 meeting at 6.31, you have the rights very long-term, so that's for the vision's sake. Of course, school directors. First order of business in public comments, no one in the room, anyone on Zoom? We're going to have to rely on your screen. I'm sorry. Hey Scott, are you just, I just want to know, are you in a, is here on an iPhone? Are you traveling? Should we not call on you? I am traveling. I should be there about 10 minutes. Hey, thanks. Second order of business, consent agenda. We have some co-curricular additions. We need to take out the resignation, which is like a possible resignation, so take that out. Okay, so we will have the co-curricular additions to the tract, the resignation, say hi to Chris. I moved the consent agenda minus the resignation. No trigger? Second. I just want to note a couple of typos in this letter. One is a total net, which is everything is k, except for one number, and then there's an extra capitalized k. That's my name is on it, but I care. And I'm specifically going to lie in as a blue. We didn't even call, we didn't even call it one out. We will fix that, Jim. We're going to sign it. Thank you. Is that the letter, the R-Besser letter? Yes, yeah. I think those are minor enough that we don't need to re-elect them. All those in favor? Bye. Bye. Any opposed? Great. Consent agenda moves forward. We also have a couple other things we want to add to the agenda. The equity committee, we'd like to, before and after their choice for someone to do an equity audit, because they've been working very hard to interview folks, and we've been several bids on our little print equity audit. And also we need a quick executive session to update on negotiations, which will hopefully be quick and not going to finish fine. It's a board learning focus. Central Vermont Career Center presentation with Jody. I assume Jody's a lot of them don't be ever on screen, but. There's Jody. And most of the board members have their computers up. Just looking at yours. Yeah, that's fine. I'm here. Just because we didn't have a projector in here, I shared the presentation with all the board members, and I will share it on my Zoom screen. I'm sorry, everybody sees it. And let me get that up for you, Jody. No problem. Thank you. This is actually the presentation that we used this week for our curriculum and instruction review. So we have the Southern Regional Education Board tech centers that work with us this week. And on Tuesday they showed up and interviewed a bunch of staff and students today with a team from a couple of sending schools and some popular Matt McLean joined us as one of our team members. And he was here five years ago when we did this process before. So thank you for letting him be a part of that. And they observed our program today. And in the four hours that we have kids, they've had 55 observations. So lots of great data to look at. So really exciting. But this presentation was really set up for them. So it has a lot of information that I'm probably not going to spend a lot of time on for you, just because it's sort of redundant and information that you already know. And so one of the things that I had talked about during the budget presentation is that one of the board's next steps for the Central Vermont Career Center School District. And thank you for giving us Jill, who continues to be our board chair, newly elected again. Thank you. We have this tagline education that works, but we don't have much of a mission statement. We don't have one that we've adopted as a district. You can move to the next slide, Libby. And when I did some research to try to find that for the folks at the Curriculum and Instruction Review Team, I found on the next slide the 2018-2019 draft that was done before I arrived at the Central Vermont Career Center. And as far as I can tell, it wasn't approved by anyone. It was just drafted. And then I think what might have happened is they jumped into this process at the Career Center where they were looking at re-envisioning and potentially moving and did a little study around that to see is our space adequate for the programming that we really need to offer, which it's not, and what ways can we remedy that. And then also on the governance mission to start this, the Central Vermont Career Center School District, which has obviously happened. So I think this got left behind in all of that work. And so it's something that my board is going to probably be taking up when they have their retreat in June, which I'm excited to be a part of that discussion and to see where that goes. On the next slide is the portrait of a graduate that the teachers here did again before I got here. And you'll see that a lot of the skills here are the transferable skills or work habits that all of our sending schools are working towards. And then there's also those academic and technical proficiencies. And so this was developed before I got here. And then the next three slides are some work that the faculty and staff did in identifying the values that they have, but also the values that they believe that Central Vermont Career Center instills in our students. And so those are integrity, respect, and responsibility. And in the process that we use with Brene Brown's work Dare to Lead, we brought out what does that look like. And so these wordles are basically how my staff and some students see these values and what they look like, what we might see in our students and staff when they're living by these values. If you move on, this was just a slide to let everyone know on the team who are my instructors, who are the folks that they're going to meet this week when they were here. The next two slides are from the annual report. And hopefully you had an opportunity to see that. We dropped off a bunch at Montpelier High School and also at the town clerk's office. And we have plenty here. So if you want one, we can get you one. I can also probably before this meeting, before I'm done here in this meeting, I can share the link to our virtual annual report for you as well. So that talks about all the programs we have, which are great. And some of the data that you saw in a different format in our budget presentation in the fall. Around enrollment, how many students are coming from what schools. So when we, the fall semester, we had 35. We have lost a few students over the year. And I don't know which Sunday schools are coming from. So I don't have the most up to date data. I'm hoping you still have around 35 students with us. The next slide was definitely one that was in the budget presentation. And so I won't repeat that. But if you have, because you have access to it, if you have any questions and you want to go back to a slide later, we'll certainly do that. I just don't want to take up too much of your valuable time. The next slide I really like, I don't think that we had a lot of opportunity to talk about that in the fall. And it's one of the areas that I feel people know the least about. And so I probably spoke to the fact that all of our students either earn industry recognized credentials or college credits in their programs. And in some programs, they earn both. And this piece of our annual report really breaks down, which they get, what are the things they get out of each program. And so it's really exciting to take a look at Baking and Culinary Arts and see that they're getting three credits out of White Mountain