 Wednesday, October 7th board meeting at 6.33 p.m. And now we're gonna have public comment. I know some of you are SRO applicants. So if you wanna talk feel free, please try to keep it pretty short. We got your letters and I think that'd give us most of the information we need but if you wanna, you know, say an extra thing or two that would be great and you definitely do not have to. I won't want to fact your consideration at all but if you wanna say a few words, please go ahead. We've done this previously with the raise hand function. So if you wanna go ahead and raise your hand, it's if you hit the participants, it should bring you to a little sidebar that has a button that you can press to raise hand. If you're having problems with that, when we're done with all the people who have raised their hand, I'll just ask if there's anyone else who wants to speak and just go ahead and shout out or physically raise your hand. And also when you do talk, please introduce yourself, even if I call your name out for the camera. And I also just want to add a couple of agenda items before we get started. Libby is going to give us an update on the COVID situation at UES. And the other agenda item is we're gonna appoint a new member to the VSPA or at least discuss it and appoint it. Luke Gillis is willing to do that and a hearty thanks to Michelle for doing it and doing it over time. So, Biba? Yeah, hi everyone. I'm Biba Khan and I did apply to be on the committee for the SRO committee. I am a world languages teacher at the middle school. I'm a parent of a second grader and I'm the Vermont 2020 teacher of the year. Mainly I'm interested in being on this committee because I am deeply proud of this district and our commitment to all students. And I'm so thankful that you all have created this opportunity to pursue equitable solutions for all of our students. My work as an educator is based in the belief that all students should be seen, heard and valued. And I would bring that lens to our conversations. As we learned a few weeks ago, the opinions in this district are pretty varied and so these conversations might be kind of tough at times. As someone who both works and lives in the community, I think I'm well served to engage respectfully with my colleagues and neighbors around these issues. So thank you for your consideration. All right, thank you, Biba. William Alexander? Hello, thank you. I am William Alexander and mostly gonna read from the email I already sent in to Jim Murphy. I'm very interested in serving on the board subcommittee examining the role of SROs. As the faculty chair of the Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA program at Vermont College up the hill, I'm very familiar with the challenges and unintended consequences of creating resources for both kids and teenagers. I'm also familiar with this kind of committee work. In addition to my role as chair, I serve on the college's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. I have also worked with We Need Diverse Books, a fantastic organization that does incredible nationwide work. I've done mentorship with them. My personal experience may also be useful. I am Latino, the white passing and with an optional accent. I'm also physically disabled. I am accustomed to advocacy in both of those realms. And that was all I wanted to say. Thank you very much for your time and attention. All right, thanks, Will. Julia Chavitz? Okay. So I am actually, I did apply to be on the committee and I would be happy to serve on the committee in my experiences as social worker and as well as coordinating with the Just Schools Initiative. But I also am happy to seed my seat or to just step aside for the purpose of making sure that the committee is 50% plus one. BIPOC folks, people with disabilities, people, queer people. I'm actually, I am queer but I am very straight passing and don't live with a lot of straight privilege. So I would be happy to step aside for that purpose. But I'm mainly here speaking tonight to support the candidacy of Susan Koch. I saw her this morning at Drop-Off and she said that she wasn't able to make it tonight but asked that I share with you all that she's very interested, that she'd be really strong both as a teacher and a strong teacher, a teacher of the year and as a community member and as a bridge to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee at the district level. And she was hoping to sort of serve in all three of those capacities. And then, no, because I'm talking. I also wanted to support the candidacy of Joan Javier of all who is the minister of the Unitarian Church in town, a strong social justice advocate and has been engaged in a lot of ways. She also is a Filipina, I believe, and identifies as a BIPOC. And she also said that she would look forward to the work of the committee which may be challenging at times and also a deeply meaningful community-building effort. So thank you so much for your, as a board for your thoughtfulness and for your work on this issue and we'll look forward to seeing how this work shakes up. Great, thanks, Julia. Catherine Nunnally. Is your... Hi, my name is Catherine Nunnally. I'm a mother of three popular Roxbury Public School students, two in the elementary school, one in the high school and I've served in multiple ways on the parents' groups and just thank you for the opportunity to be a candidate on this committee. I have been a public school educator, call it in my former life, but I taught at the high school level for seven years in a lower income area in the south. But I do feel like that experience and also years of experience working with other marginalized communities will serve me well in this capacity and also just working with different kinds of people. I've done that in different kinds of situations and look forward to that. Also just truly want to do what is best for all students and not just the students for the teachers and the school community and Montpelier as a whole, as being a community member. And I just thank you for this opportunity again and if I'm not chosen, that's fine. We'll be supportive of the process and I do feel like I could be an objective member of the committee and really listen to all sides and just try to strengthen the community as a whole and bring us together. Unity is a big thing for me. So thank you. Thank you, Catherine. I'm not seeing any more hands in the participant function. Looks like Justin wants to speak. So go ahead, just unmute yourself, yeah. Sorry about that, I'm a Zoom incompetent. I didn't know how to raise my hand and I was a little late on the call. Justin, you're actually there. I have one kid at Union and another one that'll be there soon. I actually, I had no idea there would be this many