whether you... Who's boss? Everybody's. Yeah. In the district. I'm not Pam's boss. Yeah, but you're Pam's boss's boss, good. And so, but what I'm saying is when you go in, even if it's not your intention, you have some innate authority because you're on the board. So you might not mean it that way, but it's hard for somebody not to take it. Yeah, or to tell you, yeah, stop timing about that because you're a board member. I get it, but I have a lot of faith in the professionalism of our administrators and I think they can easily be trained in that, too. I'm not saying we should be abusing it or any of that nonsense, but I'm not even Libby's boss, right? Like I'm pretty clear on my roles here. No, I'm only her boss as part of a group, right? So I wouldn't have no individual right to even ask her for anything. No, but... So it's not like I'm trying to abuse something. What I'm doing is I'm saying these things require that the professionals, the people who are full-time paid, they should understand these roles also, is what I'm saying. Well, I think they should understand it, but I think the onus should be on us to be very mindful of how our interactions with administrators are taken and the fact that we have... Isn't that in our policies already? A power leverage over them. That's what we're doing the same. So, we have a little bit of time, right? We're not really in the right time yet. No, I think we're ahead of time, actually. I think it's a really important topic and it would actually be helpful for me to really put the parent role, which does... It is hard. To just talk more specifically about where that line should be drawn, right? Because it's very easy if it's your kid having a problem in your class that they're in the line is easy and you can kind of understand it, but as a parent, you're sure seeing what's going on in the school and it's sort of involved your kid, but it's also, I think we need another coach for this team or I think we don't have enough resources in the cafeteria. You know what I mean? Like you sort of see things. I think we should be more express really about where that line is. I do think, because we're born numbers, we carry a different responsibility if you're going to a principal to raise issues that are going on in the school, even though they do affect your own child, but they're really more programmatic issues. And is that... Do you think that line, you crossed that line somewhere before you get to saying, you know, why doesn't the library staff for more hours? I'm just going to take things up to try not to personalize it, but you know what I mean? Where do you think it is? I'm not sure where it is. I mean, I think to be safe, if it goes beyond issues very specific to your own child, you might not have crossed it, but you're inching towards it. And I think also, like when I'm tempted to kind of notice or bring up those issues, I realize I have this role that I have kind of a unique ability to notice those and then bring them to this forum and not necessarily raise them in other forums where it could, you know, it could be taken as kind of putting some pressure on an administrator. So does that work though? So if we look at Bridget's example, the super library staffing. So if we come to the board and we decide to start talking about library staffing, all of a sudden aren't we getting outside the bounds of policy governance or governance by policy, whatever we're calling it and kind of making more directives for Libby's implement rather than us kind of trusting? Wouldn't that be a board conversation of is this something that the board is very interested in learning or you, Rami, are interested in learning? Do you care a lot about libraries? I think times that doesn't. Yeah, well, that's another interesting line too, like you obviously, you want to come in on behalf of the district, but if you're really seeing like a district-wide problem and you're, and you kind of have a conversation that starts with your child and then it starts to get to bigger issues that need to be addressed at a different level. And then obviously as community members of people in the schools, that's kind of how we oftentimes learn about what the needs are. Just kind of be mindful of when you're, I'm not sure if there's a clear line and it's a hard role to play, but I think you kind of be mindful and be conservative. But if you observe something like the library staff couldn't they send that to you and say, okay, I'm concerned, let's see this problem or what I think is a problem, I need some data on it or I need to hear what Libby thinks about this. To say if I were just a parent and not a board member, I would say something to do the principal. Yes. And I'm not gonna do it because I'm a board member, so I'm telling you, like, is that? Yeah. So maybe I'll share for the group, maybe a little bit of feedback, almost a disclaimer of sorts, although we did bring up, I have a professional connection, in a sense, to the school. Being the library director at the Roxbury Library, we've obviously tried to do activities and programs and coordinate things in conjunction with the school. I do my best to have the assistant director be the face for a lot of that, but small facility doesn't always the case. The fact that you have an assistant director is impressive, right? Yeah. It's been good in terms of management the last few years. Yeah. But no, but I've always tried, it's always, you know, the library email account, like it's always, like it's just about something we're trying to do together. And I've never had an instance where somebody's expressed to me that they felt uncomfortable and this was kind of gray, but it's always in the back of my mind that a lot of hats on right now and I wanna make sure that it's clear that, yes, not making it a programmatic suggestion, but wouldn't it be great if we could do this together? But that's it, it's a small town, right? So things are very, they're fluid and I think transparency has been my fall back. So when you get into those weird situations, you know, like for instance, just include Libby and the Loop or whatever, or if you like, I'm just talking as a parent here, but I did that recently, I had an issue with a specialist and I wanted to solve it with the teacher and the specialist, it was from my child, right? So I was dealing with this one