 March 17th, 2001, a Board of School Directors meeting for Montpelier-Roxbury School District. Let's just do a roll, etiquette. Here. Jerry. Here. Emma. Here. Jill. Jill. It's gonna work. Here. Here. Kristen. Here. Mia. Here. And I know Andrew is gonna be late. I'm not sure where Amanda is, but let's go ahead and start as we've got. Quorum. Amanda did ask for a quick discussion about whether someone wanted to monitor a board working group for the student waiting committee. So I want to just add that quickly to the agenda just to spend, you know, a couple minutes to see if there's any volunteer. If there is a monitor, I can pass along information on that. But first sort of business is public comment. And please, if you do want to make public comment, either raise your hand in the participant column on Zoom, or if you're already in trouble figuring that out, you can just wave your hand in general. And I'm not sure we have many members from the public who aren't media. So let's assume we don't have public comment and move on to the consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I move to approve the consent agenda. Do you have a second? Second. Any discussion? We'll do roll etiquette. Hi. Jerry. Hi. Emma. Hi. Jill. Hi. Kristen. Hi. Mia. That's it. So I will just quickly, before I have the VSBA comment, I'm very excited for their presentation. I just wanted to raise the issue that Amanda wanted to put on the agenda. As you know, the UVM did a study on the way we wait students for the way we finance our schools. If you remember from budgeting period, the equalized pupil number is one of three factors that goes into how the state allocates money to districts. Basically, the long and the short of it is that the study found that the waiting system did not account for particularly smaller rural populations in a way that was equitable. So the legislature has been giving thought to how to adjust that scale. My understanding is that while there's robust discussion and definitely a desire to do something to ensure that the waiting scale is more equitable, action is probably not likely until next legislative session. However, there is a board working group that is being coordinated by Maggie Lans, who is a lobbyist who is supporting action on the waiting issue. So anybody wants to monitor that for the board? I think they're meeting kind of semi-regularly on Thursday nights. Just reach out to Libby or me and we can send you that information and we'll also let the rest of the board know that someone's on that. If someone wants to volunteer now, great, but if you want to think about it, there's definitely room for that. Do you want to say that the initial analysis of the waiting study indicated that we would lose several students? So I think while this is a huge equity measure that needs to happen statewide, one thing we may want to think about is how the impact of it can be phased in over time, so we're not suddenly left with a huge budget gap. So that's that and very happy to have Sue Holson and Sue, I'm going to butcher your last name. Ceglowski. Ceglowski from the Vermont School of Arts Association here to do a training on just kind of the basics of board role and just kind of board role 101. So they're going to give, I think, a brief overview and then have some times for Q&A, so please, you know, ask away once their presentation is done, but I will turn it over to the two of you, and again, thank you for making time. We're happy to be here. I've met some of you before, but not all of you. I'm Susan Holson. I'm the director of education services at VSBA and Sue Ceglowski, who's here with us tonight also. You've got the A team here is the executive director, and she is also the attorney, so in case any legal questions come up, I'm not allowed to answer them, so she'll be here to sort of back up on that stuff. Before we get started, first of all, I don't know, Libby, can you allow me to share my screen? You should be able to. Can you? No, host disabled participant screen share. Well, let me just make that. Thanks. And while Libby's doing that, I'm going to say we're going to race through what Jim referred to as board 101. We do have our annual spring training for new and almost new board members that will be running two evenings as a webinar, four hours total, two evenings in May. If you haven't already received notification of that, you will from VSBA. So I would really encourage anybody who has been on the board, either just recently elected or I know you've had a lot of transition on the board and a lot of appointments in this particular board. And so we invite you all to come and participate. I think that's a different kind of dynamic because you'll be with a lot of people who also have sort of that deer in the headlights thing about what school board work is. So I will, if I can now, oh, I can. Thank you. Yeah. How do I do this? I'm getting there. Bear with me, please. So Zoom is great, except it doesn't allow me to see what I'm doing. So it's kind of an interesting challenge here. Oh, there you go. Yep. We're getting there. So I, as Jim said, we're going to end with a case study, which is also really designed to tease out your questions and your thoughts about what's going on. So I invite questions as we go. But if you want to just sort of get the overview and then we'll work with it, that's fine too. And I can't see you. So just jump in. Okay. Based on conversations with Lydia and with Jim, what we're really going to outline tonight the roles and responsibilities of the board based on Vermont law, what governance is all about, the essential work of Vermont school boards, which is a tool that we, the Vermont School Boards Association, has created to help guide you through the work of the board. We'll talk a little bit about board operations and then we'll address a case study. So I want to start by just making clear that school boards are actually a creation of legislature. And the powers of the school boards are listed in 16 BSA section 563. And I'm not going to take time to go through all of this because as you can see, there's a lot of them. But what that all says is there are 32 powers of boards outlined in that statute, including, and I just, these are the highlights to me, determining what your educational policies look like, assuring sound fiscal management and accountability, and preparing and distributing an annual budget. Boards are required based on these statutory references to comply with Vermont's open meeting law. And we're not going to dive into that deeply tonight because we just don't have time, but we're happy to talk to you about that any time if you have questions about it. And also boards are bound to use Robert's rules of order to run your meetings. And boards also are required to have a conflict of interest policy, which you do. So that's sort of the legislative piece. And the genesis of where school board activity starts. The photo here is a picture of the Vermont Education Law book, which is something that we publish and update annually. As you can see, I have not updated my picture to match where we are. They look the same other than the year on the cover and gets updated every year by our office to reflect changes in legislation. And so the 2020 edition has just come out. And I'm sure there's a copy in the central office, but it may be something that is worthwhile for some of you to have. And just let us know if that is something that you want us to get to you. Then we talk a lot about governance when we talk about school boards. And until I was on a board, I didn't know what governance was. And in fact, I'm not sure I knew for a long time after I was on the board either. And so I went to Miriam Webster and they broke their own rule by using their definition or using the word in the definition, the act of or process of governing. So I looked up govern and they specifically talk about a policy level making an administration of policy. And that's what governance is about. It's about high level oversight. And so we're going to talk about today that the distinction between government governance and management, which is more operational typically. So effective governance boards. And this is a composite from a lot of research that's been done. If board members and administrative team agree on what the principles of governance are and the habits of effective governance, you're off to a good start. And also commit themselves to making sure that you all understand the same basics. That's a good place to start. When governance isn't working, board members usually think that they're just rubber stamping decisions that the executive team is making. And the administration usually thinks that the board is micromanaging. And so you can see there's a disconnect there. And that's when things really start to fall apart. So the relationship, and we'll talk more about this, the relationship between the superintendent and the board is critical. It's critical for your kids, for your students. That's really the point at which the big picture and the oversight ties in with operations. It's that collaboration. And so that's got to be working well. I have a two minute video that I want to share with you. This comes from our colleagues in Texas. And it's just a little animated thing. I apologize if some of you have seen it before, but I think it explains the role of a school board very succinctly. And then we'll get into more nitty gritty. Let me know if you have trouble hearing this, please. It's a little quiet. Yeah, I'm having trouble as well. I can't hear it at all. You're not hearing that? Okay, hold on. Let's see what I can figure out. Did you share your computer audio when you shared your screen? That's a good question. For me, the audio was coming through. It was just the volume was very low. And it's blasting my ears out. So that's going to be a problem. I think the volume we might have heard was just coming from like ambient from her microphone. I got it now. Thanks. Let's we'll try this again. Thank you all for your explanations there. My name is Rachel, and I'm in the sixth grade. Better. I was invited to go to a school board meeting to get an award. But I didn't know what the school board did. So I asked my grandpa, Freddy, since he used to be on the board. He said, well, school boards are kind of like the grandparents of the schools. They want good things for the students and staff. Even though grandparents aren't always around, we do our best to help you learn and grow. Let me see if I can explain it in another way. Think of the school board team as building a bridge between the community and the schools. They are your voice. Board members listen to parents, community members, school staff, and even the students about their hopes and dreams for their schools. They share these messages with the superintendent and other school leaders. And they advocate for their school district by speaking up for them with other elected officials and within the community. Another important job of the board is to provide direction for the schools. School board members choose a destination for the district. They might like the students to go to Topeka, Kansas, Paris, France, or even Mars. But they don't tell the staff how to get there. They empower the superintendent, staff, and students to choose their path. The board also makes a lot of decisions by hiring a superintendent. The superintendent is the leader who makes sure the daily operations of the schools run well. The superintendent helps determine the best routes on the map, along with the staff and students. The school board also ensures that resources are in place so that the staff can complete their work and make sure students can reach their destinations. Let's say that the schools want their students to be able to play a musical instrument if they'd like or fix a car or understand algebra or other opportunities. The board makes sure that the school district has the money, staff, and materials in the right places at the right time to ensure success. The board and superintendent team help students complete their journey in their local schools and prepare them for the future. After talking to Grandpa Freddie, I had a much better understanding of what school boards do. They build a bridge so that the community and the schools can communicate and they set destinations for the schools so that I can reach my goals. The school board looks out for me just like my grandpa and grandma do. One of the things that