people that applied to the position. It seems like they're a bunch of really well qualified people. I was public defender for five years in Boston and now I've had my own practice for about six years and it focuses primarily on civil rights law, civil rights law and like 1983 police brutality type cases and Indian criminal defense. So like I'm still a contracted public defender with Massachusetts but I used to be a staff attorney. Obviously this particular topic is very close to my heart having dealt with marginalized populations and representing individuals who have been, who have struggled with over policing in the like through their entire lives and had the reverberations of that throughout their entire lives. That said, I actually think almost everybody here is much more well qualified for this particular committee. So I think I'm just gonna go ahead and withdraw my candidacy and write a really good thing for the police review committee because I think I'm much more qualified for that and a lot of people here have lived experiences I think probably a little better than me. I mean, I've lived, I've tried to live through my clients but it's not really the same. So in any event, just wanted to throw it out there. Good luck everybody. I'm sure you're gonna do great. Seems like everybody is amazing. Well, thank you, Justin. We very much appreciate your interest and remember for that, doing a lot of interest in this committee, there will be open meetings with public comments. So there will be the opportunity for those that don't get chosen to participate to speak during public comment and certainly to listen and follow it and to weigh in with your comments and other comments as well. So just in terms of the agenda, we're actually gonna deliberate about selection in an executive session. So what I think I'm gonna do is move the SRO committee dates and membership down and let Livy talk about COVID and let Mike talk about the results of the language immersion study. And Mike, if you wanna go first, you can because I know that you probably haven't, you mean you wanna get on with. So it's, Livy, it's up to you how you wanna do that, but let's do that and then let's go into executive session to talk about the SRO candidates. And thank you everyone who applied. I was, sometimes it can be a little bit of an exercise of pulling teeth to get people to serve on committees, but there was really robust interest here and I really appreciate all the thoughtful applications and really we've got some tough decisions to make. We have a really wealth of great applicants. So Livy? Do you want to go through the consent agenda, Jim, first? Oh, good. Good point, let's see the consent agenda first. Do you have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. I'll second it. Any discussion or items you wanna pull off? Nope, Emma? Aye. Jill? Aye. Mara? Aye. Brian? Aye. Andrew? Aye. Jerry? Aye. Okay, passes. I didn't miss anyone, did I? Oh, I meant to say yay, tringed under non-binary policy. Yay, approved. It's a billion and a half in the making. I'm sorry, I should have done that before, but yay. Yeah, great work everyone on doing that. That's a fantastic addition and I know that the policy committee spent many, many, many hours. So, okay, now, Libby, we can join the UES first or do you wanna have- Yeah, let's let Viper do his thing first. So, because we have some new board members, just a little background and some community members on the call. Last year's budget had a study in it. Last year's mic or year before? Yeah, a little of those. Yeah, it had a significant amount of money and to do a study around language immersion that the board asked us to look into. Mike had considerable experience with this in the district that he was coming from before. So I put Mike in charge of this process and we're kind of closing the loop now. So for board members, this is in line with budgetary decisions and visioning decisions. And so it's a lot of four year information but do ask questions. Mike, you did include that lengthy packet in the board packet, right? Yep. So Mike is the expert in this and I'll let him take over. So go ahead, sir. Thank you. Yeah, so I was supposed to present on this in the spring when we were sent home, like the day of. So I apologize for the delay, but here we go. So we put together a committee of about eight to nine people depending on the meeting that consisted of educators, community members. We actually were able to have community members that didn't necessarily have children in the school, which was great. We had parents and it was a really great group of folks that were dedicated to exploring this. The funding for the study really went towards supporting the Center for Applied Linguistics from Washington DC, coming here to work with us several times during the year. And we worked out of two texts and I have extras of these if any board members are interested, guiding principles for dual language education and then a text called developing dual language programs for student success. And the Center for Applied Linguistics representative came up and worked with our committee to really work through step by step what were the foundational needs that a school district would have to have in place in order to really promote a successful language immersion program. And so what I wanted to do is walk through the report a bit and take any questions that come along and just kind of go from there. So we looked at three main models for a language immersion program in Montpelier-Roxbury and we ranked them according to least effective and most effective. And I wanna clarify what that means. Least effective meant it was the least fidelity in language immersion for students. And most effective meant it was the absolute top that you could do for an immersion program. It doesn't necessarily mean bad to worse or good or bad or any of that. It's just different levels of fidelity and outcomes for students. So we looked at a 50-50 model which basically was halfway through the day students would switch from their partner language back to English. We looked at a 90-10 one-way dual language model which is essentially what you hear about from schools. This is kind of the model that's promoted across the United States and certainly on the East Coast. This is the model that is in place in Jericho Elementary School in what was formerly known as Chittenden East Supervisor Union. And then we looked at a full immersion school which is obviously like the Cadillac of immersive experiences. And those were the three models that we looked at through the lens of Montpelier-Roxbury Public School. Important to note with the 90-10 one-way dual language program that is an incremental release to English. So if you look at the percentages the first year of that program 90% of the students instruction is in the partner language. 