 So one more show, it just gets started. You know, I don't know when Rachel will have time to to log on. Yeah, you get for him. So, do we have a business meeting to start with are we going to. Okay. So, it is 608 by my clock. Lane, you're going to have to fill me in. So, Lane and I met with some representatives from the union last week or two weeks ago, I guess now. And to talk about a resolution for their grievance about not about people who are not unavailable staff were unavailable to work last spring. Who's we talked about this twice in two meetings, who health and other personally were taken because they didn't have any medical excuse or any other sort of verification of a of some sort of medical reason. So, we, what we came to with the union, tentatively was that we would use the current MOU that is existing for this year, and retroactively ask those people to submit medical notes that would give them reason to truly have not been available to work last spring. So that was they, they, the union lawyers were amenable to that. So it was just going to go to a vote for the membership. We decided that seemed fair to us. You know, it was as best as we could get in our opinion. And so, you know, having not knowing definitely whether that's the agreement that the union membership actually voted on, it would behoove us to talk about whether we're willing to tentatively agree to okay that that decision. So questions from anyone. Sounds pretty straightforward. So it's basically going back to our, you know, sort of decision this August, you know, that go abiding by CDC guidelines as to what are valuable, valuable, viable reasons for claiming high risk due to COVID, and then getting a medical note to substantiate those claims. So, so we can sort of not meet before our next board meeting in November, if we could tentatively agree to with that, seeing if they come back with that exact agreement, if we could already as a board agree that we're willing to let me go ahead and put that in, in, you know, blue of everyone agreeing at the same time. So, is there a motion to approve that tentative agreement. So moved. Any further discussion or questions. Is there a second. I second. If there are no questions. Can we have a vote then all those in favor of approving the motion. Please say aye. Opposed. All right. So then when we hear from the union will let you know and if the agreement was as we had discussed, I will sign it. All right. That is all the business of the board. I think is that correct Lane. Yep. Okay. So now we're going to hand it over to you Winton and begin our facilitated retreat. Great. Well, nice, nice to see you all and I need to get to know you a little bit better because we're going to be doing some major work together. I promise we'll be wrapped up by 11 tonight. We don't share that vision, do we. I trust you all receive the agenda and some other related materials. So what I like to do and it's best if we're meeting face to face but when we're not, it works just as well to know a little bit more about you. And so at the six o'clock time where it says in one minute share something about yourself that others may not know. Or that you want them to know. I just think that helps with the relationship building, given all the things that you all do together sometimes nice to know who's in the trenches with each other when you're making major decisions and usually when I when I do these kinds of meetings, I start first just to kind of break the ice and I'll start by saying that I was a teacher and an administrator for a number of years retired a couple of years ago. But back early in my career, my wife and I built a post and beam home in Northfield and in the summers I built houses for other people. And now I'm finally able to build another building on our property. I cut logs a few years ago had the milled and I'm putting up a fairly large post and beam barn right now. And just getting the roof on probably will finish for the roof for tomorrow, but I find it very satisfying. And so that's something that you probably don't know about me. So I'll leave it open as to how you'd like to go around and share one thing about yourselves that others may not know. And then we'll get into the meat of our work together tonight. Don't all jump at once. Who's brave and going to go first. I'll go ahead and start. Sure. This is just a kind of throw away one, but I started going gray when I was 13 years old. And I'm asked weekly, if a I'm my children's grandmother, which I do not find amusing. And B, if I died it to look like this. So don't mean enough. Thank you very much. Who else would like to go. Don't be bashful. I go ahead. My name is Katja. All of you know this, but went in. So let's see my, my fact is English was not my first language. I spoke German primarily until the age of five. Maybe you got my unusual name though. So cool. Well, I just have to say that Katja, I know a little bit about your family because Peter Evans and. And I both put built post and beam homes and I helped him put his, his and Nancy's home up when they built that in Roxbury. I was wondering when you said that you're from Northfield and you built post and beam and have been an education. I said, you probably know my father in law. Peter and I taught together at Northfield High School. Oh yeah. Small world. Okay. Who's next. I guess I'll go. I'll go to kind of spinning off your, your comment. I actually built my house here. It's not a post and beam, but we did mill all the lumber, pull the lumber off the land and built, built it ourselves. And I am probably a sixth generation to live right here in Brookfield around the farm. Beautiful. Is that any relation to Dean Baker? That's my uncle. Okay. He just retired. I think two years ago. Still in North Carolina. No, no, they moved to Maine. Oh, they did. Yeah. Fairfield, Maine. He was a superintendent up there. Cool. All right. Who's next. I can go next. Okay. So my name is Megan and I'm very new at this. Don't pick on me too much. I guess something that most people don't know about me. Yeah. I used to ride horses to like endurance racing in the woods. Yeah. Fun fact. Cool. Was that in Woodstock? It was. Yes. My wife was at the 30 mile checkpoint. If you're talking the hundred mile race. I did not do a hundred miles. 25. Okay. Well, then she, you probably didn't see her, but she was handing out brined potatoes. Yeah. It was a three mile interval. Awesome. Cool. All right. Who's next. Okay. I'll go. My name is Ashley Lincoln and sticking with the way you kick this off. I grew up working on a dairy farm and my father had a sawmill. He was a school teacher for four, almost 40 years at the same school that I went to and Chelsea. I'm going to one up Brian because I'm a seventh generation. Well, I'm going to tie you because I'm a seventh generation, Vermont or as well. And I grew up in a dairy farm and cabbage. So here we go. Okay. Who's next. Doing the wrong thing. I'll go next. I am not a seventh generation, Vermont or I was born in New Hampshire. And my parents were from New Jersey. So, um, I guess the fun fact, um, in my mid twenties, I, I had been a teacher at the oil union for two years. I met my husband and we decided to just sell everything. And we threw our mountain bikes in the back of a truck. And we did a trip across the country. We went all the way down to Florida and then across the south. And then kind of moseyed around in the Rocky mountain states and ended up in Oregon. And we lived there for five years before returning to Vermont. Cool. I worked at your rival school at people's academy. So back in the, let me think. Mid eighties to the early nineties. So every time there was a memorial people's game, they, each team would go paint the others granite monument in front of the school and we'd have to remove the paint the next day. So I understand how these crosstown rivalries go. So I was at the oil, uh, 89, 8889 and 8990. So you were there probably right around the same time. Yes, we were. Great. Who hasn't been. Me. Okay. Um, I guess. My fun fact is, uh, I, I like to be outside most of the time. So in college, I took a job on a dairy farm. Um, I went to Middlebury college, but I, and I didn't have a car. So I rode my bike all year long throughout the winter, about five or six, six miles to a dairy farm and worked twice a day and kept my poor barn boots in my dorm hallway, which really did not endear me to any of the people who lived on that floor. That's for sure. Uh-huh. That's a cool, cool fact. Assistant superintendent in South Burlington. I rode my bike. Uh, took the bus for Montpelier and put the bike on the bus and went to my schools all year long as well. Uh, except that when there was more than six inches of snow, even my studded hack of palletas didn't quite cut it. So I understand how that, how that goes. All right, Lane, I think you are the closer in the baseball vernacular here. I think I'm the last. Um, so 1987 was my first year of college was actually here at Vermont Tech. And, uh, during that year, um, I was captain of the national championship cross country ski team and, uh, was also national champion for, um, the relay. Um, it was going on at the time, which was a lot of fun. And then, uh, I had German at Colchester, Vermont. That was one of the languages that they offered. I got through the first year and I wasn't. Foreign language wasn't quite my thing. Um, but I, I loved the language and they canceled it. Um, there were a lot of cuts going on at the time that year. And so I managed to finish up with two years of French following that. So, yeah. Oh, well now, now you all know, did everyone go? Yeah. Yeah. Now you all know another, uh, intricate fact about each other that, uh, you know, I think you'll find that will come back to, uh, play rich dividends in the future. I've always found that, uh, building a relationship with leadership team is critically important to the success of that team. So thank you. Uh, if you take a look at the agenda that I sent out, I did a little research and, uh, thank you Laura for staring me in the direction where the, where the board wanted to go here. Uh, what I did is I took a look at your, your mission and before I go into that, you also have a vision statement or you just go with your mission because I didn't see the vision. I don't think we have a vision statement. I mean, we have, the old strategic plan is also on the website, but I don't think we really have a vision statement. Is that true Lane or am I incorrect about that? Uh, now your, uh, your mission kind of envelops both. Yeah. Yeah. And I actually think that's better because people get all kind of twisted up in their knickers over what's vision and what's mission and, uh, yours is very straightforward. So people know what it is that you're about. And my first question is, does that mission fit where you want to go in the next three years? Do you want to get feedback from, uh, your constituent stakeholder groups or do you feel like that's okay? Any thoughts on habits of mind, heart and work? Does that still work for you? I'm was being quiet. Let the board talk, um, in terms of the strategic peace, strategic peace, but, um, I think one of the parts about the policy governance that we're under is, um, these are the board's ends, um, that the district is working on. Um, given the broad nature of them and the work that needs to be done, um, at least through, through my work, we've kind of focused in, um, more on the foundational knowledge side of things, specifically, um, mathematics, uh, ELA and science at this point in time, as well as adaptability. Um, and the, the goal was at least is to get those up to the thresholds, um, that I've set with a cabinet, um, check with the board to make sure that that is, you know, acceptable. Um, and then, uh, at that point in time decide, Hey, we keep pounding on these to make them better, or we start to encapsulate some more. Um, but