I really like about that video, which I think is about to start again, so I'll move on, yeah, is the analogy with the grandparents because I watched my parents become grandparents when my sister had children and they hovered. I mean, they, they, my mother was at their house every day. She co-parented, really, and I lived 300 miles away, so when I had my children, I was really the parent. And that notion of being able to infringe on the parents' domain, if you will, sort of reminds me of the temptation to micromanage when you're sitting on a school board. And if any of you have local parents, you might know what I'm talking about. Anyway, the, the role of a district school board as understood both through statute and practice is that the board has oversight of public education on behalf of the community, your trustees of the community. And, and what are you overseeing? High quality education for every student, good return on investment for the public, meaning that they feel like their taxes are justifiable and that your system is operating efficiently, effectively, and ethically. Now, it doesn't mean that you're actually providing the education as a board, nor are you spending the money, nor are you watching the, I mean, managing the efficiency of the way the system is run. But you are monitoring all of those things. So one way to think of it is that the, the board is sort of first and last. You're first when it comes to establishing a vision, creating and adopting the policies, delineating parameters, and understanding what, what are priorities in your education system for your community. And then last, after you delegate a responsibility to make that happen to your administration, you're, you step in again to monitor and make sure that the money that you're spending is in fact influencing the outcomes that you are looking to influence. So it's really important that you have that understanding of how, this is the 20,000 foot view, right? So I mentioned that BSBA School Boards Association has developed a platform called the Essential Work of Vermont School Boards. There are six, what we call domains within that. And I am going to fly through this tonight. But they are engaging your community to make sure that the vision that you're establishing for your education is in fact aligned with what the community wants. You have a mission statement, at least I believe this is a mission statement that I got from your website. And that's pretty clear, caring, creative, equitable learning communities that empower all children, all children, to build on their talents and passions, and to grow into engaged citizens and lifelong learners. So that's, it's, it's visionary, it's pretty high level. But that's your goal. Now, ultimately, everything else that the board does has to be measured against this goal. So I mentioned policy being one of the critical elements of School Board work. Policies articulate the values and concerns that, that parents and community have shared with you that you've sought out to understand. And you're then going to follow that up both with monitoring the educational results, making sure you're legally compliant, and making sure that the community understands and, and is aligned with the expectations that you understand them to have. And then you delegate, you delegate to your administration who interprets the policy, right. And when I say administration, I mean Libby and her team, but the board is really going to be directed to Libby and Libby then manages her team. So the board has one entree into the operations. And, and it's up to administration then to interpret those policies in the form of written procedures that talk about how things are going to get done. The board sets the why and then delegates the how. And then comes back at the end and monitors to make sure that the policies A are being adhered to and B are still consistent with the values of the community. And so I know you have a policy review schedule and that's exactly what the purpose of that is. And of course there are some policies that the state will require you to add periodically. There will be others that we as the state association will recommend but aren't necessarily required. The third of these pillars is about the superintendent and the relationship the board and the superintendent have with one another. And as I said earlier, it's a critical relationship. And it's really important that everybody understands whose job is what and who does what and how those responsibilities and activities blend. And you have a policy, your policy A02 clearly defines that relationship and establishes what the responsibilities of each of those positions is. And I if you haven't read that in a while, it's it's a long policy but I really encourage you to go back and look at that because it really spells out a lot about how your board is going to function. And just to reiterate what I was saying, the board sets the vision, the policies and is responsible for allocating the resources, right? You prepare the budget, make sure or try to make sure it gets approved. And then there's accountability to the to the voting public to your taxpayers. Your contact and all of that runs through the superintendent who by state statute is actually defined as the chief executive officer of the school district and is the systems leader for the rest of the administrative team, including the principals who are education leaders at the school level at the building level. The principals report to the superintendent and in some areas, this is a big mess right now, not so you guys. So I'm not going to dwell on that. We talked about a budget. So your budget has to accomplish a bunch of different things, right? It has to be reflective of the culture and and the financial respectful of the financial resources of your district. You need to make sure that you have policies that discuss how your budgets are going to be spent and who has responsibility and who has authority for approving those expenses. The you work with your management team with your administrative team to finalize a budget. I think you've just been through this, right? And then it's the board's job to work with the electorate to try and get them to understand why the board is recommending this budget and why these funds are necessary. But and then you also have to be accountable that you've got adequate internal controls happening at the district level that the money is being managed well. And then I mentioned before monitoring, so you need to make sure you see your financials regularly and and you know how to read them and how to interpret them and how to ask questions about them. And finally, you're obligated again by statute to have an annual financial audit. And in in doing that, you have some responsibility to understand what that document says and make sure that everything is working appropriately and that your audit reflects good money management. And finally, the the the last of our domains is effective and ethical operations. And what I want to really remind you about here is that school boards don't operate the schools. The administration operates the schools, but you do have your board's operations. And there have to be some accepted practices and understanding as to what that all includes. In here again, you have a policy that does a really good job of spelling this out. The board members are obligated as elected officers. You are the only power that you have is as a single entity. So a single board member does not have any authority as an official. But as a board, you are a public body that has been elected and speaks for your community. Board members within the board need to recognize and acknowledge the validity of board decisions that are made by vote of a majority, even if you're on the losing side. So even if what you believe in didn't pass, you still have an obligation to support the work of your board. And to another one that's often compromised is that you have to maintain confidentiality when you go into executive session, which is why the SBA recommends not even taking minutes in an executive session. So that there is no public record that anybody could ask to see at a later date. And finally, the conflict of interest question, which I mentioned earlier is in statute, you need to not only make sure you're avoiding actual conflict of interest, but even perceived conflicts of interest. And that gets a little touchy, especially when we live in towns where everybody knows everybody or is related to everybody, as is the case in some Vermont towns. So putting that all together, VSBA has a recommended code of ethics that we recommend board members sign at the beginning of each term. Some even do it every year. And I'm happy to share this full document with you. This is just an excerpt, but it basically assures that you understand that you are part of a board and not an individual who has any kind of authority, that you're not giving directives to the school personnel because you don't have the authority to do that and avoid making any commitments that compromise the decision-making ability of the board. So don't be making any promises outside of the board and then the board is going to come and vote and you've already promised some outcome that hasn't yet been determined. Finally, board protocols, we recommend that you establish your board protocols at your annual reorganization meeting. And they're pretty important. It's how your meetings run. And again, you have a policy on this. Policy A03, your expectations for the Montpelier-Roxbury board members, I think is a really well articulated, again, lazy policy that stipulates what the expectations are. And that's public record. So anybody who joins the board has, we presume, has reviewed that document, has agreed to comply with that document because that's a standing policy that has been approved and adopted and is in practice. So that's it for the talkie part. How are we doing? Are there specific questions here? We are at 704. And if you want to open it up for questions, I think there's definitely a lot that folks have. Okay. I'm happy to do that. Or do you want to take a look at this case study and just sort of structure our conversation around that? I'm game either way. How long does the case study take? That's the whole, that's what you need to read. And then we're going to talk about it. Let's do the case study, if you think it's been helpful. Okay. We're at seven, so we're just a little past seven, so we're flying through three. Why don't we take five minutes for everybody to read that? And I just want to know if you can, in fact, read it in this format, because if not, I can pull the document up and share it outside of the PowerPoint. That looks like Amanda has her hand up. Do you want to say something before we do the study? I'll wait until after this, buddy. Folks still reading. Has everybody finished? Yes, I think so. Okay, great. So what's going on here? What do you see? What's the question at the bottom? What's wrong with this picture? I can see the participant was to, folks want to raise their hand. Otherwise, I think just speak out because we've got a limited viewing. Anybody? Well, can I ask, I don't know if you folks can hear me. Okay. What a board vote to censor someone means? If a board votes to censor a board member, what is that? Sue, do you want to give the technical answer to that? I'm happy to give the layperson's answer, but. Yeah, so if a board votes to censor someone, normally what they, well, one of the things that you see in this example here is that they come out of executive session and they don't do anything. So I'm not really sure this board actually did do that, but it's a sort of a public acknowledgement by the board that they, that the person that is being censured has not complied with the board's, you know, protocols or code of ethics, that type of thing. Thank you. I mean, part of the problem is they censured without having a discussion and aligning on what the actual issue was and getting agreement on behaviors. Right. They didn't launch into a discussion of what the infraction in fact was, right? Good point. And yet somehow it feels wrong, right? Well, I mean, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but shouldn't when, as a board member, when you're, when you're making comments in public, I guess this is not a public, it's a closed group, but it's still with some members of public. Wouldn't it be prudent to, to kind of say that this is