Community College. And they are getting the tier two IRC of Thursday. Or that our paramedicine program, which is our EMS two, those students are getting 24 credits from VTC, paramedicine one, paramedicine two, and they'll have nine credits left to get that certification. And that's a summer that's coming up. So it's really exciting to see how many credits that students can earn and just how much they can accomplish while they're here. Some of our students in plumbing and heating or in electrical, for example, will get their level one apprenticeship license when they, when they sit for those exams this spring. And they'll be able to be co-op students next year and work in a job four days a week earning like so not quite full time, but darn close to it as a senior in high school. And if they want taking those classes at night to get the next level of apprenticeship and take that next level test. And a lot of the, our industry partners will help pay for that for them. It's a great opportunity for students across our region. On the next slide is directly from the budget slide show that I did, I think, and I edited a little bit just letting people know that there are proficiency documents for the state of Vermont for CTE. So when you're looking at a program, any student, whether they're in my automotive program or another automotive program, we have the same standards and they're all linked in that piece. And so if you have that slide show, you get to click on that and find that site online and you can look at any of those. And we're all doing that work. And I think the next, the teachers across the state developed those proficiencies together, looking at some national standards. And their next step as they work together, they get to have professional development twice a year. So once in the fall and once in the spring. So all the building trades teachers get together, the construction trades get together once in the fall and once in the spring across the state and work on this stuff. And so they've been aligning their programs to these proficiencies. And the next step is building rubrics for these standards. The next slide is something it's been around for a little while since 2019. And this is when we had credits before proficiencies were in some of our schools. This is what students earn when they're in our programs. So if they are proficient in our programs, then they have demonstrated the proficiencies for courses in English, math, science, art, social studies, and some additional credits and we are or proficiencies. I know that last year we this is an old document because last year we also added health to medical professions because of the college credits they get not class. We are a full day program even though we're only four hours a day because we meet the 1200 minutes a week requirement for full day. Other CTE centers have two hour programs each day or so you might have kids going two hours in the morning to a program and different kids coming in the afternoon for a two hour program. And then their programs tend to be two years to get in the same amount of learning that our students get in one year. So we are called a full day center even though we're not yet full day as far as students are being on campus. It talks a little bit about the new governance model and how this is our first year as a new district where TechEd district 004 the fourth one in the state. We did some training with the folks in the next slide that are here with us this week from SREB and we did our teams of teachers developed wildly important goals. And so we had a goal for the career pathways they were collecting and analyzing some data regarding program viability and program needs and our board actually acted on that last night. Some of the data they collected and some that we collected in our comprehensive local needs assessment last year. So we are closing our natural resources program for next year and I have submitted the request to open a welding program for next year. So those those are some of our next steps based on that data that that team prepared. They've moved on to trying to figure out how to get more information from our alumni something that we heard across the boards and I think yours was one of them asking from do we have data beyond that six month range about our former students and where they are now. And so that's what the career pathways team has taken on now. Our instruction team has a goal around work keys. Work keys is an assessment. It's actually three assessments in math reading and graphic literacy that students in CTE centers across the state. Was there a question? Okay. So I'll keep going. I'm going to roll like through all this stuff. I know it's a lot of information and then I'll I'll finally be quiet until you ask me a question that I need to. But we do the three assessments in the fall and the spring for work keys. I do share that data with our sending schools our high schools. And our we saw too many of our students go backwards last year. And so we set a goal to improve every student's score at least one of their testing scores this year and utilizing the curriculum. And so we're hopeful that the curriculum was helpful in doing that. And then our student leadership team has been working to create opportunities for student voice and students have taken on some ownership in our quarter awards assemblies. And and they also created a program swap day where they had the opportunity to try out a different program, which was a lot of fun in January. Now the next slide, Libby. Thank you. I did talk about when I was in Montpelier in December about our new EMS2 where students are getting those 24 credits and doing that per medicine work with BTC and how we've added the certified clinical medical assistant and phlebotomy to our MedPro program this year, which is great. And we're working on building a pathway to get students into a nursing at BTC or the Vermont State University System sooner so that they can start on that pathway before they graduate from high school. And our phlebotomy kids have been doing live draws. And if you're wanting to volunteer, I'm sure they're still looking for some volunteers to come in and and they can practice. Mia looks really interested. Yeah, they have to do 30 draws before they can sit for the exam for that certification. The support guide that's first left. We are also excited about our new program design and fabrication. We were only able to get two students in it this year, which has actually been wonderful in allowing our new instructor to really build this program. It started from nothing with the support of the Vermont Granite Museum and the Granite Association. And the students have been carving granite in the last two weeks, which is really exciting. Tomorrow and Friday, they're going to be doing some bronze casting. They worked with the blacksmith out in Marshfield and made some of their own tools. And they have been visiting a bunch of different stone shreds in Berry. They've worked with some of the best stone artists, marble, slate, et cetera across the state. They've worked with VTC to do some 2D and 3D design. And it's just been a really exciting thing to watch come into play. And I know our team was really excited to see that program today when they visited. I already talked about the added credits in baking and culinary when we looked at that sheet of credits in tier two IRCs. One