thing and little did I know the teacher was copying, blind copying the principal because they were concerned, like what was going on here? And they said, would you like me to include the principal in this? I'm like, no, I don't think we need the principal in this, right? And so there's this power dynamic that if you are aware of that I wasn't even thinking about in terms of, I was like, no, I just wanna solve my problem for my kid right now. And so then I get a call from the principal saying, hey, would you like to talk? And I'm like, okay, right? And so I really loved that and I thought she was great, Pam was great because she was just making sure everything was okay, but everything was staying totally legit. The alternative could have been just copy the world on all that. And then I would be like, well, I'm not trying to escalate this. So it's this multiple kind of thing that gets confusing. No, it's definitely hard. And I think there's another line too, which is I don't wanna pull back on advocacy for my kid because I feel I'm in a board role and you know. You won't. And I won't, but you know, but I also try to like, what would I do as a parent to get full advocacy to my child and where, you know, where might that come into like broader district policy that suddenly is inappropriate? So I think just be, you know, be very mindful. But I think the clear areas where it's not a problem is if you're talking to a administrator about something that doesn't have to do with your kid. If it's, you know, I need information on this. If you're talking to them as a board member, then the filter clearly goes here. And if you feel, if you get into a situation where the conversation starts as a parent and you're starting to wonder, you know, then maybe think hard. And if it's, you know, if it's kind of going beyond parent advocacy, maybe reach out to one of us and say, I've got a situation. You know, do you think that I'm starting to go into a board role? Anyway, just since we're doing a check-in, I thought it would be good to raise that again. Any other comments or questions before we go into committees and kind of organizational committees? So kind of two major things on committees. There's a question about how to deal with the warning meetings by committees, whether for the whole board, Libby and Heather have been largely doing the warnings. But with committee meetings, it's been kind of ad hoc. I don't think the expectations are super clear. There are technically committee meetings and technically the committees have the obligation to do it. It's something that Libby could do if there was a desire to have it do. I know Bridget, for instance, is a great job of she just directly goes to Heather. I've done it when we were doing the transportation meetings. So I think we should have a clear consensus on the board of whether the committee chair goes to Heather to warn meetings or whether it's something that is a super-attended role. I think it's the committee chair. Committee chair, does anyone? Libby, is there any reason you need to do it? Yeah, go directly to Heather again. Okay, good. I did it in the middle way in there. Well, I mean, it came up with the negotiations but it wasn't warned. It turned out it didn't need to be, but I think there was some professional about it. For negotiations, it was a question of negotiation session versus a committee meeting. Yeah, but it didn't come up until the night before the meeting and fortunately we didn't need to have it done but I thought just given that situation, it would be good to, so committee chairs will do it. The second thing is for committees that meet fairly regularly, would it be good to maybe have a set time, I don't know if this works at all for your schedule. For the finance committee it does kind of work because we've been doing them before the presentations of the quarterly meeting. The negotiations committee I think is gonna be really hard for one, a lot of them don't need to be warned. Second, negotiations, schedules. Yeah, go through the union and they also kind of have an unpredictable pace and intensity to them. The only really active is the policy committee. I don't bridge it if it would differ. We've never been able to step up. It just doesn't work. We've had a way to fix it. Regular schedule, now it's been, we have these priorities right now, let's call it one conference and it looks like it's necessary to have a scheduled monthly or biweekly meeting as needed. Okay, that's perfect. Is there a rule in warning about how many? For example, if you've scheduled four meetings, could you warn the four meetings all at once or do they have to be warned a certain amount of time before the meeting? They have to be warned, oh, sorry. 24 hours. 24 hours. It's good to put an agenda on so it would be hard for our to warn four. Oh, okay. And how far in advance? 24 hours. 24 hours, at least. Except for some like emergency. Yes. Okay, I think that's the only really committee that meets semi-regulatively that doesn't have a pretty predictable schedule. And then, so any questions or comments on that? Well, just to add to that, so you're wanting to establish a regular meetings in order to have them posted and accessible and regular meetings don't have to be warned in the same way. Yeah, they don't. So that's hardly just to like have it more. They don't have to be warned in the same way and then it could be something that say Heather could kind of calendar. So it wouldn't, yeah. Really, it doesn't have to be warned in the same way? If I said, I'm on a committee, it's gonna be once a week for some reason. Right, wouldn't you, don't you have to warn it just the same? Well, just like our regular board meetings aren't warned in the same way because we set a schedule. Well, that's what I was wondering about a list of if you had a committee and then already set for me. But you still post the agenda. Yeah, I still post the agenda. Yeah, there's other steps. Yeah, I mean, I think there's like three types of meetings or regular meetings, special meetings, and special meeting, and then emergency meetings. And the final thing is, I think I want to have a little discussion about the negotiations committee. Tina, now that the committee is more stocked and not just Tina has decided that her previous desire never to ever be on the negotiations committee is