my personal opinion and not, not speaking as a board member or, you know, clearly stating where the person is coming from, you know, when they're talking. Yeah. It's a very, very tricky line, right? And it's sometimes even hard to know when you're crossing the line. But as a board member, you are always a board member for the, the period of your term. So you can say this is my personal opinion and I'm not speaking for the board. But you're still a board member. And so if you're in a position, and in this case, it is maybe extreme where you have the opportunity to chime in. And in this case, bad mouth, the district that you are representing, then you really are infringing on, the board's ability to do its work effectively. And, and your credibility is questioned. Why would you be on the board of a, of a district you don't believe in? And I get that. But just playing as a devil's advocate, you could have differing opinions, right? When you, when you're in a board where, you know, you might not agree with something. So you might vote against a measure that came across. And, you know, you go out and somebody asks a question. Why would, why, I mean, I'm not talking about this situation, but in general, why, why did you, you know, why did the, why did you guys make this decision? And correct me if I'm wrong, but it's within your rights to say that this is the, this is the decision that we all made as a board. And this is the decision that we are proceeding. However, you know, I had a differing opinion at that point. Right. And I had, as a board member, I accept the board's action. I mean, that's a really critical piece, right? I, I'm on this board. I may have differed in my vote. And, and it's okay to acknowledge that your meetings are open, right? And particularly as long as we're virtual, you're actually on the record. But the idea that you dissented and therefore you're going to badmouth the action that the board took is really in violation of your policy. So that's the key, right? You're badmouthing it. You're not saying that, you know, I disagree with that. I personally disagree with that. Whatever the measure was, however, that is the decision that we as a board collectively made and we are proceeding in that direction. Exactly. So I know, I understand this is an extreme situation where somebody's badmouthing it and, you know, they don't like what they're doing and whatnot. But in general, it's a tricky line, as you mentioned, but it is within the rights of a board member to, to express his or her views as long as they state that that is the decision that was made was a collectively made decision. And we are proceeding in that direction. Right. And in this example, I'm not sure who's speaking. Sorry, I should raise my hand. Amanda, I do see your hand up. Let me just address this one comment. In this particular situation, this is not even about a board decision, right? This is not even about board level work. This is an operational thing that this board member knows about only because of her other life or, you know, or other aspects of her life that are not related to being on this board. And so when you start basically when you start badmouthing at the operational level, you're really dismissing the credibility of your administration also. Right. There are processes in place when, when there are nonperforming teachers, but it's not a board member's place to get involved in that at all. Right. And so in this case, it's crossing a couple of different lines. Okay, I'm sorry. Amanda, please go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's important to like how you're defining best mountain, you know, especially because, you know, thinking about tone policing and like how sometimes women are interpreted, you know, like in this, and I'm not talking about this face. I think that there has to be a conversation around the the rights of a speech rights of board members. And I think Anita was saying at something I was thinking about around, we do have like this set, you know, like Supreme Court, you know, I'm thinking this set, like you write your five page when you disagree on something. Yes, that is the board. It doesn't necessarily mean that we all are going to agree on some things that I'm going to be able to vote no and that I'm going to say why I'm not supporting something that doesn't mean that I am against the board, but that that is the procedure. And so the same thing around the social media, or around, you know, being in blogs or being in someone who wears a lot of hats in the state. So we're moving from place to place. And, you know, I was researching around speech. There's a great document that I found around about my rights as school board members in the first amendment that has a lot of the laws and examples of how they were repealed when they went to the Supreme Court system. It's a little old, but so many things might have changed since then. But I think it's important that when I'm having these conversations, we're talking about some policing, what does that mean? What does it mean when like the difference on free speech, like what are you implying basically is my question around this? I think it's a really good rule of thumb to understand that while you are on your school board, you really, you can wear other hats and we all do, but you can never take off your school board hat. With any other hat? Well, that that's going to be your, you know, each individual's way to interpret it. But as far as the commitment that you have made to this board, to this school district, and to the other board members through your policies, and I refer you back to those two that I cited earlier, A02 and A03. One is about the expectations of board members, and the other is about the relationship between the board and board members and the superintendent. But those are, those don't apply only during board meetings. Okay, they're for all the time, 24-7, as long as you are on this board. And, and so while yes, you can explain that you didn't vote for this particular decision. And here are the reasons why you also are, are really in a position to follow it up and say, however, it was the will of the board, or the decision of the board, and therefore I accept it. Because you're obligated to do that. So that I'm just trying to understand, right, because I think it's about interpretation. And so if, if the board in its majority is a racist board, am I supposed to then, and I'm not, this is not an example, but I'm using an example as to understand the concept. If I had joined the board, now I love this board. I love this district. I am committed. I am, you know, I know my place. I know I've read those two policies very, very thoroughly before I joined the board and after I joined the board. So I'm trapped. So when I joined the board as a racist, what is the role of that person? Just to say, okay, it's fine. The board is made, has made racist policies. And therefore is the will of the board, even though there's impacted people, I'm trying to understand all of this, because I think it's important in terms of when we are interpreting and when we are, you know, like thinking either legally or policies that are created just out of like the will of white folks when it comes to impact. This is my lens always, it would always be. So this is how I'm bringing this in. And these questions that I have are based on the impact. So. So, Sue, I invite you to jump in here as well. But it would seem to me that you use the example, Amanda, of the policies. Okay. So if that's an area where you really see something that is systemically problematic, you could request of your chair that you be on the policy committee. And then you're part of the body that reviews those policies on a schedule as already determined. And if you can get the rest of that committee to agree to apply an equity lens tool to each of those policies as you're reviewing them, great. That would be the way to work through the system to make the change rather than to butt heads and dismiss the reality of what is. Jim? I mean, I just want to say, I mean, I think you can, you know, say whatever you want to say under the first amendment. I think the, you know, the important for me is that I think it's very hard to remove your board member hat. So if you want to criticize, perhaps very legitimately, either policies or other aspects that, you know, you find fault with either, you know, operational level or a policy level. I think, you know, be prepared to have a reaction be as a board member. I think the argument that I was saying that in a personal capacity or especially with social media because social media gets so leaky. That was a closed group or a private chat or, you know, I was just talking as a parent. I was just talking as a community member, like those distinctions become very hard because I think, you know, the example that in the bottom with the press picked up on that, it's, you know, even if you were complaining in this, you know, this example about that teacher kind of as a parent, you're still a board member saying that that teacher has issues and, you know, that's how the public can interpret it. So that to me is a takeaway from this example. Nia? Thanks, Susan. I raised my hand for a different reason. So I'll get to that in a second. I think one of the things that's coming up for me though in this part of the conversation is that, you know, we as a board are working hard on learning different facets of white supremacy culture so that we can unpack them from the way that we operate. And one of those is binary thinking and the antidote to that is non-binary thinking. And that's one that's been really useful for me in life in general ever since being introduced to it. This possibility of being able to hold two truths at the same time of being a board member who is committed to advancing the values of our community and at the same time hold a critique of you know how the board is doing at holding the values of our community. I think that's possible for us to do at the same time and it's actually quite necessary to do in order to be able to move forward. So that was I wanted to just offer that as I think a component of working through situations like this when you know as this example plays out. And then the reason that I raised my hand was kind of related to that point but it had more to do with the actions of the board once they learned about what Tina did. One of the things that Emma and I in the work that we've been doing on the school safety and police relations committee that we've been working with members of the community and staff and other administrators and students is examining the practices of conflict resolution and how and actually realizing that our schools are working very hard to become more active in using these practices and that actually feels like a place where this board could use a whole lot of help the board in this example that they went immediately toward a punitive measure rather than one where that allowed Tina to recognize the impact that her action had and learn how to approach a critique that she has of something happening in the district differently next time because at the end of this example I don't see anybody having actually reached a resolution that feels very good for anyone and certainly doesn't make me believe that Tina's going to do anything differently in her behavior next time and that also seems like a big problem. Susan I thought that it was at Mia, is that your name? Yes. You raised a lot of great points. One of the things that on your first point I wondered about whether your board had thought about using developing some norms. I was on a school board for many years and we actually went through a merger and when we had our new board form that's the first thing that we did and it was really helpful for us to spend, we spent quite a bit of time developing them and then we would actually read them at the beginning of each meeting and at the end of each meeting we would have a good discussion of how we did with meeting our norms and it really helped keep us operating I think the way that we said that we wanted to operate so that might be something to think about and the other thing I was glad that you recognized that seemed punitive in this example we actually have in our essential work of Vermont school boards we have a sample process for addressing board member conduct and it does not go the way this example went. It has a lot more steps to it and it has you know the