that's kind of where, at least in with me talking where we're kind of sitting at this point in time. Okay. Yeah. Feel other board members feel free to jump in because Winton and I have talked quite a bit about this. So I feel like I've sort of given my opinion. Um, so the rest of you guys can chime in. I, I, I basically, I think, uh, said about the same thing as Lane. And I did let Winton know what our current sort of ideas were for, um, our strategic plan, the three goals that we had, um, which seemed to me somewhat apart from this mission, but, um, not that that's here or there. So, um, I agree. Or my opinion, um, I think this mission is fine because I still think it speaks to the role of the educated education, the body that we're trying to share with our children. Um, and I don't know if I think that our strategic plan has to link back entirely to this mission because the mission to me, this is very like this. It's kind of saying a lot in my opinion. This is a pretty big mission statement. Typically they're like three lines. And this is like four paragraphs. So I think that there's a lot being said here. Um, and just my opinion is we could spend a lot of time trying to modify a mission statement, but I think this says a lot. And I think we should focus more on those strategic goals. Well, and the strategic goals would hopefully lead to success of our mission statement, right? I mean, we reached all of those goals, then students would be, uh, Excelling and succeeding as we, as our mission. States. States. Other other thoughts before I pose another question to you. Going back to our, the way our board used to function. Uh, if we're going to change the mission in the ends of our goals, our policies require that we go back out to the community and make sure we're on track. So, um, That's what's a little bit. Strange in this process for me, having been on the board for a long time. And. And one of the things that we've struggled with, um, and with turnover and with the way the board is operated is. We've never really got clarity on. Where the, where we are with the ends. Um, again, this is sort of policy governance speak, but it seems like, um, From the time that we actually created these, these ends, because our mission is basically our end statement. Um, We haven't, we haven't really followed through with really monitoring them in any. Significant way. So it's sort of like we're back at square one right now. And maybe we do need to sort of reconnect with the community, even if we can't say, Oh, hey, we accomplished these ends and now we're going to come up with some new ends, but maybe. Um, I don't know, maybe we go back and sort of. We look at what we're doing. Maybe I don't know. But I think what causes me to pose that next question now, and I asked you earlier, but I want to seek your, um, seek your direction here. The one of your four goals is community public engagement. And so I think. If you're, if, if we end up moving forward in the way that I think you're intending here, you're going to be engaging your community about your ends and your three other strategic goals beyond the, uh, the community engagement. So I'm just going to pose that as a question. Is that the vision? Is that the direction that you see this going in? I mean, I guess I don't think we should tackle the ends. Um, just because it is such a broad. Group of statements. I mean, I don't think anyone's going to say that we've reached. You know, that our students already have knowledge skills and tools. They need to be prepared for the next stage of their lives. I mean, that's an ongoing challenge that, you know, that's, that's the business of education. I think, um, that's what our schools are working towards. Um, you know, as, as well as the other things, resiliency, critical thinking, et cetera. I mean, I see us, you know, tackling through smaller goals, which as Hannah says, we still are underneath this broad mission statement. Um, that, you know, I think, you know, we need to take something for granted into me. The ends are those things that we currently can still take for granted. Okay. In your, at your school board meetings. Am I hearing you say that you're not a monitoring ends at each board meeting? Yes, we are. You are. Okay. We're having ends reports and yes, we are. We had a presentation last month, um, by Lane and the month before by the high school teachers. Yes. We have ongoing, um, monitoring. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, let me make the assumption that Laura's speaking on behalf of the board, unless someone has other ideas, I think we should focus solely on the three, the three other goals other than public engagement. I think, you know, as we, our board talked about, um, is that we think by using community engagement, we will develop our goal, our strategic goals. So we will practice that. Correct me if I'm wrong, the rest of you, but, um, that was what we decided talked about a few months ago. That that's sort of a means to an end. Okay. I think when we talked about it before, it was, uh, that community engagement was probably a, uh, one of our week traits and we were thinking we would want to. Kind of set up a philosophy of how to do it, but it wouldn't wasn't really a strategic goal. But if we could do that, it would help us with the other three goals that we had. All right. Well, I'm looking at it is yours. I didn't find your strategic plan other than the PowerPoint. Did I, did I miss something? Do you mean the current one? Yes. Uh, yeah, it says it from, it was from, uh, 2017 to 2020. Yes. It's quite lengthy. Yes. Okay. And as I said, I think I told you on the phone, we did not create that that was, uh, created by our, uh, the superintendent and the, uh, I don't know, some administrative people. So this is the first time the board has done strategic planning. Okay. Well, I think it makes sense to look at kind of past, present and future. Um, I don't know if I have the ability. Do I have a authority either Lane or Laura to, uh, put up the PowerPoint presentation? Or do, or do you have that? Uh, yeah, you, uh, it's just, uh, if you hit present view, it'll ask, you know, what part of your screen that you want everybody to see. Um, and then you just click on that and it should go. It should go. Um, present now is on that little banner at the bottom towards a little bit towards the right. So if you move your mouse down to the bottom. Are you seeing it now? No. Okay. I'm sharing my entire screen, but, oh, maybe it's show all. No. Are you seeing it now? Nope. No. Um, you can try emailing it to me. I might be able to pop it up. Okay. I got the one that you're looking at. Let me open up the, actually go to go to your website. And I just copied it from the website. So if you want to click into it and present from your side, that works fine too. Let me see if I can find it. Not on the computer I normally use. So it takes me a second. While Lane is looking for that. What I think I'd like to do is go through and just tag. Certain components of. The existing strategic plan that you'd like to at least probe or consider in the future. And then we can identify those that. We're not interested in pursuing in the future. And what I'm looking at right now is it's a big star. And it talks about where are, where are you now? How did you get there? Examine your identity. It says conduct a SWAT analysis. You did a store. Sore and SWAT are similar kinds of things. Except sore is a bit more aspirational. And then SWAT, which tends to be more of a business model. Where do you want to go? Establish a timeframe, set objectives. Decide how we get there and then communication and feedback. Let's see if I got this. Susan just pop in. Do have this. Let me see if I can get it out, open it up. Okay. Too many menus. Good evening, Susan. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for being late. You were busy with with another school district and that's okay. There we are. All right, go through about 10 slides lane. Now go back a little bit. One more back. Right there. So this is what you currently are. Operating under as far as these departments. And. The center of that circle needs to change to OSSD. So that, that will be a change. These arenas are these the departments you're now operating under. No. Do I have my microphone on here? I don't know if they ever had a human resources department. We do not currently. So I don't even know why that's on there. Okay. So we need to make a change there. Lane, what slide is that? Yeah. Okay. All right, go to nine. All right. I think we can just skim through here. I'm assuming your learning management system is already operational. No, that was started at. The very end of the previous superintendent's tenure in. Was not. Was basically at the very fledgling stages. When I came in and sat down and talked with the cabinet. The tool that had been chosen for that purpose was not the one that they wanted or that they needed. Or that fit in with the big. I'm trying to get my brain working here for thinking back three years ago, it didn't fit in to support the work that they were heavily engaged in that was mandated by the state, which was the graduation proficiencies and the standard based. Or cards. And so we actually chose another software package, which isn't really a learning management system that provides those functions. I forgot the name of the software that they were looking at, but we needed something that would encapsulate those two functions of graduation proficiencies and the standards based report cards. And so we went with that. Because the purpose of this learning management system was to fulfill that function. I think Haiku might have been the what they were looking at. I think I saw somewhere in the background. Yeah. All right. Are your PLCs up and running? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And you talked about ELA. So it sounds like your math and ELA are still moving forward. And middle school structure is one of your goals, I think. Yeah. And we've actually, there's been a considerable amount of work in that area already. We actually have provided a stipend to have basically a middle school assistant principal calling the head of lower grades that is actually overseeing the development of a true middle school program within the high school program. Okay. And is that grade seven and eight? That's grade seven and eight. Currently we had had some discussions about bringing the sixth grade up so that it would be a true middle school, the sixth, seventh and eighth grade to free up some space in the elementary schools so that we had space to continue building our preschool programs that we've been building. Okay. All right. Go to the next slide. Communications. So I, when I came in, I went to school messenger as a means of actually being able to reach out to the community with all the initiatives that we're working on, as well as just the important emergency updates for the community when we have them. So that piece at least has been engaged. Okay. Anything else to jettison? Let me read through volunteer expert visitors in school legislative legislative shadow days. I have no idea what that is. Community learning conferences, everything in the red dots is already happening. Okay. Implement the elementary report card, common court that is already done. Proficiency based graduation requirements is done. Research and implement. We did implement a software system to support the proficiency based graduation requirements, but it wasn't the one that they started with. The website was completed. The new website. The year that I started the old superintendent completed that year. I'm going to go back to that. I'm going to go back to that. Signs and stationary have been updated. Policies and procedures are always, it's ongoing that they're updated. One of the big things that we're working on now is. The board just revamped all the policies