 Great, I believe that technically we have a quorum if I'm counting correctly. So, everybody ready? Shall we get going? Thanks, Kari. All right. Well, welcome all to our first regular board meeting of the month of October. If I could just remind everyone, if you're not speaking, please mute yourself. And if you're on the phone, star six is the is the function that needs your phone and unmute your phone if you're already muted. Just a couple of attendance items. Stephen look is detained by pressing business at work. So he'll join us if and when he can. Dorothy Naylor is has some internet issues. So we're hoping that she'll be able to join either at a wifi hotspot or by phone. So, and I noticed that it's, it's blowing pretty hard by turns out there so if a tree falls down and knock somebody off. I don't have internet. If it's me, then floor, you know what to do, right? Great. Thanks. Good and and also out of deference to to those board members who have both stronger stomachs and caner appetite for political debate than I do. So we're going to try to wrap up in time for for the vice presidential candidates debate. So hoping that that will work out for everybody. Anyway, thank you everyone for for joining us this evening on reception of a guest. I guess everybody who is not a board member is is most welcome as our board members of course. And on this particular occasion, we're narrowly we have public comments after agenda revisions if I'm not mistaken but this time we'll go first with public comments. And for public comments, if I may ask, please raise your hand either. If you click on the participants icon at the bottom of your zoom box and see raise hand. If you're joining by phone as a member of the public and wish to speak. Please press star nine, which will show up on my on everybody's screen as a raised hand. That will help us keep everything in order. And just to remind. We welcome your interventions members of the public. Please when you introduce yourselves. Let us know which town you're from. And in this segment, we board members this name, we will. We will address concerns or any, any aspect of what you're discussing that bears on our business at the appropriate point in our agenda, or if we'll get back to you in one way or another. With that, if I may invite members of the public who wish to make a comment or ask a question to please raise your hand. And if there's a line will call on you in turn. Thank you. And if there's not, we will proceed to agenda revisions. I'm seeing the raised hand from Daniela flour Brooks in the box. Please. Hi, I'm Danielle. I'm from East Montpelier. I'm a parent of two students who are attending remote school and eighth grader who is thriving. I want to give a shout out to Amy Molina and the water core team who are doing beautifully and I am so grateful. I have a third grader who is in deep distress, because of being removed from Kate Robb's classroom. And so I'd like to talk a little bit about my role as a parent and my role as an educator and what I'm seeing. As a parent I have a. So what happened is that on Monday morning a week ago, while I was helping my child with her email she was in class with with Kate Rob. There was an email message that said, Welcome to third grade. And I thought it was a phishing scheme. I didn't. I didn't see the email any place else I then went back to my email I went in my junk mail there was a Gmail address and that I didn't recognize I forwarded it on fully expecting this was a phishing scheme to find out that my child was no longer to attend Miss Robb's third grade. And I don't know if any of you have eight year olds or work with eight year olds, but are my eight year old had just gone through three weeks of class. I had formed relationships with the teacher and classmates. We've worked so hard on rhythm. And it was such a shock she's asking me what have I done wrong why can't I go to my class I'm planning the remote whole school meeting I want to meet the first graders. So, we had a really hard entry level to this change and and I've the district has apologized and I, I doesn't have to be perfect. But it was like having an eight year old go into school and say no you can't go into room 12 you got to have you have to actually leave the building, and you need to get there yourself and the door might be locked, and I can't help you. And I was. Okay, so, so there's that part. So it's taken a while to realize that she really can't be in Miss Robb's classroom. So this Monday so by Friday afternoon last Friday at two three o'clock I really understand I get the message that it's that's it you've got it you're not going back to Miss Robb's classroom. So, I, this, this Monday morning at by six, we don't have the correct password, we don't have the correct landing page to access the canvas course, I know that there's a meeting at 830 from 6am to 830. My wife and I are working frantically trying to get into the classroom. Meanwhile, my daughter is saying well I could do I go to Miss Robb's classroom who is my new teacher how do I, what am I going to do with my. Okay, so there's all of that. She gets to the classroom and is not welcomed, and she logs herself out in tears. She's crying, she can't understand she logs herself into Miss Robb's classroom. I'm going to try again, please there's this chat log into the chat, you know so she logs into the chat. And all that's received that I can see that she's receiving is. Okay, you need to go watch this video and then you need to watch this video, and then you need to log into this part and then you can submit the assignment. And she's so frustrated. She's in tears again she's leaving the room. So I'm on Wednesday I'm on day three of crying over not being able to understand why she can't be in the classroom, and she can't access what she's supposed to be switching to. Okay, that's like the parent role and the child role and my kids regressed her she's talking like she's three she's carrying around her huggy. Okay, so I'm going to set that aside. Now I'm going to speak as an educator. Okay, so I, thankfully, lots of people have talked to me I'm grateful as of I think it was Friday, Monday, Monday, maybe I talked to Jen. And she had not yet been able to get into the classroom somebody made that seems to me that somebody made the decision for to switch to this classroom without actually looking at it and seeing what it is. So, when this decision was made I can see that it's a cost neutral budget. This decision is a cost it's neutral to the budget but my eight year olds paying a cost. My family's paying a cost that there are seven third graders six of them have not been able to make the transition yet. That's 86% are not able to make this transition. I want to know about who's thinking about trauma informed practices. I have an eight year old who could not go to school as of March, who has worked so hard to now be learning remote and that's because I have a we have a high risk family member. The remote families I want to say are the people who are the least have the least amount of risk tolerance, we are at risk for some reason or another and we're being asked to be incredibly flexible without support. Back to educator role. Okay, what I see happening in Miss Rob's classroom is phenomenal. I see a person who's teaching children to use technology to connect to real people. There's direct instruction. There's the ability to monitor and adjust and meet the needs of those students this morning I heard her ask a child. Have you had breakfast. Yes, take time to go have breakfast. This other experience is completely different. There. It's a preset program out of Florida. What I can understand from it. There is so little flexibility we are 24 modules behind 36 month we're going into the fifth week of school. My daughter saying to me, she told me if I don't get 100% on this, I can't progress to the next module. She's all I'm not seeing direct instruction. I'm not seeing monitoring and justing. I hear that this is a gold standard program. And I bet it is for independent learners who start at the same time, who are not in trauma. This gold standard program may not be able to meet the needs of people who are eight and 10. And so I'm frustrated. I understand everyone is doing the best they can. These are extraordinary times. I really, my first preference is is that a teacher is hired, who can take from what Miss Rob has done, the routine, the learning methods, the ability to understand reading levels and math levels, what they've already done, and create a routine that the children can train that there's something familiar. There's a person that's familiar. There's a rhythm that's familiar that there's anything that's familiar. So they can transition. That's my first, that's my first request. If that's not possible, please hire teacher aids. You know, if, well, probably the first thing to do is to go to the teachers to ask them what they think should be done because they know the children, they know the curriculum, they know the teaching methods, they know the rhythm. I'm out of step there. I would defer to the teachers, definitely, but hire aids break send them into break breakout rooms. Okay. If that's not possible, and we must go with this program that does not appear to be flexible has not yet shown itself to be flexible. We still need resources we need people I need somebody from the school to say together those third graders and say you know you didn't do anything wrong. You're not being pushed out of your class because of anything you've done. We need to make an adjustment you look at how far you've come in five weeks look at this community look what you've accomplished look you've gotten to know the fourth graders you participated in an all school meeting. Here is your new teacher. Here is where to show up how to show up. We still need resources. Somehow, we need resources. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you very much, Daniel. Others who might have public comment to give, if you're able to raise your hand. Jessica. Jessica, I'm sorry, we can't actually hear you. It doesn't appear that you're muted, but it's possible that your mic isn't working. Yeah, we still. Yeah, that sounds good. You hear me. All right, perfect. My name is Jessica Hines and I'm also a parent from East Montpelier. I prepared a written statement. I'm Jessica Hines and my daughter is a third grader in the remote learning class. I want to start off by thanking the board members that have reached out to me regarding an email I sent on September 28, outlining my concerns about this remote learning situation. I'll go over all the little details as I clearly laid them out in the email, but I will summarize our family's experience by saying that my eight year old daughter was thriving in the learning community under the direction of Kate Rob was outsourced to a teacher in the remote learning school. What I want to do, however, is talk about the district's elementary remote learning option document that is located on the COVID-19 district website. Students will be either, will be with other students within our district, and teachers will be licensed district teachers. A curriculum that is aligned with what is being taught in our schools and connected to the same SLOs as all district in person schools will be taught and more synchronous learning than in the spring. Another important part of this document is the adherence to six guiding principles, the big ideas and values that the district holds about education. They are equity, relationships are at the center of learning, balance of on and off screen time, predictability, alignment with district learning objectives, and formative assessment. With a move to the VTVLC program, some of these guiding principles no longer are true. We have been in school for five weeks now and my daughter has developed a wonderful relationship with her teacher. She feels confident and comfortable asking questions and enjoys learning with other students that she will eventually be with at U32. The synchronous learning that Kate Rob provides is wonderful and they have become a tight three for learning community. As an educator, I know there is a direct correlation between a positive student teacher