of the things I'm super excited about is we have been working to get an equity scholar in residence. It's a program that Washington Central Unified Union School District has. That's on the next slide. And they work with the Institute for Libertory Innovation and basically the equity scholar, if they're full-time in your schools or district, they come in about three days a week and work with staff and students and get to know everyone. And then they're a resource for when something happens. When there's a hard conversation, when there's an issue, they can also help us at the CTE to figure out how do we attract and keep students who are of non-traditional gender in our programs. And so that's some of the work that we're going to focus a little more on in the months to come. And we were able to hire with them. I will not employ this person, the Libertory Innovation Institute does. So I pay them and they employ them. So I don't supervise them. They come in as a resource to us and they don't have to answer to me. So I think there's some value in that piece as far as them being able to support across the board, but also know that we have this relationship that allows them to go back and like process with the Institute folks and then come back with some resources that are going to help us move forward. So we're excited about that. We hired a person who's actually on the Harvard board. His name is Life and he's been working with the Tarrant Institute at UBM and he's going to come join us starting next month, a day a week until he can start full time. And then next year he'll be with us full time. So we're excited about the work that we're going to do with an equity scholar and resident next year. We have been working to try to figure out how to get a full day with academics. We have decided to take phase one on next year and embed English and STEM into so on academic teachers into our current program, keep our program scheduled for next year and then go into that full day the following year. We were struggling to find qualified candidates. I'm sure it's not a surprise across all our schools. There are positions that are unfilled and we were concerned that we wouldn't be able to do this successfully and it wouldn't benefit everyone's students including yours if we didn't do that. We continue to look at additional programming and the potential for a new building or new spaces for our programs. For instance, the welding program is likely going to be a collaboration with a local industry in Berry and we'll be using their space for our workshop and our space for the classroom. I touched on the collaboration towards the pathways in health sciences. I've also been supporting work in advanced manufacturing. I think that our welding program, once we get that off the ground and the design and fab fit into this, but the advanced manufacturing one is quite complicated and involves many other centers, especially River Valley. It's just some of the work that I've been involved in and trying to partner with sending schools and post-secondary institutions to get pathways for students to get to an associate's degree upon graduation from high school. Thank you. Great, thanks Jody. It's super helpful and informative. Questions for Jody about the presentation or otherwise? Yeah. Jody, yeah, thank you for that and I'm a huge fan of the career center and I think I've mentioned before, but just it's really exciting to see what you're doing with the students and to see all the diversity of programming that you have. And my question is about, well two questions. One is about the decision to stay half-day program. It makes sense given the challenges that you're facing and I'm curious to know what the downsides are to this and if there's anything that our students are missing out on? I feel like one of the biggest downsides for students is that they go to your school, they get on a bus, they come to my facility, they access a program that most of them are really happy and excited to be a part of and engaged in and then they get back on a bus, go back to your school and hopefully and they're engaged in a class there that may or may not be at the same level and it's at the end of the day which is the hardest time traditionally for a student to stay focused and if it's a class that they don't enjoy or aren't as engaged in as much, it makes it really hard for them and hard for the teacher, for them to transition back. And so that's one of the things that I'd like to see less of that especially the time in between of having to transition from one space to another and then focus on whatever that academic subject is, I think that's hard and think about it for some of our other sending schools for students who go to Cabot or who go to Harwood, it's even further distance that they have to go and to access some of their coursework that they still need. So if we have a central location where they're able to come here and do all of that, that's great. I've seen some data from some of our sending schools that our students, even though they have classes at their sending school are not going back to. And for some of our students that means that the semester they get pulled out of our program because they have to take more classes at their sending school to make sure that they're going to be able to graduate on time, which proficiency was supposed to help us to sort through and kind of take away those, everyone should graduate in four years, some could graduate in three, some could graduate in more, but we're still on a four-year program across all our schools. And there's still that sort of expectation. And it pains me to see that there are ways that kids are slipping through the cracks and not getting what they need. And so I feel like that's what motivates me the most in wanting to have kids here for the full day academically. I also think that we could make the academics meet like really collaborate with our program teachers so that it's similar with the work that the kids are doing in program relates to what they're doing in their math class or what they're doing in their social studies class to some degree, while still also allowing them to meet the standards. I think too one of the things that we realized especially late yesterday, as I'm getting the data from sending schools about what classes of the students that were accepted first round need, there were a lot more students who needed physical education than I had anticipated in this round. And so that's one of the things that we're really going to need to think about as we move forward next year and really plan how to meet everyone's needs is we don't know until now in March our first set of accepted students what they need. And so then we're like trying to figure out how do we meet that need? Do we have the right teachers in place for that? Do we have some folks who maybe could get those credentials? Can we partner with our sending schools? I mean, Spalding's right next door. Is there a way that we can work with them if we need a little extra than what we have what we thought we would need? So there were a few surprises and I think that could happen every year because the students coming in at least for a while until we settle into a rhythm with all their sending schools and we have counselors on board who know if this student is likely to head towards CBCC, then we need to make sure that we get these base courses