 So the first order of business is I will take nominations for chair. Nominate the floor to you, Smith. Second. Thank you, Jonas. Thank you, Chris. Are there any other nominations? Is there any discussion? For the state of discussion, I think the floor is very well, and I'm extremely happy to nominate her and look forward to voting for her chair. Okay. Hearing none, all those in favor? Hi. Hi. Senator. Thank you. Any opposed? Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. I had come to please concur with Jonas' description, so I will turn it over to you. Thank you, Megan. Thank you, everybody. It's an honor, a pleasure, and I'm delighted to be able to do this for another year. I did a lot of work, so I didn't know that, but I love this district, and I think we have a fabulous board, and we have a few budgets, so I'm excited for this new face, the funding, and all the opportunities that we have ahead of us right now. So, very excited. Thank you for the staff and the administrators that are here with us tonight, and we're pulling not a snow day today, but we're up. Wow. You're going to be pretty impressive. And Lisa, thank you for your support always. Thank you. Okay. So now we have to take nominations for vice chair. Nominate cardiographic. Any other nominations? All those in favor? Any discussion? Any discussion. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I was going to jump in this time. I think he's done a great job in his role, and the two have worked well together. Yeah. I appreciate that. We appreciate it. We appreciate it. All those in favor, please signify by saying hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Any opposed? Stay. Hearing none. Thank you. Now, I will take nominations for clerk. I nominate Jones. Do you want to do it? It doesn't take any time. Being clerk is not a thing. How did we go without to say anything nice? Wendy and then Ursula. Any discussion? Thank you for taking all of our nominations. We appreciate it. Yeah. We appreciate you. Plus you also do other things. We appreciate you. I know you love me, Jones. Yeah. Okay. All those in favor, please signify by saying hi. Hi. Hi. Got it. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. Okay. So with that, moving on into our committees. At first we would have the steering committee. So we already have a member from Worcester, a member from Calis, and a member from East Montpelier. So we would need a member from Berlin, and a member from Middlesex for the steering committee. So I would nominate Ursula for the record from Middlesex. Okay. Ursula. And I think we could combine. I'll nominate Diane. Ursula and Diane. Second both. Second both by Jones. Yeah. So who nominated Ursula? Ursula. Sorry. Chris and I have Ursula nominated Diane. Okay. And Jonah, second both. Okay. We're trying to confuse you. Thanks everyone for taking that hour on one day. The steering committee takes extra time too. I agree with that. And I think it helps us keep good representation. And we also have more diversity of thought at the, for our agenda planning. So we appreciate that work. Very helpful. For me. Okay. So all those in favor, please give me a call by saying hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Eric and your post. We have staying hearing none, the motion carries. So we're moving on into the policy committee. So I would be looking for three members, the point three members to the policy committee. For the three current members and they want to continue serving. Okay. Okay. All those in favor, please give me a call by saying hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. But. Any of both. Hearing none, the motion carries. Thank you. Now. We currently have four members of that committee. Yeah. That's okay. We need a minimum is three because we need that's the minimum that we need. But we need to meet. I think we need to have more than. That's all right. All those in favor please sign by saying, Hi. Hi. Hi. Any of both. Hearing none, the motion carries. Thank you. No. Important work. Yes. Now to the negotiation. That's the minimum that we need, but we can have as many as long as people are willing to serve. I nominate Joshua, Diane, and Chris. And yourself. Oh, and I nominate Jonas. Don't just eat your food, it can't be anything. Okay, so you got that? Did someone second it? Who seconded it? I'll second it. Okay, Mindy seconded it. Michael, those in favor, please signify by signifying. Hi. Hi. Hi. Let me say that in the negotiations. Jonas has been doing a masterful job of facilitating. And I think we've truly done a good report with both groups. It's truly been a really wonderful experience, I think, this time going around. I mean, we haven't had a contract yet, but, you know, maybe you still have to go there. But I think it's been a good relationship, working relationships, and Jonas is a significant part of that. Thank you, Chris. As does Norm with the food. Yes, as well. As does Norm with the food, because this whole is just a product. Oh, Norm. Yes. And Chris, I would follow up on that by saying that I've been on Diane quite a bit, so I appreciate it. And I think the entire board appreciates all of you guys doing this. I said a lot of work. So thank you. Thank you, Joshua, for jumping in from both into that work. I'm afraid to call her. Yes. And you're responding. Yes. So thanks again for joining us on Diane. Thanks, Chris. Those in favor, please signify by saying hi. Hi. Hi. Any opposed? Okay. The most exciting committee, Education Policy Committee, which, can I say, that Ursula is willing to lead with the support of Terry. We talked about this. And so, you know, we need a few more members. And I know that we always have, like, half the board on this committee. So just raise your hand if you're willing to be in this committee and we'll nominate one. I nominate Ursula, McKaylin, Diane, Natasha, Lindy, Kari, and Daniel. And four. Okay. You got that. So, that's okay. So I have the youngest nominated Ursula, McKaylin, Diane, Natasha, Lindy, Kari, and Daniel, and four. Yes. Are you designating Ursula as chair of the committee? No. The committee can do it. But we just wanted to clarify that, too. Yeah. The committee will organize. Yeah. Who's second? Natasha. Okay. Oh, wait. I can't. Oh, wait. No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. So it's thanking you, Kari. This is a lot of work. Kari and Dan, too. Thank you. And Ursula. Thank you for volunteering. It was a promise of mentorship. So I'm going to hold you today. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. It's the most exciting work so far. Thank you. Any … All those in favor, please signify by saying, I. I. I. Can you pose? Bring on the motion. Kari's, at least, excited, but very excited. committee. So I'm wondering, Daniel and Kari and Eric, who's on the phone, are you guys still willing to serve in that committee? And I know you would be in an hour. You would take your hiatus right now and then come back. After budget? After budget, yeah. So, I will be there. Oh, sorry, yes, you too. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Joshua, you want to nominate this committee? Or you want to be on that? Oh, you join? You join? Okay. So I'm looking for somebody that actually want to nominate this committee? Sure. So it was Joshua, Ursula, Daniel, Kari, and Eric. Eric, Laura, and Eric. I think you can make it more. What was the committee? It's the finance committee, which is the biggest that has been so far. So sorry, Natasha nominated Josh, Ursula, Daniel, Kari, Laura, and Eric. Yes. Yes. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion. Okay. So they appoint a board representative to Central Vermont Carrier Center, and as you guys know, we don't have a wrap anymore. We have an actual board member on that board. As in the board member on that board, I'm going to continue, but if there's somebody else that is really, that can commit the time, that is okay too. It's that they need on Mondays, six to eight, you will leave the finance committee too. And so. You nominate Floor. So we're nominating you as a director rather than a representative? So it says yes, school board member, director. Yeah, you're right. The director is the right term. And so we have six directors. It's really a really good thing. Because now I'm like a big, big fan of this. If you know, I'm happy to serve one more year, I will love for somebody to potentially fill this role next year. So if you want to think about it or come to some meetings with me, that would be great. I love both the Carrier Center and Jody. You know, it's a great organization. Steven helps Megan as part of that too. It's really important part of our for all our kids. So all those in favor of the signify by saying aye. Any opposed? Carrying none. The motion carries. Okay. Now we have you guys have your agenda in front of you too. So I think I have to go through what the current needs, but we're looking to nominate our current officers for the district. So should I read them out loud or is somebody prepared to make this motion? I can read them out loud. Because we're doing it as a slate. As a slate. Yes. I nominate the following as truant officers for the school district. Berberland, Aron Boydham, Calis, Kat Fair, Worcester, Gillian Pugwa, Middlesex, Caroline May, East Welfillier, Alisha Leipzig. Who do you nominate for? J.B. Hovery. Thank you. And for you 32, J.B. Hovery. I'll let you know he was nominating. What do you guys want to be in here? Okay. Do you have a second? Okay. You guys decide who's going to... Okay. We need discussion. Thank you, everybody. So hold us in favor, please signify by saying hi. Can I pose? Hearing none, the motion carries. So now we get all the phone. Okay. So we need to establish our meeting schedule. So hopefully everybody's okay with staying with the first and third Wednesday of the month. The first Wednesday being where we do either professional development for board, community engagement or strategic planning to get more and more engaged in that process. Do we have to have a nomination or do we just, unless somebody is sent, does that have to be a motion? I think we just have to, everybody doesn't have to do a motion to keep it. I do have a question though about if we're splitting the first one between community engagement and strategic planning. I don't think that's enough time for strategic planning. So I don't know. So that's what that reads as. So I don't know if that's what you need it as. No. So I was just saying that the first Wednesday could be anything. So it doesn't necessarily have to be a board meeting. So we could be just doing community engagement, which at this point we're probably going to do a lot of community engagement through the strategic planning. Yeah. I would also add that I think that the, when the strategic planning steering committee convenes to develop the plan, the forums associated with board meetings are one method of engagement in the community but won't be the only ones. And so I don't think that, I don't think there's an intention to limit it to those. I think it's just, conceptually, does the structure of the first meeting being more public facing presentation engagement and the second meeting being more business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keeping that first Wednesday flexible. So if we do need to use it for strategic planning or any discussion we could or go more exactly to that. Great. So could I have a motion? I knew that we use our current meeting schedule the first and third Wednesday of each month, the first meeting to be forum or board vote and most of each time. Chris. Second. Chris, second. Those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. Okay. And then this one, we don't necessarily need a motion, but we could also do a motion that we agree that we're going to use Robert rules as we've been in the past. Small boards, even though we are a three day board. So just, we would keep operating in the same company among the Robert rules. Everybody okay with that? Yeah. We don't need a motion just to have to be clear that. Small board rules, right? Or we use the combination because we are a little bigger than all, but yeah. And then we want to adopt our board norms, which are part of your packet. That we, again, we adjourn back in 2022. But that are on the top on page three. And we will look at them again at our retreat. So we want to continue to operate under the norms that we established back in 2020. We use them again in 2022 right now. So I would be looking for a, to adopt them. I move to adopt the board norms that were adopted in 2021. Second. Yeah, adopt our board norms. So second, a move by Ursula, second by Chris, any more discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. Update. Identify community practices. A communication practices. So that was just for information. You know, we don't need to, but I'm assuming you guys are okay with that. That's the way that we've been operating right now. Yes. Okay. Schedule our annual work session. Yes, we treat. Do you want to talk about it a little bit? We have two proposals. Yep. I also just, I'm realizing we can just get to this when we, we jumped to board of orientation and operations. That might just be where the agenda was organized. Which I think is fine. Should we go? Should we? Yeah. Is the students okay with that? Or did you guys not organize? I just, I just felt like we knew. Like really organized instead of breaking it up. And I should have asked you guys first, but. So we were having a conversation about figuring out a way to structure our retreat so that the leadership team should be part of it, particularly for kind of the reflection on the year, kind of state of the schools. And thinking more, thinking more thoughtfully about how we want to engage with them as part of these meetings for the rest of the coming year. So that could look like a full day retreat where they join us for a portion of it. And then, or it could look like two separate shorter retreats where they joined the first one. And the second one is really more focused on affirming board goals, getting down a grain size board work plan, things like that. And I think we had talked possibly about, we have a June board meeting slated in the schedule for June 21st, which we should make sure that that works for folks because it's after school, that's out. So the thought would be that we could use that time, extend it a little bit, perhaps I've done it together, and have the leadership team join that one. And then the typically scheduled August one would be just the board. The other possibility would be to look for a full day in August. And there is also time to do that. So those were the thoughts. Yeah, that was the idea. So June 21st, even if it's not June 21st, use that last board meeting to partner with them and then still have a board retreat where we could get more in depth into our goals. It's the 7th or the 8th of August. We've been typically doing it the second week of August. But we are also that. That could change. I know that it doesn't work for everybody. I think it would be nice if we had just the thought, if we decided this year that whatever we always do at the second week. Because then we can all plan our families and stuff around it. And now we need a retreat. It's nice to start the year with a retreat. And it's nice for us to be able to have July off, although we're not going to have totally July off because we might be doing some strategic planning. But don't get too excited. But it would be nice to continue. And I know not everybody was able to join the last board retreat. So I have kind of, yes, discussion. June 21st is the summer solstice. And we had a meeting on the winter solstice. So, you know, my family celebrates the summer solstice. I probably wouldn't be able to make something