relationship and academic success. Conversely, my eight year old under the VTVLC program will be required to do her academic work asynchronously with optional synchronous morning meetings. Can you imagine how isolating it would be to a young child to no longer feel connected to her teacher and classmates. Can you imagine how challenging it would be for an eight year old to be in charge of her learning. I understand the difficulty in teaching 31 students, and I'm aware that a new plan had to be made. But I bothered that in the two and a half months that we've known about this problem, there's been no transparency in the decision making process, which ultimately left us with one option that is unsatisfactory. Why have we not explored hiring some part time co teachers to reduce the load on the remote teachers. Why have we not made use of our in house interventionist. We haven't. Why haven't we examined our current remote teachers FTE and redistribute to make a more equitable workload for a district whose hallmark is to do what is best for children above all else. I'm confused and disappointed by the lack of creativity and out of the box thinking on behalf of the kids. I was not expected to be blindsided with a complete upheaval of my child's academics and sense of belonging. I have worked in this district for 15 years and I know that we pride ourselves on keeping the students at the center of all decisions. I know that we don't make decisions without thoughtfully vetting them and we are exceptional at thinking outside the box when a challenge arises. At least that's what has happened in the past. The entire experience of being a remote learning parent has made me question what the district's real guiding principles are. I'm confused. Are we changing our guiding principles and an effort to save a dollar. Is it the school board's intention to let these decisions be made and accept their negative ramifications or will you do your due diligence to maintain a high academic rigor, no matter whether in person or remote. I'm confident that a decision will occur that will yield a positive option, rather than the one that's on the table. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do we have other public comments. If you can, I want to make sure I'm not missing anyone. There are four screens worth of participants. Other public comments. If not, just just to recap, both Daniel and Jessica are commenting on remote learning. And we will be addressing that in this meeting at 4.1.1 under superintendent reports. So I hope you'll both be able to stick with us through that and through the board discussion that at that time. Now, if there are no other public comments, let's move on to agenda revisions, if we may. Is there any. I wonder if Dorothy has been able to join us. I don't see that she has anybody else who might have an agenda revision to propose. Scott this is Diane I don't have an agenda revision. I'm not sure that my wifi is blinking in and out. So I prefer to have my video on, but I need to turn it off, but I just don't want people to think I'm being disrespectful. None of us would ever dream that it would be such a thing to and it's never happened before. And and I hear I hear a phone. This is Dorothy. This is the first time I've, first time I've done it by phone and I, I forgot to hit star, but here I am. I would like to suggest an agenda revision to move. I would like to, to be the absolute last thing on the agenda. And then we can get through it as far as we can and possibly adjourn before nine o'clock. Yes, Dorothy, if I'm not mistaken, this is so that we can be done in time for the vice presidential debates. Yes, that's what I have requested. Okay. So I would like to make a decision among board members to shifting the policy committee. Segment of the agenda to the end of our meeting. Nope. Okay. Great. Many thanks. So 4.2. Well now. The Apollo eight at this point, and we'll be the last thing we do before we adjourn. Sound good everybody. Great. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. So, I just want to say my internet is, is acting up really weird. I'm going to try to log out and log back in because I can't. I hear intermittent. I apologize. That's why I have my camera off. So I'm so sorry, but I'm going to try to log back in and see if that helps. Okay. Absolutely for this. This seems to be going around really, really windy here. So. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Um, and Scott. Yes, this is. This is Chris and I'd like to see if we could have a very brief. Executive session. Before we do any personnel issues on a personnel matter. Um, Uh, very brief executive session. Yes. Before we do. Any, before we take any personnel actions. So. Are you proposing that this come between. A consent agenda. And the. Yeah. Yes, please. Okay. So, um, between. Number the, what you see on your board packet as. Number five consent agenda. And number six, personnel action. Chris is proposing a brief executive session. Um, are there any board member objections to this? I'm not seeing any objections. So, um, may it. Be so. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Uh, other agenda revisions before we move on. Great. So, um, 2.4. Except you 32 recommendation for. Uh, a second student representative. Um, Brian. Um, Should I. Start with you. Yes, I just wanted to, uh, thank, uh, the, uh, Utility to administration and Steven Dellinger paid in particular for working, uh, Uh, to. Identified another student representative to the Washington Central unified union school district school board. Uh, and I, there it is in our packet on page three, uh, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. As a student representative to serve for two years. And is anyone from unit 32 want to add something? Uh, I see Jody's here. Uh, then we want to add anything about, uh, Anna, I see clapping. So. I think she'll be a great addition. And she's got some great ideas about how to bring elementary student voices. To the board. So excited to have Anna. Join town. I'm very happy to hear it and welcome Anna. From, um, on behalf of all of us, if I may say so. Great. Um, and as it happens. You get to, um, you get to come. For your debut performance right after towns will let him be your warmup act. Okay. Awesome. Um, Before I start, Brian is signaling. Yeah, I just wanted to, I don't know if, uh, the board wants to just officially accept Anna Farber as the U 32 student representative. I don't know if you have to do a vote or not. I don't know either. Um, or shall we, shall we accept her by, um, universal acclaim? All right. Thank you very much. Um, I love the variety of gestures to. Diversity and expression is a great thing. Okay. Um, so Anna, welcome, uh, officially by, um, by acclamation. So, um, towns. If you would please. Yeah, I'd love to. I'm actually, I believe that, um, Anna is, uh, comfortable. Uh, if she would like to join me in the student report. Um, sweet. So, uh, the first thing is that, um, this Monday is indigenous people's day. So the students will not be attending school, but teachers will be using this day, um, for in service. So, um, students will have a three day weekend and a reduced school week. Do you want to do the next one? Yeah. Okay. So on the 14th, which is this coming Wednesday, we have PSATs. Yes. Lots of testing for everyone in most and for most high school students. Um, sports games have actually started happening. And all of the usual fall sports, um, like soccer and football field hockey and cross country. I don't know if I'm missing any. That's right. Um, within these weeks that have just passed, we've also started having, um, more expanded food service as, um, including, you know, sandwiches, salads, hot meals to all the students. And it's all free until December. Um, and also, you know, a month of school has passed and students have, um, hybrid students have started adapting to the, uh, constant change in their schedule. Um, and, uh, the fully in person middle school has also, um, People started settling into the, the, the swing of things. That's, that's our student report. Wonderful. And you coordinated it together. Yes. That's, that's fantastic. And Anna, may I ask, do you write for the chronicle? I was part of journalism last year. Last year you're not still doing it this year. It's been a little bit busy. I'm going to probably start up at some point again. Okay. Great. Um, I was just curious. And, um, both, uh, towns, are you ready for the chronicle? Yes. Yes. I am going to be doing a lot of chronicle stuff this year. Hopefully. Great. Um, it would be, it, it would be terrific if you know, um, you felt comfortable kind of carrying over some of your, what you learn and what you're doing at the chronicle to the board meeting. Absolutely. Thank you. Um, one of the, uh, the chronicle is one of the few ways that we board members have of, of kind of getting a sense of how students are thinking at U 32. So it's very valuable and to have it coming from, you know, in person where we have a chance to even ask questions, even better. Yes. Stay tuned everyone. First. Awesome stuff and come your way. Hopefully pretty soon. Fantastic. Thanks very much. Towns and Anna. Um, any board members have questions for one or the other of them or both? If not. Um, we can proceed once again with thanks and a hearty welcome to you, Anna. Um, Move on to board governance goal, which, um, has a document attached at page four. So did floor manage to make it back on? Floor, are you, um, Yes, I am. I am, I'm, I'm here. I'm sorry. My internet is acting up. I'm going to try to turn it on. I already had everybody moved away of. So we'll see. Okay. Um, are you in a position where, um, where to discuss the board governance scrollers? Um, the draft. That, um, The chill suggested. Yes. Yes. There. Sorry, I had turned everything off to try to get. To see if I could get the internet to work. Yeah. But at least the wind seems to have stopped here. So I think that should work. Yeah. Sorry, I'm opening my document. This is my first board meeting since my next became empty. And I'm really noticing the improvement of the wifi. Okay. I'm going to have to, uh, I got it. I got it. It was just doing that little. Circle thing. The wheel of death. But it's open. So, so we had a, we had a meeting. If our agenda planning committee had a, had a meeting and we talked about the governance goals and we wanted to run this by you to get your input. So, so we decided that we want to suggest that the school board would develop superintendent job description by a certain. We haven't decided what, what date and complete the superintendent evaluation, which we all know is part of our job, but that is a concrete goal that we know that we can. Monitor in and achieve. Hopefully, and then goal number two as governance would be the school board will formalize board roles and operations by completing the following. Creating a board norms. A credit board roles and descriptions and have board members complete board training. And we're including communication. Yeah. Yeah. Board training. What is in parenthesis is basically sort of one of some of our brainstorming that I think would come up as, as we discussed. So no need to talk about that right now. And the school board will conduct a needs assessment to evaluate the district's progress to us focusing on learning as a unified. District. So we wanted to open that for discussion. And before we, we get started. I'm going to share with you guys. I just got it today. I was hoping to get it before, but as far as getting us focused on goal number. On goal number two. Talking with the Harvard board. They've developed a document that I think could serve us as a starting. As a starting point that we could develop is literally a board manual, but it has a lot of the things that we discussed on the. On the meeting. So I'm happy to share that with everybody in. And work the document for our next meeting. I just wanted to put that. That suggestion. Up. So we, it's open for discussion. Yeah. What do you think about this? Achievable goals. Hopefully. Members. Maybe we can start with those who were, who were at the meeting. Jill. Since. You, you sort of this is kind of the. The offspring of your chat box. I think floor summarized it. Wow. You know what I tried to do in the, in the agenda meeting was really just capture what I think I was hearing. So. So this was my, my attempt to just capture the, our effort to try to make this concrete. So I think I would actually defer to board members who, who weren't there, who may have some questions about what we discussed and came up with. I have a question. Scott, if that's okay. Of course, please. You had emailed us something. That you said would help. With this. And I'm not sure. If you were, and it's, I'm sorry, with all the, I need like three devices. Because I want to keep the agenda open, but I also want to have what you sent us. But I thought that it had to do with this. But then when I read it, it looked more like. I wasn't sure if you were suggesting that we already. Had a job description or that it would somehow help us fill in these blanks. So that was my sort of. I guess procedural question of, can you. Scott, explain how you, what you sent us as helping with this discussion. And I don't want to imply that it won't. I'm just trying to figure out what, what it's, what. Yeah. Sure. Of course. Just for the benefit of those who might not have seen it. What I, what Caroline is referring to is a, is a paragraph. Of the board's contract with the superintendent. That discusses. Among other things. Evaluation. And the. Basically what it, I, and now because I don't have multiple devices open. I'm speaking from the one device I can least rely on. That we would come up with an evaluation process. By November 15. And that we would complete the superintendent evaluation by July 15. And we would, in any event. Give the superintendent. 