out of the way first. If we can do that, there's some things that we're still trying to problem solve. Driver's Ed is a big one. Yeah, special education services is another big one. So we have we there's some things that we just have to figure out together that we've been we've been having some good conversations around. And Jodi, you were saying you're trying you have an open position for special ed. You just haven't been able to fill it. Correct. We posted as anticipated and we're going to actually take that off and keep it open and try to hire so that we can hire someone who can come in and get familiar with our programs and our students and knows how to support them when we're able to do the full day next year. So I think this additional year of planning while I wish we didn't need to take an additional year, I feel like it's it's going to give us the opportunity to get what we really do need in place for all our students to be successful. So like Libby said, do we have a Driver Ed teacher here that was not in my plans at all? And certainly a superintendent and some of our setting school counselors were like, well, we could collaborate somehow. And so that discussion just started. And that we need to work through that and figure that out. Yeah, well, I can understand the desire to want to get going. But I also think it's smart to take your time and do it well. So I appreciate that. Thank you. And then my other question was just if there's any update on a location for a new building, that's all your own. I wish. I haven't won the lottery or figured out the school construction stuff enough to know how to do that. What we did do last night as a board is we separated our finance and facilities committees. And so there will be a facilities committee that can devote some time to this. Honestly, in this first year, the board was getting together. We were figuring out how to be a school district and what we needed to do and working through some of those pieces. And so I think we're poised now to start having those discussions and anyone who has some ideas and wants to present them to the facilities committee, I believe they meet the first Tuesday of every month. And you can go on our website and the cbtcc.org and you can see there's right in the middle of this tab for the board and every board document we have is out there. So you can log in there and see when we have a facilities meeting coming up and see what's on the agenda and jump right in as community members and give us some feedback. Great. Thank you. Other questions? I have a question. Based on what I've heard from students, how is the transportation system like at cbtcc? So this year we started a new policy around parking. So we have a limited, we lease our space from Spalding High School and we have a limited amount of spots in the parking lot. And so we decided we also looked at our data from previous years and students who drive had a tendency to be tardy more frequently than any other students and leave earlier than any other students. And so we made it a policy that if you had a class at your sending school, you needed to take the transportation provided by the sending school. So each of our sending schools sends a bus. And so they would need to make sure they access that bus to get here. Or there's the alternate. Some folks choose to park on the air street, which is right outside of here. And if they refuse to ride their school bus, but that was our piece. And then as soon as they could prove that they didn't have a class at their sending school, they would move on to the parking lot list or they'd be on a wait list because we've actually oversold our parking lot. And if all of our students were here on one day that had parking passes, we wouldn't have enough space for them. Thank you. Good question. Any other questions? Was that at Kristen? Yeah, I have a couple questions. Thank you, Jody so much. It sounds like you are grinding through a lot of pretty complex challenges. So thank you for that work and that effort. And just also thank you, Jill, for all of the time and effort that you're putting into sharing that committee over there. We are grateful for you. I had a few questions. One is if we could get a reminder of how special education services are currently provided to our students enrolled at CVCC and how those services extend into their time with you. And then I had a question about like once you're fully staffed with English, math, these kind of content core academic areas, what will that look like? Will that look like having an English and math class there? Or will that look like those instructors kind of closely working with your trade instructors to have that embedded within their technical education? And then my last was I distantly remember driving in my car and I think hearing something that sounded like an initiative by Governor Scott that was really sounded like there was going to be an infusion of funding support for CTE. And I'm wondering like how you see that trickling into your programming and if any of that supports you to staff the program, you know, with academic instructors and high quality tech ed instructors. So that was three questions. It was kind of a lot, but that's what's on my mind. Thank you. First question was around special education services and it really depends on the school a little bit. So what we have here, Carrie Cook came from Montpelier, she last worked there. She's our special ed services coordinator. And so she works with all our sending schools and make sure is that we have a say in the meeting, so making sure that the program is an appropriate placement and making sure that we can be safe, have that student be safe here, and also support them in the ways that they need. So she has all the plans and she helps make sure that all our teachers have that information at the start of the school year and she supports them with what they need and she will often also support students who need some specific accommodations here. We have two of our sending schools who send their case managers because they assign CVCC students or out placement students to a specific case manager. And so we have one one sending school that sends their case manager twice a week. She's here during program time on Monday and Thursday. And so she does support the students when she's here and she also is aware of exactly what's happening in all of our programs where she has students. And so she's able to support them outside of here. Another sending school sends one their person one day a week and he does the same thing. Others we try to communicate with that with the case manager about the needs of if the students not finishing some of the things they might need to or might need a little additional support. A lot of services are provided at the sending school right now instead of in our time because we need those four hours a day for the program. But we do offer the accommodations and supports that are needed as frequently as possible. The second question was what will the schedule look like. There is a draft. There would be three different schedules running at the same time for programs. So there would be some programs that would maintain their four hour morning block. There would be some programs that would have three full days a week because they tend to have larger labs that they need to do or they're out in the community or in their lab spaces