that come from federal guidance. And state guidance. I'm working on the. Protocols at the school levels. I'm for conducting those policies. I reviewed all those and those look like they're very current and good for good for you all. Do you have. Separate policy governance policies. Yes. And are they on the website? Yes. Because I couldn't find them. They should be under. Go ahead. Yeah, they're under the board. Okay. Okay. So is this is a review of this just to interrupt. I'm sorry, but is this something that we can do outside of this. Retreat. You know, or is this. Essential for moving forward is to go over our last. Strategic plan. In your opinion. Well, I was thinking. I might have. Maybe Lane and I could do some side work and just. Knock off the pieces that are already. In place. And then leave the. The others for consideration moving forward. If that's how you'd like to go, I think that will streamline this portion of. Tonight's agenda. Yeah. And I did a very detailed review of this about a month back in 95% of this is complete. There are still some outstanding pieces on some, some of which changed because of minutes and what, but the majority of it is complete. Okay. Is that agreeable with the board then to. Work off lanes updated PowerPoint. The presentation. I'm assuming it's PowerPoint. This is really confusing for me. I'm just going to go back to the slide. I'm just going to go back to the slide. Because. We have been operating in a way where we aren't. We are looking at outcomes as a board, or at least we used to. And now. I'm just confused with how. We're moving into looking at operations or how the school. How the superintendent is going to accomplish the outcomes. And how it's going to actually happen. And so. Monitoring outcomes and making sure that those outcomes happen. And not. Figuring out how those. How it's going to actually happen. And so I. I find this process is, is confusing for me. Okay. You're exact exactly right. It is one step removed from the day to day operations. My question. What I'm doing is I'm moving towards a design team. And I'm, I'm needing to know, does the board want to be the design team for the strategic plan? Or do you want to, if you've had a chance to look at the. Stakeholders that sit on his design team, do you want that to be a school and community stakeholder collaboration. If the board is the design team, we'll have to get down in the weeds and do this kind of work. I mean, I guess the question then would be, what do you typically see boards? What do you see as the role of the board in this? Because I guess that it seems like there's a little bit of wiggle room if the board from what you're saying. So what do you see traditionally in boards like the role that a board plays in this type of process? Well, I will say that there are fewer boards that are policy governance boards in the state. And so traditional boards often like to spend time, I'll say down in the minutia policy governance boards don't. So maybe it makes some sense to switch to the VSBA strategic planning proposal that I sent you and go to the last page. You all should have that and take a look at the design team member roles and expectations. And you'll see 13 total members and you'll see the stakeholder representation that only has one school board member sitting on that team. And if that's how you'd like to move forward, then we don't need to spend any time looking at the old strategic plan. I guess, I mean, I see these team representatives when we previously have talked about community engagement, it was not necessarily saying, well, these types of people are the ones we want to participate, but just being more open-ended and inviting whoever would like to participate in participating. So I have a little bit of a hesitation, say, well, I want one of these and one of those rather than being more open-ended for whoever wants to be a participant. Let me then take that to the next level. Look at the feedback group roles and expectations underneath that. And that's where you get everyone. And they either participate through Google Form surveys or they participate in Google Meet forums and generally do that with like stakeholder roles at the same meeting. And if you look at the, I think those roles are there. You know, they're actually back in the beginning. I have six stakeholder groups that we reach out and solicit feedback with focus questions. And one of them, one of the groups would be community nonprofit leaders. So I'll give you an example of how these processes usually go, well, I say usual because usually it's not virtual, but now we're virtual. So let me play out a scenario. If you had a design team that helps work with me to shape questions and design the process and you empower that team on behalf of the board, they would come together. They would help develop questions. They would help process the data that comes out of focus forums, focus groups, feedback groups. And they would be the team that starts in roughly January and ends in May. And they would work on developing the process, analyzing the data that comes out of feedback from your community engagement and then helps to craft and draft the strategic plan. The feedback groups, let's just say on January 15th, we bring together administrators would be one of the stakeholder groups. And in the first meeting, if you look in the first page of this, the proposal that I started with the last page, look at the first page and look in January, no, actually February, forum series 1A, host the teacher staff forum. It would be one hour and likely Google Meet and another day that same week, I would facilitate a parent feedback forum and we would have likely eight to 10 people in the teacher staff forum and eight to 10 parents in their separate feedback forum and we would pose six to eight questions in a focus forum configuration where one of the questions might be and in using your goals might be focused on high school academics. And I would probe that and get feedback from the first group was a teacher staff and the second group would be parents. And I would spend an hour with each of the groups and then process the data. The next forum series 1B would be students. I'd host a student forum and then the fourth forum would be a business leader forum. Same questions. Later in the month of February, 1C would be host separate administrator forum and then a nonprofit community leader forum. Again, one hour each with six to eight focus questions and collectively process the data and the feedback that those stakeholder groups are providing to the board and to the administrators. So that's how we might shape the process. The question is how many focus areas might we move forward and I'm just gonna make an assumption here that you'd like to hear about high school academics from stakeholders. You wanna hear about school climate from stakeholders and you wanna hear about middle school transition from the stakeholders. And that would provide the foundation for moving your strategic plan forward. Again, that's only my assumption. That's how I've done it with other school districts. Talk to me about how that feels for you, what you don't know and what you'd like to know. I have a question. I actually appreciate the idea of reaching out to these different groups, having that structured time, but my question is, we did some of this pre-work that you included and we've mentioned during this evening on those three goals, the fourth being kind of a consistent community input, the fourth of goal. So you're suggesting that you would basically take the foundation that we already have and then we're gonna reach out to all of these different community groups through very tight focus group type of situations to see if they agree, if they have additional information. If that's a yes, then my next question is, because I feel like this could go so far astray, depending on who you have. I mean, you start bringing in 64 different people, you're gonna get 64 different opinions. So my question is, is the work we've started, is that the foundation that we're leaping off from now to garner feedback from others or are we taking a clean slate and gonna gather what any person within this group thinks is important? That's what Laura and I talked about and she encouraged me to develop a process that takes the three goals that the board, the fourth is an assumption that public engagement is how you're going to do it. So setting that aside, you wanna hear from the community about high school academics, middle school transition and high school climate. And I can shape those questions around those three topic areas. So let me just stop there and see, does that fit for the vision of where you think this should go? I like the sounds of this, because it seems like we're gonna be reaching out, we've sort of come up with some ideas of things that might need to be addressed, but that's based on our personal experience, sort of what we've heard, but this will allow us to really reach out and get feedback from everyone that's involved in the whole system, which I think is great. The one thing that concerns me a little bit is these are very focused toward the older students. There's nothing, we don't really have anything that's oriented toward the elementary school, but perhaps when we engage with the stakeholders, we'll hear more or if we're looking at high school academics, that means you've been preparing through elementary school, so maybe that will give us some feedback there. Okay, one of the focused questions that I traditionally use in planning processes like this is the stop-start continue question that you might have reviewed in the first page of the proposal, and that is what should the Orange Southwest Supervisory District stop, start, or continue doing to prepare students to be contributing members of society, skillful workers, and lifelong learners. And that's a pretty rich and pretty wide-open question to stakeholders that could get at the elementary piece very well. You're gonna get a lot of data in forms where 50 to 100 people come together, which is how I've traditionally done it. I use post-it notes, and people just write, continue, they have as many post-it notes as they like, they generally have about 10 theme areas where they post it under a stop column, a start column, and a continue column, and then there are facilitators that begin to amalgamate and place like statements together. And that's when themes begin to emerge. It's a little trickier virtually, but I think we can do it, but that's how I ordinarily have done that. So the question, and thank you, Anne, for raising that, how does the board feel about including a question like that with all stakeholder groups? I think that would be a fine question to start with. The only thing that kind of concerns me and Lane will probably can agree that most of the public forums that you have out, it's usually the same people that come to every forum, and at the board level, the only time we really have any contact from the public is when they have a specific problem or issue. We don't normally have a lot of input, so I'm not sure, I mean, how would you set up these focus groups? Would you specifically ask people to attend or would you just kind of leave it open for anybody? Both, and I'll tell you what the options are. The design team helps to reach out to what I call key decision makers in each of those stakeholder groups and make sure that those people are targeted and not just a single philosophy, but a very broad cross-section of individuals, and those are people that we actually work with directly, but when I mentioned Google Form, we put that out to anyone and we make it available through the newspaper, through Facebook, through Front Porch Forum, many different ways to elicit feedback from anyone who would like to participate, and they just, they include their ideas in a online Google Form, and that