10% is in English. That 10% would likely be specials, recess and lunch. Those are the things that would account for that 10% of English. And then each year progressively translates back to English. And so that's just an important thing to note. We included a scale in there in the report to kind of explain how we rank these things in order of fidelity. So what would this look like in our schools? Essentially what we were considering kind of focusing on that 90-10 was it would start with students entering kindergarten. Most of the research says that that is the best way to do that. Don't start at second grade. Don't start at third grade. Start at kindergarten. And that's the way that you start an immersive learning language experience. Each year that cohort would move up and we would incrementally increase our capacity. So the kindergartners would move to first grade and suddenly we have two language immersion classes. Then the next year those first graders would move to second grade and we would have three language immersion classes. And that's how that would build upon itself. Families would apply for the program likely through a lottery process designating certain number of spots for free and reduced eligible students. Certain number of spots per school based on residency and broad demographic stakeholder groups. There's a lot of systems out there already built for us to look at in terms of that. This is a long-term commitment. This is not something that parents and students can go into for a couple of months and try and hope that it works. This is a six-year commitment for the school district and for the parents and students for the best outcomes. That's really essential to reiterate. Students in these classes would still receive English instruction during the day and there are classes and things like that as I mentioned before, but mainly immersive in that 90-10 experience. We included some projection enrollment projections in the report. Those are obviously outdated at this point. We have some updated ones. It doesn't change the outcomes of the report or the recommendations. Mike, I'm wondering if you might be able to project your report in screen share, just especially for people accessing this as a video labor. Let me see if I can do that. Post as disabled participant screen share. Mike, keep going. I'll tell you when you can go. Okay. Staffing considerations. So there are a couple of staffing considerations that come with this. Quite a few actually. So in each model, we kind of broke down the different staffing considerations. In the 50-50, we'd have to hire or reassign Spanish-speaking kindergarten educators in the first year. The same for the 90-10 and the same for the full immersion school with the exception that the full immersion school would also include other staff that we would have to consider. That's in that first year only and I'll talk more about staffing in the budgetary considerations. For the facilities consideration, this is one of the tougher areas for us. Our schools are packed. So if we were to assume a kindergarten classroom, union elementary, if we looked at union elementary, it would be based on class sizes and projections upon when we started. It was very hard to predict what that would be. We have years where we have a high end flux and a low end flux and kindergarten numbers are always kind of fluid. Incoming kindergarten numbers. For the full immersion school, we had two discussions. One was Roxbury Elementary School and this was all theoretical. Nobody was jockeying for one way or another, but theoretically, Roxbury Village School as a full immersion school or renting or leasing an off-site space was another consideration in our discussion. One of the biggest concerns slash considerations that we looked at and worked with through Cal was our curricular considerations. In Chittenden East, it was my responsibility to implement the Spanish immersion program there. And one of the things that we did not do well was the curricular considerations. We had to go back and figure this out after the fact and it was very extremely challenging and probably not great for students. Ooh, there we go. Probably not great for teachers either. Not very good for teachers either. So one of the challenges, the big challenge is it's not taking a curriculum and just translating it to Spanish. It is much more than that. And in MRPS, we are still working on our local curriculum in a lot of areas. So that base level of curricular development that really is recommended before launching into a language immersion program, we're not quite there within our local program. And there's more than just considering the curriculum. There's considering the accessibility of the curriculum. So for example, in certain languages, a lot of curricular materials are really hard to come by on a sustainable basis and their quality is somewhat questionable. But then there's also things like assessment. How do we assess reading and writing in a language immersion program? That's a pretty big discussion. How do we know how they're doing in their English language acquisition and how do we assess that? How do we report on those things to families? So those were all components of curricular development. There were a big question mark for the committee and also for the Center for Applied Linguistics. For budgetary considerations, there's quite a bit to consider. One of the big things with this program is sustainability. This is a huge commitment for parents, for students, for teachers, for the school district, for the school board. This is a multi-year commitment. And in order to do that, what's really recommended is to have one person with expertise in this to be focused on the program. A language immersion coordinator would have to be a consideration in terms of budget. And this is pretty essential. It's essentially a school within a school. And it kind of requires its own director and own coordinator to be able to really be dedicated to that. Staffing recruitment costs. This is not the kind of job that you just post on school spring and wait. This is something where we would probably need to be working with embassies. There may be travel involved. There may be job fairs. There's a lot more to the staffing recruitment and retainment than just posting as we tend to do in a lot of other positions. The cost for the curricular and instructional materials, that is a biggie. You're starting from scratch. All the posters, all of the alphabet charts, all of the classroom libraries, all of those things that we've inherited over the years in classrooms aren't there. So that's a pretty large cost and start