30 days advanced notice that we intended. To complete that evaluation by whatever date. We do, if it isn't. If it's before July 15. Say. So anyway. I just wanted that to be out there. The, because. An evaluation process. Is. Includes more than a job description. We might want to have the job description actually completed. Before. November 15. And. That would be my hope. Anyway. So that's what that was all about. Thank you. That makes. That makes a lot of sense. And. Yeah. Thank you. No, thank you, Caroline. Floor. So I think just to move those back a little bit. So today I think our intent was just to, to set. Give us some guidance of achievable dates, maybe, like, you know, just try to set that, that calendar for right now. And then we would go. About the process because I think in order to have that superintendent evaluation. Brian also needs some clear goals for. From us too. So that we make sure that he's. Helping us achieve those goals as part of. Of his job description too. And I, I don't, I'm looking at him knowing how my hearing with Caroline said, and what you just said, Scott, trying to achieve it's. October seven already and having the job description for November 15. Since that job description is pretty old. What, what a realistic timeframe is for you that won't interfere with the other stuff that you need to be. That you need to be doing. So we could let you think about it. You don't need to answer that today. But with that in mind, we can try to set just even not at a specific date, but month. That we want to have this guy's achieved by. Brian. Yeah, so I think, you know, I think there's a lot of things about process, right? Well, how we want to develop my job description. And I think that we need to be able to do that. And I think that we need to be able to do that. I think that we need to be able to do that. So I think that we need to be able to be able to do that. So I think that we need to be able to do it. How we want to. Develop my job description. I did do some homework in the job description area for Vermont superintendents. I did ask the Vermont superintendents association. And they said they were get back to me. They did get back to me just recently. And providing me with several different types of job descriptions. Speaking with different superintendents. There's also. school board member responsibilities slash job descriptions themselves for yourselves as well. So we have a clearly delineated guide between governing roles versus management roles, right? So the idea is that we have it, we have it kind of in writing and what that looks like. Cause that's always the, that's where the rubber always hits the road in school board and superintendent relations. I would think that if it seems very ambitious to have it by November 15th, I think when this contract was drawn up, it was right before COVID and all that. So it was a pre COVID idea. So I think if we have to have an extended by two weeks or into the December meeting, I would be amenable to that. I do think it would be helpful to get a job description up and running for the superintendent and also the board roles and the board norms and maybe a board job description. So we have our ideas of what that should be. And then I did also talk about, there's different ways of doing superintendent evaluations. So I think that that's another conversation that we probably should have in executive session because it involves my personnel file and personnel documents. So I think there's opportunities to talk about what I will be evaluated on. So if we're working on the job descriptions for superintendent and board members and board norms and those documents, we work on that. We can also have some sort of executive session I think in the near future to discuss what types of processes are out there. And at the same time working, while at the same time developing those pieces, developing our board goals because I think the board goals will ultimately inform any evaluation that that's like the content piece of the evaluation. Did you make your goals? Did you achieve your goals? What actions did you take to achieve your goals? What are some things? And I think that's really where, again, the rubber hits the road. So I would be in favor of, if you want to push it forward a month to get us into December to give us some more time because of the pandemic, but make this probably some sort of standing agenda item where we're talking about getting the board to adopt goals, adopt board responsibilities and the superintendent responsibilities. And I can definitely focus on that work for the foreseeable future. Sounds good. So Floor, it sounds as though Brian is suggesting that there will be some preliminary work to be done separately by him that we can then kind of coalesce around in an executive session at some point in the future. How about the other stuff? The board norms, some of that is related as Brian pointed out just now. Board norms, board roles, board goals. But how would you say that? What kind of process would you like to do you think should unfold to get at the rest of let's say two and three? I was thinking that we would set a date by that we would bring something back to the board to reflect on, not try to create it right at the, because we don't have enough time but maybe again the same committee that since we're in charge of doing the agenda it put together something for them to reflect possibly at our next board meeting a draft and then say that by November because we can't really be operating much longer without norms and roles. I don't think we really need to reinvent the wheel and what those are. So maybe say that by November that's an achievable goal for us. Let's say that by November we would have the board description and the board norms or is that too ambitious? I'm just putting it out there. I don't wanna be the only one saying when but I think a lot of these things are there, they're just not. And then we would have two or three meetings to or as a board to talk or not talk about we might be able to do it in one meeting but it might take two meetings but at least we know that by November 15 or wherever it is we have norms and board roles and descriptions. So that will take care of goal number two. So what do board members think about November 15 as a target? Any objection? No objection, but can I, is there any documentation of defining what board goals or I'm sorry, board roles or board norms are? And I think from a previous meeting the folks from the U32 board previously said that they had a pretty defined set of board norms. If that's true, would they written down anywhere so that we can take a look at them? We would be bringing it back to you. Scott had sent some stuff but there is also as far as a governors there's some stuff for the Vermont agency of education that sort of sort of drafts what the roles and responsibilities of the board members are. We could start with that and give us something to frame the conversation and then we talk about those. How does that sound? And then we'll bring both Scott's ideas on the norms, the document that he had sent us. The other not document that we had received from U32 that I think I had shared with you guys and then we would bring some like a mixture of that for you guys to reflect on so that we don't have to do everything at that board meeting. How does that sound? That sounds fine. But when I'm looking at this document of board governance goals it does not seem to incorporate any of the structural any of the structural changes or structures that we talked about when we were reading the Rice Book and in particularly creating avenues of communication between the different stakeholders in the district. And that seemed to me to be one of the more significant parts of the Rice Book in terms of creating a much more fluid communication structure between the board and the various stakeholders in the professional learning organization. So I don't see that here. And I think that if we're going to talk about governance as a structural entity we should be incorporating some of those principles as well. I think this is where the needs assessment part comes in. Yeah, Scott it's absolutely right that we came up with that to try to there was how we got consensus around the group of people that met was to if you go into your book actually when you have a chance Chris, you will see that it's part of the book is to conduct that needs assessment and I believe that the district progress that we're focusing on learning. So it's one of the pieces we didn't put a date on that yet. But yes, you're right. We're not trying to leave that behind. In the book if the needs assessment done before the structure is created or after the structure has been created. It's the first step, it's the first step. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Good. So we're looking at November 15 to bring something to the board. And it would be, well, be November 18 when we would be done, right? Is that, isn't that what we were saying? And I had a, I was just looking at the counter right now. I was a, so it would be November, let me see. No, actually November 21st will be the second Wednesday. November 21st. November 18, it would be the second Wednesday of November. And November 4th. So we would bring something to the board. At the next meeting, we're doing quality stuff. So maybe we would bring the first draft to the board November 4th. Is that makes sense to everybody? Sure. Okay. So Kari keeps waiting so patiently with his hand up, but I'm not as patient as he is. So I wanna make sure you're seeing that. He keeps trying and he's not getting called on. I'm so sorry, Kari, I don't know where you are. There you are. Please, my apologies. You've actually answered many of my questions while I was waiting patiently. So I guess the one thing I'll emphasize is that on the goal number one there, I think that it might be missing a step, you've got the job description and that's the big picture. We need that, obviously. We've got the evaluation, that's the process that has to happen. I feel like it's important for Brian's sake to be clear on what the basis of the evaluation is going to be sooner than later. So if that's gonna be first year goals or here's the categories we're gonna be looking at, I think it's only fair because I don't see us evaluating him on the full job description in year one during a pandemic where we're already halfway into the year by the time we get back to him with this information. So I would add a line, add a phrase in there about what the criteria of the evaluation are going to be and if there's a specific goal or something like that so that he has a chance to try to accomplish that prior to the evaluation being completed. Yeah, that's a very good idea. Thank you very much. Are there anybody else? I'm not able to see who is trying to speak. Jonas, Jonathan, did I miss either of you, Jonas? Is anyone familiar with what the VSBA offers in terms of superintendent and valuation services? They say they do it, I haven't looked too far into that, I'll put in the Northwest there. Yes, Brian, sorry. So I actually was anticipating this topic coming up so I've been trying to gather up different superintendent evaluation processes. The VSBA does do a training, they do do a training that you can purchase and you can hold like a workshop with them or an executive session talking about personnel and how you wanna do, it depends on how you wanna use it and they'll talk to you about the different pieces that are in a superintendent's evaluation. It could be different or it could be something exactly as they basically give you different options that you can consider, so it could be informative, it does cost money, it does, but they do paint a picture of what that could look like. So this is the second bunch of stuff you say you've gathered, I would love to see that. If you could put a packet together with all those job descriptions and that stuff. Yeah, okay. Great, okay. Do we have enough then to proceed? Wonderful, okay. I have one question. Please. And then Kari after you Caroline. Okay, and it's both procedural for outside of this and specific to this one. If I had an idea or something I wanted the committee to consider during their needs assessment, let's say. So one is like who's on that committee? So who would I send it to? But then the second part is I wanna be really careful not to do work outside of a meeting. And so what happened, I had this thing from the last meeting. Now I can't even remember what it was, but I thought to send almost like a draft statement, but then Scott had emailed something very specific that mine would have been very similar. So I chose not to send it because I thought it would look like work outside of a meeting. So where do we stand on that? I don't wanna take up time now going into the needs assessment because that's not what this meeting is for, but I don't want it to get lost and I'm not on the committee. What would the board suggest? Sure, I'll take a shot at those two questions and then my colleagues will modify or correct as necessary. The members, this is the agenda setting committee which includes Floor, Jonas, Jill, Diane, myself, with of course, Brian as the executive secretary for this committee, if you wanna call it that. And in terms of materials, the way I interpret the open meeting law, we may not, must not engage in any kind of discussion or deliberation outside of open session or in an executive session that we have entered into as a board. However, in terms of pumping out information, say if you have a document that you wanna share with everybody, please do. We may not respond in the sense that we must not respond, but we can take it all in. So if you have something great, Floor has something shared around and then we come together as a board with these various documents and then in open session, we discuss them. And we're not supposed to edit a document a single document either. So we can't do Google Docs or anything like that. We have to just push out our own individual contribution. Did I get that about right? Okay. Okay, so if you send something and say that it's about length of school day and you think it should be eight hours and here's your research. And I send my own not replying to yours but mine is all facts on why it should be seven and a half hours. That's still okay as long as it's not a response or mentions yours at all. As long as it's not calling response, it's fine. Okay, perfect. Great. Thank you very much. Kari, did you have something? Yeah, a quick point. I just, this is, I think beyond the scope of this year, but I do feel compelled to say it because I think we have a duty to provide an orientation to do new board members. And I think number two is important elements of an orientation. So as the committee is developing these documents, if they can think about it in terms of a new board member being oriented and then what other items we would want to add to that orientation. I think that would be helpful. Thank you. Once again, I, I couldn't agree more. Yeah. Thank you. Great. Are we ready to proceed? To student achievement goal. On. Kari, do you have the lead on this one? Sure. This will be quick. The ed quality committee met prior to this meeting. We reviewed a draft of. Two goals. One having to do with a. Review of student achievement. Data and process. And the other having to do with. The curriculum instructional review. And expanding that out into developing a strategic plan. An updated strategic plan for the. District. And so. And these are based on the, the ideas that came out of the retreat. So we talked about them today. We will update a draft and expect to provide you. With. Draft goals. At the next meeting. Excellent. Thank you very much. Word member questions. For Kari. If not. Then let's. Continue. On to the report. Superintendent's report. And 4.1.1. Which. Hards back to the public comments on remote learning. Update. Brian. This is your show. Thank you very much, Scott. Members of the board and members of the public. So basically there's a remote class size update. That was several, almost eight days ago. It's on September 30th. And it just talked about how the district was working to. Try to. Improve the situation in our, in our. Remote learning classes. Using the remote virtual learning cooperative. And the Washington school district. What we could try to do. So one of the things that we were able to do. What we were able to place a math teacher into. The Vermont virtual learning collaborative. And in exchange. We were able to. Attain. Seats in the Vermont. Virtual learning collaborative for grades. Students in grade three and students in grade five. The. That we, they were able, these were the only seats that they had available. We were able to place an offer this program to all. Of the students in grade three and grade five. The arrangement allowed for. Too large. The two largest class sizes to decrease. And it'd be more similar to the in person class sizes throughout the district. So. The class sizes are much smaller now for, for the remote teachers. And we're going to continue to monitor this. This is a, unfortunately. And I will say to the parents who came today. This is really. A situation where. We have to choose between imperfect options. In person, our number one focus in the district is. Letting is in person instruction and trying to, that's our preferred mode of. Basic of ways to educate children. Remote learning was added as an option this summer. To families to provide them an opportunity. The, and I think the board. I applaud the board for supporting that option. When we were doing it in the summer. And then of course. Where you make these plans and then you have to be flexible. Because things happen. And again, I guess that what I would say is it's, it was really. In an imperfect option. In an imperfect world during an imperfect time. You know, and as a superintendent, we have to, I know I have to make the best choices. At all possible times. So we can support all of our kids. In the best way that we can. The imperfect options. The way it really was played out. Was there was a one option was to continue. With large class sizes. With large class sizes. With large class sizes. With large class sizes. With large class sizes. With large class sizes. With large class sizes. With large classes. With large class sizes. And so we have to continue. With large class sizes. And our virtual learning classes. Which. Can be overwhelming for our teachers. The second one was to. Send students. Sign students up for. VTVLC. Which I will admit. I will admit that it is a different program. Then our remote learning classes. educational option and a educational and a teacher. So ultimately the choices were made. I'm the superintendent, I own all the decisions. It was not a unilateral decision. It was something where I consulted with my members of my leadership team. The great thing about the leadership team is we do have a lot of smart people on that leadership team. And thankfully, not everyone always agrees, right? So there's different opinions about VTVLC and the district programs. At the same time though, given these imperfect options, I really, really did not want to, do not wanna have a program at all if we don't have teachers. And I know we can't run a program without teachers. And so I just wanted to let the parents know that one of the things that I feel very bad for the parents in the program was the notification. Of how they were notified, it was unfortunate. We did have the remote learning principle try to reach out, left messages, was unable to either get through. And I think this happened quickly on a Friday. And then over the weekend, apparently from what I've learned is the VTVLC teacher had reached out to the parents before the remote learning principle could get a hold of the parents. And when I heard this on Monday, I was like, ugh. And so we've been trying to figure out a way to give the parents a transition. It's been difficult. I will say it's new for our district to do remote learning like this. I think at the high school, they've been doing this for a number of years. But at the elementary school, it's a learning curve for us, for as a district at the elementary level. And I would also have to say it's also a learning curve for VTVLC. I think one of the pieces for VTVLC is they've had to expand at a rapid rate and they have a lot of teachers and we've been afforded the opportunity to ensure we get our children into VTVLC. And again, I just feel bad about the notice to the parents and at the same time in an imperfect world, these were imperfect options. Thank you, Brian. Before I open for board member discussion, I just want to recall that the administration has reached this solution as a result of the board's encouragement to solve the problems of excess class size and a personnel situation. So anyway, this in a sense is... I'm sure this is sort of like no good deed goes unpunished, but as Brian says, we're trying to deal with imperfect options in an imperfect situation. So, but just to recall that the board has already sort of had a kind of directive role in this. Now, board member comments. Board members, I can only see a few of you on the screen at any one time. If you're able to click the raise hand button that will help me a lot. Caroline. So, I don't need to go first. I just want you to know that I did want to speak. I feel like I've talked a lot at this meeting, so I'll wait and see if there's others, but I just want you to know, I do have some things to say. Thanks. That's very generous of you, Caroline. Thanks, Jonas. My video is going in and out because of the internet as well. So if my screen pops up and down, that's why. I have a child in the, what is now the four class and the fourth grade remote class. And I have, since we learned that this was happening in the third grade was being split off, I've tried to ask him as nonchalantly as possible. If the third graders are still in his class or if an announcement has been made that it's just fourth grade now and he's told me no that he has no knowledge of that, but again, he's a fourth grader. So I don't expect that to be totally truthful. I just like to hear what kind of outreach has been done to the fourth graders and the sixth graders who are missing their classmates now. Understanding entirely that my kid is an unreliable narrator. Well, I can let you know, as of right now, I'm not aware of any official outreach to the children in those classes. I do know that the remote learning principle and also now the director of curriculum are working and do have plans to reach out to the third and fifth grade students. I should just mention that there will be an opportunity for public comments