automatically compiles into data that the design team then uses the process and that gets merged with the focus group ideas and feedback so that you get people who might wanna be more intimately involved and then you get some folks that maybe will answer a question or two, but it's very comprehensive and targeted to as many people as we can reach. So other thoughts or issues before I move forward a little bit, all right? So it sounds like you'd like to probe with focus groups around the three board goals and just give me a thumbs up if you think that's a good idea, okay? And how are you with the Stop, Start, Continue question to those six stakeholder groups? Thumbs up on that? And I should tell you, I don't know if you use thumbs, but thumb on the side is I'm not really sure and thumbs down is I don't like it and thumb is the only digit we're gonna use tonight and I'll just leave it at that, okay? So that's very helpful because that gives us a direction for moving forward. Go back to this document, the first page, the proposal. Now I don't wanna make an assumption that you wanna move forward without asking you the right question. Given what I've said so far, does it make sense to move forward with a comprehensive strategic planning process that will shape as we go and that uses a design team to guide the process? I'd like to hear what your thoughts are or do you wanna just vote on it? How do you wanna move forward? I'd love to hear from a few of you just your thought process of how you envision yourself being involved in this going forward. I think it's definitely the way to go only because I don't know about everybody else but I don't have a lot of planning experience. So I'm more willing to help with, give my opinion and do it in what I can but definitely have someone kinda guide us through it would be the best way. What I like about the idea of a design team is that you're using the word stakeholders and that makes me think these are people who will feel some ownership over it which is and over the district as a whole which is in my opinion, what is missing for our community engagement. People feeling like they have a seat at the table like they have ownership. So by making the design team have such a broad membership that's attractive to me. Okay, other thoughts before I put it to a vote? Okay, with thumbs in whatever direction those of you that would like to have a design team with roughly the configuration of 13 members that identified in the end of that proposal show your support with a thumbs up or thumb on the side or a thumb down. Okay, all right. We need to talk a little bit more about do you want, the majority of the board says design team. The question is, do you want the board to be the design team or do you want that stakeholder group to be the design team? Do you have some concerns about giving up some authority to a design team like that? It's an amalgamation of, in fact, look at your proposal again now that we're getting to a decision point the last page of that proposal, they would have one school board member, one community member or nonprofit leader, one elementary parent, one middle high school parent, one high school student, five teachers, one from each of your schools, including the career center, one elementary administrator, one middle high school administrator, one business leader or total of 13 total members. And understand that as we decide on who these members of the design team should be that we'll also have the representation from all the communities. So if we had an elementary parent from Brookfield, we might have a middle high school parent from Braintree and do it that way. I do, and in that list, I do feel like it would be important to separate middle and high school out because I do feel one of our big focuses is this middle school creating that middle school. And I think that if you had just a middle school parent on that as part of that team, they might not understand what happens at high school level or vice versa, a high school parent who might not be in touch with what's happening on the middle school level. So that's the only one that I feel, and I don't know how others feel it may be separating that out so you have a representative from parent from each of those, or both of those kind of student populations. Okay, that's a good suggestion. Any other reshaping of that team representative Katcha and Laura, did you have any other concerns about a design team in general? I mean, my only one, I mean, I guess not as much. My only one would be the school board representation and just making sure either if there's a way to rotate that or make sure that those who, if there's numerous school board members who'd like to be a part of that, if there's a way to kind of involve those of us who are interested in being involved or again, maybe rotate so the people who are on the committee have a way to get to know each of the school board members, I don't know. I have a question for you. Is it typically difficult to, you know, like I see five teachers and I just wonder and two administrators, is it typically difficult to get those people to give up their, you know, evening time for something like this over a period of months? It hasn't been, but again, I've done this probably 50 or 60 times, but I've never done one virtually. And so I don't know for sure. That's gonna be like, in some respects, it's easier because you don't have to go out to a meeting. You just go to your computer and you're there. I've done other kinds of leadership development activities virtually, but not the strategic planning. So in the past, design team has worked very well. Yeah, the only question that I would throw out there is just not to forget that we are operating under COVID and the workloads are nearly double what they normally are, especially when we're transitioning back and forth, depending upon the local conditions. So I think that this process, having run one or two of these myself, I think this process would work fine under normal circumstances. It will probably work fine under COVID as well, but I just wanna throw that caution out there that there's that unknown just because of the extra workload that's on folks. Okay, any other thoughts? Okay, well, it sounds like the majority of folks think it's a good idea to move forward with the design team. Kind of the next level here would be to begin to identify a process by which to solicit participation from members that fit these stakeholder groups. So be thinking kind of in the back of your mind, who are the right people here and what's the process look like? Do we devolve that to lane to reach out through invitations, both internal and external, internal meaning within the school district, external, meaning the parents and community leaders and the like. Does that, without throwing too much on your lane, does that put that to lane and his team to figure out how to do that, does that make sense? And then depending upon how the board feels, this is something that we could easily bang out in the cabinet meeting and then give the feedback to the board on the folks that we're thinking about. And then if the board is happy, we could go ahead and do the invites. Yeah, I think we represent the three different communities quite well with a wide range of knowledge of different teachers and not a different parents and stuff like that. So I think the board could be a good reservoir of ideas of parents and business leader and things like that. But I think we would definitely love to have your help inviting administration and teachers. Okay. So that it sounds like it'll be a two-pronged attack. Lane and the administrative team work on a process that comes back to the board and board members as well with your relations in the community also reach out to folks. I would caution you not to promise anybody that they're on but just find out a list of volunteers that then can come to the board and you make a decision about kind of the diversity of people that would be coming to represent you on the design team. That makes sense to have the final ultimate decision be at the board level. If that's a yes, just nod your head or thumbs up. Okay. All right, that's good. All right. So going back to your first page does January seem like an okay time to start this process? We're looking at the end of October November, December would be identified design team. Also we need to identify the feedback groups. So it's not just getting representatives for the design team. It's also inviting individuals to participate in the feedback groups. And so as you come across individuals I often go back to a real tour cliche it's three to eight to motivate. And what that means is three to eight exposures by individuals in your community. They hear about it, it's a front porch forum. They hear about it from a school board member. They hear about it from an administrator. Something goes out to all parents in a school newsletter. It's on a website. It's in the newspaper. So when it becomes a crescendo of they're getting this information from a broad cross-section throughout their community they understand that there's a big deal going on at the school district and it's a public engagement process that's soliciting feedback. And here's your chance folks to let the board know what your thoughts are, good, bad or ugly. So that's when I use that cliche that's what real tours are about. They use all kinds of Zillow and different company websites to be able to advertise a house that's for sale. And we're advertising we wanna hear your voice in the community. And I saw that in your board goals. So this is just a process that gets you closer to that. All right, well, I think we're at 707. I built in a 10 minute break. I think any good facilitator gives folks a little bit of time to breathe a little bit. So I'm gonna give you a choice here. The choice is we can continue on or we can take a 10 minute break. I promise I won't wrap up at 11, I'll wrap up at nine. I just wanted to make sure you were listening early on. You wanna take a 10 minute break and just stretch your legs and come back at let's say 715, not quite the 10, but let's come back at 715 and we'll get back at it. I'll see you at 715. Not everyone's back, but I'm gonna start anyway. I'm gonna do a simulation. I want us to assume that a design team has shaped the process and that we are in February and we're on the first page of the proposal and you all are teachers or staff members at one of the schools, pretend like this is a feedback group and I'm gonna pose a couple of questions for you and just give you an idea of what a focused or feedback group conversation would be like virtually. So we're gonna use the stop-start continue and so welcome group. Thank you for participating. I know that you're all teachers and staff members at one of the schools. What do you think that the Orange Southwest Super Bowl School District, what do you think the school district should do to stop doing, start doing or continue doing? And so I'd like one of you to volunteer. What do you think the school district should stop doing in the future? Anyone can respond to that. Everything we're doing is fine. Let's go to what do you think the school district should start doing to prepare students to be contributing members of society, skillful workers and lifelong learners. What should we start doing? And what I might do here if I had a lot of dead air time, I might say, look at the three goals that I have prepared for you and the board is interested in middle school transition. They're interested to know what you're thinking about high school academics and they're interested in knowing what is your third one, high school climate. What should the high school do to do differently or start doing around school climate? Again, we're in a simulation here. So think about your teacher or staff member and you're focused on high school climate. What would you like to