up each year as you're going through that. And then a really substantial commitment to professional development and support. An example of that would be working with the Center for Applied and Linguistics on an annual basis. That's something that Chindenise does. It still does. And with so few schools in Vermont using a language immersion program, there's not much opportunity at the moment to partner and to be able to take advantage of batch pricing or to collaborate or do things like that. So there need to be some sort of commitment to long-term professional development. In the implementation considerations, it's all the things that we've kind of talked about already. There's a lot to develop in there. A lot of parent information nights, recruitment, a lot of face time and contact time, a lot of sustainability considerations. One of the biggest challenges that the language immersion programs face across the nation and in Canada as well is not just hiring staff but keeping them. That's one of the biggest challenges if you talk to language immersion programs in any school district. It's the retainment of those teachers for a sustained period of time is particularly challenging. And at the end, all members of the committee were super excited and committed to the concept of getting to a language immersion program. And we're almost frustrated in recognizing that we weren't quite ready to really launch into this at this moment. But the overall recommendation from the committee was to have the school board really review these components, ask a lot of questions and then know that if we were to embark on this say next year, it could be a significant lift for us and could possibly detract from us actually putting in place the base level of considerations that we would need to do this really well. Good. Thanks, Mike. And thanks for all the hard work of both you and the committee on this. I know it's been a while and this is very thoughtful and definitely a lot of time. Questions for Mike? If I ask quick, Mike, did any of the three models you look at consider including pre-K students as the beginning age rather than kindergarten? No. And that came from the Center for Applied Linguistics and one of their documents, there was actually a study about that. And it had to do, I'm not gonna explain it really well, but it has to do with this bell curve of language acquisition and when to have students really enter that versus a play-based experience in their home language. The individual from Cal said that she had seen a few pre-K programs, but they were only in a full immersion school, not in a 90-10 scenario. And so we didn't really consider that in our discussion based on that. Thanks for clarifying. Yeah. I should also mention that the committee actually visited Jericho Elementary. We spent the full day at the program and then met with the staff afterwards. So we had an opportunity to see it in action and raise K through, I think it was K through two at that point. Mike, as I think you know, I've attended numerous immersion programs. My spouse is a director of an immersion program and a language educator, global language educator. I'm a big proponent of what these types of programs can offer for students, families, communities. But for me, when I look at this and I look at this presentation, which I think you, I really appreciate your recommendation that that was very thoughtfully presented. And it seems like you guys did a very thoughtful job researching this as well. But this raises a lot of equity questions. You know, who gets into the program? What if somebody moves here in third grade? So you are offered to everybody at the most equitable scenario possible. And then you have somebody enter in third grade from another state who's never had any Spanish. Where did they begin? Like there's all these types of questions of equity that jumped in my mind when I think about this type of program and public school. And I'm just wondering the extent to which that was explored, how that has been considered or is that like, well, that would be the next step if we decide to continue on this path. Yeah, great question. It was a little bit of both. We spent probably the first, is Vivis still on here? Vivis here. She was on the committee. We spent probably the first two to three meetings with just a list of what ifs. Like we, what happens when these kids get to middle school? What happens with this? What happens if a kid moves in in third grade? And we had some answers for some of those things based on other programs that we had researched or seen. And then some of those we thought we should kick that down the road in terms of a conversation with the whole group. So I'll give you an example. One of the recommendations from Cal is that if you have them, if we did a 9010 program, let's say, and there is a kindergarten Spanish classroom at UES. There should be to do it well a Spanish language instruction component for all the other kids in that grade level. So that there's a cultural exchange happening between all of the students in the grade level, regardless of whether they're in the immersion classroom or in an English speaking classroom. And so there were all those elements that kind of came out and you're right. There are a ton of logistical and equity considerations to hammer out. And that's kind of the reference to the budgetary considerations of having a coordinator who can be solely focused on those aspects and make sure that we're doing the best for our community and our students. But there were several of those, but there were also several that we had to table. At one point, we made this grand list and just said, okay, we need to wait and get Cal here to really help us work through this up because we're just stopping what is planned. Other questions from Mike? All right. So you said that it would take a significant amount of time. Did, was there like a timeline that the committee would recommend for implementing something like this? A full year in advance of starting anything was the overall recommendation. The recommendation from Cal was that that's a short time. And does that mean having the language immersion director there and those educators there to begin developing that curriculum in your advance? It could be a combination of things. It could, so I'll give you an example of Watson and Easton. So they had their incoming first grade teacher start work three months early to work with the coordinator to be able to develop the curriculum because you have to remember, so if you start at K, you don't necessarily have your first grade curriculum, second grade curriculum and third grade curriculum articulated yet. I feel like you'd like to do that with the teacher that's coming in. So they made