on the 21st. And the, similarly, the second week in August is a week. Pretty much are always away. So, which is fine. But my proposal would be to do it closer to the beginning of school. But I know that gets hard for the administrators because I think you guys probably start sooner than the students. But, yeah, students start Wednesday. If we were splitting it in two in the first half that they were part of was tagged to the end of the school year, then that would matter less if it was closer to the end. Do you think it would make what would be more beneficial, like meeting just after the school is completed and sort of like have that immediately fresh or like sort of reflect and like, I don't know, and think about plans for the upcoming after there's been like a break? I don't know. It's funny. This conversation, the leadership team has this very conversation as it relates to our retreat and how we, when we're in the right frame of mind. And we also, similarly, although it's the same group of people at both retreats, which is different, we tag our end of year one closer to the end of the year. Use that for reflection, looking back. What did we accomplish? We set these goals. How did we do? Then we let some time span. That's kind of the processing time. The one that's closer to the school year for us is future planning. So this is kind of the same. It's the same thing. And it, I mean, that structure seems to work, I think. For us, we can't have it too late into August because the ship has sailed for planning by then. But that's a little bit different than the board. So we could have that one later in other students and then we could look at, we could send that to the poll. Everybody will respond to it. It's for June. I'm trying to just go into the calendar right now and see, we were scheduled for that June 21st. The only other, we could do the, we could do it on June 7th. Do that retreat with, I don't know if that's too early because we wouldn't necessarily have to have a community engagement. So it's usually not our work. So we could do dinner and towards the end of the meeting and maybe our business meeting is short and just have that one meeting in June and we can get a little closer on the work plan and see if we need an extra, or yes. Well, I'm looking a little bit particularly, if it were the 14th that would be very difficult because that's two days before graduation. Is the 7th, I'm putting these folks here on the spot, is the 7th feasible for leadership? Stephen has the only principal here and Central Office folks. June 7th feasible, right there, retreat. June 7th. Yeah, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're. I didn't pre-do that much of it with them. We were talking about the 21st, actually. Yeah. Which was feasible. So are we talking about just the evening part? Yeah, just the evening part. Oh. Yeah, yeah. Just like you don't have anything else to talk about. It's not as bad as what you mean. It's not a busy time. Yeah, there's nothing going on. Nothing going on. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there is the tricky part with that week. Elementary principals, elementary, all of the buildings have whatever the various end of year celebrations are, and some of them are scheduled now, and some of them are not. So I can't guarantee that they don't have in their heads that week earmarked for various things. Yeah. That, that would be the challenge. I would say that's not likely to be a night for most of those events as a Wednesday night with the following week available as well. But we would need to get this on the calendar to make sure. Okay. That's, that's helpful. And we, we don't need that motion right into this. We just wanted to bring it up so that people could put it on the radar and we can send a safer day at least. I've already saved in your day. Oh, that's why we have it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a better night for the board meeting on the 21st. Okay. Yeah. I would suggest that we keep the 21st on the books because we may need to approve CBAs. Okay. Yeah. But it, instead of being a retreat, it would be a business meeting. Yes. Okay. I wanted to add that I liked the idea of like coming up with a timeframe that we can all agree on, pick a week in August that we're going to have to do the retreat every year since nothing around it. Yeah. And we could talk about that at the retreat too, but it would be great. Well, I think if we wait until June to plan something in August, I, I look that second week is the only week, I mean, that I've asked without any kind of work or school or anything. The second week of August. Okay. So why don't we pencil in the second week of August and then we figure it out. Sorry. We've figured it out. I'll be in Acadia. Oh, you were saying, I thought you were saying that was the only week. I was saying that's the only week that I have like for family, no other to come to us. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I totally read. I'm going to say something that's on my calendar that next week, even though things start, they're more spotty. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I totally misunderstood what you were saying. I'm so sorry. So the week of August is why you're saying something. That would be better to me. Third. And because it does not involve the leadership team, this far in advance, that's fine. So in theory for August, we would have blocked the Wait, the second week is the seventh. Never mind. I'm only in the week of the fourth. Sorry. Sorry. I think now is the second week of August. 13. Are you saying for like the second and the 16th would have already been booked as board meetings and so we could just use say the 16th as a one. We're just going to start the year. I don't know if the fourth matters for us. Yeah. Is there a way that we could just send a wrap? Yeah. Don't pull. There you go. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Let's have it. Let's have it. I'm trying to adjust. Yeah. Okay. And we'll send several. It doesn't necessarily have to be on a Wednesday. No, it will send. And it would have to be at least a half a day. Okay. Okay. June 7th. And they're blocking everybody's calendar. Yeah. So then the next one, we do want to have a motion for. And that would be where we post our agendas. So at each elementary school in our website and at each town court is what we've been doing. Rick. Yeah. So. I'm going to be post meeting agendas at each school on I move that you post meeting agendas in each school on the district website and in each town office. Thank you. A second. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. The Times argues as our newspaper of record. Thank you, Ursula. A second? Second. Thank you for your attention. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Can you pose? Hearing none, the motion carries. So we need to designate a voting member for the health insurance. You can read the whole thing for the book. We need to send this name by April 1. In the past, we have designated Ursula. What is the one? This is the one. So anybody that is going to go to the conference, I'm happy to do it, but I'm already on the BSVA. So I think it would be a great opportunity for somebody else to be conference. That's why I was going to do it. Yeah. So it happens this second day. But I might not have to read by this year, but we still need to send it. We still need to send a representative. Does anybody really nominate Ursula? I'll nominate Ursula. Second. Our voting delegate for state-wide health insurance. Thank you, Lindy. And you second it, Diana? Thank you. All those in favor, please give you five by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. The rest, I have this here. I don't want to get into the weeds of this one. It's just our code of ethics. If you are willing and want to sign it and give it back to us, that's great. If you have any concerns, that's OK, too. So I'm going to pass it both ways. And actually, if you want it to me, just give it to me at the end of the meeting. Any? In any discussion, I'm happy to have discussion. If you guys want to say anything about it, I'm sorry. Is there a reason why there's not a title on the page? I don't know. If I had been a copy-paste issue, it should be, I don't know. So maybe it's just, I must hack it. I wonder if it was in the, maybe I got it cut up for the header. But it's just that you're just adopting the code of ethics. You can read through the document. There's not a title on the page. Yeah, so I must have cut it up when I put the header. Sorry. But it's that. And then the last part is that there's some, for development information, I live to open meeting law. So it's good to have a refresher if you want to do that. And the toolkit from the essential works. And there's going to be May 8th and May 15th, the first year journey. You guys were not able to do it last year, every first timers. It's always good as a refresher too if you want to do it after. That's all. And then we're working on our fourth manual. Let me hope to unveil to you guys our retreat. And that was it. So then we can move into our four students that are here for you. So any adjustments to the agenda? We're just going to remove that personnel. Oh, that's true. We don't have any personnel. So we're going to remove that. I looked where to take. I know. You're going to take your action. I am there for you. And then I don't see any members of the public. Thank you again, Sasha, for being here. Thank you, Mark, for running our. Oh, we do have. So welcome, members of the public. Any public comments? Can you guys hear me? They must, because Eric was here. Can hear you? No comments. Thank you, David. That's great. Great. OK. Thank you, David, for also being here and all of the members of the public. I just wanted to point out that the Middlesex community had the pie breakfast again for the first time in like three years on Saturday. And it was a stunning turnout. And really enjoyable to see. I hadn't seen young kids in a really long time. And it was really wonderful to see the community come out and engage. And it involves a lot of hard work, honeybee and Barry, I think was the spearhead this year. And volunteers come in, they make the pies, and then serve and clean up. And it was just a really delightful event. And I'm glad that it's kind of opening up. It's a rejuvenation in a way. It's springtime. So I just want to offer those comments. And I think a lot of our towns had the lunch time meeting, but no lunch. And that was really well attended, too. OK. So since we don't have any public comments, finally, to the stars of our wiser here, the floor is yours. All right. Well, I just want to say first, I went to the pie breakfast. Tommy reached out to me, and I helped serve. And it's super nice to see everyone. I haven't been back to my elementary school. I miss the pie breakfast. I'm a little sad. I love the pie breakfast. OK. So our boys, hockey won. It was an insane game. I've never had some M more exciting in my school game. We were losing for the entire game. We were tied at one point. And then at the last two seconds, Ty Ross Masler scored the tying goal. Ty tied. And then the second overtime, we scored again. And everyone was there in the floor, and Mike was there. So it was really exciting. It was good. The team deserved it. They're really, really good. So it was a really good time. And everyone seemed really happy with it. Everyone got home safe. It was good, because it was really late. At 2 AM. At 2 AM. Everyone was really tired the next day. But it was good. It was a good night. Yeah, it definitely raised the school's spirit. You can kind of see it in April to the next day. Also for sports, we had indoor track again this year. Boys got fourth in the state, and girls got third in Preacher in Division II. So to finish up our winter sports, we always have a sports banquet. And so we had that Monday night. It was really nice. The coaches went up, and they gave speeches for their teams. And Caitlin Fielder and Sarge Burns got the principal's awards. And they're really good athletes. That makes sense. It was good. Also, it's the time of the year where college acceptances are coming in. So a lot of people are here in the back. And it's really cool to see where people are going, actually. And then finally, this weekend, we are doing a spring fling. So it is our school Harwood in Montpelier. And everyone's going to, I think, a place in Montpelier. I don't think it's the school. And apparently, our school is leading in numbers to going, which is great. So it will be a fun night. And it's high school only. So if you're high schoolers, tell them to go. It will be fun. And chill. Also, a few last things. SSJ, the Seeking Social Justice. Next week, we're touring to Berlin Elementary to talk to them about with LGBTQ education and awareness. We got teachers asking for us to go after presenting to the district a month ago. And we're also be going to all the other elementary schools, hopefully, by the end of the year. We're also presenting at the Education Justice Coalition conference this year, which is April 1. It's going to be about over 200 people there. I think we're just presenting to a small group. But that's also exciting. And finally, not finally, but something after. But we have the performance of Kippin coming up, April 13, 14, and 15, if any animals go see. Everyone's been working super hard. I'm stage managing this year. It's been super fun. But yeah. So finally, the student body was introduced to the S program. And that's the year end study program that's happening in the year 3-2. So the last four days? Four days? OK, Steven. Four days. Students are signing up right now to do a program that they're interested. They can get some grades from it, like credits that they need it. They can get it. Or just finding a passion with something different. So it should be good, because normally the last four days of school was hard to be in class. So it should be fun. And a lot of kids are excited for it. Yeah, teachers are presenting on things that they're interested in. We have origami, or log rolling, or swimming, or African films, et cetera. So it should be cool. Wonderful. I have just the definition of what is the school's length. Oh, the school's length. Oh, it's a dance. Sorry. Sorry. It's a dance. It's a dance, so it should be fun. It's a dance, so it should be fun. I have a lot of college. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't seem like a dance. It's like the crystal ball of a James May. Any more questions? I'll see you on April 1st when I'm doing two. I did see that, actually, about school boards, right? Yeah. Well, thank you for the student report. That's super exciting. I'm going to say the hockey game. I don't know if you guys have noticed. The star here, all of the hockey game, all the hockey seniors had a particular hair color, and these guys have the best principle that joins into getting his hair dyed in the same color. Pretty cool. Yeah. And I have never been to a hockey game. You've been to a symphony as well. Yeah. You've been to a symphony, too. I have never been to a hockey game. I was totally naive. Willow tried to warn me about what happens when they score, their team scores. I survived the game, and Steven rescued me from being completely smashed. But it was really fun. Well, you're crushing us with the glass. How do you come up with a reason to spot for you? I don't know that, but the elbows, I could go under. But it was super fun. So congratulations to the team. It was amazing. It was a great group of kids. And one of our principles was also their son, Nolan, was some of the team, too, and the youngest of the first. So it was pretty exciting. I heard from somebody outside the area that the sportsmanship was amazing at the end of the game, the hugging, and the congratulating, and the people said they were very impressed. The MMU was, and it was really one of the best that I've seen, just in terms of the fans and the behavior. It was what we want in all of the games. And it was so great to see it in that game. And that's a lot, but it's poppy, too. It is. It's very physical, and I'm afraid to say something to each other, so it was really nice to see it. That's why I was impressed. It's so loud. I'm like a little more dance than I was before. Some cold reports, any highlights? Yeah, well, the two things that I'm a highlighter are actually on for us to talk about, which is just sort of an update on the mascot review and talking about strategic planning. So maybe I'll just hold those until we move down to that. Yeah, that's OK. I'm happy to answer questions if there are other questions, but those were the two biggest. I need questions. So when does he stand on any response to the request that they put up the hearing? So we have that as a separate. We're going there. Oh, is it? We're going there. Yeah, we're going there. That's OK. We'll discuss that then. And then any other questions about the cold reports? Thank you for it. It's really informative. So moving right on. The Central Verma Career Center are budget passed to. We're supposed to reorganize last Wednesday, but all of the boards were last month, last Monday, but all of the boards are meeting at different times, so we're not able to, because we have 20 members that just did, so we're not able to reorganize until the 21st. That would be the first meeting, but it was, we had over 7,000 votes. That was really, it was a big show for 18 towns and small towns, so it was really great, and a great support. BSEA update is mainly what I put in your board development. That's the most important part of the week, which I want to need to take away. Right, it's never a bad time to take a class, even if you had taken a class before, and the workshop for the first year at your home is so informative, and there's a link there to all of the webinars archives, too, as far as that. So that's the only thing I wanted to highlight. And moving on to board operations and boards. So the only thing that I think can happen is stipend and then conversation, but I don't know what it means. I also fill here, so I don't know if you want to switch to that first. Yeah, so if the board is okay, we want to switch until 17, so we want to make good, so just time with us, so we could jump in and do that debrief, and then do the last two items that we had, and then we have executive session. Okay. Yeah, and we can do that before going to executive session, so welcome, Phil. Thank you for joining us, and there's some food there when we're done, we can have some. And some water. There's some sodas and water right back there, too. If I get dry, somebody in the top, can maybe get me a water. I'll be with you. This is my last scheduled session with the board here in the state of Vermont. I just had a presentation with another board. A lot of our emphasis in conversations this week is our geared toward new board members, and so congratulations to the recently re-elected board members. I don't see any new faces, but several of you just won unanimously in your votes. Who got the most votes? I'm sure somebody counted that. Yeah, I'm sure it was me. Okay. I'm not shy at all, I'm just joking. I wanted to take the opportunity just to talk about board processes, and this is an area that's been sort of growing in my awareness, concern as an opportunity. When I was a board member, there's a lot of things to be frustrated about. There's just no way to, you know, you wanna solve the problems of the world, you can't solve anything. Or I read something in the Wall Street Journal years ago, the politician boasts, I'm gonna change the world, and a garage mechanic sneers, he can't even change a tire. So it's all a matter of perspective, right? Like, what do we wanna accomplish? And one thing I really encourage all board members and anyone, think about what you wanna accomplish on board. Like, right? We use the word so-and-so and so-and-so had an agenda, like it's a bad thing. But if you're on a board and there's nothing, you wanna see improve your growth or progress, what's the point? So, you know, think about what is it individually? And then I would encourage you, you know, as you have retreats in the future, set aside some time to talk through, here's what I'd really like to see us accomplish, here's what, you know, and get to those kind of shared opportunities for doing good work together. I just, a few minutes ago, I texted an article on the floor that she can share or have Meg share with the whole board. It's by the executive director of the Panasonic Foundation. So a philanthropic group that years ago took on the endeavor of trying to help support school boards across the U.S. And intriguingly, they wrote chapter nine in improving school board effectiveness. I didn't at the time feel like it was a very strong chapter, but I actually have come to appreciate their work. And you'll see in that article that she shares that there's probably some things to think about and they might even be a resource that you would consider for your school board and other endeavors that you're involved in. So I'd encourage you to give that a little bit of thought. We've in draft governance standards that Vermont is adopting this summer, they're in the rulemaking process right now. One of the three sort of main pillars in those governance standards is board processes for governance processes. Again, when I got out of school board, I was frustrated, like, can't we do this? Can't we do that? No, it's like a process. I mean, you gotta have a process for having a first reading of a policy and a second reading of a policy and sometimes a third reading or just about anything else. You wanna talk about something, you gotta have a process to get it on the agenda. And then you gotta bring it on to the agenda. Is it for discussion? Is it for decision? There's just a process for everything. And I don't know about all of you, but in my personal life and work, I like to make decisions. Let's move forward. Let's have some progress. You mean we gotta have another study? So the process thing, something initially as a board member I was really frustrated with, but over time I realized how important it was to have processes in place. And something that stood out to me just recently, and I know this is in those draft governance standards, but if somebody in the community, whether it's a staff member or a community member says, well, you never know what to expect from this board. That's not a compliment, right? I mean, there are people that sort of think a group should always be random and all over the place like Phil is. But most people, they kinda wanted things to be predictable. And to get the community engaged, they have to know where can I enter? What can I contribute? So I thought we'd take a few minutes to talk about your recent budget adoption process. Congratulations, by the way, 71% or 60%. 60, something, about 60. Oh geez, I thought it was at least 70. Maybe you have some hidden votes that we haven't seen yet, but 60. All of my papers voted yes. That's certainly a risk in today's political climate. Everybody I know doesn't include everybody. But just thinking about the process and you'd have to tell me when you started, last fall, setting parameters, how you used a committee, as you reflect, and we're gonna get there, hopefully within 15 minutes. When you reflect what went well, what didn't go well, maybe what did you learn, what would you suggest to your current board and or another board, five or 10 years from now, or a neighboring district that didn't pass by 60 some percent, said how do you do it, what advice might we give to them? So help me out here because I don't know what I don't know. But let's talk about the process a little bit. What did happen? Somebody walked me through a timeline. Anybody, especially if you're on the committee that was passed through that, how does the process of setting a budget or proposing a budget, how did that get started? First of all, thanks. I wanna say we started in September, October. Nope, I'm gonna say August, September. Talking about just our budget calendar. And I'm gonna get the month from possibly September. We did a board training on how budgeting in Vermont works and how education and finance works. We follow that and we share our calendar pretty much in every meeting, every step of the way that we've been sharing our calendar of what we do. And so we had an initial community forum meeting for, oh, we wanted the community to come talk to us about what they wanted to add. Somebody might have to jump in and say what we shared with them. Because I thought we shared some of our just limiting factors potentially. The data, yeah. And just context, some numbers, enrollment. Right, both the areas of focus, kind of general things like that. Very general numbers, got their input. So monthly, we were having community input. And then, November was the first draft. Yep, the finance committee established our adverts in November. Right, and brought them to the board. So right, the finance committee met, established parameters that we recommended to the board. And then at the next meeting, the board heard those and was able to vote for the staff. So are you on the finance committee? I am. Okay, so that's helpful. What I've got here, and this is correct me if I'm wrong, sometime about the start of the school year, you began to talk about a timeline and calendar for the budget. You had a training on the budget. And then you started doing monthly community forums to get input from the community about what's most important to them. Right, and concurrent with that, I would say, is the administration and the finance committee. Right, finance committee set parameters. The board talked about and approved those. That was in November-ish. October? October, let's say October. Late October, because then first draft came from admin, from the leadership team in November, for us to discuss and look at. Okay, goes to finance committee, then comes to the full board. Finance committee gets to look at it, yep, and- So process-wise, does the finance committee make a recommendation to the board? Is that how it comes? We have, yeah. Okay. So we look at it, we digest it, we have enough conversations, and then we can make a recommendation to the board, and they can take it or leave it. I got right, because it's not us telling them exactly what to do. It's a discussion, but we can guide them. Yeah, good. You've had more time with more information on the budget maybe than someone nod on the finance committee. Right, because we get to have that extra meeting. This was a very unusual thing to hear about. I mean, we've never gone beyond a parameter. I mean, usually we are, and usually our parameters are like two or three percent, and this parameter was higher. And then even then, when we were looking at it, the board really discussed it, talked about it, and by vote went over that parameter. I think I was in a virtual meeting in December, maybe. Conversation. Nine different points. There was a lot of outreach to the community, a lot of community input, and even adding on meetings into January to solicit community input because of the difficulties that we were having in terms of just coming to an agreement on what the budget should be and the importance of what the budget was being proposed. So there was a significant amount of community turnout, I think, in this process, which I thought was helpful. So I'm curious, when you say outreach, did the board as a whole kind of have an outreach plan or did individual board members reach out to their networks? I saw stuff on FrontPort's forum, but other than that, I don't know. That, I don't, I can't answer that. I think it was more about FrontPort's forum. There may have been individual efforts, people using networks to come out, to ask people to come participate in the meetings, things like that. Anything else if we were just like, you know, an observer, what happened from August in the August and March budget-wise? So the administration prepares a draft budget, presents it to the finance committee, the finance committee says, you know, yes, good, brings it to the board. And we make suggestions on the presentation as well. Okay. Because we're able to review the presentation that's gonna come to the board and we can talk about things that we think might be more important to focus on or information that we wanna see at the board meeting, potentially, that we think people might need to understand. Did the finance committee make any actual, like recommended changes to the draft or just changes in Alex presented? Changes to how it's presented. I mean, they're not major. I think this, you know, leadership team does a really good job putting together their presentation. And then we came up with, after the first draft came, we came with recommendations for like draft two, like what we would like to see in draft two, which was like what percentage of increase we would like to see. While still maintaining these very specific pillars that we had set out, which was student achievement, health and safety, and human injustice. So just so I know, and so I like trying to kind of anchor the relevance of all of this, your board does a lot of work by committee, right? There's a... There's a finance committee, a quality committee, which is that education, that quality, and then we have a negotiations committee and we also have a policy committee. How do we bring them to the board? To bring them to the board, so in essence is to advance the work of the board, so that we can do some of that work without making a decision for the board. So then we bring it to the board in order to have a bigger discussion, but the work of the committee is also significant, right? So does the recommendations of the committee are not like just that we take time, like the negotiations committee takes a lot of time dealing with, they're not dealing the finance committee, the quality committee, so the board thinks it's serious, right? Doesn't mean that we have to rubber stamp it, but we still ask questions and this year that was a little bit different than in previous years. Ursula? Well I was just going to jump in, like a good example is the policy committee. They do a really big bulk of work of like reviewing the policies. Are they still relevant? Do they meet our needs? Are they doing what they need to do? Do they need to be rewritten and do a bulk of that work and have really big conversations around that? And they bring it to us, but then we can still have... Changes. Conversations and ask questions that might send it back. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's really excellent part of that whole process as the board has in terms of the policies just question things for seeing it for the first, sometimes for the first time, but just raising really significant points until there's an ongoing changing process until the board satisfied with what the policy is and then they go. Do all of your committees finance all of them? Do they have a clear written charge? This is what this committee does. It might be an area we're going on. Seriously, if you're going to have any committee, even if it's a standing committee or ad hoc, whatever its purpose is, it should be written somewhere this is what this committee does. Otherwise you get scope creep, right? Where you started out here, but all of a sudden you're solving the ferry tax problem from Canada or something. It's interesting how those things can just grow into something. I haven't seen anything like that. I haven't got my time here with that. Well, thank you. Maybe if you get people on your board that aren't as rational as you. I mean, it's one of those things might be a healthy process to just have clear charge. I think we've had a good, as I've turned over, as I've been major. So each of these committees have had some legacy in there to help lead and people have stepped up to that. So when, let's say I went on the policy, Chris could take you along what it is about these policies and I could question as a newbie on if it's already been approved, why are we doing all this? And we get that information. And I think that's why we haven't, because we've had that kind of continuation even as we merge, our boards were not brand new coming in. So there's been continuity and new, which is good. I look at what the work is that we've done on the Equality Committee, which is like every year we review our goal for the committee, which isn't specifically a charge, but we ask, is it relevant? Is it what we need to do right now? Good, that's really helpful. We are creating new or update the goal as needed. But I wonder if that sort of consistent reflection as we discussed the budgets was present. I'm thinking about all of those bulleted points of creativity and then how that intersects with the bendide or the emerging circles of... So how that all intersected with the different versions of the budget and then what we heard from the community. So it seemed like there were a lot of different things to consider that may be during each thing, at least in my opinion, that were reviewed as we discussed each. Like each of those bullets, like how does this affect these bullets? Right, just as a matter of process, like if we're talking about like, just like, I know it's outside of this sort of policy that we're talking about, but it seemed to me that we voted on these things to consider or charge the leadership with that maybe was missing every time we talked about, like, okay, what is this budget and how does it fit into these points and within these pillars? I think we tried to get there at the last vote, you know, which was like, oh, like we should have been doing this the whole time, like that sort of light bulb. I think on the flip side, we have to trust the committee, right? And that the communities work with the leadership to make sure that education quality and performance are addressed in the humanity and justice are addressed. So how many people are on the finance committee? Four, five, four? Four. Well, five, five, five, five, yeah. And I think to what Joshua was just saying, we have both the community and also we have charged our leadership team with coming back to us. So we have to balance our informed decisions, right? And that was hard. I felt, to be totally honest, I haven't said something different to the board, right? Like, that was to me felt unbalanced this year because we had a bigger show of a particular community because it was not a diverse portion of our community but they were a part of the meeting and we were kind of in some ways buying ourselves a year but we had a lot of input from our staff in how to get into those parameters that we had asked them to look at and just trying to add into what John was saying. So if we were able to do more reflections about the last meeting and say, you know, and any budget that we could have been into, so we tried to debrief, you are voting yes in this category, right? This is equitable and we had a more organized in some ways discussion about how the budget fit into what we were trying to do but hearing what you both are saying makes me think that we might want to reflect in how we, every time we have a budget discussion maybe bring up where there is the parameters or the pillars to make sure that we're responding to both the voice of the community, the voice of the staff in an hour informed decision. So, I don't know, checking like in your book you would always say don't make a temperature decision, right, make an informed decision, right? So I hear you saying several different things but initially, I think I heard you alluding to, you know, you've got the professional recommendations of staff and then you've got community-based concerns, preferences and how does the board balance that? I mean, that's one issue. Well, I'm not only how does it balance it but how do we elicit a broad spectrum input from the beginning because I have to, a little bit disagreed with some of what's been said. I feel most of the community input was at the end when a lot of work had already gone into it and people were forced with some loss of some things they weren't happy about. It was great to see them come out at that point but it was better to see them come out in June or whatever, you know, that first community forum we had, I think we had two or three community members show up to talk about what their priorities were for the budget and similarly with some feedback I got from staff towards the end of the budget when there was a lot of, the budget process when there was a lot of fear, just people feeling like, you know, there was just a sense of a lack of transparency or really it was just that maybe missed opportunity to involve people earlier on in the discussion so I think our big task with this coming year will be how do we really get a lot of input from all groups in the beginning? And it's a challenge for all of public education, right? For boards, for the school system, for individual schools how do we engage, involve the community like in a proactive, you know, supportive way? So I'm curious, when community didn't come out at first but they came out at the end or toward the end I think I heard you use the word fear so emotional things draw people out, right? Cuts, yeah. Right, it was reactive, it became personal. That becomes the strong feelings that they come out. It also becomes informative because they only knew what the budget would be and what the result of potential impact would be later in the process. So, you know, there's lack of information in terms of what these, reduction, well, what these increase, because they're always increases but it's a matter of how much, how they would impact the community and the school. So not having that, it's kind of like, well, you don't really, you're talking more in broad strokes and we really don't know what this means for going forward. So at that point, people did come out and they said, oh, this looks like it's gonna be cuts for staffing and things like that. So that is what caught many members' attention because they didn't have that information. Not like that was known from the beginning and people just ignored it. So, you know, the process in terms of trying to divine what the budget is going to do in real time, could get that early, I bet the community support or the community participation would be out earlier. We'd have a fuller discussion about whether that's the way we wanna go or not. Well, to me, it's not about balancing as much as you're filling in the picture. So, you know, there wasn't, nobody was holding back any information. It's one of these things that just takes a while to develop and then when there was input from different communities, to me, I wasn't necessarily swayed by the argument. It just opened up another door to me of thinking about, okay, here's another piece of this puzzle. So, here are these different puzzle pieces and how am I putting them together because perceptions of everyone involved in the process was different and so I'm not in the thick of it. I need all the different information and so to me, it's tricky because there's so much work that schools are doing and have to be doing that to be able to give this wide open time to figuring out a budget is next to impossible. So, it's really about, again, starting those conversations earlier, having those real grounding parts, but then also having the dialogue and the discussion of what does it mean. It would be great, like in one sense, if you could threaten cuts in July and then everybody would know about, right? But it's there, we wouldn't think of that, right? So, I appreciate your analogy that as the picture gets filled in, then people are like, oh, I didn't realize it was my program or my thing, right? Personal? I was gonna say it's about us trying to find a very, you said the word proactive way to get people to come and talk to us because we did start at the beginning with these budget parameters that we knew, dropping enrollment, the fact that inflation was very high that it cost to increase and that we were dealing with really tough times. We said it at every single meeting, several meetings were very unattended and people didn't come out until they heard inflammatory marks, essentially, where it was gonna affect them personally and they come and they share their emotionally charged opinion. The concern I have for all of public education in the US right now is that Meg knows a lot more about this than I do, the details, but the drying up of federal funds. So, we've got this compounded effects of the pandemic and other social unrest as a nation. And then on top of that, there was this huge infusion of cash that runs out someday and I think the very problem with the Congress is gonna stop the process. So then, what will districts like yours with declining enrollment, how will that compound the problem in the next year budget and the budget after that? Yeah, I mean, there are a couple of pieces that we haven't discussed, right? One is that the administration could not meet our parameters, right? They became and flat out told us we can't do this and maintain quality standards unless we change the structure of the district. That's when the conversation changed and that's when we ended up with dueling budgets, right? One that came as close to those parameters as we could with those changes that they could do. And the other restored those changes. The other was essential level service, right? And that's where the conversation on the board got really interesting about what we do. But I think that that, not necessarily a black swan, but that is extremely rare. I have not been on other boards, but those of you who have has an administration or a principal or superintendent ever come and said, we can't meet your parameters. We just can't do it and maintain and quality. So that's one of the things we asked them to say, we're gonna ask for this. We want it to be increased only this amount. But keep in mind our academic achievement is like safe and healthy schools and the human being justice. And so get as close as you possibly can, Kari. I didn't want to stop you. So I just want to say, I thought in a lot of ways it was a very well run process. I agreed with a lot to community input both in terms of meeting time and number of meetings and the whole setup was really good. The administration did a really good job responding to what we asked. One thing that I've always felt, but I really felt at this time was the lack of a multi-year context. You were kind of hinting at that with the federal. In business, we would always want to know what's the two, three year outlook, both in terms of the plan and the budget. So we know the decisions that we're making this year, how they may affect us down the road, both in terms of the quality and in terms of the budget. And in fact, my biggest concern with this budget is that we just set ourselves up for very difficult next year and years after that. And I don't know how exactly to deal with that, but the strategic planning is intended at least in part so that we have a sense when it gets tough, this is what we agreed to. We're gonna make tough decisions, but we know what the context is in that sense. And the other thing that we did this year that was a little novel was we set up parameter in the spring. And Megan mentioned we could do more of that. In some ways, the strategic plan may fulfill that, but there's nothing stopping us from saying early on, no, these are the real parameters. These are the things that we're gonna expect next year and probably the year after that. And that could help us when it gets difficult in December and January, because that's inevitable. We're facing reductions. We're always gonna get staff come out and we're always gonna get the parents that perceive that they're most effective. That's just gonna happen. Yeah, and having that conversation in the spring and summer is gonna be essential for the war to have the shared understanding, shared expectations. I'm really curious, and the rest of our time together, follow up with this line of thought, what would improvement look like for this next budget cycle? It'll be here before you know it. It's like you finish one, and you move right into the next one. So in the guise of being lessons learned or just professional reflection as a board, what might you do differently this next year? Or what are some things that you would like to consider, talk about as a team for just process improvement? And Will can jump in and he's on his way over here. Oh, I was waiting for it. Yeah, I saw you on the edge of your seat there. Back part of your seat. Any thoughts on that? Like what would improvement look like going forward? Well, the feedback we were getting. So in one of the reasons why statements were made repeatedly that we need to start the planning now, we need to start those hard conversations now, no one was denying that this next year is gonna be even rougher. But the sense was that we needed to, with the challenges, and it was a timing challenge, that we could not flesh out completely what those changes would look like. You can't always completely flesh out, but there were some questions that would be asked that couldn't be answered. So we have said repeatedly, we really, and our hope is the strategic plan and that conversation will come up later. But it was to really begin in the spring and the summer to start those hard conversations of these are where we know, if we've identified parameters then let's dig into that. This is the reality of what we know about our numbers. This is the reality of what it looks like. Here are the options that we realistically have and how do we move forward? If we don't start that conversation till fall, we're dead in the water again. I feel. What's your timeline for completing this strategic plan? When do you anticipate? That's what we're gonna talk about. We're just starting. Okay. January. January. So January. So it wouldn't be complete, but I think you might consider what about the early part of the process that could also inform budget decisions, right? And we're committed to year round, right? So the finance committee is really gonna theory our next meeting jump right into talking about that is our board reflection too of our finance committee reflection of what went well. How do we move forward? And starting to set the vision for the rest of the year, but with a multi-year like Kari was mentioning because we have to, right? Not just because we have to, but because we know that that would be best practice. So we're not having these conversations. It's inevitable that there's good because of our declining population that student population that we would be facing, besides the shortage of staffing, we would be facing staff decisions for the next two years, at least for sure. And with the answer funds being gone and we don't know how economy it's gonna be doing next year. And we're about to agree in negotiations too. So we have a lot of things up in the air to start with, but if we get smart about getting enough common understanding, not just the board, but common understanding with our communities, the staff, our leadership team, and having a common understanding of what is the actual goal so that at the end of the day, we are able to not make those decisions just at the last minute because we have more people showing at the last