see the school start doing? I know some of you guys are breaking the future. You come back and it's hard to get your engine started here. I would say some teachers would say we need to get our equity committee up and running and really work on equity issues throughout the entire district. Some teachers would say that, I'm guessing. Okay. That's what we're doing, right? We're guessing what staff. Yeah. I might say. Yeah. All right. Someone else. Oh, well, it is better preparation. There are some kids who are not on IEPs who are not reading at the right, they're reading at a third or fourth grade reading level and it's really hard to teach a content level class if you have people who can't read. Okay. And so just to fast track this a little bit, taking Anne's posed question or thought around equity committee, what I might ask is, how many of the rest of you feel, how many of you support what Anne said around starting an equity committee? Just give me a thumbs up. Okay. And remember thumb on the side if you don't really know and thumb down if you don't really like it. So that's an example of how I would work with the stakeholder group of students and staff. I would operate in the same way with the other five groups and we would go through an hour's worth of time and I would ask about pros and cons and I would probe some of the issues that emerge. And often I would try to bring that to some consensus. Doesn't mean unanimous support, it just means consensus and that you could support it may not be your favorite but that's part of kind of the dynamic of how a feedback group would operate. And so we'd have six or eight questions in an hour and I would have a scribe working with me that keeps notes and then we would compile the other five group notes and data into an evolving theme and look for kind of consistent themes throughout the different stakeholder groups and that would help us to show goals or show feedback that begins to emerge. So my next question go out of this role play you're no longer teachers or staff. In fact, you don't wanna be teachers and staff in COVID because Lane just told us they have to work twice as hard now because they're either in school or they're at home. Let me ask you the next question looking at the first page of your proposal again you'll see that there are six stakeholder groups and different feedback groups that operate in feedback forums. The first one is teachers and staff should they be in a forum together? Give me a thumbs up if you think that's good, okay? Ah, we don't think that's good, okay? Do you want teachers and staff to be separate? So can I just ask a clarifying question? Yeah. What do you mean by staff? You mean like the people in the lunch room, custodians? I would say your professional staff would be your teachers, your non-professional staff would be aides, parrots, bus drivers, kitchen staff, custodians. So I'm seeing a little bit of concern about having them all in the same group. I would worry that your professional staff may not speak as freely or they might not feel like they have the same voice that a teacher does. So I would, I mean, you can have lots of meetings. I would prefer to see those groups separated so they feel like that they could speak freely about conditions or perceptions on moving forward. Okay. Show me your thumb support level with separating teachers from non-professional staff. Thumbs, all right, consider it done. The next group are parents. So I don't think there's any concern about parents unless you wanted to hear an elementary parent voice, a middle school parent voice, and a high school parent voice. Do you see them all lumped together or do you see them separate? I think you'd want to separate the elementary from the middle high school. But maybe that's what I would think. They might be a little bit different. I would lump them together. Okay. Because even though they have different immediate issues, they ultimately want to have the same goals. Oh, that's true. Yeah, just a wide representation, though, because we do have three very, especially at the elementary level, we have three very distinct schools. So I think you'd want to make sure that you have representation of parents from each elementary school involved. Okay, that would be a given. The question is, all elementary parents in one feedback group and another feedback group in middle and high school parents together. And we're kind of split right now. So help me bring this to some consensus. I'm in favor of them being combined. I think they could inform each other so well as long as there's diverse representation in terms of which parents are making up the group. Yeah, it might work if we did it town-wide. So for instance, elementary through high school parents in each town and then we would be able to have different, the distinctive elementary school constituencies separate. Okay, now remember that there's two ways to elicit feedback. One is in focus feedback groups, face-to-face for an hour with each topic. And the other is online Google form. It's a one-way submission of your feedback. There's no dialogue with that. It's just you chunk it in there and you push the button and we begin to compile it. So you can have those people that are more directly involved and those that are just sending it in from outside. So where's your... Go ahead, Brian. I would think it'd be best to have them all together only because sometimes I don't think that the elementary school parents know what's really going on with the high school parents and vice versa. And I think probably if you had them all together, they could at least either, they could communicate between the two of them, the groups to know what's coming or kind of explain where they were at that time. Okay. And you might have some folks that have kids in middle and high school that also are in elementary as well. I think it just also, the jump on Brian's, it helps with that cohesion of like, you know, moving through the district rather than switching schools, I think which is kind of the feeling right now for a lot of families. So creating that, you know, kind of generalized cohesion between the district schools would help. And you're able to facilitate it in a good way in that kind of a meeting too, making sure they have all. Okay. So I'm hearing a little bit of leaning towards combined elementary, middle and high school together. Can we live with that? Okay. All right. So together. All right, go to the next page. And, oh no, excuse me, the bottom of that page. Students, do you want just high school students? Do you want middle and high school students? Do you want elementary students in focus groups? What's your pleasure? Levels of students. I think elementary students can, it may be on an elementary level, but you can get a feel for sort of what they are thinking. And I think student voices is really important. I'm keeping quiet just because this is kind of a fourth The students side, I think alumni would be important, especially recent alumni. Okay. Do you think that middle and high school students together will work, or should those be separate? I personally don't. Okay. So separate middle and high school. And I would think in that vein then probably have elementary, unique, and separate as well. All right. I mean, I'm just kind of imagining here as you have the conversation with the cabinet that what I'll do is I'll print this up. And as we begin to think about, and for the board as well as we begin to think about the participants in these forums, how we're going to invite them. And that will be something that your principals, I think will have quite a bit of contribution to that process. All right, the next is business leader. You want to just put it out to like chambers of commerce, rotary, just a general lumping business leaders together. What's the alternative to that? Well, I have a separate stakeholder group of non-profit and community leaders. So the rotary might pick up community leaders. Again, many of these stakeholder groups where more than one hat. So you could have a parent that is a business leader. You could have a teacher who's a parent. So sometimes they're separate and distinct and sometimes they're not. It's just making sure that you're getting a voice from a broad variety of internal and external stakeholders. So when I throw out to you the business leader who comes to your mind, who's a key influencer in your communities who owns a business, manages a business, just brainstorm for a minute. Who do you think fits in that category? Would VTC be a business? I think of applied research of LED Dynamics. I think, I don't know if they have to all be in like a Randolph Brookfield brain tree, but then you also have GW plastics. I was thinking about. The manufacturing, but I do think that the reality also is that your nonprofits are a large part of your hiring. And I don't know if I think those two groups could be separate because I don't know if you're gonna get, I feel like they're not really separate on the map where we live and it should just be combined because VTC is nonprofit. You have to get it. But then you look at our economic development officer, Josh Jerome, I mean, there's a lot of people within the town government too that I think we'd wanna be talking about. So I see these two groups together. And it seems to me community leaders, there's such overlap with the two groups that Ashley just mentioned that it would all those three would have to be together. They're just intermingled. Okay. I wanna just being in the nonprofit world. I don't wanna narrowly think about that world in terms of business because I'm thinking about parent child centers. I'm thinking about Claire Martin that aren't necessarily, they're not businessy, but I think a really important voice in the process. So I'm not advocating for separating them but I do wanna think about them separately when brainstorming who would make up the group. Well, given the lists that you rapidly rattled off here, I sometimes see them having a different mission and a different focus. And remember, there's only six or eight participants in each of the feedback forums. So if you had separate business leaders in one forum and nonprofit leaders in another, you pick up your town clerks, you pick up your select board members, you pick up regional planning commission, your nonprofit to Claire Martin centers and all of those. And I think those tend to be a little bit different. And I think if you merge them together you're gonna lose the breadth of voice that you might have by keeping them separate. I guess I have a clarifying question then. I thought these feedback forums were wide open but you're saying that you're asking six to eight people and that's that, just six to eight people in each one. Well, there's two ways to do it. Each question you could have a different six or eight people. So if we're gonna go through three levels of forum around your board goals, you could have your first, let's just say there's 10 in each group. So your first series of forums would have 60 voices in it if you had 10 in each forum. And let's say that the first forum just asked the question what should the school district stop starter continue doing? You get 60 voices. You have the next level of questions gets at your board goals which are high school academics. And so you have a second group of 60 people that you'd hear a voice from that go through a forum series to A through C. And then your third would take you through middle school transition. And that would be a separate group of 60. But the reality is to be able to manage your process that big, you're inviting people all the time and it's harder to maintain the continuity. Remember that the Google forum gathers data from outside of the face-to-face process. So there's two ways to get at that. And I'm happy to talk. I'll do it any way that you folks think is the right way to go. But you feasibly could be