arrangements for that person to start three months early and do that curricular development. So yeah, there would have to be somebody kind of steering the ship to be able to do that and it's everything from the ground up. And I think that that's what the big lift is. Just the smallest detail to the biggest. So the minimal recommendation from the Center for Pipeline Do-It-Six was one year prior to implementation. So that's almost a two year budget commitment, a two year out leap. Another question was that did the committee reduce like budget estimates? No, no, we did not. Part of that was because depending on the year the costs could change. Also, depending on our staffing, our current staffing, the difference has changed. So for example, if we can reassign somebody who's already Spanish speaking, that could be, for example, that could be cost neutral in some aspects. So really the costs were, and Libby and I could bounce a number out there on outfitting a classroom, but it would be much higher than you might think. And then the staffing costs are pretty aligned with current staffing costs. The other funny thing to me was this report because of when it came out and now where we are, obviously doesn't address the elephant in the room, which is we're dealing with an unprecedented space situation in all of our schools. Yeah. I'll tell you, even before all of this, that was one of the most challenging parts of the report. And the committee was considering our space and not just considering our space, considering our space for five to six years. That was more challenging. So lining up the cohorts of students and projecting where they would be in terms of space need, because we have some larger grades and some smaller grades. So really projecting out where people would be in our census numbers just aren't reliable enough to really project that well. Especially that far out. So that was a big challenge and space was a big consideration. Great. Other questions for Mike? Yeah, I have one. Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry. What? Sorry, Alex. The, unfortunately, once we start the meeting, we don't take comments from the public anymore. But thanks for speaking up and... That's just an unfortunate hard meeting's work. Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, but you can write to Libby or Principal Barry if you want, if you have any more questions or to Mike Barry directly. I would just add again, and I think Biba can echo this. It was a unique committee group. We had some really great community members on there that were very, very, very active. And we had a lot of community members on there that really contributed to that conversation in a way that I don't think... I think we were lucky to have folks that didn't have direct student in the school and have community members. And as a part of that conversation, it was really, really good and really special. Great. Yeah, and I want to thank all the members who served on it too. Again, I know it was a lot of work and I love the creative thinking, and I really hope we continue to think about ways that we can expand opportunity for world languages in elementary school and younger than that too, because that's when I think the brains are really malleable and a lot of learning takes place. And I can see a bit of a smile on it. All right. Next, UES and the COVID situation. I know that we want to give us some updates and I also want to thank Lili and the entire administration for really acting quickly on this and communicating in real time. It's certainly... I've heard a lot from the community about how much they've appreciated the level of communication and I think in a time of stress and uncertainty and definitely unprecedented times, I think it's made everyone feel more informed and better of a situation. But I'll hand it over to Lili. Thanks, Jim. So I just want to start with wishing the members of our MRPS community who are dealing with this infection firsthand, just all my positive vibes and all of our positive vibes we can send to them because they're dealing with something that none of us really have an idea of what they're going through. So we all should be sending our positive thoughts and hugs to those community members. So I have kind of a bulleted list of things, just the process, because I want to make sure that stated publicly of what's happened so far. The board, it might be a repeat for you all, but I want to make sure the community knows that. But I also want to encourage board members to ask any questions that you've been asked if you feel like that's something that we need to talk about in a meeting. So please go ahead. So just a process in general. Since we've got notification, our nurse was the first to be contacted. And since that moment, we've been in constant contact with the department of health, particularly our regional nurse. So they've split school districts up by region and our regional nurse department of health is a woman named Karen Nelson, who has been amazingly supportive and responsive to us. We spent many hours on the phone together at this point in time. We were also interviewed the next morning by the. We were interviewed by the school building at that time. We were interviewed by the epidemiology team, the state. And I do, I do want to say when we first were notified and we talked with our contact at the department of health, it wasn't Karen. It was just the person on call because it was after hours. They did tell us to, to alert the community that it was a district case. And I can talk about that more about that. Why later they did tell us not to identify the school building at that time. So we were interviewed by the school building, the epidemiology team, a contact tracing team. It was about an hour and 45 minute interview. They asked many, many detailed questions. Shut my doors when I come to see this transform. And, and we, and in that interview, one of the questions they asked was about the size of the school and the size, the amount of teachers we have, the amount of students we had. And because our school size, we didn't have the. The name of the school that gave us the go ahead to name the school after that. So I know that caused some consternation and community, but we were following the department of health guidelines at that point. We see. They assured us many times in that first interview and sense. that we have in place are exactly what they wanted, and they're commendable. Dr. Levine actually reiterated that in the press conference last Friday. No, but they isn't, I just wanna say, yesterday. In the press conference, they've said it multiple times. A lot of people have said, yeah, but how did we get six infections in one pod? It's mainly because this is an incredibly