minute, because we know that we're gonna have people unhappy. It's just, it's impossible, especially in the context that we are right now. We're not gonna have endless amount of money. We won't have any extra funds. So we're gonna have to really tighten our belts in order to be able to be physically responsible to our communities too, right? And it's sustainable. So several important things kind of threads just underscore not to belabor this. As you go through the process of strategic planning, that's gonna help thinking multi-year. It became really apparent to me four or five years ago working with the board over time that they wanted to see more career and technical education happening throughout their system. And that recognition that we don't just wake up one day and decide we're gonna add CTE programs, right? There has to be classroom space, there has to be teachers, there has to be certifications, all of the different hiring decisions and so forth, maybe facilities decisions. So I've come to think that it's really critical for a board to be thinking ongoing multi-year. Like I know last time we were together we talked about superintendent evaluation a little bit. By the time you're completing a superintendent evaluation you should already be started on what do the parameters look like for next year, right? And how does this fit together? And so certainly with the budget, maybe some other decisions that you have upcoming, thinking multi-year will help you have better outcomes. There is a fiscal cliff coming for virtually every school district in the country, certainly every single school district in Vermont. And it concerns me as I move away that I'm not hearing school systems and the public engaged in the realities that we think things are tight, we're talking, but they're going to be much more difficult than less than two years. And I just don't, here people talk. I don't think that's this board. I think this board is very clear eyed about what it is. We had disagreements about what we should spend this year but I think there's absolute consensus that the next 12 months are all about what does this district look like? Where does children go to school and where do the people who provide services to them work? That's what the strategic planning process is going to be all about. We are all about that. And I think we've telegraphed that to the community as clearly as we can, even as we were making the decision to support the higher budget this year. And this year was just really a continuity of current service. That's right, because for me, the furor that would have erupted had that happen would have led to an even more difficult environment for us to do that work now. Okay, someone has something. I was just going to say, I think it's important. I think we are clear on that and we communicate that but I think we need to keep communicating it. And I think we need to be as specific as we possibly can. I don't think now is the time to tiptoe around like very hypothetical things. I think we need to be as specific as we can. And ideally, use the positive emotional responses from our communities and our district, the excitement and the creativity and that they could go into these decisions. That's right. It's probably critical community and staff that the board stays mindful of morale, the client, right? If you've ever worked for an organization that was going through budget cuts and people were being laid off or let go, I worked somewhere a few years back where that was a monthly occurrence that the positions were being eliminated. And they had, and they were actually, the organization was doing too little to be in that case. But it was kind of, you know, you realize every time somebody left, there was this disturbance, there was this uproar and it was partly your emotions attached to your coworkers, partly your emotions wondering if you were next and partly the emotions of, oh my God, who's gonna do all that person's work now, right? It was really a shared challenge that needs to be thoughtfully managed in advance as much as possible. Yeah, and I think that's very true. And I know Jonas, you're very adamant, you're like, we're all on board for next year, but I'm not sure that we can really say that until we get there. Judging by the reaction the board had to the emotional response of the community and that sort of flip that can happen in those situations, like we can say we're there, we can say we're all together. I don't think we really know until... No, of course not, but I think that everybody here is willing to do some work and is willing to talk about closing schools, consolidating schools, consolidating programs, reffing, right, reducing the headcount of the schools or all things that have to be on the table, we've been explicit about that. Whether we all agree, that's absolutely a different story, but to engage in that work with clear eyes, I don't see a single person here who's not ready to do that. That's true, that's true. And I think we have to be careful. As a person who pushed back and pushed for the level services, I used my brain, I used my thinking, I used my experience. I was informed by the emotional response. I was not swayed by the emotional response. Had it been an emotional response that did not connect to some of the things that I was exploring and gathering information about, then I would have been able to hear it and say, I can understand where that is, but it wouldn't have swayed me. So I think we have to be careful to not attribute meaning to what other decisions are that other people are making. Let's give an opportunity, especially for Natasha and Daniel to weigh in. This is this idea of what would process improvement look like for the budget for the next cycle? Any suggestions about how to do things differently? Or do we consider? Yeah, I think we came up with seven budget parameters, I think. And this was a criticism someday at the time. I think they were a little soft. I think we could be firmer on those. I think to the sort of multi-year planning point, I think we could frame those in terms of multi-year planning, like a three-year budget average increase, and holding ourselves to that, so that extraordinary years like this year could be taken into account, but down the road, they have to be, they have to be sort of accounted for. Those are the ones that I... Yeah, that's what I appreciate. Anyone else say anything? Natasha, thoughts about budget process improvement over the next year? I think for me personally, the budget process has been daunting. I think this district does a really good job of trying to explain it. But I've said it on multiple occasions, I get more information than I've ever wanted to know about budget, which can be kind of overwhelming. And I feel like sometimes the stuff that we talk about to me is not the things that are important to what makes our district what it should be. And so, when I think about the end of the budget process for this year, and listening to the community members who did come out to me, they were speaking, even though it was personal, to me, they were speaking to what makes our district great. And so, I felt like, yes, if we're going to create a budget, we need to create a budget around what we truly believe in as a district. Not word but not, but yeah, so for me, I think, using the strategic plan, planning process, and being able to communicate with our stakeholders really about what is it that we want this district to represent? What do we want our students to walk away from? What do we want to create so that our educators want to stay a part of this district? What do we want to create so people move into the district to make and grow our student population? I think that that really needs to be the forefront of the conversation and how can we reimagine what education can look like? That's a lot. It is a lot. And I said this at one of our budget, I feel like the one, well, not the one, but one of the exciting things for me that came out of the pandemic was it was our chance to reinvent public education and create a public school system that educators would be excited about, that students would be excited about, that parents would be excited about. And I think we as a country blew it. I do. I think we ruined our chance. Well, but our money's gone. I mean, our money's leaving. We were flushed with more money than we've had. And when I say we, I was in another school system that I was teaching in, separate from this, but I think that we ruined our chance. And so I think that we as a district are being given another chance to do that. We don't have the money. But we have a chance to say, okay, we really have to rethink what education looks like in our school system. And I'm really excited about that. And I really hope that our budget process focuses on that. I'd like that to be, at least that's what I would like to focus on. I felt a fraction of that in this last process. I think in real time, I realized that, like you can call anything a priority, but then there's the protected priorities. And I think we realized intuitively that, and from feedback that we got as a board, how important the counselors were to the schools at this higher level that this federal funding allowed, and how important the safe spaces and resources that the libraries provided were to the schools and the communities. And we took action to protect those priorities. I'm 100% agree with Natasha, and I'm hopeful that the strategic plan lets us be proactive about identifying a lot of those priorities and explicitly saying we're going to work to protect them. A word I've thought a lot about the last year is intentional, right? Proactive and intentional. How can the real board be intentional about all that you... I'm pretty sure a lot of time is up, but I do want to say thank you for allowing me to be with you again. And thank you for your service on the local school board, your communities and all the work you do here. I do think it's very important that you do it together. You know, it's easy when things get hard for, you know, a group of people to kind of get contentious with each other. Feelings are divided, but the more you can kind of stay in there and lean in, really hear people's heart and perspective, the better decisions you'll make for the greater good. Thank you. I think we'll be able to have a little something for you. No? Nice. You're all welcome to come to my house tomorrow. I live right by Romney's school. We'll be loading the truck. If we can get the truck unstuck. I saw it. Do you see that? Configuration in your bad ways. You tried on the back of a truck with a trailer and the truck's inky with no weight. So you moved in a snowstorm and managing to leave in a snowstorm. Yeah, somehow you arranged for that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes, so it's five minutes break to go. Ten minutes. We're going to try to get started so that... Yeah, it's not snowing outside. So we're back at Bloor Corporation. Sorry, Chris. We spend quite a bit of time in board development, so I'm going to skip that one and move into stipend. And I'm going to ask... I want to stand here right with your dessert right now, but I was wondering if you mind jumping into this one. No, I don't mind. The question is, does the board want to receive their stipend payments once a year or two times per year? If it's paid once per year, it would be paid at the end of the term year. So the last payroll in February, or the end of the member's term if the member gets off the board early. This would prevent overpayment of stipends and going over the budget if a board member were to exit early. So that's really the question. Once a year or twice a year? The twice a year split this year was so that I could give you guys something in December. Historically, it had been paid in December, and I felt like that was a tradition that was like, here's a little something, you know, at the holiday time. So I wanted to keep some part of that this year. That's why I gave you part of it in December. And then the last piece was in February. So which method would prevent any potential overpayments more? I think either one... I mean, I can make it so that when I pay it in December, then I'm just paying up to that portion. So it's really 10 out of 12 months. So either one is fine. I guess I didn't understand. If it's for a term, and our term is election to election, then the February makes sense for the payment. And February works great for me, by the way, because it's just one payroll that we do it. I love it. It's fine. And then we would do it for anybody exiting early. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So the board has agreed. February. February. One payment. February. And if somebody leaves in August, then they get something prorated, I guess. Yeah. But that's... Yeah. Yeah. Schedule or retreat. We already talked about that, and we're going to go into that in person, a remote meeting just quickly. Yeah. I think we had... We had put it on here because we had a question about a meeting later this month being virtual and then realized it actually... The date has to be rescheduled because we have a mandatory, or one of our mandatory superintendent board chair trainings is May 17th. Okay. So the thought is because May has an extra Wednesday, it's not really extra. It seems like it's... Five weeks. That we move it to the 24th. And part of the reason is that... 17th. Correct. 24th. Yeah. The training is in person. Right. Exactly. And it goes two hours past when we will be meeting, so it's just really hard to see that we... So we meet the first and the fourth. That one. Yes. Okay. But that doesn't mean you didn't do it remote. That was just correct. No, no, no. I mean... The actual, but then the timing didn't work out. Okay. Yeah. And yes, we want to keep in mind for you guys that we could still have some potential remote meetings. If needed, but we would let you know with enough time in advance. I am assuming that the board is okay with that and we will continue to do the hybrid in order to... Today, Jonathan is joining the remote. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm not sure. Are we setting the norm that all meetings are in person but with a remote option, the hybrid option? No. What I'm saying is that we are open to remote meetings too. But right now we've been having one in person, one remote. Yeah. Are we continuing that? Or are we... A good question. That's what... Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question. Yeah. Yeah. Good question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had intended and we had a conversation at the retreat and then the first meeting in September, I think people were really excited about that that we could be in person and that's why we had this second meetings location be here. We knew we needed a virtual option but I do think that we thought that we would be here and over time I think it became clear that there are some of those meetings either for weather reasons or travel reasons and we flipped them to fully virtual because of that. So I think in some ways the board thought that that all in on in person made sense and then discovered that some virtual does make sense and then I think we've updated, I think you know this from whenever they, from January, they have extended the ability to have a virtual meeting with no on-site location through 2024. So it is an option. What's the downside of having them all in person with a remote option? There's no, there's no downside. There's no downside. In the winter, because we added some meetings for the budget and stuff, so it's nice to be able to have the flexibility to like for example, there were one when there were a couple of people that would be in a conference for example and it was nice to be able to accommodate that so that they could meet. I agree with the flexibility, but yeah. But you would have it in the work plan anyways. Right, I think there's also a point at which if there's hardly anyone in person, it's actually a more, it's a better experience if everyone's on the screen. So there is, but that's not an impossible task. It sounds like you've got technology connected because I mean, you're not messing with microphones and it seems like people online are here. So I don't think we need to do it definitely one way. That's my sense that definitely one way or another. We have posted them pretty clearly if they're in person or remote and for now we have been in person and this is the one date that we think we have to change right now so far. But we have been one in person, one remote. We've done that at least twice. I think we did it in February and we did it in December. So I guess the question would be, we have our... We had started to shift. We had shifted to the schools. Well, we had shifted to in person. Yes, because we ended up requesting December 21st to go to virtual because we knew it was so close to the holidays and other things that people might attend more so. So we had been shifting to being in person. So our next meeting for now is scheduled for April 5th. And that would be here. Correct. And if you want, I can transition to visioning strategic planning because the topic of that meeting is a more public overview from our great schools partnership consultant and ideally the steering committee who will have been selected again to do kind of a broader overview question and answer session. It's not meant to be an engagement session so it's not the only opportunity but it is a kickoff informational session. Can I just ask a quick question? Yes, sorry. So the third... the third Wednesday in April is April vacation. It's May. No, we moved. Right, no, but it is... No, it's not for us. No, not here. Oh really, when it's last. Oh, okay, perfect. Oh, good. Sorry. It's a late one for a lot of districts. Yeah, it's really late. So we are... And your invite is in person and it's here. So I think we can revisit our next meeting as we have a meeting. And make sure that there's any conflict. We have the flexibility to move in. Okay. And now, yeah. Okay, sorry. Totally shift. Is that okay, Diane? Okay, great. So there was an update in the report. So I won't rehash that. The functional task for tonight is obviously to answer questions or get reactions to that initial overview. And for the board to report to members to the... And we're calling a steering committee and I hope that's not confusing. It is a strategic planning steering committee. But as we've talked about quite a bit, this first phase is to actually design the engagement. So that is part of why it's a little difficult to update you all on here's what it's going to look like. Because actually we're convening this group of people to decide what it's going to look like. To pick up all of our work around community mapping to think about how do we get all of these voices. And it's a tight timeline, as we just talked about in that budget debrief, in order to have the information that we want. Because I did talk about January is when our contract ends with grade schools. The goal is to have pretty solid goals and action steps in the December January timeframe. So I just wanted to say that as well. So the task really is to appoint two members to the committee. The committee is about 12 to 14 members. Because we recognize that sometimes people fall off. It's really important to have representation from all of our communities. From all of our various stakeholder groups. We've done obviously in the community newsletter just some blanket push out to both our faculty and staff and communities. We also took some of the names that were brainstormed in our community mapping session. And did some more targeted reaching out and inviting people to apply. So I'll pause. Happy to answer questions. I will continue. So we will continue that this is not the only committee that the board will have the ability to participate. This is just the planning committee. So it's not like there would be other opportunities for board members to leave the work. So after the plan is over, does this committee disband in terms of its membership? Or does it continue on? Good question. The vision is that it would continue on through this process through January. Whether or not an outcome of the process is to... I'm totally making this up. But there are some districts that create community advisory councils or different, right? Like that could be that their strategy comes out of the session. But normally the steering committee would sunset with the inclusion of the strategic plan. Can you just run through what the space allocation on the committee issue said to board members and how the other either 12 or 10 slots is going to be allocated across the many interest groups that we have? Correct. So currently the thought is that we would have... So I'll name the categories first. True. Because I think we're flexible on the number from categories in order to get the breadth. Student... There will be probably two student reps. Steven has a good brainstorm to have a student who is on site and also a tech center student from the Career Center. So two students, teacher, administrator, ESP, so support staff, obviously you mentioned the board. And then community. The rest would be filled with community members. Let me open up my list to make sure I have everyone on that list. And then various other representatives from... So of those stakeholders, we would make sure that all five communities were represented that... And anyone who has clicked on the applications, listed as an application, these questions are optional, but there are demographic questions for people to self-identify because we would like to represent a broad swath. So we would also be looking at making sure we are touching on different members of our community. But let me pull up my... To make sure I didn't miss a category. And open for feedback. That's part of why we're having this conversation. In the application, which I haven't clicked on, but if you do not receive feedback from people in particular demographics, you'll get nobody. Is there a plan for each? Yes. Targeted outreach is part of what we're doing. I'm sure students, teachers, ESP, community members in all five towns, legislative or government. And again, people can play multiple roles, but just someone who has a connection to the legislature, local business or industry leaders, community organizations. We have reached out to the friends of Washington Central. So those are the categories I left off. Is it safe to say, because typically when you're doing strategic plan, you're not... This is high stakes. I mean, very realistically, this is high stakes. And we need it to be. And we know that we're moving in that way. Typically, it's not that high stakes. I mean, it's important, and it really frames your work. This is going to really potentially shift how we provide what you were saying, Jonas, so well. But I'm not really necessarily saying that listed here. You know what I mean? It's funny, one of the things that I wrote on my notes around the budget planning, this process is threading a needle, frankly, because this process is not to design a new structure for this district. I think if we build it that way, that would not feel good to our community. I think it because we would be already making an assumption about what has to happen. This is about what do we want for our kids. We can't, though, make it totally divorced from the conversation of what then should our structure be, but she died. So I think that's why this is... This is not a steering committee that's going to come up with various different models of structure. This is a steering committee that's going to help us engage our community to get input on what we want for our kids, including goals and then that is, and this may be a retreat conversation about what is the best way to, and what are the groups of people that are going to generate options alongside of this process. But this steering committee isn't to do that, which is part of why you don't see it there. But I'm acknowledging that it's a team. They're not disconnected. In fact, they can't be disconnected. So it's tricky. Go ahead. So it almost seems that they have to be connected now because we've been promising the community that we're going to have these hard conversations starting in the spring and summer if the process is going to end in January, then we will not get any input. We'll get input of what we want for our students, but we won't get any input on how we deliver that in a concrete fashion versus the difficult budgets that we know are coming up which deal with the difficult conversation of how are we structured. And having a community come out just once for what do we want for our kids without combining that with how do we deliver that in a way that we can financially, I think is a lost opportunity because how we deliver it financially, how we're able to deliver it can impact what we deliver. Right? And maybe this committee won't have that expertise in order to really tease that out from the community, but I think we have to really kind of do the two things at the same time, especially from a timing perspective because then we're two budget cycles away from any type of structural change that we may be contemplating. I said the one thing that is not missing, but the steering committee, I see it as a working high level up here getting us to have a common understanding of what our communities want at the same time, parallel, the board is going to be working in what our schools are going to look like with the leadership team. So it's separate, but in order to me, if we blend the options of schools, we are not going to get what you were talking about. We're not going to get what we want with that common understanding. We're not going to get what our communities want. It's our job with the collaboration of the leadership team to present those models to the community, but we're going to learn how to communicate with the community through this. We'll be creating some trust, especially with the community, that we understand what those common priorities are and that we're working towards that. One last thing before I let you go, I had this crazy idea. I don't see this process, and I'm looking at Kari because this is more organizational, and then pulling you guys into specific work as we're doing the strategic plan, which I don't know what it is, because we haven't created it, so then pulling out Natasha for this, Diane for this, leading different things and having Kari and myself, I don't see how not to be part of this committee as the chair if I'm going to be organizing, and I was thinking that if Kari is going to step as a mentor into quality and as a person when I want to bring that up, that in his last year we could, this is something that we did before a little bit, but it's different. This time around it's finally looking at our district together, so we would just be doing organizational part with this group and then leaning on the board when those specifics, what the process is so that you can be more specific with your community. I don't know if that's making sense, but that's without really knowing what this group will deliver because I feel like there's going to be a lot of work to engaging in what that process is. But that doesn't mean that if you guys have a different idea of what that should be, we should talk about it too. I don't mean to volunteer. So Daniel and then Kari. I think to Chris's point, I agree with a lot of what you said. The way I'm thinking about it for myself is it's my responsibility as a board member and someone who's committed vocally to sort of this year-round budgeting and starting thinking about hard decisions right away to be present and sort of auditing and keeping close track of what those strategic planning conversations sound like. Whether I'm on that steering committee or not and I almost feel like we should all sort of, we should have some mechanism to hear reports out on a regular basis and be sort of thinking about scenarios and budget implications of every conversation happening. That said, if we put that burden on this strategic planning group, I think that's an unfair burden to put on and I think that's our burden primarily and this is a great opportunity to have a representative group sort of leading this strategic plan but in some cases I think that hopefully a proxy for community values and sort of community conversation. I was going to say I'm happy to participate in the committee because it's process oriented and I like that sort of thing. I don't know what's the matter with me but I agree in the sense that the board is a key stakeholder group so the input that we give in the output that we hear back is going to be really important as we plan and I also agree with Chris that we don't want this just to be a wish list there needs to be some sense of at what cost or what the priorities or tradeoffs the community can accept are. So a lot of it is how we frame the conversations. And just in both of those points sorry I'm going to jump in but our consultant is very well aware of our realities and I so even though I and that is because it is important I think to hear what we want she also understands that we have to get us to a place and that includes the steering committee figuring out how to integrate those types of questions or information sharing into the community events. So there is an awareness of what needs to come out of this process and I think the steering committee will take this feedback as well to say well how would we design the input session? What questions do we ask so that it is more thoughtfully connected. So I just wanted to say they are aware of what we have to have at the end of this. Sorry Jonas. What is the timeline for coming to a conclusion on what the structure of the district is and how do we make that decision? This is a little bit me off the cuff answering that question. I think the conversation about structure is big enough I mean you mentioned two budget cycles it is big enough that it is going to take two budget cycles anyway. I might be getting ahead of it I don't know. That implies a big drastic but if we think about the feedback that we got about cross district service delivery in small areas it was big. I don't think there is an official timeline I think we are going to run financially headlong into realities that make us make quick decisions. But we don't want to do that again. Right? It's always been my impression and my thought that that process would be running in parallel with the budget so that when we have a budget next year it reflects a different structure. Is that what we are looking toward or do you anticipate that we will not be in a position to make decisions about structure until the following year? I think first of all the board can make those decisions that needs to make them. I think that they can. There can be a simultaneous conversation of this board studying the various different structures and models. That can be happening simultaneously with this strategic planning process and that's what I meant by we may need to talk about that at the retreat as something more specific I'm just trying to emphasize that it's not the steering committee of the strategic planning process who is going to do that with these different models. They're going to be gathering input. I do think that it can be simultaneous and then depending on what it is you're proposing what it is you decide to own and recommend will tell you what the timeline should be. So I think that those things should happen simultaneously. I think that we should be working to try and