interacting with 180 people. If you have separate stakeholders in each one of those feedback series, or you could have 60 people consistently through all three of those questions. So I guess I have a follow-up question. So I thought there was just one feedback forum for each group, but you're saying there's three feedback forums for each group where each one is revolving around a single question. Yes. Okay, wow. You can do it either way. You could have the same group respond to the three different questions and three different meetings, or you could have just one and have a single question and let's just say you do the stop-start-continue question. And I build into that forum your targeted board goals, which are around high school academics, around middle school transition, and high school climate. Now that's, I don't know. I think that's too much. Ask a clarifying question. Would you also be doing a general Google form out to whomever in addition to these focus? Yes. Okay, perfect. That's great. So you get different levels of participation. You just get it on, I say paper, you get it on electronically with no dialogue on the Google form, but you get the interaction in the feedback forums and you build on each other's thoughts and issues and point of view, and it's more collaborative than it is just a dump, so to say, of information. Well, I would think that if we could get 60 people involved, we'd be doing good, but 180 might be stretching it from what we could get even people just to volunteer for. Well, that's my concern. Having done this with trying to, in the group that was working on unifying the district. Okay. We did, I mean, and we reached out a lot to sort of the community, we thought were sort of the community movers and shakers, and it wasn't easy to get people to commit. So, but this is a little bit different, so I don't know, but I would say that is one of the things that I think we need to think about is can we get eight to 10 people to deal with one of these topics at a time? Or do we just, although you felt like maybe that would be too much to try and do all three questions in one group. You know, as I think more about that, one separate evening, I could develop questions with the design team around the high school, and it could be high school academics and high school climate. And so that series would be fine that way. Middle school transition could be another night, and then the stop start continue could be the third night. And that would be kind of the open ended that would elicit feedback around elementary, busing, you know, who knows what the stakeholder issues might be. So I think that would be doable. So I think I'm sorry, I think we have a lot of clarifying questions, but I'm gonna throw one out. So when we're talking about these community stakeholders, and it sounds like a lot of the community stakeholders that were mentioned are ones that potentially work with our students, I'm thinking specifically maybe in senior projects and stuff, would they be targeted then for like the specific group questions of like, you know, high school climate and high school academics, because I don't know how much they may, you know, have input in like middle school transition, like their knowledge may be best in that upper limits, you know, upper classes question. Okay. And then potentially, you know, I'm thinking like if we were to involve the community or the town, you know, or like if you've got like the library or the rec department, like they may be ones that would be more directed at like those middle, the middle school group, just trying to think about where they may fit in better for, you know, the kind of the depth of their feedback. Okay, good point. What you're saying is not everyone's gonna have a lot of even thought about some of these topics, may never have had children in the school or they may have children in the school. Okay. Other thoughts as we move forward here. Okay. Well, did we get all the right stakeholder groups? Do we have them in mind? What are the six that I presented? I'm gonna separate, actually that makes seven. I'm gonna separate teachers from staff, students. I'm gonna separate three different levels of students. So elementary, middle, and high school. I think we decided, and maybe I was just pushing it this way, that business leaders were gonna be in a separate forum from nonprofit. Did we make that decision? Are we comfortable with that decision? That decision, but after you mentioned what you mentioned, I was leaning back that way. I don't know about the other folks. Show me with thumbs, if you support having a separate forum from business leaders and a separate forum for nonprofit community leaders. Thumbs on, do you support that or not? No, we don't. Some do, some don't. All right, there's enough interference here. Let's talk a little bit more about how we can come to consensus. How should we handle this, given that we don't have unanimity here? I'd be curious why folks didn't wanna have them separate. Maybe I'm just being silly. I think just, I don't have a really great, I didn't intend to discuss, I intended just to vote. But I think I just tend to be, most of the time a lump or rather than a splitter. So, there. I don't know that. I feel like we're like, it might just be getting too split and complicated if we don't clump people together a little bit. That's all. Okay. How can we call this? I was, you know, a flat thumb, basically because I don't necessarily feel that business leaders have, are really intrinsically gonna represent different interests than nonprofit leaders. And so, and I just, yes. And I think a number of business leaders in town are parents that there's, it's a small enough town that I don't think anyone's gonna feel left out. Okay. I'm just watching the pendulum swing a little bit. Now's your time to influence. Well, I was again, kind of the same topic that I've mentioned before is, are we gonna get the participation? The more focus group you make, the more people we're gonna have to be involved. So, if we're looking for six business leaders and six nonprofit leaders in a small town that we have, are we gonna be able to find them? We're gonna have them be participating in it. So. All right, but let me. Maybe back. That's an excellent point, Brian. Let me just clarify. The business leaders would be from all three communities and likely even outside of your three communities. Because I think about GW Plastics, not in your community, but that would be a stakeholder I would see. VTC certainly is. I don't know about the other two companies that were identified. Are those in your three? Vermont Calfland is another one. Okay. It's helpful. All right. Well, can we live with lumping together? Non-profit and business leaders? Thumbs? Lumpers? Okay, we got it. Are there any other stakeholder groups that we should be looking at that are not identified by the ones that we've just talked about? I like the idea that Lane brought up of alumni. And especially fairly recent alumni, I think they could be really helpful voices in this. Okay. Where do you see your religious leaders coming into this? Would you see them as just community members? Would you see them in a separate group? Come in under no. Could. And actually it's non-profit community. So yes, they could. Right. The alumni, I think you could lump in. Oh, but did we decide to lump in all the, no, we didn't lump the students together. So I would lump the alumni in with the high schoolers. In with the high school students? Yeah. Because I think they're gonna be hopefully close enough in age that. Well, what are you looking for for a limit on your alumni? You know, are you looking at the college age kids or are you, I mean, there's some of us that are, you know, 30 years out on our alumni. Okay. Lane, do you have a vision of who fits this? Probably not as clearly as the board members do. I would say we want them closer in than 30 years ago because we're looking at the outcomes that we've had over the, you know, over the more recent changes. Because that we've taken place, I think. I mean, I think if we're looking at a focus group of six to eight people, we easily have alumni who are, you know, 22 to 26 or 20 to 26 right now around Randolph. There, so many of them are back because of COVID. It would be easy to pick their brains. And I think they have a lot to say. I mean, they, they realized what they had and what they didn't have when they got to college or wherever else they went, whether it's a job or this or that. I mean, I think they're probably our best resource as far as what is good and not good about the high school. I mean, I really do. And they're also, especially the ones that are either directly in college or completed their first year are usually the most valuable. Most of the schools that I was at, we used to actually bring them back after a year. They'd set up, they'd have a panel and have a discussion with their teachers about, you know, where their strengths were or their weaknesses were based upon the things that they were trying to pursue. And that was incredibly valuable. So even after this process is over, I may still tap into those folks that we engage them for that process. Okay. So we're talking about graduates within the last eight or 10 years. Okay. Go ahead, Ashley. I agree with what Laura said in that right now I do think they're, I'm really quite amazed that all of the recent grads that I'm seeing around. And I really do think I would love to know were they prepared when they got to college? You know, were they prepared when they entered the workforce? What did they excel at? And what was their deficiencies? You know, they might have been on a college track in the high school, but not prepared at all for the level of homework they had in college. I really think we could learn a lot. And that's a group that I think we should, I don't know how you pick who you start with, but I feel like that could actually change this discussion, modify what we think hearing from that. Great idea. Lane, I think you have a raise coming. Good, good, good idea. I'd just be happy to get us through the year. Okay. So when we talk about alumni, I think it would be good to have some of the, you know, ones that went to college, maybe some that went straight to work, and then some that have graduated college and are in the workforce to kind of get the range of, you know, were they prepared for work? Were they prepared for college? And then even after college, you know, what they're doing and how it has affected them. Okay. And one of the thoughts that's always been in the back of my head and one of the concerns, see if I can state this cognitively tonight, is this idea, the alumni that would be really beneficial as well are those that changed midstream, you know, started off at college under one major and did something else or got through a degree, realized it wasn't what they wanted to do and did something else. And identify, you know, yeah, you know, you prepared really well in high school. It looks like you had the skills to be successful in your first choice, but more importantly, when you decided to transition, did you have the skills to pursue a second choice? If that makes sense, because I always worry that sometimes we get the kids a little bit too specific in one pathway so that if that pathway fails or they decide down the line, it's not what they want, they can't change without going back to a more remedial education to get there. But, okay. And again, the design team would help us shape questions in that vein. All right, so we now have an alumni stakeholder group. All right, any other stakeholder groups that we've missed that we should be reaching out to? Okay. Well, let's take a look at the agenda and see how we're doing. You see at the 750 time in the agenda, I've presented just some sample questions and we've already talked about the stop-start continue. I took one of your