infectious disease, and that's what the Department of Health has kept reiterating for us that masks aren't at the end-all-be-all. They certainly help and they mitigate a lot, but they're not an ultimate protection. And when people are in the same room all day long, then infection, they weren't surprised by that. Sure, I'll just look through my notes. So with contact tracing, this is the place that I've learned the most about throughout this process. And right now, now I just got a text from my husband that may have different guidelines as the CDC came out with literally five minutes ago, but from what we know with the contact tracing, the contacts, closed contacts are defined as six feet apart for more than 15 minutes. That's the definition of closed contact. So anybody who's a contact of a contact, and this is where it starts getting a little weird language-wise, but anybody who's a contact of a contact are not considered closed contacts. So let's use Mike's daughter as an example. If Mike's daughter came down with, there wasn't a class where her classmate was COVID, Mike's daughter would be potential contact if she was within that six feet apart for longer than 15 minutes. Mike would be a contact of a contact. He'd be a contact of his daughters. So he is not going to be contact traced. He's not gonna be called except for his daughter, of course, but Mike would not be told to stay home from work. He would not be told any of that stuff. Now, if Mike's daughter became infectious, we hope that doesn't happen to Grace or another daughter, but if that were to happen, then Mike becomes the contact. So because Mike and I have been in a room together that for a longer period of time, then I become a contact of Mike, does that? So it depends on the context of the contacts is hard because where this comes into play is siblings. So out of an abundance of caution, we asked families to keep siblings at home once we put the pot in quarantine. We were told we didn't have to do that by the Department of Health, but we did it anyway because we knew it would make our community and our teaching staff feel better. But they technically are contacts of contacts. Those siblings from what I understand are still home in quarantine with their family. So that's a big thing that we're trying to make sure that our community knows and make sure our teaching staff knows too. It gets tricky and intellectually people understand it, but emotionally it's a different story is something that I very much am learning throughout this process. Those two things seem to be in conflict quite a bit for myself as well as for our community members. The other thing we have learned that if there's, and this is really hard, so bear with me with this one, if there's a positive case of a community member who is in our school, but that person has not had contact in our school at all, so they've been quarantining or they just have been in school for whatever reason within their infectious period, the Department of Health will not call us to tell us that that is a positive case. We won't know unless the family tells us or the staff member tells us if it's a staff member. So unless there's a contact, a close contact within six feet for longer than 15 minutes in our school buildings, we will be notified by the Department of Health. The superintendents across the state have argued this, a lot saying that we need to know, you need to call out, it doesn't matter if it's three in the morning, you need to call us and tell us this because we have a responsibility to our communities and to our staff. The Department of Health is not changing their mind on that right now, but we are very much working for it, working for it from the superintendents lens, and I know that's very hard for people to know or understand. So if there's rumor, there's all kinds of things happening, but if that kid or that teacher or that staff member has not been in school during their contagious period, I won't know about it unless they tell me. On that point, are they citing federal law or are they providing any kind of justification for that? The Department of Health continuously refers to HIPAA in privacy. So that's what we continuously refer to. So today we convened with the MRPS COVID Task Force, which is the same task force that did a lot of planning over the summer. It's our administration, our nurses, our union leadership, and a couple extra teachers in there as well to talk about where we are right now. Our staff is shaken. As I said, I think to Jim earlier, our house of cards is wobbling a bit and a good stiff breeze could potentially knock it over, but it's still standing at this moment in time. And as we talked about it, we debriefed afterwards with just the administrators. I think Ryan Harris ended up the best when he said, we're just looking for a nice bow to tie around this to say that everything is contained, but because the hockey situation in central Vermont is not contained yet, we can't make that statement yet. So our staff is resilient, our staff is amazing educators, and I think they're gonna pull through this one, but they are definitely shaken as are some members of our community. So some of the things, the positives that I've learned, that we've learned through this is the first is that our pod structure, while it doesn't seem so with a count of six, definitely mitigated significant disruption to the rest of the school. So when other schools in the state are having to close down entire schools or entire grade levels, we had to close down one pod that influenced 15 kids, or I'm sorry, 12 kids, or 11 kids, three adults. I'm not even doing math now, well, 12 kids, three adults. I'm just looking at your supportive face right now. So that is a significant positive. For the evidence that we have currently that could change in an email, I get in 30 seconds, but the evidence I have right now is that our pod structure worked in the intended way it was supposed to work, and that we didn't have to disrupt the education of hundreds of kids. We had to disrupt the pod that went virtual, but they are virtually learning now. So that's a positive. Our attendance rate has not suffered significantly. So I had Ryan run the numbers today for the past week. Our attendance is down 2% compared to last year. So it's at 93% of kids attending versus 95% last year. So families are trusting. I take that as, and this is an assumption, that families are trusting our pod structure. I think the numbers are similar at the middle school, but we may have more middle schoolers staying home because of this than elementary school, but we're gonna get the exact percentages from Katie in time. As I said before, our staff has shown significant resilience, and they just continue to