outside more frequently. And then we have another end of day set which actually the medical professions for the most part the health sciences wanted that end of day. So we have three different models for the programs and that that Stagger's academic class is separate from those programs mostly the financial literacy and math and social studies potentially drivers. Ed would be a piece of that. There might be some room for additional services in that time. The English and the science would tend to be still embedded and be in blocks where the teacher pushes into the program. One of my goals my son was a student at Randolph Tech and he had a wonderful experience there but he was pulled out for his from program for his classes and so he might be gone for an hour in the morning. Some of his peers might be gone for an hour and afternoon. They needed a different class and the teacher didn't always have the full class there. And I see that having taught before as a really difficult way to have to instruct students and keep them kind of on track to get all the skills that they need. So the goal of my schedule was to make sure that we weren't pulling kids out if we were pushing in academics great but I don't want them being pulled out of the program to go somewhere in different spaces and at different times because that I think is a way at the core skills for that program. It is I did present it in full the schedule plan to the board last night so it is part of our video from last night's meeting and I do have the documents that I can forward to Libby that she could share with you around what the schedule what our current plan for the schedule is and funding support. So a lot of studies and some specific grants for electric vehicles were given out to CTE from the state of Vermont. We do have time grants that have been a traditional grant process and that is usually used for equipment or staffing of new programs. So the design and fabrication program is the instructor salary is paid by a time grant right now. I'm hoping that I can still pay 50% of that with a time grant next year and slowly reduce from that. We also get Perkins funding which is federal funding. We get an allocation and then we have to write the grant based on that allocation. Our equity scholar in residence comes from that our EMS2 instructor because we are splitting the program next year was EMS1 and 2 which taught by the same instructor this year with a cap of 16 students. Next year we have 12 no 16 in EMS and 10 in EMS2 and so we are hiring a new EMS instructor and moving our EMS guy up to the EMS level 2. So that will come out of Perkins. So we have three our literacy interventionists in Perkins too. So literacy interventionist ESR and new EMS2 position out of Perkins. So that's some of the funding that we have. We did budget to hire at least two maybe three instructors depending on negotiations and so that's where we're hiring that English teacher out of. We already have the STEM coordinator who is a science licensed science teacher here. So they're already on staff. So we're hiring English teacher and we're hoping to hire the special educator that we can start working with. That would become the build back model later but not now because right now they wouldn't necessarily be providing as much services as they would in the future. Great thank you Jodi. Other questions for Jodi? Any from the board members on the screen? Great well thank you. This is super informative and again thanks for the work you're doing and another thanks to Jill for being our representative and sharing. I know that it's a lot of work on both your behalf so thank you very much. Thank you. Jodi does a phenomenal job. It's really need to be a part of it. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Hi you're welcome. Great so we are now on to our policy monitoring. We have two policy monitoring reports of 20 fiscal management and C5 firearms and I know that the finance committee I believe met before this meeting so if they have anything to report on fiscal management. The finance committee needs to reschedule their meeting because it didn't happen because Rhett was the lone member so no quorum for the finance committee so we're rescheduling that piece. Okay should we delay the fiscal management approval then? That wasn't on the agenda to talk about in the finance committee we certainly can but that wasn't on the agenda to talk about there. Okay good. You will probably see the audit again. Okay. So do I have a motion to approve fiscal management and firearms? So moved. Second. Second. Discussion. I have one question and then sort of a request. On the fiscal management one there's something referred to as a student activity account. What is that? It's when student activities is when students actually make some money. Oh so students so things like sports tickets could go into a student's activity account or when mainstream middle school kids sell furniture they make that goes into a student activities account like it's just a separate account that that is dedicated an income source almost for for kids that they've made and we'll go back to kids. Yeah so then it would be used for like the next class that makes furniture. And then the one thing I noted on the fund balance I think you said something in the monitoring report about the board voting on all fund balance I think well we vote when we see something like the quarterly financial report in the consent agenda but I remember that there are times where we have like proactively voted on something to put it into fund balance but then there's other things that just are there and I think it would be my request is I think it would be helpful for me to have more clarity around when it needs to be a proactive board vote and when it's something that the administration does and we're just you know kind of like approving or accepting. That may be in another policy but okay I could be wrong there too so let me write that down and get back to you. Yeah those were two things. I just wanted to thank Libby for putting the note in the firearms policy monitoring report to like ping the policy committee around some suggestions that had been brought up in the past for improving that policy that was really helpful. And then I had a question about are the policy monitoring reports for like one year from the date of so when you say there have been no reports of students in possession of firearms on school grounds is that good for the past 12 months or what are we talking about there? That's an excellent question because I think about that too when I have to monitor a policy like the firearms policy. Now firearms on campus firearms may not be the best example because the board would be alerted in an executive session should firearms be on campus especially if it was a student. However I have that same thought the way that I have in the board is welcome to tell me to do it a different way the way that I think about it is that unless the policy unless I'm monitoring a policy like this in September where it doesn't make sense to say I haven't seen any yet in this school year because the school year is so new then like now in March it's for this school year but if it were early in the year it would have been from last school year or the last time I monitored the policy but I'm open to suggestions because that is definitely something I think about when I monitor policies