towards the end of the meeting. So other board members. Can you hear me, Scott? I can hear you. Yeah, sorry in that video, but I couldn't connect. So, Brian, in one of the comments from one of the parents, I thought there was a reference to the teacher being a Florida teacher. If I misheard that, I apologize, but if I didn't, can you address that? And also at the same time, just tell, I thought you said that the program was different. Explain how it's different from what the remote program was otherwise. Yeah. All right, so thanks for the question. To basically the, I think the Florida question, question of Florida teachers is not an accurate, that might be based on erroneous information. I'm not sure, I can't speak for the parent about how she received that information. I did speak with the director of VTVLC and ultimately what it is is it's been around since 2009, it's all Vermont teachers. So, and schools basically leverage the teachers who cannot teach in person and to address families who did not want their children in buildings. Currently, from what I understand, there's about 120 Vermont teachers providing education for 20 school districts in the state of Vermont. It's a Vermont educational community that has come together with support from the agency of education, from the Vermont agency of education. So they are working on creating, especially in kindergarten through fifth grade, they are working to create a cohort of students to develop a sense of community. And what I heard today from some of the parents is, they feel that there has been a loss of a sense of community in their classes. And I know that we're gonna try to work very hard with providing, try to provide more of a sense of community. And I can even ask our director of curriculum to jump in in a second here to talk about some of the work that she's been trying to do to not only transition our remote learners from these affected classes, but also how do we try to adequately prepare our students for those transitions. So there's definitely some more work that has to be done, but that is something that we are definitely mindful of based on the feedback that we have received from our parents. I do know that their curriculum is a standards-based. It is implemented in Canvas. The program is run differently. It's less synchronous. So our program is more synchronous. So the synchronous meaning that you have more in-person instruction happening at the same time versus asynchronous where you have modules or things that you have to do lessons in online and then you can get to meet with the teacher or come back to the class at a different time. But so right now, as I understand it, there is every Mondays, I think I believe they're offering math, a math class 45 minutes to an hour, Tuesdays literacy, Wednesdays is specials that's something that we're have to work on. Thursdays is science and Fridays is social studies. And it could be, I may have the content areas mixed up on the different days, but I do know that that's what they're doing for about an hour a day of continuous instruction. The other piece that I understand is that they also meet with the students for one-on-one sessions. And this I believe happens every other day. So it's at least twice a week or three times a week, 30 minutes to 45 minutes. And they also, the teachers also have online office hours. And so it is a different type of offering. I think the, where we get into some of the assumptions behind the programs and they're different and everyone has different opinions, right? About what's better, what's not better? And I think it comes down to is synchronous better than asynchronous all the time, right? So is synchronous learning better? Is it better? I mean, I think we can definitely all agree that in-person learning in the classroom while it's happening in the school building is the most ideal situation. But again, this is an imperfect time with imperfect options. And I hope that gave you enough information with regards to VTVLC. Okay, let me ask Balo a question. Would any of the suggestions that the parents had in their conversation or the presentation help with the creating a sense of community for these students in the VTVLC program? Yeah. So I'm gonna let Jen jump in here because she's been working very hard in part of it. I know she hasn't been able to get to all of it. So I'll let Jen talk about some of the work that she's been doing in this area. Okay, thanks. Thanks. Thanks. So first I wanna clear up the Florida misconception. I think that the confusion came because the curriculum that's being accessed is from an organization called something like the Florida Learning Cooperative or something like consortium. It is aligned to the national standards and Vermont has adopted the national standards. But I think when folks have seen Florida, when they look at elementary curriculum materials in VTVLC, that's why, because it came, it was developed in Florida, but in alignment with the national standards. I have transitioned into this role not quite a week ago. I've had the opportunity to meet with Jeff Bernard and who is the director of VTVLC, learn a bit more. And I have, right before the Ed Quality Committee meeting today, I've had the opportunity now to have met with both of the teachers, the third grade teacher and the fifth grade teacher. We've been hearing a lot from families. I've been trying to reach out to most of them. So far I haven't been able to reach everybody quite yet, but the sense of community is gonna be really important. Our teachers in Washington Central worked very, very hard to establish a sense of community and that is foundational to the social emotional support that we're providing our students and the academic support that we're providing our students. So we came today, I was able to meet with the fifth grade students and the fifth grade families to divide the plan along with our fifth, sixth remote teacher and the fifth grade remote teacher so that we can be clear for families and students. So they know what the pathway is, accessing their academic learning through VTVLC, but with opportunities, touch points each day to connect with a larger class for read aloud and for a closing reflective meeting each day and allied arts. As Brian mentioned, the allied arts are still a work in progress. We're still trying to figure out exactly how to make that happen. It's been a trickier schedule-wise and coordination-wise than I think anybody would have anticipated. That situation that we're producing in fifth grade right now does not yet exist for third grade and you're hearing tonight from our third grade families. It's particularly challenging. The classroom is set up in third grade for VTVLC a little differently than the fifth grade scenario. There is less synchronous time in the third grade scenario and I just met with that teacher late this afternoon to figure it out. So I have a meeting tomorrow morning first thing with our fourth grade remote teacher so that we can try to take this information and synthesize and try to wrap around and support our third graders and their families as best we can. But that is not, that is still definitely in progress. Thanks, John. Other board members, questions? Oh, Caroline, your generosity. I don't wish it to go unrewarded. Thank you. I just wanted to say, because we, it's really hard as board members when we have the public comments and then it's not, we don't respond back and I know why we do that on the agenda and I support that. But I did want to say to Danielle and Jessica that both of you really did an amazing job of speaking and advocating for your kids. It totally emotionally touched me because I have an eight-year-old and I think it was Danielle who brought up eight-year-olds with trauma and I got choked up. So I just want you to know that like as a board member, I absolutely feel for you and I encourage you and we appreciate you coming. I do feel that this was a decision at the superintendent level. I think that was the appropriate place for the decision to be made. And so because of that, I don't want to get involved with asking a lot as a board member like, did you do this? Could you consider that? Because I don't think that's our role at this point. We did ask to fix very strongly. We asked to fix the high number situation. Personally, I do not think I would have supported any option that required additional funds or staffing. So I can very much see how this was. Anyway, I'm getting into what I said I wouldn't. So I just want to say, I think it was a superintendent decision. So as a board member, I want to leave it at that, but I want to say to everybody who emailed, everybody who spoke, this is a really tough time. I totally agreed. Those of you doing the remote learning, you are in a trickier situation. And I think that most people made that decision and it was a tough decision to make. And so just know that we appreciate hearing from you. Thanks. And thank you, Caroline. You expressed my feelings better than I could have. Other board members? Lindy, you're muted, Lindy, there you are. I got it, I just couldn't find the cursor again. I did have people reach out to me and I followed up and was told that options were looked into. The leadership team was consulted and those were the questions I had to see if there were other options from within house. And the answer I got was it was a team decision and a committee or a group and not a single person made the decision, which is what I wanted to be. I wanted to hear that we had looked at other options within the district. Thanks Lindy, I see Brian. Yeah, and I just want to add on to that, that at the end of the day, and I'll say what Caroline just said, the big thing is I consulted with the leadership team. There were obviously different opinions about what people think about and what they believe they could be doing. However, sitting in this chair as a superintendent, I bear sole responsibility and ownership of that decision, but people work, everyone was consulted. Understood, thank you. So, would members anything else or shall we continue to the search update on the director of technology? Okay, let's move forward, Brian. Yeah, before I get there, there was just one other thing I just wanted to, it's something that I just want to inform the board about and that is the, and I'll turn this over to Principal Lyford real quick, but we are, East Montpelier is the only school on election day that actually is used for folks to vote on election day. And so I'll turn it over to Alisha as we talked and she developed a great plan for that day. So I'll turn it over, Alisha. Thank you and I'll be quick. So this is one of the silver linings in COVID. I think we had met, I met with the town clerk way back last winter to plan and prepare for this, what's going to be a very large election day with a huge turnout. And we had bounced around ideas on how to make it so that children weren't in the building this day just for safety because the building is completely open. And then we learned about these remote day options. So this fall I've been working on developing a plan that I reviewed with staff today. On Tuesday, November 3rd, we will have a planned remote day. Students will get their bagged breakfast and lunch the day before and their Chromebooks and take them home with them on Monday the second and they will participate in our first trial of a remote day, hopefully under the best circumstances, having planned it and the teachers will have time to prepare. We followed the guidance from AOE that the remote schools also following as far as instructional hours and what the day needs to look like. Students will still have interventions and their services, they'll still have their specials on that day and they will all be doing it from home. So it'll be a little bit of a trial for the district and I'm happy to report back after the fact how it all goes, but fingers crossed will be well prepared. Thanks so much, Alicia. Yeah, and this will be important for Calis, I think coming up in December when we get to that point. And I just want to thank, sorry, I just wanted to thank Principal Leifert, Alicia for her leadership in this and thank you for your leadership on that role. The