be just the amazing rock stars they are for our kids, and they have trust in the structure and our procedures, and they've had lots of conversations about how we can do that better moving forward. So the opportunities, we've had lots of conversations about opportunities to grow. This gave our staff in all four of our buildings the chance to reevaluate all of our procedures and clamp down anywhere that we felt we needed it. So one example of that is through eating. Our kindergarten team led the way in saying, hey, this is how we're doing it in terms of making sure all kids have their mask on, all kids get the food at their desk, and then the teachers say you may take your mask off and eat, and they don't allow a lot of talking, unfortunately, during that time, which stinks, but they allow about seven to 10 minutes to eat, and then they say everybody's done, put your mask back on, and they take it away. So that's a new procedure that's going into every one of our classrooms to limit the times of mask off. That gave us the opportunity to have that conversation and we continue to reflect on how to communicate this very hard information to both our external community and also our internal community of teachers and staff. That's what I mean when I say internal community. It's just, it's really hard stuff and it's really emotional for people. And so we're reflecting on that. We saw, my principals wanted me to say, especially Ryan, we appreciate all the notes of thanks and support that we've gotten, as well as those who have contacted us and gone directly to myself, or Ryan, or Megan's following the nurse who's been amazing at UES with their concerns so that we can help alleviate them as quickly as possible and answer as many questions as we can. I think coming straight to the source instead of allowing gossip trains to go wild is really important at this time and we've been working hard to answer questions in like 15 minutes if we can. So we're not making people wait, but I encourage that and continue to encourage that either through email or phone call or whatever. So that's the update I have or I had planned but I'm more than happy to take any questions that the board has or that you have from community members. Yeah, no, thank you, Libby. And yeah, let me echo the positive vibes to those who are sick right now. I know COVID is a very tough and unpredictable disease. So I hope they're all doing well and recovering and taking the time they need to get better. So questions for Libby? Great, well, thanks again for the update. I know this is an evolving situation. Hopefully we have it contained and but I'm sure as people move indoors and yeah, we're seeing a spike nationally and worldwide. So I think we got to be prepared for more situations like this as we move forward. Can I say one more thing? It wasn't in my plan statement just because we decided on it this afternoon in the administrative meeting. We are gonna send out a letter to our families. We decided on a process just this afternoon. We're gonna send out a letter regarding travel over the holiday or over the vacation that's coming up. The state of Vermont is highly recommending no travel and I know that's really hard for people and why we can't tell people not to travel. We are going to be asking them, we're gonna send out a paper survey to tell us if they are traveling and so that we can contact them to tell them quarantine rules that will be in place for when they come back. Our staff is very nervous about families traveling and so we're trying, we're gonna try to put an effort together over the next three weeks to gather that information so that our staff knows that we have put in a huge effort in defining out just who is traveling and to ensure that they know the rules of quarantine when they come back. We're also putting together things to Anna, I put this on her plate, a fun like, hey, what can you do at home? Kind of a public relations effort. So if anybody has any great ideas for Anna to share out to the community, please send that to Anna too, that what kind of fun Zoom games have you been playing with your families and that kind of thing so that we aren't just kind of wagging fingers but we are also offering some suggestions about how we can make this vacation season coming up memorable too and happy. Yeah, let me just reiterate to the members of the public that the school districts are doing all they can to keep people safe and I know we're constantly evaluating and trying to improve on that but the community members really need to do their part too and I know especially with travel coming up and with the fact that we've been on this for a while, there's some fatigue setting in but particularly if you do travel over the holidays or if you socialize over the holidays, be careful, observe all the rules, don't let folks know, do the quarantine you need to do, don't make up little excuses like I was only at my parents' house, I don't think I was with anyone because that's how it spreads. So, I know it's tough but it's really important to the community to do all we can and I know that it really is quite hard but it's a reminder I think we need to constantly keep in line. Jim, I also wanted to say that I know a lot of people just aren't really concerned about the people who have tested positive in our community and I've heard from a lot of people about like what can I do or how are they doing and wanting updates and stuff like that? I know that the Union Elementary School of Characters Alliance has put out an initiative online, I think through social media mostly and also through email for people to upload videos or write letters of support and that they will help get those messages to the families affected in that pod. Thanks so much. We had a great video today that we sent along. Excellent. Well, thanks again everyone. No problem. Who? Oh, sorry. Go ahead Joe. I just wanted to echo the support you've been hearing and how the pod structure to your point that that was a really helpful thing and it was really helpful to hear doctors being discussed that over the course of the summer you and this team built this plan and this was the thing that the plan was built to contain and we're all locking on wood and crossing our fingers but our kids have gotten to go to school for two months now and so I just am very indebted to all the administrators and the teachers and the families for taking this seriously and following us because I've heard nothing but positive experiences from the kids and it means a lot that they can still go to school even if it was a little different. So thank you. And Libby, I know that I've just heard from so many people a big outpouring of appreciation of all of your communication around this and the various