first thing that would happen would be that the board chair would talk to that person so that it wouldn't be a surprise that they're having an executive session about this person because they wouldn't even need to have one probably the first time unless it was something really egregious but I can if any of you would like that and you don't have the book I can just send you a PDF it's a two page two pages out of the book that the first page basically has information about the board discussing and agreeing about how it's going to operate and board member conduct and then the second page is the sample process. Thank you Sue. I'm going to jump in because it is 729 and I don't want to be the one who's keeping you late tonight but Jim this feels incomplete to me and I just wanted to extend to you all we're happy to come back to continue this conversation at any time and maybe it's because you're such a there you have so much new newness on this board maybe you want us to come back quarterly or something along those lines so that as people are growing into their roles and hiccups surface we can address them in real time as we go you know we certainly are open to whatever works for all of you that's you know that's what we're here for um and I know we didn't really get to the broader questions away from this case study but I think some of what we were talking about it applies um outside of these specifics. Yeah no thank you very much and I think it would be great if if you run into Max I know there's a lot um yeah yeah we didn't always scratch the surface there's a lot of other stuff here and a lot of great great points raised I think as we kind of you know think about um you know how we want to operate as a board we you know we do have board expectations and our policies um you know they do not look like I think how this example plays out although I think there are some great things in this example but certainly in terms of you know the process um uh but um yes we would love to have you you come back and and we can get work to coordinate that. Great. Just to not leave this as a loose end in this example there are also several violations of open meeting law I'm not going to get into them I just want to be on record of saying that because I don't want you to think kind of advocating for things like taking a vote in an executive session. Maybe can I say something maybe next time we can use the real example that happened in our school board and then we can break it down and figure out a way out of it because it actually there was a example that happened at the beginning of this year um and so like it will be great to like have it out and open and dissect it together and see like okay how do we move out of this and so and it will be great to have you here and um talk you know break down some of the speech uh uh first amendment rights and like figure out a way because it's not just about being a school board member it's about like our individual rights as well so like it will be great to have that open conversation amongst our whole board we'd be happy to do that um I think it might if we were going to do something like that it might be helpful to just schedule a special session um rather than having it as part of a regular board meeting so that there'd be enough time it sort of reminds me of what Mia was talking about in terms of our school safety and police relations committee work we've talked to we've been looking at our our board policies and one of the board policies that we're interested in potentially making a recommendation about are the board expectations and that perhaps we include some norms around using restorative justice practices when something happens a conflict arises within the board so that we can have a method to sort of work through those before we would get to the point where we would be like censoring and things like that and I think the end of the board to my knowledge is never censured and I don't even think our expectations would would censure an instance like this um yeah and we did have um I mean we had an incident I know the incident Amanda is referring to but I think we had a more severe incident a few years ago um that ended up on WCIX news um and uh yeah it was actually born after this example where someone thought they were talking to a closed group and it was not a closed group um and uh yeah it it uh yeah it targeted a couple board members and it went you know viral and and ended up on the news so um but you know censure was not was not considered and nor was any name executive session um censure is pretty extreme yeah and I don't think I don't think as a board we have any desire to I don't think I don't be able to write or desire to censor people's speech either so um but uh yeah when when when something like this does play out I think it's better to you know you know to speak about it and the board member that was targeted in that instance um um yeah addressed it quite quite gracefully given the the public um nature that it all took so yeah and I just you know I when I would have wanted to get into too is just the lines on social media and um you know some of the open media laws that current social media use of Facebook um because I think we're all on several groups and um you know there's there's considerations about you know how to answer questions and when whether it's pile on etc so I think a lot to delve into and we're happy to to talk about the incidents that Amanda is referring to as well um so because we can do in a special session or otherwise well just let it you know give us throw out some dates and and we'll we'll make it work and in the meantime we just want to thank you thanks for all that you do um and to the rest of the board since you are also new VSBA is your resource we are here for you if you have questions if you have concerns please pick up the phone give us a call send us an email we are working remotely right now so we're all at different phone numbers I've got um oh sue I didn't put your number up here my bad um but you've got my number here and um you can reach us by email Libby knows how to get hold of us Jim knows how to get hold of us um and and it will come back whenever whenever we're invited all right thank you thank you very much thank you good night good night um so now I think we've got the facilities presentation and Andrew are you doing oh hey Andrew hey Jill so uh quick question everybody know you we have new board members I'm not sure if Andrew everybody knows me so Andrew the Roses our director of buildings and grounds he is fantastic and all of the safety and wonderful things that have happened during COVID was because of Andrew's very forward thinking and he was at the front of the line in every type of ventilation work and every single thing so Andrew has done I can't I can't get away with having at the board meeting without embarrassing him a little bit Andrew has done an absolutely amazing job this year um and is a very valuable part of our team and has been working really hard on this facility's report for you all for for quite a while now so all right Andrew I've embarrassed you enough now you got to really impress them well agenda item one great raise okay so I think Libby uh so how many so the the facilities report was included in the board packet correct does did anybody get a chance to read it yes it was excellent okay so what um so you guys one of the things that I should be doing for you guys is exactly this facilities report um Libby I'm going to need the screen if I could if you could share access at some point should be able to share it okay um so I'm not going to go over the whole thing I kind of pulled out some highlights of some things that that I thought were should be on your radar um and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have um right now off of what you what you read or as we hit a school if there's something that jogs your memory just jump right in um so um so yeah so that's one of the benefits you have of having me work for you guys is is that we can we can have this document this living document uh available so um and I think we should be we should uh because this is the first time you've seen it really one of the things that I'm going to want from you guys over the next couple weeks and months oh this is bad lighting isn't it um is your feedback on what different information you'd like what more information you'd like what less information you need so as you read through it and as you think of these things uh share them with Libby share them directly send me an email hey you know cover this next time um and we can work that in the other thing that uh the other thing that we have to do at some point is figure out the appropriate time for this document to be shared with the board um now luckily we've got this done and you can whenever there's a new board member we can share this with them um but a certain probably in the spring when things lighten up a little bit would probably be a good time to review this maybe we can even I'm more than happy to schedule building tours um take people through the buildings and also this will help you guys sort of as you start to think about budgets um you know what are some of the priorities that that we make sure we're focusing on so the the purpose of this report again isn't to give you guys very specific information about every plumbing fixture that needs to be uh changed out or um you know which classroom needs a new lock on the door what are they it's to give you just an overall picture of when someone asks you how many classrooms there are at Roxbury you have a sense of that when they ask you whether a building is sprinkled or not you can answer that question um what we haven't done what the action items that I put in there the sort of recommendations those are those are sort of also general in that no single project ever is a standalone there's always some ramifications if we change a heating system in a room or in a building once you start tearing into walls are you going to replace the ceilings while you're replacing the ceilings while we might as well do the lights if we're doing the lights do we need to do the upgrades to the to the panel so the the recommendations again are very general um and they're not particularly in-depth they're all just sort of visual observations we don't really know what's going to happen until you start opening up things which is one of the reasons that we don't get into costs now we started to think about that and the thing with the costs are is it's very easy if you wanted me to give you a number and how much it would cost to renovate the building I could probably give you a pretty accurate cost on that if you ask me how much it is to renovate a wing and if you asked me about a classroom I'd be really wrong because you just don't know you don't have any slop when you estimate a lot of things some things are going to be high some are going to be low and they cut it they have a tendency to balance themselves out so that's why we kind of stayed away from cost again once you see this once you get more engaged with the actual buildings and you want to know specific costs then I'll have it you'll be easier for me to pull those numbers out talk to the professionals I need to to pull that together the other thing we didn't didn't really get into with this report is the space needs you know how you know where do we need more space in what building um we started to have those conversations COVID sort of put that on the back burner some of you were involved with the main street middle school conversations and the space needs I think really travel as bubbles where we have a class that's large and we we seem to have enough space as it stands now to sort of accommodate those I think that we're probably relatively close if we get a lot of new students in the buildings we may have to actually move some spaces around and take a much closer look but again I think that space needs first has to that has to happen with the principals and the superintendent to think about you know how are we teaching what kind of what kind of spaces do we need to teach not today but tomorrow in 10 15 years down the line energy you know for the longest the times and we have made a conscious yet unscientific effort to to run our buildings as energy efficient as possible whenever we make upgrades we use LED fixtures we make sure that our mechanical systems are working at the highest efficiency they can we make sure our