other things are just so folks are aware of the technology director search update, the, and this kind of also goes under the talk of, I'll do two at the same time, the central office job descriptions as well. One of the projects that I passed myself with when I started was to look at all the central office job descriptions and try to figure out what do people do? What are they tasked with? What do they think their job is? And does it align with what we have on our paper or saying what their job is? And so, and then of course, is there something else that isn't captured in either one of those because maybe there's something that we need to consider looking at. So my goal was to try to do all of them before the start of the summer, but of course, pandemic reopening and other things going on. And I realized that it's a lot more of a heavy lift than I thought. So we did a couple of things with Keith McMartin who is now no longer employed in our school district. He resigned officially October 2nd. We do have a vacancy and we have posted for that position, but that also created an opportunity to look at the technology director job description. I went to, and it's a process, so I can describe it to you so you're aware of the process and why it's here tonight. So the idea behind it was, let's look at the old job description. Let's bring Keith in to look at the old job description. Tell us what do we need to do? What are some changes that we need to make to the old job description to the new job description? And then ultimately advertise that new job description in the local newspapers and we top school jobs and other things. So we already do have a position, we already do have the old job description that's in school spring that is up. And we do have some folks that are starting to apply for those jobs. However, it is an older job description and tonight I'm gonna be asking you to adopt a new job description. So I can then go back and repost and send it out to all the groups that are set here on this document. And so the big question is what do we do now? We have remote learning, we may have snow day, I don't wanna say, actually I'm not gonna say anything about snow days. No, I see everyone, no, I didn't say it. We have a lot of things that could be happening that may require us to have remote learning days. So what do we do without Keith McMorton, our technology guys? So right now you might be wondering who is on the Zoom, the district Zoom picture, but I'll give him an opportunity to introduce himself. He is our technology consultant. He is going to be working here most of the time remotely, but sometimes in person. He's gonna be conducting a tech needs assessment to help us with our strategy for technology in the district. And he's also gonna be working with our tech team. He is a highly sought after consultant. I'm very happy that we have him. I'm happy that we can afford him, very important. And I'll just turn him over. He's again to stop gap measure to help us in case of a major emergency as well while we're looking for a person to replace Keith. So Jim, Jim Garrity from Diamond Technologies. I'll just have you introduce yourself real quick. All right, thank you very much. My name is Eric, I'm with Diamond Technologies. We're a systems integrator that is based in Wilmington, Delaware. We've worked with several different school districts and state agencies all throughout the country in education as well as labor and some other areas. And we have a couple of different focus points. So we're in the development space. We integrate systems a lot. So we'll talk tonight a little bit about that. And then equally as important, we're a managed services company where we push in resources into the companies on the IT side, whether it's networks and systems or stores and virtualization, other types of network security items and things like that. So this gives you a little bit of my background. So I've spent 20 years in the financial services space, healthcare space, education space and the security space. I've run a couple of companies in the cloud space. Outside of what I do from a work perspective, I do teach at the college level. So I teach cryptography, which is math-based security. So some of you that are teachers in the math space, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And Brian, I appreciate the opportunity that you and the leadership team have given me to come in and take a look around at the current environment and see where we can make some adjustments. It was my first day evaluating the team and the technologies and things like that. So there's a lot more to do. I'll give you kind of a two minute version of this. People are good. I think from the application folks to the technology folks, you have a very small team that does a tremendous amount for this school district. And you should be proud of that. I think that in a limited time, I've worked with the team here today. I came away very impressed. And I'm somebody as Brian will tell you that is not easy to impress. So I'm usually the opposite of that. And I'm more of a contrarian and somebody who's a realist more than anything else. But I came away pleased with what I saw today. I do think we have some real gaps in sort of the network and systems space, not in who we have on the team, but just in knowledge. One of the things that Keith did alert me to is in the short time we've been a district and in the short time, since we've dealt with COVID, there hasn't really been an opportunity to document all the things that we're doing, the infrastructure, the technology, the application layer, working, talking back to longitudinal systems and things like that. So one of the key areas we're gonna have to focus on in addition to shorting up our network and systems knowledge is going to be in just documenting everything that we do and everything that we have so that we can continue to make smart decisions and continue to make sure that we're being good stewards of the public's money and things like that. So Brian has tasked me with coming up with an IT strap plan of also looking at the job description for technology. I did make a few changes. I'm gonna put them up on the screen here in a second. Again, these are my thoughts and being in the space and then from there, I'll let the board either make a yay or nay decision to my changes and then you can adopt that accordingly. And so let me go ahead and very quickly post. Well, actually, before you post anything, and I think the ultimate goal here is that when Jim does his work and we do find someone to replace Keith for the long term, we can basically have some sort of document that we hand over to the person and say, today can hit the ground running, whoever that may be. So are there any questions for Jim? I just wanted to see if anyone here has any questions to him before he turns over the, puts up the job description. We're happy you're here. We need to have this function covered, that's for sure. We're gonna go ahead and I'm just gonna share my desk up here. All right, so what you have on your screen here is the job description that the board has a copy of, which is the director of technology position. And really from the position objectives, what's really important here. And I've talked to a couple of leaders within the group. I talked to a principal today. And one of the things that we heard in stereo was, look, Keith did a really good job for us. And what we want is more of Keith, but what we really need also is, to tie the strategy component to that. And so one of the things that I agree with is, I want this IT director to be a CIO, right? I want this person to be somebody who is, able to think strategically, is able to digest what teachers are saying, paraprofessionals are saying, what principals are saying, and what the leadership team is saying, and be able to distill that into a cohesive strategy and plan. And then within that team, you have a bunch of really smart people that can execute. And so figuring out ways to be able to deliver those services, whether it's other infrastructure and application services, or it's service management components, I think that there's an opportunity there to improve what we're doing already in the service management side, which is really about how do students and how do parents make sure that, they get all the resources they need when there's an issue with a Chromebook or something like that. So those are some areas I think we can really improve upon. Walking down through the essential duties and responsibilities, one of the areas I've added was, about really shoring up this network and systems virtualization and storage area. Again, there's some surface level knowledge there, but this becomes really important because when we've got 30 applications that are sitting in our cloud infrastructure or our local infrastructure today. And so, we don't have a really strong sense of what that is. We have some sense, again, the team's doing a great job, but Keith did a tremendous amount himself in addition to leading the team. And so we've got to shore this knowledge up. I saw that pretty quickly when I was evaluating the team today. The second piece is, I want this leader to really create a backlog of all the different things that we're seeing from, parents and educators and principals and those types of things and get a list of all the needs that we're hearing about and then to prioritize those things to weight them. And then between the prioritization and then the budget consideration, we make decisions about what stays on the truck and what we develop against or what we purchase or the things that we don't purchase, right? So that's going to be really important. The last piece is that the district over the last couple of years has done a great job of moving things into the cloud. Now, there's a lot of people who get nervous about the cloud, but I can tell you that in source what is core to your business, right? And outsource what is context to your business. So if you don't have a good sense of what a student information system is and it's not core to everything that you do and all those pieces, then my advice is if it's not core in the development of it, then outsource that to people that do it every day that can host it for you, that can update it for you, that can do all those things that, again, limit the weight of what you have on that IT team. Because again, the IT team is very resource thin. So we have to create enough capacity for them to be able to serve the student body the right way. And so I think the district has done an outstanding job in getting some of those critical systems to the cloud while still in sourcing or keeping on your own servers the things that are your special sauce, whether it's the way in which you authenticate in the systems and other things. I don't want to get too technical here, but those are the areas that I think are really important here. And last but not least is really to look at that, that application strategy and coming up with those best of technologies, looking at a sort of event diagram of what you have today, what people want, and sort of making decisions about what stays on the truck from an application perspective, what doesn't. So those are really the three changes that I'd like to see in the plan. And just my two cents, and again, by all means, we can either adopt these changes or trash these changes either way is okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Should we have- That was, I think that is all I have on the technology director search update and the ask for the board to approve this job responsibility tonight so we can get this out for tomorrow. Very good. Thank you very much, both of you. Should we have a motion then to approve the director of technology job description? So moved. So I'll second. So just seconds. Thank you very much. Is there any further discussion? Where did this, how close is this to the previous job description? Oh, Chris, you're on the phone. So you weren't able to follow the screen. Yeah, not the screen. I have the description that was in the packet. Yeah. Yeah, that's it, right? Yeah, so it's a very good question. One of the things I did was attract changes components. So we