get an answer concurrent with the budget for next year. I think that that process also needs to be driven by SABIA professional. I don't think we have the capacity to put together to restructure the district but I think that that has to happen immediately and putting that off another year is really concerning and separating trying to have some kind of firewall between strategic planning and the structure conversation. I agree with Chris. We're going to run into trouble there because people are going to come to these things want to talk about not wanting to go to school class. Well then I trust the process. I think that that was I think this is a good question for the Jeannie Phillips is if they're aware of that what their view of the parallel process because as they begin this work there may be then indicators or action items that specifically go to what's the structure. To me it's more than two budget cycles. We're in a crisis and we need to cut in the next two budget crisis but any sustainable change is a good five years and this strategic plan I would think would cover five years. So it's absolutely we have to be working parallel but we have to also provide the opportunity that we're not being driven by the structure only but by what the hopes and the goals and the vision is. And to that Jonathan I would just mention that in our meeting it says I don't want you to close my school. How do we reframe that? What is best for kids? Is it best for kids to have three kids in school right now? These are opportunities that the kids will have in kindergarten or in preschool. So it doesn't mean that we are not going to have people showing up because of that but how do we frame that conversation again into what is best for kids what would be value I hear you I think we're going to run into some frustration with people who want to talk about end results instead of mind method. Wait wait wait. We're still at that. Sorry Eric. So this might be a lot of what's already been said but I I think it is I think with our last budget process it was strategic planning but the public really gave their input after we put the budget out and put the controversial stuff on the table And I think part of the conversation at the beginning is these are possibilities. Get their reactions and possibilities with that. Because if we don't give them possibilities, they have nothing really to react to until it's too late. And I think that's one of the things that happened last year. So I think just having a general idea, and I think we've actually done a reasonable job towards the end of the last budget session of starting to talk about the future, about possibilities if the public was paying attention to those are our real possibilities. That's great, because that's what you're having a talking. And the committee is something I also would be interested in as well. Thank you, Eric. So yes, I wanted to talk about some assumptions I've made or thoughts that I've had on this, because I'm not sure that I have it clear. But my understanding is that you've got this vision steering committee who is going to work to create how we talk to the community. And Natasha talked about it earlier, like figuring out what do we want education to look like, and then how do we change how we're providing it so that we're meeting those needs that we want in our community. And that's what we're going to be getting from this process. But I assume we also have to lean a lot on administration and leadership team to go, what are the resources we currently have? What can we do with the resources we have? And these are some ideas. So the steering committee is not doing that work. And the committees and the community discussions aren't building those alternatives. But they're going to be coming up from leadership team. And we have to talk about them. And there are going to be people who are angry and don't like them. It doesn't matter what we say or do. There are new people that aren't happy. They find it difficult to change. But the more we can engage the community around any sort of restructuring, the better. I mean, if we can generate ideas from the community and provide lots of options and a lot of opportunity for feedback, that is, in my opinion, the best way to approach it rather than something coming from the top down. Here are two ideas. What do you think people are going to have? And the other thing is that our articles of agreement give the community a veto if a school is being closed. But as long as we operate one grade. What? As long as we operate one grade. You know, you can do that and talk about creating trust. We're going to create this fake thing and just so to avoid the art. But we really, and the schools, are very important to communities, as we all know. And so people will be unhappy. But I think having them engage that this is what we're really talking about here in terms of a structural change early on and getting that process going, I think it will be equally dissatisfying in the long run, but more accepted in the long run as well. Because schools, local schools, mean a lot to the community just from the social networking and the importance of having a school in town. And we have to, I think, move on parallel, but in an organized parallel way. Not just wait for administrations to say, this is what we think should be done, but having community involved in that and board members involved in that. And if we need to set up a separate type of committee that would be dealing with the structural issues just in terms of options and what they do and what the financial impact of that would anticipate there would be. We should do that. Just again, I think we've kind of committed to that during this last budget process that we're going to start working on that. And specifically, we talked about structural change exploring that. And I think we should at least start moving there and getting community involved. Because I think we really feel the end will just be difficult. So we'll talk to you about a part of the size. I think it's important to, so I'm going to pick up a thread from what you said, Ursula. If my bias is that if we don't have a conversation with our community about what we want for kids and we simultaneously try to just say, here are a few different proposals for restructuring. All we're really doing is moving shelves. It's a shell game. And that is not meant to say, we're going to do this process and then fast forward through something at the end or hide it from the community. And I don't think that we will find ourselves in a, oh, it's now going to take 10 years. I mean, we are the people telling me that we don't have 10 years to figure this out. And that is true. I don't think that we can. I think what we would find, the feedback we heard when we talked about restructuring this year, small, small scale restructuring that was based on good faith analysis of our numbers. But it was a good faith analysis of our numbers. We got feedback that said, that feels too rushed. That feels random. I don't know why you would do that. So I don't know how you even do the things that we're saying to get us there without this grounding process, which is why we've been talking about this part of the strategic planning. And I think, and I kind of like Diane, the process and one of the reasons we picked this facilitator is so the process could do things to set us up to do both. So I think that we can, I think the Steering Committee can think about how would we enter this conversation into the forums that we have so that we're not bringing people out and then not getting this input. I think there is a way to design it. I don't know if the board just wants to say, here are the different options, what we're missing is what did we ground those options in? Yeah, I want to say essentially that in another way. But I think the purpose of this process is to coalesce, the community coalesce around an effective path forward. And I think the single most important ingredient in that is it's a credible process. And so we have to be careful as the board that's sort of driving it all sort of on the sidelines. But we have to remain open-minded. We have to be perceived as open-minded and we have to be open-minded and curious so that people don't perceive that we've judged the outcome ahead of time. Because then why have the process and we're not going to get the buy-in in the end. So as much as I want to move forward as quickly as possible, I wish we had done this a long time ago. I think the most important thing is that we do it right. Daniel, I'm going to move to the left. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Actually, just so you were up first in my question. No, no. OK. Sorry. I thought I'd interrupt you when I asked for that. No, it's good. Everything was said and questions were asked. I think it would be redundant. So I think I just am looking for some reassurance then around the timeline. Because with this last budget cycle, when I heard from the leadership team, there is no way we can cut the budget any more without restructuring. I guess I translated that into, OK, so for next year we have to restructure. So I am all for taking the time if we have it. So if I'm being reassured that we have the time, I'm all for taking the time. I think what we're saying is that we're going to multitask, right? That without a heart, without a narrative, what we're creating with this is the heart. So that if we have that heart, we can bring the brain to this, which is going to be us working together. And when those two come together, we're going to have a product that our community is going to respect, it's going to trust, and it's going to support. Because otherwise, we are not going to be able to have those, sometimes in isolation, you can say, I don't want my school. And I didn't mean to, because in January, when I said, we can leave one right open. But it might be because we understand that our schools are the center of that school might be repurposed for something that's still community, right? Or that it's child care. We don't know that. What are their needs of our community? So with this, we're doing the work that we did not have the opportunity to do before we unified, right? We have never had this conversation as a unified district. We have a lot of commonalities because of the way we've been structured as you before. But we have never had the opportunity to have this conversation with the community in the context that we're right now. So that context of a population declining, the answer funds in the economic, it's still going to be surrounding this conversation. So it will inform it. And we're just going to have to work a little harder this year. So I'm all for visioning this year. I don't want, at the very end, us to be put up against a short timeframe for restructuring because we've run out of time. So if we have time, let's dream this. I'm just concerned that we're approaching the community obliquely, absolutely concerned about that. And as we learned from the Wizard of Oz, the heart and the brain and the courage all work together down there in the Yellowbrook Road to get there together. Not one at a time showing up at the end, but helping each other out with each of their respective skills. And so really, I'm looking at this, it's a, they do move together. And especially when you're in the community, in parallel, but in the community, it's just, I cannot overstate how visceral I think this will be for some communities if their schools are being restructured out of existence, potentially. And I don't mean to be, I'm not, don't mean to be creating alarm, but I think that's what we're kind of hearing about, we're structuring in some fashion like that. And I think we should be working in parallel toward that, just in terms of exploring options. I think the way Jonas was bringing it was not approaching the community obliquely. I think, and this gets to what you were saying, it's all in the design, how accessible the process is. And I think the phrase feedback loop seems really important to me. And what is the structured report back to this group and to the administration that satisfies the community's feeling that this process is relevant and it's driving at least a significant portion of restructuring planning. So I'm curious what that looks like. Is it consensus-based? We have a forum, two concepts rise to the top and there's a clear process for how those get sort of judged in terms of their feasibility, in terms of their budget implications, in terms of the timeline for rollout. And I'm also curious about, because this is the crux of the issue, everything is sort of, any proposal has to be sort of scored budgetarily. I'm curious about the central office's capacity, sort of thinking like May to January to be thrown sort of, you know, the best like, you know, three scenarios and like what their implications were in terms of budget at worst, like 15 curve balls at random times from different committees asking is this doable or how much money would this save? And I guess some happy medium in between where there's equity and there's access to the process but it's also not stressing central office's ability to waive these options seriously. So I'm having to share a couple thoughts. So I think that related to that last piece, actually related to several of these, it is possible once the board is coalescing around some conceptual models or a conceptual model to get to that model over time that includes some budget savings year to year without jumping fully into a restructure. So part of the not getting kind of is because when I say it's a multi-year process, it doesn't mean, I mean to get to that, whatever the end design is a multi-year process and there's steps in between. So one piece is just to understand that as the board is doing this work and getting informed, it's there are steps to take. It's not one fell swoop, whatever gets decided. The second piece related, or Vermont has and if you read any sort of education news has several examples of districts who took the approach of using this type of process to study structure and they did not find success in those processes because the whole process was people knew in advance we're predetermined that we have to do X and it actually felt this ingenuous to community members because it felt predetermined. So that's part of why, I mean it's part of why I pitched to the board and part of why we went forward with this type of process. And again, I'm not saying that we do this and we don't talk about structure and then we pick up structure. They are simultaneous. I just don't think that it's been tricky in Vermont to just have this be about structure. And I think that we've got a committee, I mean that's the purpose of designing it this way is that the people on the committee would represent all of these perspectives as we design the process. And that's the thing, we haven't designed the process yet because we're trying to figure out what the committee makeup is going to be to design the process that we are all talking that we wanna see so clearly. So we're right at that very, very beginning but I also wanted to talk, Jonah, as you said that like you don't want to come to the community or the weekly, like we're hiding things. I don't think that that's necessarily, what? Not hiding things. But I went through a visioning process once with the non-profit organization that served a community that was very low in funds, right? And lots of different groups around, right? And the leader of the organization that I was working for said, when we ask them what do they need? What does the field need? What does the community need? They're gonna say money, right? We need to find a way to tell them it's not the really money that you want, right? And I'm not saying that that's what we're gonna do, right? Is