control systems work as well as they can you know a control package is only sophisticated as the user and you can have the most space age sophisticated controls package to run high efficiency but if people don't know how to run it the system the building will run inefficiently we've actually have done a very good job about staying on top of that we have a we work with honey well very closely we've got a service contract with them for 25 000 dollars where they come in and then we have a great relationship where we pick up the phone and we call Scott and he comes down and helps us out so we are we are engaged in conversations with the city and their net zero uh so we are becoming more sophisticated with our energy uses we did have our buildings retro commissioned last year last last winter which actually put us in great position when it came to the COVID indoor air quality work because we actually had engineers who had been through our buildings and had actually written up reports on our mechanical systems and their thoughts on on what we could do and what we should do with our system so we we're we're in very good position there are there places to save energy absolutely and one of the things that we have is where we use a lot of energy so which means we can when we make changes and we make efforts to conserve it we can actually make a great headway in that area you know the condition of the buildings I think you know we've got old buildings nineteen seventeen nineteen thirty whatever for the union the fifties for the high school and eighteen whatever down at union up to nineteen eighty four uh are done at Roxbury um they're in good condition uh union and main street were built with very durable materials um same thing with the high school high school it was a well made building back in the fifties and and Roxbury actually has has been a wood construction uh has survived very well you guys got to keep in mind um is we got you know over a thousand students you know 200 plus employees and let me I may be wrong on these numbers but you know and we're open eleven to fourteen hours a day you know these buildings get a lot of use and um so the um they're they're they're well used buildings but uh in general we've done a good job of staying on top of them and keeping them in condition you know a lot of that has to do with the custodial staff um and more specifically Tom Allen who's our maintenance and custodial supervisor we you guys and me as a taxpayer are so blessed to have Tom Allen in the district in the district his level of professionalism would be the envy of any school in this state and I'm not just saying that he absolutely is passionate and smart and hardworking and he has instilled that on Chris and lend out the other schools and the custodial staff in general the other sort of piece about the custodial staff that's sort of hard to uh quantify but as the staff has a great relationship with the kids and I saw that when my son was down at union with Todd when he was working there and I see it with Glenn at main street middle and that relationship the custodial staff has with the kids you can see that in the building I'm gonna knock wood here because I can hear the spray can't go in the problems of things like graffiti and vandalism and stuff of that nature just doesn't happen in our school district and um we're I think that has a lot to do with that relationship that the kids have with the the folks who take care of the buildings um so I cannot praise those guys enough and like I say the professionalism that Tom's brought through this doesn't mean there's not room for improvement but even over the last five years or seven years since Tom's been there before Tom got there every school was doing their own thing like they were buying their own products and deciding what products to use in the building and he went through and said no no no we're all going to use the same products we're all going to order from the same people we're all going to be able to cross cross train so someone can go from one building to the other and pick things up and have a routine and and tackle amazing really quite we're very quite lucky again the next thing is the feedback you know what you guys what more information you need what more information uh what information is this you just don't need and again the walkthroughs I'm I worked I worked 40 hour a week whenever anybody wants to come through let me know I'm happy to take you on a tour any questions about the overall so you saw in the report what we did what I did was I started on the outside of the building and worked our way in when I talk about individual buildings some of the things that we do just to give you a sense of when again when the public asks where your tax dollars go every year we we continually work on the buildings it's the other thing that tom has brought forward is that we used to have this sort of mentality like everything had to get done in the summer and everything stopped once school started well we don't stop anymore we keep making improvements throughout the year and we make sure that we don't interrupt education but we you know we don't wait for the spring or the summer to take care of a project it needs to get fixed now we fix it now and it sounds it may sound like yeah of course you do that but that's not necessarily the case in a lot of schools so in a typical year we do things as mundane and these are these are some of the things that have happened and these are just things that have happened in the last few years we go through you know we've done things as mundane as number of the exterior doors and shared it with first responders like now the police department and the fire department know when if there's ever a phone call that says hey you know there's trouble at door six at the elementary school we all know what door they're talking about very mundane but I think important we've got bleed kits in Narcan and EpiPins in the buildings and every floor has a defibrillator in it now so things that are very small like that to every year we renovate probably an average of two to three classrooms in each building every year we'll go through change the lights ceilings paint flooring things of that nature but I'm not going to go through the whole list here but you know so simple things but important things all the buildings now have chilled filtered water bottle fill stations in the corridors so that and that's a with the drinking water we have gone through and we've done over 200 tests in the district and you can go on our website and you can see the results for every test that we've done location results what we did what changes we made it what we needed to do we've gone through that there's a couple gaps with what the state has on record but we're we're working through that again mechanical system reviews but I don't know what are some of the other things there so that's union a lot of this a lot of the other things that we've been trying to do is um unify systems so that when we have inspections when we have a final inspection we don't have them at four different times a year four different schools we say you come on one day and you do all four of our schools very sounds really silly but it's important um again union replacing light covers in the in the hallways renovating bathrooms in the in the union we now have all new bathrooms uh at union main street and the high school and down at rocksbury basically all of our game bathrooms within our schools are i don't think there's any that are more than seven years old at this point uh there's a couple small one one user bathrooms down at rocksbury but rocksbury had two bathroom renovations uh last year union again with the bond project as you guys can remember we we did the playground we have the ad vestibule a new fire alarm elevator system down there so we do not only small projects but we do large ones as well um again main street we went through that high school you know high school um again we've taken care of a lot of silly things like I don't know if however many you went to the baseball field or went behind the uh bleachers but there used to be this electrical panel out there with wires sticking out and we took care of that we renovated we added bleachers in the gym part of the bond project we put in new sound system seating um and ceilings at the um auditorium we've got new locker rooms at the high school we've got a new fitness room at the high school we've reconstructed the softball field the anticipation that there's going to be softball coming back to the high school we're also out for a middle school team this year one of the big things we did at the high school this summer is last year is we got rid of the mud lot which I'm very pleased about that having that first impression of being a muddy parking lot was not the first impression that you want we wanted to present to the students and the population um fitness center that's so that's that future projects some of the things we're kind of looking at and you know projects change we we get together with the administration in each of the schools in september and say what do you need next year where are teachers moving what do we got to do and we write it all down we make a list and we put it into the budget and then we know that by december it's going to change and by april it's going to change again but we were able to shift it and you know it we we know that's going to get spent and the money's going to be spent in the if it's not mr jones's class when we know it'll be in this is smith's room that's going to change so we don't get too hung up on that quite yet in the sprint in the fall but a couple of the things we're looking at rocksberry I think we've got some casework cabinet three down at rocksberry that needs to be upgraded we've got some mechanical systems down there that we're investigating currently changing over to some heat pumps possibly we've got engineers working on that right now to give us a better understanding of what the potential is the town hall down there if none of you some of you haven't been down there one of the oldest buildings is the town hall which is used for town meeting it's used for community events it's used for cafeteria it's used as the gym it's a very hard to use space we paint it every year we improve the lighting but we need we need to put do a little more work down or to make it even sturdier so it so it stays looking looking good even longer union some of the things that union we really want to focus on coming is the little gym that that needs to that needs a little work as part of the capital fund we have a renovation to the auditorium coming as well as window renovation restoration replacement I'll talk about that a little bit we've got to do some cleanup in the basement storage issues down there main street again windows are a high priority there's some site improvements that I think need to happen over it main street primarily sort of in the back and I'm not sure I'd call it a playground but the play area out back last year I don't think we put this down I put this down but last summer last summer we restored the place reconstructed the basketball courts at main street middle I don't know if any of you remember the old basketball courts that would get filled with water and were all sunk and deteriorated those have been those were reconstructed last year so they're nice and smooth and they drain well and we've got a nice painted court and new backboards another kind of pressing issue down at main street is kitchen improvements that kitchen is very small it doesn't have much preparation space it is really it was shoehorned in and it was definitely shoehorned at a time when it was a reheat tater tots type situation which I don't think that Jim speak to it but that's not really what we want to do so that's a tough one the kitchen is below grade and we're right on the property line so expansion and additions to the main street middle is definitely going to be a challenge but it's definitely we need to make it better even with it if it's within the same footprint at the high school high school is probably the building that's probably in the best overall condition but we are approving the access to the river that was part of friends the Lewinowski project with some teachers and someone if you've been on the bike path you see there's a new new sign at the boat launch we're going to be planting trees down there there's some talk of some benches it is also an