questions, question two from your mission. Do students have the knowledge, skills and tools they need to prepare for the next stages of their lives? Although I think earlier tonight we said we were gonna stay away from your end statements. You still feel that you're okay in that area and you wanna go in a different direction? Because if so, I'm gonna delete those. Question two and three are from your mission. So if you took those sample question two and three out, are you saying that we would instead substitute our some of our strategic planning sort of initiative questions instead? Yes, yeah, your goals, your board goals, yeah. I think that's what we agreed we do, right? I think so. All right. You did a SOAR analysis, the strengths opportunities, aspirations and results. Would you want to, would you want your stakeholders to do that as well? Would you wanna hear their opinions on that SOAR analysis? I wonder if that would be, I mean, it would be interesting to see if they came up with the same things we did, but it seems like we would be calling into question those three goals that we came up with from our work. But again, I felt uncomfortable making those coming up with those three things because I didn't feel like we, I was like out of my perspective, which is very limited. So in a way, I would kind of like to see that, to see if people would have come up with the same things, but I don't know, I don't know in the process, in this process, that's, I don't know if that's a worthwhile use of time, I guess. I'm wondering if we wouldn't come up with many of the same type of reflections when we have this question, what should the school stop, start or continue doing? That seems to me equally open-ended and sort of gives the gamut of both positive and constructive feedback. Okay. All right. The rest of you feel that way as well? All right, good. All right, then let's turn to, and Lane, I'm gonna have to rely on you again. If you would beam up the Addison Central School District Strategic Plan. I think I said it to all of you as well, just as a model of a couple of things in that that I'd like to hear your feedback about. So Lane, if you could beam that up for us, and that would have been in the packet of the material that I sent to you on Sunday. And I sent that from church, by the way, I was in church when I did that. All right, go through number of different pages, keep going. Okay, slow down a little bit more, a little, keep going. Yep, keep going, all right there. All right, back up a little bit. Those three foundational goals could be, those could be your school board goals. Although those are a bit more broad. Yeah, probably not. So a way to think about this is they talk about systems about community and Lane, what's number one, educational success. Educational success, yep. Yep, all right, keep going through the slides. All right, and each, stop this for a minute. I like that graph. Under educational success, they start getting into learning outcomes. And here might be an area for you to think about, how would you measure? Cause any of these goals you put out from a strategic direction, there need to be milestones. And in N's jargon from policy governance, you wanna know how you're monitoring the progress of your goals. And so this is one way to do that. And I'm not saying that their goals are what you should be looking at. I'm just looking at a format for it's kind of planning with the end in mind, a little cubby focus here. We need to figure out what the strategic plan is gonna look like and how we're going to present it to the community so they know what the school is about, what progress they're making. And this yearly goal accomplishment is one of the ways to do that. What do folks think about a direction like this? Well, I mean, when I look at this, it's not really measuring the success of the goals. It's really just a timeline. So you're showing, I mean, when they're gonna accomplish these things or am I missing something? No, you're right. You know, that's, yeah, that's not, to me, I mean, that's showing that you're progressing, but it's not really showing that you're attaining anything. Exactly right. But what would you all, do you have any vision for what you'd like your final document to look like? What is, I guess my, I'm not wowed by fancy things like this, except if they're good for promotion or something like that. Like, who's the audience for this? It seems to me, so much of this could be conveyed in a lower tech fashion. So I'm just wondering, you know, who is it intended for? A broad variety of constituent groups. It could be teachers, internals, it could be your teachers and staff, obviously parents and your business community. Oh, Lane, spend, yes, good for you. I didn't see this. So this is what you're using now? Yeah. Oh, I like it. Is this on your website? No, this is, it was kind of interesting coming into the district. There was a lot of just gentle work and cleanup that kind of needed to be done. And so these were the goals that, based on the end that we had been working on, as a cabinet and as a team, but they were never really codified as clearly as this. They were in a gigantic ends report, which was probably a little bit complex and verbose for folks. So this was a kind of simplify, you know, what we were really working on. And does the board say this? They got it for the first time at their October meeting as a kind of a preamble. This is data from a year or two ago because we weren't able to collect data last year because we didn't have us back and whatnot. So we will be stating the data for their November meeting. I love this. So I agree. This is the type of format that I'm used to working with with a strategic plan. I don't think that we need to create a report around this, but something more, because my understanding is we're gonna hold, we being the board are gonna hold Lane and his team accountable. And this is a nice, quick overview of the goal, the action steps taken and the timeline with that. So to me, I would prefer something more like this. And then if this needs to be enhanced for a publicity piece of some sort, just to thank people for their time, let folks know what the goals are. I feel like we could create that additionally, but this to me is a nice working document. I agree, I like it a lot. And I also wanna say, again, just with my experience with strategic planning, I mean, it is a roadmap, but it has to be dynamic because think about where we are today, dealing, school is completely different. Everything that we think we want to have happen now with COVID, really, it's not even, we're not even talking about that right now. So I think that this is a nice idea for a roadmap, certainly something we should do for accountability, but with the understanding that it may change. Okay, so then feedback that's coming in from these feedback groups could help to inform what you already have in place. Does that concept work for you all? Yeah. Okay, beautiful. Lane, would you send me that please? Yeah, okay. All right, so I think we've worked through our agenda. The only thing that I just wanna make sure that we all have the kind of the same mission in mind as you go forward is the next steps of the process and that is soliciting volunteer feet, volunteer participation from these stakeholder groups. And I think that, I think I need to kind of collect the thoughts of what I've heard you all say this evening to turn that around and send it back to you all with a direction on the kinds of questions as you're seeking volunteers, so that you're all coming from the same page of music, so to say, that Lane and the cabinet are asking people with the same set of assumptions that you're asking people to participate. And I'll include with that in the invitation what the roles, expectations and time constraints are and if you look at the last page of the VSBA proposal, you'll see that it identifies what the design team members, what the configuration is. We did separate middle and high school parents, what the expectations for those individuals are and the same for the feedback groups, what their roles are and what their expectations are for participation. I'm wondering as I look at the timeframe in November, identify individuals to serve on the design team and feedback groups happens in November. In December, I'd like to meet with the design team to begin to shape the planning process. Do you think that's too soon? Do you think December is an okay time for me to meet with the design team? Do you have enough time to solicit the members of the design team and meet as a board to make a final decision? Do you meet once a month as a board? And when in November will you be meeting? November 12th, I believe. Let me double-check. It's the 9th. Pretty short turnaround. Well, here we are, the 26th of October. Is that adequate time for you to create the 13 member? Well, no, not to create the 13 member, to be able to see who's interested in being a member of the design team and then come to your November 9th school board meeting and make a decision to empower the design team to work on this process? I have my next cabinet meeting next week. So, you know, and our, again, sounded like we had split this up a little bit that the board would work on some components. I would work on teachers and the admin. I'm happy to have them work on more than that, if need be. So I would at least have names and probably in potential invites out to see who is interested. And I could present, you know, the categories that are ours for the board that night and say, hey, these are the folks that have responded that were identified and are interested in how the board kind of vote them in. Lane, when's your cabinet meeting again? It's a week from tomorrow. The date is? Wednesday, yeah, it will be in November. Hold on, November 4th. Okay. All right, so the 9th is the board meeting. Well, that timeframe will be tight, but that could work. Yeah, how do board members feel about shaking the bushes for these members of the design team between now and November 9th? I feel fine about it, but I think that we could end up either shaking too hard or not hard enough, depending on whether we coordinate our efforts. Yeah, I think that's the challenge is, you know, to talk, frankly, and amongst ourselves to find, you know, a handful. So we need something like five people that we would be willing to ask to participate, you know? So, you know, it would have to happen like tonight, I think, because we're not gonna get together before the 9th, otherwise. So we would be looking for school board member or community member or nonprofit leader. Lane, are you gonna do the parents or do you want us to do the parents? Whatever you're most comfortable with, I know the principals will have good ideas on who folks that would have valuable input would be in terms of like parents. Winston, I apologize, I cut you off. No, no, no, no. And then the high school student. Yeah. With this, so most of this is falling on you. So with a school board, we've got school board member and a community member or nonprofit leader. And a business leader. And a business leader. So we have three people we need to come up with as a board and you've got all of us. Yeah, but I've got a big cabinet that connect with, I mean, between us, we connect with everybody in the community. So it'll be an easier task for us. Rachel, you're trying to get a word in edgewise here. I'm just thinking that there are certain parents who are more connected to the school administrators. And so I worry that we might end up with a kind of skewed design group if the principals are choosing those people. That doesn't mean it's the wrong thing to do. It's just, I'm just voicing a thought that I had. Well, then here's a way to balance that. School board members bring a list of folks that you connect with as well and compare that to the list that the principals create. And then