like this. I was just thinking it would be nice just for public record to like include so whatever it is to just include that in the language so if you're saying there have been no reports you know since the beginning of the school year or this school year that have been no report something just to clarify for people. Yep thank you but I think that makes sense I mean I think it might make sense to you know I don't know if you monitored this exactly 12 months ago probably not because we had put it all on pause so it almost feels like it might be good to plan on I mean I don't know how other people think about this but to plan on on monitoring it for the date you know from the date that it was last monitored to now type of thing if possible but that was that's just my gut feeling thank you. Any other comments on the monitoring reports? This is Jill I think what Emma suggested is a good idea thinking about other times in management or supervision where you sort of say you know the date range that that applies to so that makes a lot of sense to me to either be specific about the timing or the date range. I can do that. You have motion right? We have yep. All's in favor? Hi. Any opposed? Hi. Great passes and then we have third policy reading of D22 library materials. Emma do you want to say anything about the changes we made and feedback incorporated? Yep so we just incorporated everything that that people had said at the last meeting and we're waiting on a little bit of feedback but I can kind of go through from top to bottom I think that might be helpful and then if there's anything to add people can speak up. So this was something that had come up in discussion last time and we were waiting for feedback from the librarians on this so there was a suggestion made about like do we want and maybe just not about this policy in particular but like all of our policies moving forward do we want a little section in the policy that talks about the types of things that we would want monitored to show you know indicators of success something like that. I don't know how Libby feels if that would be helpful to have like a little guide in there of like a couple of things that would be that we would consider as the board indicators of success meeting this policy you tend to do like an interpretation you know that type of thing so I don't know if it would be helpful or it doesn't seem like it's typical practice you know in the VSBA model policies they don't include that type of thing typically so but it could be something that we add to our policies like language around indicators of success anyway specifically relating to this policy we had I had sent an email out and I think I have feedback from the librarians down here on one of the lower comments um you do it the last comment third and that strength okay so yeah our librarian said um the so regarding the challenges of analyzing a collection or even purchases this would be very time consuming and subjective unless we are analyzing so analyzing meaning like indicators for success like seeing if they've done a good job analyzing the very specific content areas diversity of authors and characters etc etc additionally we are not comfortable with the inclusion of instructional materials in the policy and we don't have control over ultimate decisions of instructional materials there is also a challenge of the availability of quality materials especially those for younger grades we may be able to use a diversity analyzer through our library automation system however we are still waiting for it to be activated so we don't know exactly how well it will work um what are the parameters for holding ourselves accountable to this policy there are many factors considered including availability of quality of text reading level range etc so it seems like it's um just a little more complicated it's not as easy as being like oh just do this and this right to analyze whether we're successful with this policy um but they're going to you know they continue to meet on a pretty regular basis and they're thinking about this so I don't know what the ultimate decision like maybe we just decide this time not to put the indicators of success in the policy I feel like that seems like the easiest solution what are other people's thoughts on that I feel like we don't need indicators of success um to me this policy I feel like is more useful in case a member of the community decides they want to come in and ban something um then we can go back to this policy and say you know this is our official policy we're not going to ban a nonfiction book or um yeah I don't know I feel like it's it's also you know it's kind of a nebulous thing to measure um but I do agree with the librarian's feedback that the school instructional instructional materials should probably not be included because they don't have any control over that anyone else with thoughts on whether we should try to craft language in here for indicators of success or not I mean I tend to agree with what sagey said and just and I also tend to want to with this particular policy that was drafted by our librarians sort of follow their lead and it's something that we can always revisit again in the future you know we can monitor it once or twice and then see how it's functioning and if we need additional language we can add it then I'll just say I'm that that I'm I'm fine with that I would say I feel like sort of like on a as a principal thing it would be good for us to include in our policies what success looks like so that we know what we're aiming for um but I also totally hear you about supporting our librarians and giving them the backup that they're asking for okay it sounds like the end tool that could come in the future they just don't know what it will that diversity yet so I think it might we might want to leave that off until we know what that tool is going to do yeah another thing we tossed around at a previous board meeting was the you know the statement of intent here reads that we're providing a barrier-free safe and supportive learning environment one that affirms the identity of each student and acknowledges and celebrates differences to create a sense of belonging for each child that could be a thing that that to me sounds like an indicator of success and that that would be something we could measure through a student survey not that we would only survey students about this one policy but if we had like an annual student survey this is one of the things that we could be asking about okay so for now it sounds like um the will of the board is sort of to leave the this language out of the policy for now await await these different um technologies that might come in the future that could help the librarians uh analyze the and measure success and revisit it in the future I also think it's a larger question for the policy committee to consider around what Mia is saying around like what does success look like with this policy with all of our policies so I'm going to resolve that comment and I'm going to resolve the comment down below with the feedback from the librarians okay okay so let's see here um okay so there had been a question about like potentially including some language around stakeholder engagement I think a lot of people were thinking about students when they were talking about this um stakeholder engagement and selection of materials so like