a desire that she wants to rekindle. That was like your buzz, nope, that was excellent. So who does that leave? So it leaves Ryan and Andrew and I just- So that's two and we always had two. Yeah. That's true. We always like just to be clear, I have that saying. You're just laughing. You're just doing that about it. It's true. It just doesn't always get it. Yeah. Well, I've heard you do a great job. Oh yeah. So I want to give mostly Ryan and Andrew's thoughts about whether they feel they're comfortable as a duo. And then the other question is, since we are starting to get into issues, getting some time with the board to go over what the issues are going to be and get some board consensus on how we feel about it. I think that's critical. Yeah. It's really important. So we need some executive session time? I think probably. I guess. Yeah, I guess. Do you think a half hour could do it if we do it quickly or should we schedule it one more time? I suspect half an hour is probably reasonable. Maybe we've only gone through the grandals at this point. It's going to be more general expectations, I think, than if we don't have anything specific, really, except for the semaph and recommendations, so. Would, yeah, go ahead, Steve. No, I just think we should make sure we have a good kickoff in terms of our strategic direction or whatever we want it to be this year. So we're going to need a little bit of time, so at least 30 minutes. The first time. I think the discussions take a long time. They do. Longer than we always want them to. Yeah. First meeting maybe 30 minutes after that, I remember. But I think at the very outset, I think this is what you're saying, Steve, is to kind of have the general approach ironed out and maybe our general tenants ironed out of. Yeah, and just knowing what the realities are this year, getting all that, that takes a while. It might be 45 is what I'm trying to say. Never to happen twice, but. Okay, whenever you guys have, whatever you guys think you can squeeze in, I think is what you do. Could people start at 5.45 or is that too early? 30 minutes? Well, I'm just thinking the fifth is the public budget presentation, so I'd prefer not to push into that. I don't know if 5.45 is the early, but. No, the fifth. I mean, if we can get people here. If we can get people here. If we can get people here. If we can get people here. If we can get people here. They even get a pizza. And is the idea to Jim and Levy that we're gonna, that the administration during that time is going to present its proposals as well? I can. Well, so right now we have these proposals from the administration. And we don't understand them, so. I don't know how you could understand that. No, I think they need to be, we need 4.5. Yeah. Okay, so let's do, let's meet at 5.45 then. Okay. We'll get food. Yeah. So. And this has to be mindful that we can meet again because I don't want to push. Can you get 5.45? Like that, yes. Being equitable to Rocksburg, right? Yeah. And. Again. Okay. Because there's a lot of people who are way cheaper than Rocksburg. Ooh. Way cheaper. So. It's okay. It's okay. Bring them on. Okay, so logistically, so if Andrew and I are the two other negotiation committee, I get really sick and I can't make a schedule meeting. Is it okay for Andrew to be there by himself with just one person? Yeah, you know, actually we did have three for a while. I'm not sure that we all know except you. We did have three. I'm gonna go with you. We did have, there was some, it was me, Jen and Peter for a while. I just remembered, one time I did get really sick like an hour before I moved to Houston. I just canceled. You're being like, enjoy your trip. You're not going. I'm willing to be, like, yeah, like the emergency goalie, like who sits in the stands that they pull out when everybody else is dead and injured. Ah. When everybody else has won the Powerball. Right. In terms of Libby's involvement and the attorney's involvement, et cetera, is that something that we want to save for next time? Okay. Well, if you win the Powerball, I still get to negotiate this committee. What's that? We'll do the whole play the ground work next time. Yeah. We'll do this. There's a lot to talk about. I think there's quite a bit, yeah. Are you about to go to the last item? I think there's all the items. Does anybody remember who last time said we should go talk to the lions? Oh, yeah. So, I figured it was, I don't think there is a lions in town. I've been trying to... Is there an elk? Elk. We're good on rotary. I can't find the others. So, I think they're like up at the Canadian club. And I'm like, I'm not sure the Canadian... Actually, they might be. I think there's a colonis and berry. I think they... They're all berry. Unless Michelle says otherwise, Michelle usually watches these. Actually, I think it was I that said... I just picked another. There's no lions nearby. I mean, they are. They're in the Canadian club. And we're not. I don't think they have any interest in our school budget. So, we're good with the rotary. Okay. In January. Okay. Thank you for that. That's quite all right. Anything else? I've just got to open up quickly before I return. Anything else on board governance? Anyone who wants to pick any observations? Things we're doing well, things we're not doing well. And a policy committee conversation. I can raise a question. In the last, what, 14 months, we've had a lot of conversations and discussions about, we're not policy governance. We're governance by policy. Never formally said, adopted anything besides conversations. Would it make sense for us to have kind of a very short, global policy, essentially, if it says this is how we're trying to operate? Does that make sense? Would it be not necessary? I don't know. Who would force us to define what governance by policy means? What do I look forward to that conversation? I'm gonna say. Which might sound better than it defines. I'm agnostic about it. I think we could have it. My guess is it would take 45 minutes and it would end up on a sheet of paper and we'd worn it a few times and then it would sit in a bind or somewhere. Like I said, it was fun. It just kind of came up and here we are in progress update for board governance and for a passable board. Other thoughts? Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. All those in favor? Thanks all.