the board makes that decision on November 9th at the board meeting. So there'll be some duplication here, but it will be a bit more diverse, maybe group or maybe not. Yeah, I think it would be, I agree with Rachel. I think it would be nice to have some people who are not necessarily the ones who are always always the loud ones interacting with the school officials. All right, and remember, we separated middle school student from high school student, excuse me, that's parent. We separated the middle and high school parents. So we're looking, so that makes that 14. We did? We did. We'll come back together. Do we really want an odd number? That would be my question there. We have an even numbered board. It makes a consensus, Rachel. Yeah. Get along or, or else. There's a little bag in looking for, right? Those are good to reference. I think 14's fine. Yeah, I can work with that. And again, we're making consensus decisions, so it's not a hard and fast, we gotta follow the law, we either do or we don't. All right. So we're looking for- Okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Ashley. I'm just trying to do, so I understand. So then between now and our next meeting on November 9th, we are gonna step forward each of us. And do you want, Laura, all of us to bring forth our ideas, we'll review those and pick from that idea to then invite to that meeting, or are we gonna do that now? I don't know. I don't, and it's, you know, it'll be awkward to do it in open meeting as well, you know, because we're talking about individuals and I, you know, I don't think we can really talk, frankly, about, you know, personalities and characteristics and things like that. I can do executive session and then when you come out of executive session after you've decided on the 13, just do your vote. I mean, that would be helpful. I mean, I think if we each thought of one or two people that we think would be likely to be interested in participating and would really add something to the group, maybe then we could come up with a good team. I don't know, does that make sense? But are we putting feelers out? I mean, are we saying to these people, would you be interested, not actually inviting you? Yeah. So we're not just bringing a list of names, but we're actually soliciting interests. Right, but you need to be very specific for them to understand that they're not in yet, that they're on a list and we're going to try to have as diverse a group as possible. I think it would be helpful to do some brainstorming on people we might ask as far as the board section. I think that might be helpful to do together tonight. So that we have kind of a coherent plan moving forward. So we can approach some people. Yeah, that makes sense. And so because this is what's going to happen for me, I'm going to be like, okay, I'm going to do this and then I'm going to go to work and I'm going to come with nothing. And so if everybody does that, we're no better off. So it looks like we're going to end a little bit early. Maybe we have a brief executive session and just talk for a few minutes about the way we're going to go about this in a more efficient way. Yeah. And sort of handout assignments. That works, okay. So let me just review what we've done tonight. I believe we've agreed to move forward with a comprehensive strategic planning process that is that's guided by a design team of 14 members. And you're going to have a preliminary discussion on who possible individuals might be that fits those roles. Lane's going to do a similar kind of eliciting ideas and feedback from the cabinet. Board members tonight will shape how they're going to go out and invite individuals. Those names are going to come to the board on November 9th as to individuals that would be agreeable to serve on the design team. Would you like me at your November 9th meeting? Would that be helpful or not? What are you thinking here? I don't think it's necessary unless someone else has different idea. Okay. Then after the November 9th meeting, I'll get a list of individuals, their names, their roles, their phone number and email address. I will then set up a meeting with them in December. That will give them adequate time to prepare for that meeting. And I'll begin to send them out information between November 9th and say, they'll get it before Thanksgiving. I'll meet with the design team a second time in January, actually two more times in January to finalize the process. And then in either late January, early February, we'll start having forums. We've got about nine or 10 different forum groups now. Because of the way that we've split those out. So I'll change what this looks like. We've agreed on, I think at least three probes. One is gonna be a stop-start continue. Second one's gonna be around high school and academics and climate. And the third one's gonna be around middle school. Does that seem to capture the feedback that then will be helpful for the board to begin to shape that strategic plan? Okay, thumbs? All right. Just a quick question. About how much time do you think a design team member will need to commit to be an active member of that team? Designed, okay. It will be eight meetings from January, excuse me, from December through May. So one meeting a month and a couple of months, there'll be maybe a couple of meetings. Each meeting, generally not more than two hours. There might be some work outside of the meeting. But I will frame out a process that tells them exactly how many meetings that they're committing to and the month that those meetings are in. They'll all likely they're all gonna be virtual meetings. So you can be anywhere in the world and still participate. The number of meetings... They don't tend to be part of the feedback forum then. Design, no, they do not. In fact, it's better if they're not because we wanna have other voices. So your design team will have eight meetings. Your forum participants will have three meetings. And those meetings will be about an hour to maybe an hour and 10. So they're committing to really three plus hours. Your design team is committing to probably 16 hours. And in the process, we'll bring that back to the school board for feedback as the evolving plan emerges. We'll bring it to the cabinet for feedback as it evolves. And then finally in May, bring that back to the school board for adoption. And then you'll see on the next page, I strongly encourage the cabinet then to have a summer retreat around the annual work plan based on what the strategic plan provides. And then follow up quarterly school board presentations, which really could be your ends. Those could be your ends presentations to the board. And then the spring of 2022, identify your progress from year one and outcomes to the school board. It's critical that you don't just create a plan and just set it on the shelf. It needs to be a viable working plan that you refer to often. So I think that's- Can I just ask one question to make sure? So we finally have this ends plan that we saw last month in October. We're gonna just add that plan into what we do with this design group, right? I think as I need to look at that to see how that's gonna play, but I think I can develop a lot of the focus feedback questions around your ends document. And then people are contributing to something you have already rather than kind of invent something new because you've got a good direction there. I just need to see it. I think that will help us- Well, I think that Lane has already put together. He's kind of already put some benchmarks together. He said, this is where we're gonna be. This is where we are now. I mean, we need to kind of build on that. We're finally there. And now we need to kind of have some time to implement because we finally have something that we can work from. Exactly right. You see, I don't think your stakeholders even know about that. So that will be, what it does is the benefit of this is you share more broadly the direction that you're going in and you get feedback on that direction. Okay. The last thing that I haven't been as specific about as you begin to talk to your community members likely some of the individuals that you talk to to invite them to consider being on the design team not all of them will but the ones that don't can be your feedback group of participants. So the more the merrier because we're gonna need a lot of folks and we're talking in the same stakeholder groups for the design team that we're also having the focus feedback groups on. So don't turn anyone away is what I'm saying and let them know that we would encourage their participation on either the design team or the feedback groups. Okay. All right. Well, as I don't know if you ever used to listen to the click and clack NPR radio show but we've wasted a perfectly good two hours of your time tonight and we hope you tune in again soon. So with that, we'll leave it to your executive session but if you decide to hire the VSBA to facilitate this process we'll need a little bit of remuneration. And I know that Susan talked to you about a $7,000 fee. I think my document says 6,800 6,800 was last year's amount that I would be working for you through the Vermont School Boards Association. And Susan, if you decide to move forward your contract would be through the VSBA in the amount of $7,000. And that covers all of my time, all of VSBA's time. I think we have any travel, the printing we've needed if you have print documents those would come through your central office. So that's a comprehensive amount and I'll leave that to you to decide if you'd like to move forward on that aspect. Any final questions, thoughts or issues that you have for me tonight? One thing I forgot to share with you early on is my wife Valerie Goodrich was a 25 year teacher in your elementary schools and she retired three years ago and she may have been the teacher of some of your children. So Anne, she had one of your children, didn't she? Yeah, I thought that was so. So I shared with her that I might be doing work with her old district and she smiled. So that's the end of the story. So thank you very much. I'm gonna sign off and let you do your executive session planning. And I look forward to hearing from you on November 9th. Don't be bashful about sending me an email. If you have additional questions because we've talked about a lot of stuff this evening and I'm here at your service to do whatever needs to be done. So with that, nice to see you all tonight and thank you for sharing those wonderful stories. Rachel, you'll have to find out the things that people told about themselves that were quite unique. I'm sorry that you didn't get a chance to do that. With that, have a good evening and take care. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. My suggestions that we follow proper protocol is that one of you moves to go to executive session. I sent the link by email for executive session a little while ago. And then after that motion has been made, we move over into executive session just because if we're talking about people I'm gonna make sure that there's nobody looking in on this meeting. I make a motion we go to executive session. I second. So we're leaving and going? Yeah. Okay. And so it should be in your email box. We got everybody, almost everybody. One more. There we go, we got everybody. No, we're missing Laura. Nope. Are we? No, she's under, oh yeah, I guess you're right. Oh, that's because we got the camera roll and that's why that's the 10. I was thinking we should have nine. So do I have a motion to approve the $7,000 to cover the VSBA facilitation of our strategic planning? So moved. Second. All those in favor please say aye or raise your hands or something. Aye. Okay, any opposed? No. All right, great. Is there anything else we need to talk about? Thank you everybody. We even got done early. That's like never happens with us. So thank you all. Have a good evening. Bye. Bye.