maybe once a year surveying students um could something like this live in the language of policy or maybe in the procedure and um without me prompting the librarians they had they read the notes in the comments and they had concerns about including that in the policy um that it might be challenging for them to do that and they also you know I think I didn't have a chance to talk to them in person but I suspect that you know they're the professionals that have been trained to do this job and that um if we say that there will be a process for stakeholders to choose library materials that that might put them in an uncomfortable position yeah I also feel comfortable taking the lead of the librarians on that one um I also feel that in my observation of being in school's librarians do have um they have kind of less formal ways possibly of collecting you know feedback from from students it might not capture all students but I could see how that could be difficult challenging impossible or uncomfortable for the librarians so I would be comfortable leaving that out I will say that you know there's still a procedure that's linked down below that needs some revising so it's possible that we put something in the procedure in the future I think it could live there and like not in the policy at least for now because I think like the spirit of what we were getting at in terms of like being inclusive of community feedback and not necessarily like a directive that stakeholders will get to choose library materials um I think it could still be in there somewhere but maybe it lives in the procedure eventually any other feedback on that should I resolve it I think we can resolve it resolve it yeah okay um okay so Mia I think we addressed this in your in the previous question about around like um I'll let you speak to this I'm not sure I feel like we emailed about this and then I feel like it was related to what we the conversation around um indicators of success no it's separate from that but I finally just sent you an email today with the actual oh okay yeah that I said out loud I meant to send that about a month ago and I didn't so it now has the my suggestion is just for the this sentence to read building diverse and inclusive collections is one of the ways we act on our core values that's all okay what I have in your email let me just drop it in as a comment and we can revise it or you can type in and revise it too this is what I have from the email is one way we live our core values yeah okay yeah um so I'm just going to make that revision unless anyone feels uncomfortable with that I'm just going to type it right into the document and I don't know if it's within the scope of work for the equity audit but it seems like something that they might be able to that the um that might fall under that that umbrella of work maybe they could have some you know review this and officer's suggestions or yeah I wondered about that too because they're going to review materials yeah so does everyone feel comfortable with that revision I'm going to resolve it yep okay um all right so all students should be able to find themselves in our library books and school instructional materials so I think first we need to change this too I think this was originally like later it defines library library materials yeah right below it you know I think it's meant to be that and not school instructional materials so if everyone feels comfortable with that revision we'll do it we'll use that language instead I think it's redundant I think you can take out the library books and just put library materials because the definition says includes all print non-print and equipment resources oh that's the redundancy yeah should I keep it like this though where it says library library materials do we all like that no okay I can't see what you're doing I'm looking at an older you can't uh if you if people are listening on on zoom if you click on the link then um you'll come to the live document I believe okay so the language around all students should be able to find themselves in our library materials um the policy committee had asked a question um it came up as a point of discussion in the policy committee of whether this is like a little too broad and and challenging to actually succeed in doing right so it's like every single student every single type of human being should be able to find themselves in the library materials the library so we just put that to the librarians and asked them what they thought about that and they said that the wording had come from the Vermont State Library Association statement on intellectual freedom freedom we determined that it seems redundant because the wording is already in place in the previous paragraph in the policy section as well as the items in the implementation section we would be fine with removing that section also librarians would like to remove instructional materials okay so does anyone have any suggestions about I mean I don't think they're talking about I think they're just talking about removing this sentence um and not the previous section that they're referencing does anyone have any suggestions about my brain is I've been at work all day and I like just transition to this meeting so I'm struggling being creative with wordsmithing if anyone has suggestions my hunch would be that the librarians are talking about that first sentence I think they'd be in full support of the next two sentences yeah that's what it looks like to me but I guess my question is do we want to remove this they're fine with removing it do we want to remove it or do we want to reword it or does anyone else this is Jill I actually liked it I think it may not be exactly those words but it's definitely the intent right that we're we're all trying to move towards as a country is that students should be able to see themselves in their materials and that can mean you know a student of a single parent a student from a different background I can be in all kinds of things but I I actually liked it what about diverse library materials are essential in a student's education or access to diverse library materials is essential in a student's education all students should be able to learn and grow the rest of it right or it could be like well I mean it already is should right so it's not like if we don't have a book in the library that every single you know like there might be a student out there that can't find themselves represented and maybe that needs to be rectified right but maybe we could word it we want our we want our students to be able to find themselves in our library materials or something like that MRPS strives to ensure all students I mean could you say something like all students should find our library's maternity or welcoming or should then you then you get tricky materials sorry what was the last sentence you said welcome in our library materials yeah that involves I would I think you just get rid of it it's kind of confusing I'm just going to type in MR I'm just going to type in what Libby said MRPS strives how did you work for all all you said strives to ensure all students can see or find themselves there the woman when pneumonia's got it that all students I feel like that paragraph almost would fit better in the statement of intent but yep yeah I was I was thinking that the statement of intent was missing something about library materials myself earlier