phone calls and emails and sometimes even if the information isn't 100% up to date or the whole hockey connection wasn't made at first it's still been positively received that you're giving whatever information you have at any given time out to the public and that transparency feels really important at this time and I know that people really appreciate it I appreciate it, thank you. I think we may have even fixed power school but I'm not gonna really hold on to that until I know for sure. You've even been working around that by having the principal send out your message it's just been really appreciated. I know I've been hearing and I appreciate it. Good, thanks. Make the appointment and then we did decide to enlarge the number of students to three from two, both figures in balance and also we just had a really fantastic group of students. I just wanna say thank you to everyone who volunteered to step up. Really hard decisions. I'm really proud of this community for being willing to provide so many talented people being willing to spend time on a tough issue so thank you everyone. Every candidate was a great candidate. We could only choose a few. So for those who did not get chosen please know that we greatly appreciated your interest and we really want your participation throughout the process and there will be plenty of opportunities to participate throughout the process and I also want to say that the appointments are about 60% people for who identify as belonging to a marginalized group and I have to admit given that we're a very white community I was skeptical of our ability to do that but we really had a very diverse pool on it which was great to see that. So with that can I have a motion to enlarge the, to change the charge to change the number of student appointees from two to three? I move that we alter the charge to change the number of student appointees from two to three. I second that. Any discussion? Jill? Hi. Emma? Hi. Andrew? Hi. Mara? Hi. Brian? Hi. Jerry? Hi. And did I miss everyone, anyone? Okay, now I'm gonna do it by category. Can I have a motion to appoint Gen Wal-Howard and Pierre Cotton as the representatives from the administration to the SRO safety committee? Just to, we're gonna do this for each category. We have to. Yeah, just so it's clear. All right. Cool. I move that we appoint Gen Wal-Howard and Pierre Cotton to the committee as administrators. Actually, do you want to withdraw the motion? Why don't I just read all of this? I was gonna say, I feel like the whole list is gonna be faster. Yep. I just want to, I'll just be clear who, okay. So I think I know it as a full list. Do I have a motion to appoint as administrators Gen Wal-Howard and Pierre Cotton as a representative from the city council, Jay Erickson as a representative from the police department, former chief Tony Foggus as representatives from the school board, Mara Iverson, Emma Bae Hansen and myself as students, as representative from students, Zach Edison, Edie DiNostrio and Eliana Moorhead as representatives from the faculty, Susan Koch and Amanda Payne and as representatives from the community, Joan Javier Duvall, Will Alexander and Catherine Nunnally. I move that we appoint those people to the committee. Do I have a second? Do I have a second? Jill. Aye. Emma. Aye. Andrew. Aye. Mara. Aye. Ryan. Aye. Jerry. Aye. Well, again, thank you to everyone who got appointed and thank you to everyone who applied. We will be communicating shortly about getting that process off the ground, both to the members and also to the community because, again, this will be a public process and we encourage everyone's participation and also we'll have a little more information on what that's going to look like. We're obviously going to hear, you know, not just in the community, but, you know, from people like, you know, like Libby and others who are involved in the decision-making and who have experience with both the safety needs and also the DEI needs and other needs throughout the community. So, again, thank you everyone. Now, let me find, we have a couple of policy readings. The first readings of the electronic communication between employee and students policy and prevention of sexual harassment as prohibited by title nine. Do you have any discussion or comments around those readings? Any changes? They just need to be read, right, Libby? Yeah, and those can't really change anyway by law so there's really no comments we had on those. Okay, perfect. So policy monitoring, we have budget execution and superintendent expectations. Any comments on those or discussion? Just a general comment because we had a finance committee meeting beforehand and I think Grant Geisler, our business manager, just the level of information and explanation that he provides us on a quarterly basis is extremely helpful. And heading into the budget cycle, he and Libby always provide really helpful and clear explanations of what our aims are in the budget process and how that links up to what happens, the important work that happens on the ground and really nice explanations, crosswalks that I didn't use in our office and state government, state auditor's office for how tax rates were just like really, really clear explanations. I think Grant and Libby have done an excellent job. Libby and Grant, it's a combination. It's a team effort. We're a team, but Grant was such a great, great business manager in the state. He's really, really good and we're really lucky to have him. So I just want to put that out in conjunction with this policy because you can have a great policy but if you don't have great people implementing the policy, you're not going to have great results, so thank you. Yeah, now I will second all of that. We were super lucky to have the team we have and Grant makes the budget easy and understandable. So he's fantastic. Other thoughts or comments? Motion to approve the policy monitoring reports. I move to approve the policy monitoring reports. A second? Second. All right, any discussion? Gary Nunn, Jill? Hi. Emma? Hi. Andrew? Hi. Mara? Hi. Ryan? Hi. Jerry? Hi. I think that's it. You might not have nominated Jill to... Oh, that's right, thank you. Yes. Do I have a motion to nominate Jill to be a representative to the VSBA? Andrew's shaking his head, but you have to say something. I moved. Do I have a second? Yeah. A second. Jill? Thank you guys. Hi. Emma? Hi. Andrew? Thank you, Jill. Hi. Mara? Hi. Ryan? Hi. Jerry? Hi. Yes, no, and thank you, Jill. Okay, we dealt with COVID and SRO in one meeting and I'm gonna enter into motion to adjourn at 8.32. Motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Okay. A second? A second. Jill? Hi. Emma? Hi. Andrews? Hi. Mara? Hi. Ryan? Hi. Jerry? Hi. All right, thanks everyone.