area that we need to be mindful of we we had a it was it was used as a campsite last year some of which I didn't even realize until you know it really started to look but we're going to stay on top of that early this year and hopefully with those site improvements we also cleared out some of the dead trees that were a little bit dangerous and overhanging and we've cleaned that up there a dvc control system basically the controls that we have at the high school that control the mechanical system are the oldest in the district tom has to do a lot of sort of tricking the system into making changes that it can't really do itself again we've got an engineer looking at that right now the other thing that the high school doesn't have with its dvc control system is a CO2 CO detector so to bring in fresh air when we need to do that that's going to be part of that classroom there is a three-acre storm water improvement that I talked with Michelle Brown today or emailed back and forth with her on that one that is still we've got a design on that but I I think we're a couple years out before anybody's going to make us do anything on that and I think there's going to be funding available for that the only other thing some flooring upgrades I think in the entrances in the science lab but that gives you kind of a sense of some of the beyond the sort of normal you know repair as we go some of the things that we've got kind of in the front of our our mind moving forward so any questions so far so I'm just going to buzz through the schools and again some of the things that sort of sort of we think about and deal with and maybe you've seen or maybe you should be aware of when someone asks you so down at Roxbury about 10,000 square foot building it's got a limited sprinkling it's wooden construction that's right here on 12A one of the things with Roxbury is it is the flat it's probably the one flat spot at the very bottom of Roxbury so all the water comes down so in the spring we have a little bit of water that we have to deal with there's no real place to push it as far as I can tell so it's something we just deal with every year and we try to we rope off the area where it gets wet and we give it a week or two and dries out okay there that's that's often a problem metal roof has been is is is a good starting material but it's the absolute wrong material for a school building because the snow comes crashing off on the little kids heads every small town in Vermont passes a bond to build a school and puts a metal roof on because that's how you get the people to pay to vote for it because they say you're crazy not to put a metal roof but we manage it we're very lucky we have a local individual who works for the school district he's actually got kids in the school who comes and does our shoveling for us and the snow clearing and he does he does a great job for us so we've been very fortunate with that again wood building um typical 80s construction in the back it's the it's it's it's held up well it's a fine it's a fine building we are going to have to do some painting and that's something to deal with every year um exterior painting but but in nothing we we can't really manage basically double loaded core or it's a single loaded corridor I'm gonna go up a little bit here so this was and if I'm wrong Zach you can this is the town hall this was the original kind of two room school house and then this portion which was the kitchen in a classroom was added to connect these and then in 80 in the 80s these last three classrooms were were added back here um this being so we've basically a classrooms off a corridor here a classroom here a couple classrooms here the town hall um typical classrooms are adequately sized we've been gone we we and uh northfield in the town past has done pretty good job of going through the classrooms every 10 years or so and and working on the finishes replacing the finishes um there's definitely a couple of classrooms that are you know are going to need to be uh spruced up here in the coming uh coming couple years but in general it's a pretty good shape here's a picture of the the town hall um the kitchen when we took over for northfield um they had ordered a new kitchen hood so we and a new hood and we it was the wrong one and it didn't fit and we had to have one reconstruct so the kitchen is functional it's very small it's functional it needs and it's got new equipment in it refrigerators and and um stoves and all that but it does need to be gone through one more time it needs to be have everything pulled out new floor put in new finishes and put that nice equipment back into that room we just that was the original plan but we were the summer that we took over the building we realized that the stuff that had been ordered was not the right equipment for the space and we were it was a real thrash just to get it up and running for the start of school but it is um mechanical systems down there are um baseboard heating three little boilers really high efficiency circulator pumps it's a very simple system it's almost just a big residential system um it's got some quirks but generally it works well we actually this as part of the indoor air quality COVID money we were actually able to put monitoring on the building so now Tom can check his phone at five o'clock in the morning to make sure the heat is running other than our first line of the warning being Tina when she shows up in the morning so that's a great help um that we're not just blind waiting for someone to show up and have to find out the building's cold so that that's a great piece um as part of the mechanical systems I mentioned the heat pumps one of the things that building does suffer from in combination with that little valley down there's very interesting it it's sometimes warmer than it is here in Montpelier sometimes colder or sunnier it just everything sort of is concentrated down there and you throw in this this moisture that ends up down here and this 80s construction which has a polyurethane plastic called plastic plastic in the walls it was the way we built in the 80s there's this building gets awfully humid certainly this section of the building gets awfully humid and it gets drier in the summertime it gets drier the older the construction you get because the building actually breathes so we have dehumidifiers running down there that's one of the things the heat pumps may be able to help us with is dehumidifying that building which would be a really fabulous thing the school district northfield used to run the heat in that building 365 days a year the heat was on in that building just to keep it at 72 degrees because you get down there in the summertime and you're wearing a jacket you know it's 42 degrees in that building I'm on any given July Tuesday after Tuesday morning it's 40 degrees down there so that mechanical system we should be able to improve that you know life safety stuff we don't burn a burn alarm on the building there is a there is absolutely a a fire alarm there's limited sprinkling we do have a badge system down there for security we re-keep the building when we took it over so everybody really going into the building the only way they're getting in is with a badge as anybody that's been involved with schools knows that everybody in town used to anyway everyone in town had a key to the elementary school in their town and throughout all of our buildings they they're all in a badge system now Tracy Locke does a great job managing who has access who doesn't have access when they can have access and again let's talk about Tom Allen every Monday morning Tracy prints out a list of who's been in the building so Tom Allen can look and see who's in the building to see what if there was an issue who was there what they were doing when they were there um that's the kind of thing Tom does for us and so um again we've got defibrillator down there epi pens uh bleed stop the bleed kits all those new we go through work with the fire department make sure all the leads and terminals for those for the defibrillators are up to date and work really closely with the nursing staff and all the buildings on those sorts of issues to make sure that things aren't out of date um again lead paint when we've got a preschool program down there so that's very every year we have um emergency the management supervisor now is it basically the protocols we have to do for a for a pre-k program is one of them is lead lead paint inspection and we we although i'm certified to do it although i can't it's EMP EMP um i've got that certification i'm not doing it we hire we've got a gentleman Jim Drere uh beer who does it for us every year i'm not going to go in and inspect lead paint once a year just that's crazy for me to deal it's worth spending a couple hundred dollars within to have an expert come in and do that so he does that for us every year comes in the school actually as i understand it northfield um a few years before we took over the building actually scraped the bottom five feet of that building scraped it down to bare wood and then repainted it so they didn't have the original lead paint on the building um so but we have to presume all paint is lead so we go through and we prep it we get it inspected when they come through they do that inspection at union as well in the pre-k classrooms there as well um green building stuff again we've we recently signed a a net metering agreement for solar power for that building the farm the farm when we started to correct collect on those credits we haven't we're not fully on board with that yet they're they're still commissioning some of their solar fields we've done that for main street as well this last fall so now all of our buildings are partially powered by solar farms they're all they're all on net meter contract um that let's say that's that's new for for roxbury and main street middle this year andrew i had a i had a question if it's an okay time to jump in um i i hail from roxbury i'm the newest i think i'm the newest um number of the board and uh yeah i just had a question i'm and i'm also just fairly new new to roxbury only about three years um yeah so i was interested i was interested about that solar net metering agreement that i came about and and then also the the grunfos pump system that you mentioned in the report and if so and it sounds like i'm curious kind of what those what those do what those do that sounds like they're connected to the boiler system but there's also some talk of upgrading those into um electric heat pumps and so as part of the idea of getting involved in a solar net metering metering agreement because you anticipate shifting to more of an electrical heat source and just kind of what you see the future there or if like the solar net metering is really just like to keep the lights on and and that type of electricity use yeah so the the the circulator pumps the grunfos those are just so what we have at the high school and we're getting that our engineer is getting us a proposal to replace those as well used to be just these big inefficient pumps that just pump the water all the time 100 the grunfos pumps are um they're just they're impeller design is so much more efficient and they they they're able to regulate so they don't pump 100 all the time they can go down to 15 when it's not needed and they can cycle up and cycle down and they do it just they're just more efficient motor so that's that's sort of the industry standard for circulator pumps and that's just something it happens to have with regards to the net metering really that was that came about from um um uh we had had it at the high school and the elementary school for five or so years and it um we had an opportunity to there were more there were a couple of uh folks who came to us and said hey we're having capacity we're getting capacity availability do you have any interest and so we put it out to bid unfortunately only one well one one company uh was was able to provide the services and and we went with them with regards it wasn't in anticipation of taking over the you know putting electrical heat pumps what the engineer is doing right now is he is they are looking at the building looking at what our options are from going from um um sort of wall pack kind of residential scale units that we could run one compressor maybe serve two classrooms and get some heating get some cooling you know could it take handle 60 percent of our heating load probably um i don't know