so really the way sorry go ahead the way it should just be one sentence not three independent sentences that it could be one sentence that is a part of the statement intent right they are all three of the sentences start with the same beginning I just put a little comment there and yeah two actually um it's one additional thought so um the the library resources are are essentially infinite and and I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that all students should be able to find themselves I think that the issue is that it's not in the library materials it's in the access that the students have through the library good point so Scott I'm liking this train of thought but how can I capture this do I just change this back to this and then take these we're taking these and putting it up here with this statement of intent or you're saying that these three sentences could be one sentence I think I'm saying both yeah there's no or it's an end and I don't have access to edit so I can't do it so so can you go into suggesting can you do suggesting I can request an access let me just add you here um okay I just gave you editing access uh oops I put that in and I put that in the wrong spot okay so I moved those sentences up to the top and then I'll wait to see what your do we want to do it in suggesting edit mode or do we want to just do it okay so we're gonna let Scott work on that I don't think I'm gonna see if there's okay so there's just one more comment down below on the procedures and it says um Libby will want to make some changes to this procedure to personalize it for our district so just that's fine that would happen after we approve this policy and then post it to the website is that okay Libby or is there something that you wanted yep okay oh I was supposed to add some links in there which I did not do okay so this one the selection of instructional materials we have not adopted this recommended policy from VSBO VSBA and um so I mean maybe we want to adopt this policy it is relating to some of the work that Zach and Merrick has been have been doing but it's not something that's been on our priority list um D32 so I think for now I just have to remove it from down here and then we can consider looking into adopting it later does that sound right yeah that sounds right to me Emma and I will link that f22 while Scott is working does anyone else have any other additional comments before this goes to vote to be adopted or for a 4-3 you know 4-3 or are we kind of good for that okay it's great oh I just put it in the consent agenda of the next meeting right yeah no other comments yep we can make edits right now in this meeting okay so I'll just link that and then and then it will be ready um for Anna so Scott are you ready to unveil your new language he's working like a watch while he works yes I just I don't like the word books because so much of what's available is not just books but everything else is fine no I agree with you yeah there was something kind of like sweet about the phrase relative safety of books but I'm not gonna fight you on it isn't it isn't it still there oh relative safety of books in particular um so Scott do you want to read that do you want me to read the whole paragraph you want to read the whole paragraph just for to get it on record you're great at it go for there okay so the statement of intent would read pillar Roxbury school district intends to provide a barrier-free safe and supportive learning environment for all of our students one that affirms the identity of each student and acknowledges and celebrates differences to create a sense of belonging for each child all students should be able to find themselves in the materials available through our libraries be able to learn and grow in the relative safety of those materials and have access to authoritative resources that promote critical reading and thinking I love it yeah yay okay I am going to resolve this comment and then all that's needed is the link and so I'll make sure to do that before the night is over um there was there was a policy maybe that we were going to put on the agenda just to have it be removed I forget what the number was but maybe we need to put that on the next agenda oh wasn't that on the consent agenda it's on the consent agenda oh I totally knew that because I voted for that agenda I knew that all right okay excellent so we can move on to the reading uh so does the equity committee want to talk about their proposal yep we um so we put out an RFP in uh December and received five proposals from different vendors and as a committee narrowed it down to three finalists we interviewed those three finalists um on monday they were the equity leadership group equity journey partners and insight education group then the equity committee met this morning to discuss our um you know assessment of the proposals and the what we learned in the interviews and from that we determined that we're recommending to the board to award the contract for the equity audit to equity leadership group um just as a kind of summary we thought what you know when we read all five proposals we thought yeah it looks like these five groups would do roughly the same activities in order to audit and so it was nice to see from the interviews just the ways that equity leadership group stood out and for us it was um their team has an incredibly um diverse array of experiences both um professional I think we met every single every single person we met had uh education background um and or work like has been working as an educator for their career as well as lived experience um they will work to involve key stakeholders from the very beginning of the process of the equity audit they um wowed us with their organizational skills and um they also we also like that they're going to be including some follow-up meetings with Libby and her team after they present the report to us as a way of getting us started on implementation of um the recommendations that they find so those were the things that stood out to us with this group um and why we are recommending that we award them the contract we want to see if board members had any questions before we do that questions thanks for the thanks to the group we're going to have do we need to approve it yes yep we would need and I could just make a motion I move to approve awarding the contract for the equity audit to equity leadership group for a second second any further discussion all those in favor hi hi hi can you post great and I think the next is executive session to just do a contracts negotiation update um I don't know how you want do we want to do a simple for you remember the motion language oh wait Anna put it in the email I move to find that premature general public knowledge regarding contract negotiations would clearly place the board at a substantial disadvantage if discussed in public second second discussion we have to read the second motion we have to just have to and Libby we can see your screen we can still see your screen Libby well that's not good there you go all those in favor I think it's only about board meetings now the second motion I move to enter executive session for the purpose of discussing contract negotiations under the provisions of title one section 313 a1a of Vermont statutes all those in favor oh wait second second anyone I'll second um discussion you know all those in favor hi hi