to like obscure or hide what our end goal is here. What I'm saying is that I think that we need to be explicit, like we are gathering input here on what you want the schools to be and that information is going to help us restructure the district, right? Straight, I think we need to be straight up about that. You're not gonna be, you know, you people here, you're not going to be telling us what to do. We're not gonna be running through options here, but like this, that is the end goal here. I think that we need to be explicit. I look to finish mine. So I guess I envisioned us being able to be very centered on these are the difficulties we are facing. These are these parameters that we need to find a way to fit in with all of these difficulties, but also Chris had mentioned something about all of our communities finding their school very central and we heard it from these community members like my town, my school, we might need to approach this within conversations and narratives that talk about community in a different way. That isn't just your town and your school and that isolated timing group. It might be a different sense of community that we are going to find when we are done. And it's not a back thing, it's a different thing. Sorry, do you have? No, I'm good. I don't want to interrupt you. At the end of the day, Megan, I trust you. This is what we brought you here to do, to have vision and to lead processes like this. If this is the way to go, then I'm behind you 100%. Just so we're clear. I don't want to change anything. I think that you and Floor and the committee will have a vision of what we're gonna do here. I'm totally okay with that. Communication is the key. Yeah. I appreciate that. This is part of the conversation. And I think there are ideas swirling already and no one's looking to kick a can down the road for sure. So I appreciate that. This is all really helpful. I kind of agree being really specific as a steering committee about the parameters, the contacts, all the things we've been talking about is part of how they'll design the process. And the board also should talk about what is its parallel structure that it wants to develop. Is that an ad hoc committee? Is that a short-term working group that is not one of our formalized committees that we did today, but it's something that comes out of the retreat so that there's a group of people. And I'm not saying that's the way to do it, but it's an option. So the board can make sure that you're checking that box of moving fast enough. And having that cohesive vision of learning is going to benefit us all by having that Spanish conversation, right? Is that what it's coming about? Is there art? Is there, you know, we want to have more maps. We want to, like, asking the right questions. Also to come in so that we can deliver to create the structure delivered towards what the community's vision in, yeah. So we'll, I don't know that we have all the answers. This is going to be what I call the design development, right? This is where we are right now. We ask a big question. Then we gather some input. We're developing a model and that model is going to be a continuous design process, right? It's not linear. So with that, what's the pleasure of the board be? Do you have something? If we're ready to move on. No, no, go ahead. It's John. Oh, no, I was just saying, like, as a whole board, I think we should do, as Diane said, trust the process. I think we should do, as Natasha says, like listen to the community and envision with their help and this organization's help realize that the board is one stakeholder in this process. And I don't think it is appropriate for us to create the conversation ahead of time. And also I think it dovetails in what Philip was saying, like if we test this committee with too much, it turns into like this creep and then nothing productive can come out of it. And it could feel just worthless in the end. Anyway, so we can move on. So I'd like to move that we point Floor and Kari as the board representatives to this committee. I'm nominate, I think Eric. Yeah, you're a very balanced expressed interest. I'm nominate Eric. So we can have three. Oh, that's an interesting question. I mean, the makeup of the committee is meant to be broad. I think the intention was to solidify two tonight. And this is a little off the cuff, but I'm thinking about this the same way as teachers, for example. So the intention so that the committee can be broad is we said two teachers, a teacher from the primary level, elementary level, and a teacher from the high school. I have more than two teachers who have applied. Once we have filled the minimum number, the intention is to then to go back through those applications and say, oh, well, we're missing women from Worcester or we're missing, you know, honestly. So there would be an opportunity to have an additional teacher. That's how we've thought about teachers. And I'm offering that for the board to talk about it. I don't know if that's perhaps how you want to. I don't think there's an inherent problem with there being three board members. I think that's also your decision. If you were to tell me that you wanted the entire board to be the scary committee, that would probably have feelings about that. But three versus two, I mean, that's up to the board. But I wanted to share that that's how we're thinking about, or if there's more administrators that want to be, is first we fill the minimum number and then we go back through and look at our gaps. I would be more of a favor of keeping it minimal or involvement, so more toward the tooth. Since we'll have a say in other ways, such as seams, like padding we have with the board. I'm just wondering, because you said, people kind of wear more than one hat in terms of, so I'm wondering, as opposed to us picking people from the board now, knowing that there are three individuals who are interested, can we wait to see who else decides to be on this committee? And then we can look at the three board members to see which of our board members fill the polls that are not already taken by the other stakeholders. So that's a great question. Does that make sense? It does. My question back to the board would be, we don't have a point in time for you all to talk about that and make the final decision because the intention is that we would select the steering committee. It would probably have its first meeting before the end of March, and that committee would help do that, report out on April. And you just aren't all sitting in the same room. So if the intention, unless the intention is just for me to communicate, here are the missing. Just see what I'm saying. Are there other members of our board who are interested in serving on the steering committee for this, besides the three that were mentioned already? I'm trusting that there will be opportunities to have our voice at the table and that the communication will be, and transparency will be going back and forth. So, because I think that's, to me, that's the tension is I don't really understand it and I worry, but it's my own worry. It's not a worry in the process. And the idea is that there will be opportunities for other board members to lead sessions, right? Like it's not just that the steering committee, the steering committee is creating the process. We don't get to do all the work. We don't get to be at every meeting, right? Like we can create a process that is transparent and we'll hopefully clarify division for our entire district as a whole, right? So, but we don't get to do, you know, say, you know, hold all the cards, right? Like there would be, I don't know what that process is like yet, but, so. I've been saying to lots of other stakeholder groups, you are all like, well, the leadership team itself is a stakeholder group. They are not all gonna be on the committee. They're gonna be represented. So, and the same thing with teachers, you know, we talked to the labor management about having them be able to have a voice. And just so I, anyway, it's a drum I've been beating is it's not, it's meant to be broad so that they can then make sure that they get all of the pieces. So, the question we have is two or three important members. And if we go with two, how do we do that selection just to a straight up vote or? Is there a sense, two or three? What if we had not made two with an alternative or like recognizing that the third would step in into an opening that might be there? I think that's hard with an ongoing committee if they're not able to go to the committee on an ongoing basis. I didn't mean an opening like when somebody can't make it one day, I meant like, Megan was talking about filling the minimum and then coming back in and based on the applications that we've gotten going, we still need five more people so maybe we can take something from the board or maybe something from where you're at. We need somebody from each one of them, right? Or whatever that might be, that was what I was talking about. Not like an alternate that tags in every other thing. No, it's fine. I just, we still then back to are we picking two tonight or are we picking three tonight? And that's, I mean, it sounds like no one wants really to deal with that. I hope it's two. I hope it's two. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Two's. We would be heavy and it's impiliar if we had both, you and me on the, so. I will leave it up to the board. You what? I'll leave it up to the board. And I think to respect the interest of the three that have expressed that we should vote. Yeah. And I don't know if that means we do each individual or if people just hand in a ballot with the two people that they select. It doesn't matter to me, I'm just saying those are two procedures. But can we vote to see if we want three or two? Yes, let's do that. Yeah. I move that there be three board members on the steering table. I second. Okay, so Jonas moves and Chris seconds. Any more discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Do you need a hand raise? Yeah, and raise because I can, yeah. So one, two, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So we have majority. So I nominate R8 and Eric and four. Okay. I just don't think it was good. You got that, Lisa? I'll second. Any more discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. Okay, I'm giving you up late here today. It's a long discussion. So hopefully we can do this one. This is the famous last words. So I plan to speak to another slanderist who's branding. I can make this very quick because that you've all read the report and you had a little bit of an update. You kind of know where we are in the process. The answer to your question, Chris, is I do not believe we've heard that yet from the two organizations. What we've essentially said is we're doing a review. We think it would be better before you have the hearing to read the review if they were to come back to us and say, no, we want a hearing. We would schedule a hearing. No, we have not heard that from them. So once they've filed a complaint, do we have an obligation to set a hearing within a certain period of time? We looked at that. There's no timeline in the policy. There's a timeline from which the decision has to be rendered after the hearing. But we did, we replied the same week that day. Yeah, and we consulted with our legal counsel too. So, and we copy Secretary French the week after when we hadn't heard from them. Just like, by the way, just we want you to know that we have responded and we still haven't heard. So it's in their court. We, by all means, we're continuing the process and we hope to have our report back to you in May. And that's... If not, and possibly April. So just as an update, we have got a small group of students that are enthusiastic about it. The first, there's two pieces essentially. There's looking at where it came from and what's the imagery associated with it and then that's asking kids what they think about it now. Because they're both important. They are working on that. We meet again in a couple of weeks. They'll generate that report back to you in written form. I would like to invite them to the meeting and they can present what they found to you. What we'll do at our next meeting is they're gonna design how they wanna get input from their students, from their peers. Is it gonna be a community outreach board? Then that would be the board. So this part is the review of this piece and then the board would have that discussion. And the, because the policy essentially says we support your review of your mascot. I'm sure the students also could weigh in on how they might get that input and share that with you, but that's the goal. And so all else being equal because we were going to do this anyway, April, May would be our timeframe. If we find out that they would like a hearing sooner, I would say we probably try to do our report faster so they can still have the benefit of that report when you heard from our organizations. Thank you, quick question. Without, you know, compromising privacy or anything, can you describe the group of students who are leading this review? Yes, so they range from middle school to high school. The group is generated from student council, but several of them also sit on some of our other student groups. And it's a mix of, it's a pretty representative group, actually, of our student body, demographically. Thank you. Yeah, it's great, it's kind of fun. It's a fun project, honestly. I know it's really sensitive and I'm not making light of it. No, it's okay. We're good to see students in action. But I'm really proud of our district of making it student-driven right now. It's really important and carrying it through, you know. Yeah, it's like turning it into an opportunity. Yes, yeah, exactly. Okay, so Consensus Gen, that's the reason we're going to our second session, that I'm sure it's not gonna take enough time. Okay. Well, I'm looking for the minutes of February 1st, February 15th and February 24th. Second. Okay, any discussion? Yeah. I was in favor of 155 by saying aye. Okay, did you have one? Did you have one? I don't have questions, no. Just thanks to Lisa. Yeah, to Lisa. Thank you, Jonathan. Any opposed? Any abstained? The motion carries. Approve the board's orders. Do I have a motion, Lindsay? Yes, I just closed my computer, but I had it here. Spin. All right, I make a motion to approve the board order for 216.23 through 315.23 in the total amount of $441,720.08. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? All those in favor? 155 by saying aye. Aye. Aye. And then you guys don't need to send an email, Jonathan, you're remote, but the board has signed and we have enough signatures, okay? So, we're moving right along. There's no personnel. They updated my computer. It is unchanged from the last time we had this on. Sounds good. Do you, I don't know if you want to flip the order only because I think Susan is joining. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was actually going to ask for the information they received was enough. What should we do? We're going to vote the superintendent. Yeah. Well, let's talk about it when we get into it. Yeah, okay. So, we're going to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing negotiations starting to include Megan Roy and... Second. We're going to begin with Chris. Should we just turn everything up and call it good? Because this is why we left executive sessions at the end and there won't be any actions left around. Mark, can you put Jonathan in a breakout room by himself? Sorry. No, I can just call him and Mark, you can go. You want to do that on the phone? Yeah, Jonathan, okay, if I call you. Yeah, it's fine. Okay, cell phone or home? Cell. Okay. So, I think, Mark. So, I'll go ahead and end this. End this. So, while you guys are packing up.