he's going to run these numbers versus okay if we wanted to go 100 heat pump what would that look like you know and so that's exactly what he's doing right now is is going to put out sort of two or three options of here's what you have to do to tackle you know to get 50 percent of our heating would be a piece of cake i think you know again that would look very residential to do 90 or 95 that gets a lot more complicated the good thing is we do have a mechanical system that could take up that extra five percent um so that's exactly what he's doing and i'll have i'll have better information on that um in a in two three weeks i think there's reports to do on march first but he said he's running a week or so behind so um the will as part of in the future the folks from the Montpelier net zero group are going to be coming and talking with the the board so i'll have a i'll be in a better position to kind of give a sense of what it would take to put that building all the way on um on heat pumps heat pumps really work they're got they've got a lot better but they only they only work to a certain temperature and uh we go well below that temperature on quite a few nights down there but again we've got the infrastructure to turn the boilers on so okay thank you and it's gonna be a little mindful of time because we're almost yeah um uh so just in terms of a path forward you want to maybe hit a couple more highlights take a couple questions and i think it might be great to um arrange especially as we all start to get vaccinated here maybe some building tours so people can go in and actually you have to see some of the stuff on the ground and you know have have you or tom explain it yeah and absolutely because that's one of the things that tom and i and i work very closely with tom and he's a great absolutely fabulous sounding board i think um for for for each other you know we everybody looks at something differently you know when when a principal looks at a drinking fountain old repair he didn't see that he's got he or she has bigger issues to to deal with and i may focus on and go oh that looks terrible and yeah so so having that sort of perspective of what are the important things is is um you know what we do a lot with the principals is we bring things up and and get their feedback on what they want us to focus on so union and main street i think the biggest issues here that we have our biggest challenge we have are the windows um i know that that's always been put out there as part of the fund balance issue and it's sort of been this thing that's uh i think it's been so big to tackle that it's kind of gotten kicked down the road a little bit well we're not going to kick it down the road anymore um i have been working with um heritage environmental out of burlington they do window restoration and and historic building restorations they do all the work up at uvm they're a great outfit i've worked with them in the past um we're going to take uh a classroom at me at union at union elementary and we're going to have them restore the windows restore and improve the windows they're going to take them out they're going to do all the the the paint abatement um we're going to presume we have to presume that there's lead in that in that paint um we're going to have those windows they're going to take them they're going to dip them they're going to strip them they're going to re-gaze them as needed paint new weather weather stripping, new bulbs stripping, new latches, insulate the weight pockets, replace the cords, really make them as efficient as possible and as functional as possible. On the other side, we're going to take, we're going to replace a window with a brand new metal plaid, aluminum plaid, historic, you know, the same historically appropriate new window and in another window we're going to do what was, I think we're going to do what was proposed 10 or so years ago, the idea of leaving the jams in place but putting in new sashes, putting in new windows and all that. The reason we're doing that is, so we had a proposal to do, just give you a sense of this, we had a proposal to do eight windows of restoring them and it was close to $30,000 to do eight windows. We've got close to 300 windows between the two buildings. New windows are running around $5,000 apiece and you throw another thousand or so that for installation. So the idea of replacing all these windows and these numbers, again, this has been a problem that's been talked about for many years. So I'm looking at quotes from 10 years ago and quotes from five years and quotes from a year ago and anybody that's involved in construction right now knows that material costs are going crazy. Some contractors I've been talking to was last summer wasn't so bad but people are like kind of run out of stock now. So I think the quote that I got last year for windows, obviously, is probably 10% off now. But we're working with EF Wall as our contractor to help us do that. So we're going to have a real world, what does a restored window look like? How does it function? We're going to have a new window that we actually do the beta test of pulling it out and what kind of work do we have to do to the interior of the building? All that kind of works. So then we can, an appropriate group can go through and decide, I hate these restored windows. I can actually open them. I can close them. They aren't leaky. They look good. And we can get EF Wall to help us with a cost estimate and we can get a true, accurate number of how much it's going to cost, how long it takes to install a window because that's the other thing with this project is there's only, we're really only to be able to do it for eight weeks a summer. And we're not going to be able to go and do all the buildings. This is going to be many, many summers worth of work. So that's what we're going to do this summer to sort of get our head around it. And again, it's going to be many summers. It's going to be many, many, many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dare I sell you probably over a million dollars when it's all said and done. And potentially even significantly more than that. But we need to start doing it because we've been kicking the can on it for too long. So that's, that is really the big, you know, there's some other little things that you mean we're taking care of. We've got some of this, like this stuff we've had historic Mason coming in. And as we again, we Tom and I were talking about it, you know, we pay for these sins for from things that happened 20 years ago, somebody just done it right the first time we wouldn't have been looking at this for 20 years. And now having to deal with it. So like we're gonna get rid of this stuff where the old drinking fountains were taken off and new ones installed and things that we're taking care of that you the kids deserve better than that. And it's we're gonna be given that that union got one at the high school. So here's a typical classroom that was renovated at Union, new carpet, new lighting, new ceiling. And that's that's kind of the the COVID setup that we have the kids come in, they're six feet apart, they have a bin for their stuff. At the end of the day, it's all there for the custodians to wipe down the auditorium. Again, that was part of the capital fund that when it's done is going to be fabulous. It is going to be the most beautiful room in Montpelier. Luckily, a few years back, Tom would actually had some plaster repair done. The seats are old and would but we'd never be able to afford to buy anything that would last 80 years like these have. So that's a space that I really can't wait to get going on because that's going to be that's gonna be fabulous ones done. Andrew, just looking at time, I'm wondering if the board members have any questions for your expertise in the room around the building. Jim, is there any questions for me? Got Amanda? Oh, I just want to say thank you Andrew for the report and for all your work and for your commitment to the district. Just that's all I have. Thank you. Andrew, other Andrew, Sean. Yeah, I second that Andrew. I feel like I regularly he preys on you and I really am very appreciative and I think the entire board is very appreciative of the work that you do and the professionalism expertise that you bring to the job. Can you provide us just with like a brief explanation of well, let me just practice this with the board is we received a presentation recently from students about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and at next meeting, we're going to be hearing from Kate on the energy committee about the citywide effort and you might be there as well to chime in. And we formed the facilities and energy committee. And with what you were just touching upon on COVID, it's something that we talked about briefly, but can you touch on, you know, balancing energy efficiency with some of the measures that have been necessary to improve air circulation and mitigate the threat of COVID spreading in our schools and how those work with or against each other? Yeah, so you really it's it's it's not about to me in a school setting, it's not necessarily about using less energy, it's about getting the best use out of that energy. Because you can have if we renovated this school, and we put in the most energy efficient system we can could, we probably still use more energy than we do right now, because the code is now greater than it was before when we bring in more fresh air than we ever did before. And that's a better learning environment we should. And so the energy, like I say, the energy use is always going to continue to go up. So you mitigate that by having smart systems, good equipment, a good maintenance and operations plan, and, and just using that energy as wisely as possible. You know, with regards to the city and the net zero, you know, I, I, they're working on something, and they're, they're working with a consultant now, that's really going to, for me personally, going to open my eyes more globally with regards to, you know, when it's someone says to me net zero, I think, oh, you know, you live off the grid. Well, that's not, that's not the case. It's, it's finding energy and other sources. It's carbon credits, it's, it's net metering, it's things of that nature. We did, we have in the past looked at things like, you know, we've looked at, it's a little bit off track, but things like solar panels, well, our roofs won't hold solar panels. They just weren't designed for that, that load. So we can't just throw solar panels on our roof to do that. We have to get it off site. Biomass facilities, you know, unfortunate, fortunately, our mechanical systems are in pretty good shape. So if you just did a, if you just did a dollar analysis of it, you would never say, you know, it will pay for itself. There's lots of school districts for many years, a few years back that weren't even running their biomass plants because oil was just so cheap that you just didn't even need to run it because it was cheaper to burn oil than it was to burn wood. So so a lot of the stuff on site may not be a great fit. But again, I think they've got a more global vision of what it uses, what it means to use energy and be net zero. So I'll be very interested to learn about that. We did with regards to this year, it'll be interesting our oil usage. But again, we our doors are open much more often our windows are open. We've got fans in the windows and things like that. But we're also shutting our schools down at three o'clock in the afternoon. Whereas in a typical year, the high school is running from six in the morning until 10 o'clock at night. And the other schools until seven, you know, six or seven. So that's going to be kind of tough to judge with regards to with regards to how much more energy we're using this year than we did last year. One of the good things I can tell you though, is that when we got through the retro commissioning the maintenance operations, we had Honeywell against Scott Lampson, who works for Honeywell, lives in Waterbury, loves the school district just really likes the guys likes the building likes being involved in schools. And he does a lot of work in New Hampshire. So he just likes stopping off and helping us. They for three weeks went in every nook and cranny and opened up every piece of mechanical equipment we had and greased every bearing and replaced every belt and ran the computers to open the flaps up and down and just got everything. And there was an audible bush in all of our buildings when we opened them here this summer, which is fabulous because those motors were spinning just as hard going through dirty filters or trying to go through a damper that was closed and it was supposed to be open. So the buildings are as running as efficiently as they ever have is my is my guess and we're gonna and we're committed to continuing that. I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah, that generally does. Thanks, Andrew. Jerry. Hi. Yeah, I love the report. Andrew, it was fantastic. And my question is just in terms of community awareness. Do most parents know about these updates? And I'm thinking of Roxbury. I mean, it would have been great to share this at town meeting. But of course, that didn't happen. I'm just wondering what are some ways where we can let the community know that of all the great work that's happened to these buildings? Well, I think that and and Libby, I'll look to you for your thought. I mean, I think that a report like this should be on the district web page on the facilities, you know, they're paying the taxpayers are paying for this so they ought to know what's going on. So I think that's a great way of doing it. We had tried we have tried this year to send out some notifications to parents and staff about what we were doing with the mechanical systems and cleaning protocols and things of that nature. So I think there's probably we probably do a we probably do a better job of maybe feeding the the principles a little bit of Hey, don't forget to mention this little project that we did in your building, the parents might be interested in seeing that that they could put out in their newsletter, something like that. But we absolutely could communicate this better off the parents. I'm not one generally who'd like to communicate with people. But I know that's why that's why Libby's there to say no, you should or what to say. Yeah, I was I was thinking for Roxbury, like a little binder to say what what has been going on in your school, what where the parents have to wait for something like that just so they can kind of see because I think a lot of times they just if they don't they're not aware of it. I'd be curious. I'd be an interesting survey. But as as you may know, you know what the elementary school, I was down there twice a week for an hour a day, you know, two hours a week when I'm like, if you're in middle school, less and less in the high school, you drive you drop them off for soccer practice or baseball practice, you pick them up and you then you go to graduation and done. And so a lot of them don't get very far into it. Certainly, in the high school, people don't get very far into the buildings and more so at the elementary, but they're more focused at their kids at that point. So but point taken. Okay. In the interest of time, I'll go quick. I had a couple of questions. But first, Andrew, fantastic job. I really like the report the way it's laid out. So thank you for that sheet. One of the questions I had, Andrew kind of touched on it. So I'm going to go to the second one. The you mentioned that you guys are now doing maintenance and upgrades throughout the year rather than just summer. And you're taking care of you know, not impeding the current learning and what's going on. Have you had any? I guess positive comments or negative comments that that's been affecting some or other kids or teachers or principals? Well, the only thing I can say is yes, we have even even a couple days ago, we were down, I was down talking with Glenn, and we were, he was he just mentioned that they that I think the staff talks more with the head custodians, you know, about what they're but but his, his observation was that people have noticed that we've been that there's been some very positive changes in the last seven years and that people are appreciative of it. I'm not sure that was your question. These contractors are good. Like they don't you don't even notice they're there. Yeah, no, and we're very, and we're, yeah, and we're very conscious of that. We, we, we don't, we don't send people into our buildings to do work while the kids are in class or whatever. We've got a really good group of contractors right now that we work with and contractors in general love working in schools. Yeah, they just they've got kids, they see it as good work. They see it as a great environment. They're able to if we need them to come in before school starts, they'll come in before school starts. They'll never there's never, you know, unless a pipe breaks at two o'clock in the afternoon, there's never like a group of contractors working during school. They're either there before school starts or after school gets out or on the weekend or in an area of the building where we know we don't have any students. And we work very closely with the administration say, hey, you know, you got a heater bum in that classroom. Is there another spot that they can go to for a couple hours while we fix it? Thanks. Yeah, we're very, very conscious of that. Great. I'm chill. Then we should probably think about moving to executive session. Yeah, real quick. Andrew, hopefully you guys can hear me okay. Yeah, thank you. This is absolutely phenomenal. I think it's immeasurable to explain how helpful this is for us as a board. And just to the rest of the board, I think it's really important that we have this all laid out in one place with the projects and the sort of look ahead one place because we really need to stay at a course on some of these components they may not be particularly exciting, but the payoff is a lot longer term. I know that Libby and Grant and Andrew in the past have shown us this kind of calendar of these improvements like windows, elevators, shafts, bathrooms, things like that. And I really want to make sure that we sort of protect that. And also knowing that we may, as a district, get more federal funds as a result of the latest, I don't know exactly what state and local and school governance are going to get for funding. But this would be the first place I think we would look if we ever do have a possibility of some additional funding, the one that sort of piqued my interest with the kitchen that seemed like that was a place where there were, I know, certainly the middle school one and other school buildings as well. If the state just a lot of focus on school lunch programs, then there's federal dollars as well. Like if that's something that as a board, we can kind of help leverage to make some of those improvements using federal funds and why not. So this is this is an incredibly helpful resource and and I'll cut it short there. But thank you very much. And Andrew, did you catch all that, Jillie, cut out for about 10 seconds. But I think I think the just of it came through. Yeah, yeah, you get you get me the money. I'll spend it happily. Yeah, just one last one, two last things. Yeah, this is the picture of high school. This is the mud lot. If anybody's not familiar with it, this is what we got rid of. It's grass out there. They use it as a play practice field. It's great. The other thing we're doing great. We're working very hard is this route here. You should never have cars driving around your buildings, your school buildings, kids are not paying attention, even at the high school, they're not paying attention. So we've done our, we've gotten rid of this road, we've gotten rid of this road. And we're, we're, we're trying to break habits that you have to park your car to the very near, very, you have to have to park your car to the closest door to your room or your space or wherever you go and like, it's good to go for a little walk out in the Vonson. The last thing I'm going to bring up, and there's the new fitness room of no one's been in there. Nice. It's, yeah, it's, it's quite nice. The one thing, the high school, one of the biggest challenges we have at the high school, the guys, what are the part of that, that, that level of professionals that Tom has brought to the custodial staff and that he doesn't just hire people, right? He doesn't, he wants people that are going to join this team, stay with the team, engage and be part of it. The high school especially gets used so much. And it's a good thing. It's part of the community. It's a good thing, but it's also a real burden that we, I think we sort of just said, yep, here you go. It's for everybody to use all the time. And I think we just need to be mindful of that, that we had staff, not last fall, the football before, who would literally go months, you know, with no more than one day off in a row, you know, working 60 hours a week for two months at a clip. And we, we, towards, towards, in the way that 19, we said, we're not going to rent out on Sundays anymore. We can't do it. We got to let, we got to let the guys go shopping with their families for Christmas. You know, like, so we at least at that one point had, had that one day a week, we just said we can't do it. So it's just mindful. We just need to be mindful as we open the buildings back up and staffing wise. It's, if we have the staff to do it, you know, however, you know, what's a great asset to the community, we just need to be the priority for the custodial staff and us is that on Monday morning, when the doors are open, the school is ready for the kids and ready for learning. And everything else is as after that. The other thing that Tom brought up in this last thing, you know, we got away from, we were very conscious at the beginning of this whole COVID thing to not have the sort of deep clean day, because Tom's Tom's direction and philosophy is it's as clean Monday morning as it is Wednesday morning as it is Friday morning. There isn't, there's no need for a deep clean on a Thursday afternoon because it's not dirty on a Thursday that it was on Monday afternoon. And it's that kind of mindset that has served this, served the, served us well and will continue. And hopefully that's sort of an institutional thing that will carry forward past myself, past Tom, past Len, past Libby, last all of us, you know, but that will just be the way. And I think Tom is well in his way to doing that, except for me. Great. Thanks, Andrew, that was super helpful. Especially I think that now they're building facilities committee, we will hopefully be hearing more of these updates. And I will work with Libby to pick some dates for a safely distanced set of building tours for the board as we kind of move through the spring and into summer. Yeah. I like to say, re-true it. If there's, if there's specific questions, things you don't understand, things that are, just get them back to me and, and we'll integrate it. And the idea is this is a living document, the heavy lifting has been done, it should just be updated every year. And it'll be a good, it'll be a great asset to continue forward. And this is not, this is not me. This is most school districts would, most school districts don't do this kind of stuff until they've got a problem. And then they're already two years past trying to solve the problem, needing to solve the problem and not looking ahead. So this is, this is a, this is a great thing that we have as a district. And it's worth the, worth the effort. Thanks, Andrew. Great. Thanks, Andrew. All right. Thank you. See you tomorrow. Thank you. So we're going to have a quick executive session to just get an update on negotiations. What was that? Hi, Tom. Oh, do we have one more? No, you just need a motion to go on executive session. Okay. That's all. Well, no, we need those two motions, right? We need, we need two motions. We need a motion that just something to the order of discussing negotiations in public would put the board at a substantial disadvantage. I can try that. I think it's close enough. I can try that. I moved to finding that premature public knowledge regarding the contracts with different unions were placed district at a significant disadvantage because we risk disclosing our negotiation strategy. If you discuss the proposed contract terms in public setting. Any discussion? Anakit? Hi. Andrew? Hi. Kristen? Hi. Jerry? Hi. Mia? Hi. Amanda? Hi. Jill? Hi. Hi. So that, I think we were doing the first time, at least, or was it echo? So now we just need a motion to go into executive session. Move that we go into an executive session. Second? I second. Anakit? Hi. Andrew? Hi. Kristen? Hi. Jerry? Hi. Mia? Hi. Amada? Hi. Jill? Hi. Great. Livy, you want to put us into a breakout room, please?