added three items from a job or from a central job description perspective. And then I just updated and enhanced the position description at the top of the page to really include the strategy component in addition to the execution components that you already have in the plan. So it's one additional objective component up top along with three essential criteria that I added. I didn't take anything away. The one thing I didn't focus on there and you won't see it a lot. And this is the area that others can help and I can certainly help as well. And my limited time here is on the cybersecurity side. One of the things I committed to Brian and the team next week I'm going to run a cybersecurity tool called rapid fire tools through the network and we're gonna get a sense for where we are and where we are and what things are really exposure for the organization and what things are not. But that's a heavy lift that I can do without really putting a lot of weight on the team. And I'll come back to Brian and then eventually that'll work its way into a board report. One last thing Brian, I didn't mention really quickly is that I know you were all talking about a board level training and things like that. One of the things in the future that's going to be important and I'll come up with this for you is a little training pack and then eventually maybe a breakout. I'll talk to Brian about that specifically but a breakout where we spend a few minutes talking about board responsibilities that relates to security and really protecting student data and student information. And so that'll be one additional thing that as part of my job description I'll do that in the short time I'm here. Thank you, Brian. Great, thanks very much. Thank you very much. So Chris, there are some changes that as Jim explained to the packet that he went over them in his discussion. So if you need them read out we can do that perhaps. I do not have to hurry and set a chance. Okay, I'm good with the description. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you very much. Okay. So a dumb question but I'll ask it anyway. Is it required that the board approve changes to this job description? I operate under the... It's a great question to ask. I operate under the belief that job descriptions should be carefully thought out by management and then given to the board to approve. And what I will say is that a lot of the... It appears if you... One of the best practices that I'm aware of is it's always good to have when you post a job description you should at least in the HR department the year it was approved or updated or revised. And typically the approved part it usually is something brought to the board as a regular type of thing that you do every so often. Is that an okay answer for you, Kari? Yeah? Okay, thank you very much. Other other discretion, Flora? Just a plug that when we post this position so I'm assuming that now you're able to post it. So just to say that a lot of the board I talked briefly with you about this but to make sure that we post it as far as possible but we also have an eye on diversifying our workforce not just as the educators but just if it's important that we start a leadership team, leadership positions and I see this as that leadership position that we should try to attract whether it's diverse or linguistic or gender, any, please. Absolutely. Yeah, and I think that that's a great comment that should apply pretty much to everything. Yeah. So are we ready for a vote? All in favor then, please of approving the job description as modified by that that is in the packet as modified by Jim Garrity just to be specific about what it is that we're voting on. Please click your yes button. I say aye. I say aye too. Wonderful. The telephone members say aye. That's great. And I'm seeing all yeses and ayes. So it's all yours, Brian. Go for it. Great. Thank you very much. So just moving on, this is, I know a topic that we had previously talked about. This is the callous air ventilation project. One thing, it's all in the packet there but the ultimate goal is we've qualified for full reimbursement from Efficiency Vermont to really help address this matter. The one big thing is we have to have the project done before the year ends. I believe it was originally December 20th. There is talk that it may be as late as December 30th. So I know that data's changed. So does our conversations regarding when to get this project done. Speaking with the principal, I believe, I see Kat here, good. I'll turn it over to her very shortly but the ultimate goal is we really need to get this project done by the end of this year in order to avoid not having to pay for it with our local taxpayer money. Kat, I'm gonna turn it over to you. I know you've been doing a lot of preparation work and a lot of leadership in this area. So thank you. Thank you. I actually met with Bill Ford today. There have been quite a few pieces that are underway. We started out by coming up with a plan about how we might be able to go remote when I think the work is at its most rigorous. We've developed some routines and norms around being engaged in learning outdoors and doing so appropriately prepared but I'm envisioning December is gonna test that a little bit and having the ceiling tiles open in a building that is older in some areas than others makes me a little nervous about ensuring safety for all. So it seems to make the most sense, especially as we will likely be in the midst of cold and flu season to take advantage, as Alicia said, about November 3rd for voting day for Calis to really have an opportunity to practice what it means to be remote and to do so well. One of the things I am a little nervous about is from the beginning we have thought about how long it will take to get some of the materials that we need, the equipment that we need. I think a lot of it is coming from overseas. So the lead time in order to get those orders in is hefty and it's already been shifted out by at least a week. The December break gives us a little bit of wiggle room. So I think that we're still poised to be able to get this job complete on time. And Bill Ford and John Hemmelgarten, the team is working incredibly hard to bring it all together. Of course, Lori's done her magic as she always does around arranging a plan for grant funding and then a backup one and then a backup one. And then you all, that's the final backup plan. We're gonna hope to avoid that. Any questions for me? Yeah, board member questions for Kat. Sounds like you've all got it well thought through, yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Brian, just looking at the agenda, I know you've kind of been covering multiple items in one go, but personnel updates and legislative updates, have those been covered? No, not yet, not yet. I was saving them for the end of my report. And I just want to thank Kat and Lori and Bill Ford for their leadership in this callous ventilation project. And as things continue to happen, we'll keep you informed. So the personnel updates kind of goes, and then I'll go into the legislative update. I think we're, I started jumping around, I just thought some things could be combined. So the big thing is I just want to let the personnel update is we still have a number of openings in our district. We're not getting a lot of applicants. So I just want to let the board know that it's been a challenging year. I mean, I think we're having a lot of success with reopening. We're one of five districts in the state that has reopened while a lot of my colleagues around the state are having conversations about how to reopen. We're kind of already there, but I want to let everyone know that the system is still extremely fragile. And I know we come to work, we feel like we're, you know, we're feeling like this new sense of normal here, but I'll be completely honest, there are some challenges ahead. And I think with flu season coming up, and I said this earlier with my conversation about the remote, with the remote remote and making sure we have teachers, if teachers get sick, we don't have a lot of subs. And we don't have all, and by, and what that means basically is I'm on poll right now myself and some of the members of my team are on call starting at 5.30 every morning for the high school and then 6.30 every morning for the elementary schools to basically waiting to see if we're gonna get a call from our principal saying, we don't have enough people to staff our building, what can we do today? So I have received a few of those calls last week. I had to send members from my central office down to certain schools in order to keep them open. And so I just wanna let you know, it's a very fragile system. We do need subs. We don't know, we're looking for them, we're putting it out there. It's definitely something that you know, if you have any ideas, if anyone wants to sub, I don't know, I'm being quite honest here. So it's a very fragile system and I just wanted to let everyone know that. So that was basically my personnel update for that piece. Thanks very much, Brian. And I have to say for those members of your staff who have offered and actually done the subbing in those schools, I am extremely grateful and very impressed. It does seem like a high wire act that defies gravity at times. But I hope very much that attention is being paid to the risks of burnout, not only for the people who work for you, but also for you that self-care was a big thing last year before any of this really got going. And I think we only need to be all the more focused on making sure that people don't just burn themselves out or make too many sacrifices and wind up as a wreck as a result. And I will say that I will be having conversations with our principals to see how we try to alleviate some staff stress. I mean, I think it's everyone's putting, teaching is tough to begin with. And then when you're in a pandemic and you're trying to make sure everyone's wearing their mask and they're socially distancing, and you look up and it's time to go home and you're exhausted. And I also think that the principals and central office administrators and staff, not just teachers, but all staff, are very heroic in this regards. But I also think that I've had conversations with other superintendents around here. How do we try to make things better for our staff as we go through this, especially this difficult patch that's coming up with flu season in November? And so one of the things is, I asked members of my leadership team, sometimes, I know that they come here, they come to the board meetings. One of the things I said is, hey, if you need to take the night off, take the night off for your own mental health. Yeah, my wife had me do that on Saturday night. She said, take the night off. So I did, I felt much better on Monday. True story. She's not here, but she can't corroborate it, but a true story. The other piece is, just I know there's some other things about when to respond to email. When should we be thinking about having staff members say, hey, after a certain time, do you want to respond to email? Just to give them a break at night. I mean, because when you get that email at nine o'clock or 10 o'clock at night, do you have to respond at that moment? I mean, maybe certain people do, but maybe it always goes under the idea of it's not an emergency, right? We can talk about it at some point, maybe the next day, maybe a few days later, but if it's emergency, obviously maybe it's better to pick up the phone and call. But I'm just thinking about some ways that I can support the principals and the leadership team who have not had a summer. Remember, none of them have had a summer. I mean, and I mean, intense summertime. I think this summer was probably the toughest summers and most people's careers trying to plan for the reopening. And I'm just very proud of them. Again, I can't say it enough. And I do get a lot of mail from our members of our community. I got, you know, when I send letters out, like I sent one out, someone just wrote, you guys rock, you know, I'm like, that's great. But I'll tell, let me tell the teachers, let me tell the principals, because they're the ones on the front lines doing the work every day. So, you know, so if there's anybody who was interested in something, let me know. If you know of anyone, please. Because I think that is gonna be the challenge as we move into snow season. And flu season. Thank you, Brian. I think as board members, we may need a waiver from the agency of education in order to, but I imagine under these circumstances, they'll be willing to be, you know, tolerant of this sort of thing. But Chris, I see your box lighting up. Do you have something? I do. Brian, given the, it sounds like a very difficult sub situation. Have we just alerted parents to the possibility that there may be a need to quickly shift to either remote or close school for a day because we don't have staff available? I mean, just kind of a, this is a potential, not to alarm anybody, but this is a potential that's coming, could come down the road, especially as we get more into the flu season. That's a great idea. I would definitely like to consider getting that out in a newsletter very shortly. Okay. Thank you. And before warned, just forewarned, I guess. Thanks. Yes. Flora. Just that, I'm just hoping that everybody's following the wellness thing that you guys were doing so that that's still initiative of your leadership team and all the schools, because I know you guys have put a lot of work into that. So, just because of the comments you were making so that people are taking the time they need and following that for them, just not just for the kids. And then maybe if you do, maybe put an announcement in front porch forum for maybe post-graduates, I don't know if that's, as if it comes from you. I will try. I will do it. Thanks, Jonas. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm going back in time a little bit. If you notice, my video is flipping in and out because my internet connection is weird, just like everyone else is tonight. And I've just gotten a website loaded that I wanted to look up some information on. And I don't want to throw any wrenches into the works and Mr. Garrity's presentation was great. All that sounds great. I do just wonder, Mr. Garrity, you said you were coming from Delaware. That's correct. Yeah, I'm coming from Delaware. Yep. That's correct. Did you follow the quarantine rules? Yeah, so for Delaware and Vermont, the rule is that for essential personnel and IT being essential personnel, there is no 14-day quarantine period. However, I am required. I've done it 90 times since COVID started. Seriously, it's been a process where when I come into a location, I quarantine until I get my test results back. So I took a test prior to coming up here from Delaware. Quarantine in place. I got the results later that evening. I was negative. When I go back to Delaware, I do the same thing. So I have a Friday morning 9 a.m. test that I have to do to make sure I didn't contract something while I was up here. So yeah, there's some pretty significant stipulations there. But if I wasn't in IT and I wasn't considered essential, then yeah, I'd be required to adhere to the 14 days. So no good question. And the good thing when I came up here is that everybody was masked and I appreciate all the safety precautions that went into this. I know people were wiping down door handles all day tables. I was very impressed in the short period of time both the high school and here, all the precautions you took. So thank you. Great. Thank you. I appreciate the answer. Thanks very much. Yeah. Thanks to you both. Other. I think that just goes to show why Vermont is number one in the country in the lowest infection rate. Yeah. And it's a constant effort that has to be maintained without letting go. And can I just add, I appreciate Jonas's question because I also got phone calls from, I alerted members of the leadership team and they're like, is he quarantining? What is he doing? So everyone was all over it just to let you know. Exceptional. That was good. I really liked it. Great. Excellent. Any other board member questions for Brian on the personnel updates, situation in that regard? If not, I think we still may have a legislative update. I have a legislative update. And also just, you know, one of the other things is just to update the board on was the looking at the, you know, we talked about curriculum management reviews and that we discussed during the board retreat. I just want to let everyone know that I've spoken with every single principal. We're now in the process of looking at the principles are all very, what's the word supportive of moving forward. I think everyone's just waiting for it to happen. That we're starting to get into the process of putting specs, soliciting proposals, exploring funding sources. And again, that this is a multi-year initiative and we should know more about what's happening in this area, hopefully within the next month or so. Great. Thanks, Brian. Board member questions? If not, does that conclude the superintendent's report? No, I just have the legislative report to go through. Sorry. No, no, no, no. So basically I'll go over some of the key highlights of the education legislative report. This is issue number 11 that came out as the Vermont legislature concluded their work. So the 2020 legislative session was anything but regular. The general assembly had begun work on several important topics, including the waiting study. However, COVID-19 resulted in a change in course on several fronts. The general assembly worked through the end of June in order to respond to COVID-19 needs and to develop a quarter one budget. Lawmakers are recessed until August 25th at which time they returned for a special extended session, the special session concluded after five weeks with the finalization of fiscal year 2021 budget bill H969. H969 is the appropriations bill, also known as the big bill was negotiated in conference committee and the conference report was approved by the House and Senate on September 25th. The bill provides the budget for the state of Vermont for fiscal year 2021, including coronavirus relief fund appropriations for pre-K through 12 education as noted in the following items. Number one, $103 million to the agency of education for coronavirus relief fund eligible pre-K to grade 12 public and approved independent school expenditures in fiscal years 2020 and 2021 through December 30th, 2020. Of this total $103 million appropriation, $1.2 million is allocated to independent schools and $13.5 million is directed to efficiency Vermont to support and fund school district work to improve air quality in schools by upgrading heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems HVAC. The remaining $88.3 million is to reimburse school districts for COVID-19 costs through the coronavirus relief fund LEA grant program being administered through the Vermont agency of education. If the appropriated CARES Act funding proves to be insufficient to cover all reimbursement requests, any costs for new pandemic expenses shall be fully covered to the extent of appropriated funds. If proration is necessary, it shall be on requests from school districts of repurposed expenses that freed up previously budgeted funds in fiscal year 2021. As used in this section, school district means the school district or regional career technical center. Of these funds, up to $4 million may be distributed to the AOA for the purchase of CARES Act eligible supplies and equipment, including vehicles, freezers and other capital assets necessary to provide meals to children using federal child nutrition programs during this state of emergency. These funds are restricted to costs that exceed the federal per meal reimbursement received for meals provided through these programs. Reimbursement of all allowable transportation expenditures incurred by a school district or supervisor reunion for the transportation of food and other aid to students, families and members of the community during the COVID-19 state of emergency provide that at these expenditures were already reimbursed by federal state fund or state funds, they shall not be reimbursed under these sections. They also looked at policy issues and these are some really important policy ones that I know I wanna let you know that our business administrators all over trying to get when these updates come in from the state legislature with the CARES Act and the COVID-19 funds. But the interesting thing I wanna point the board members to is the House 969 legislation regarding policy, educational policy. The first one is establish account and this is only for 2020-2021 school year. Establish account for average daily membership for each school district, not less than the district's 2019-2020 school year ADM. Reduction of 170 student attendance days for 2020-2021 school year. So that may give us some leverage in the student days if we, what we have to make up, what we don't have to make up depending if we have to close school because we don't have enough subs for a day or if we have to, if we have, depending on the winter and the snow that could be coming. So that gives us a little more wiggle room. There is a waiver and I'm sure our remote teachers will like this from our district, the waiver of the requirement for teachers to hold an endorsement for online teaching. So that's a big one that they do not have to go get online, they do not have to get an endorsement if they're doing that in our program. It's nine credits, otherwise they would have had to do nine credits of online learning. Then let's see, and those are some of the major pieces there. The other piece that I wanna share with you is how they're addressing potential education fund deficits in physical year 2021. So section E. 111.1 of H969 addresses the annual December 1st letter which is a requirement of the Vermont tax commissioner to consult with the agency of education, the secretary of administration and the joint physical office when calculating and forecasting a property dollar equivalent yield, an income dollar equivalent yield and a non homestead tax. In Act 122, the general assembly expressed this intent to address any projected deficit in the education fund for physical year 2021 by using federal funds, applying reversions, drawing down the stabilization reserve, using other sources of revenue, reducing costs, borrowing or using any other source of funding including making appropriations from the general fund or other funds. This provision in Act 122 was intended to relieve school boards of the responsibility for responding to the projected physical year 2021 deficit through school budgeting decisions for physical year 2022. So section E, 111.1 of H969 applies the legislative intent in Act 122 by calling on the tax commissioner to disregard the projected deficit in physical year 2021 education fund and to maintain the stabilization reserve at 5% when recommending the statewide education property tax rates. And then there's some other information but I'm just gonna go through. The other piece was uniform licensing standards. S233 simplifies the process of obtaining a Vermont professional educators license by directing the standards board for professional educators to develop new rules to address applicants with three or more years of practice in good standing in another state and to prescribe a process to assess the equivalence of an applicant's professional credentials earned outside the United States. This bill amend section 616 VSA 1694 by introducing a new pre-application criminal background determination that would allow potential applicants to know the outcome of the required criminal background checks for licensure and to know whether the potential applicant would be eligible for a license based on the outcome of that check. The bill does not make amendments to current laws requiring criminal background checks for licensure or employment. And this was signed by the governor on September 23rd and takes effect on April 1st, 2021. Thanks. That's pretty comprehensive. And it sounds like mostly good news. Yeah. There was nothing that I heard regarding amending the Vermont statutes as far as related to consolidation or do you consolidate? No, I had not heard anything officially in that regards. Okay. Any board member questions on legislative update? If not, I notice it's, oh, it's Jonas, is that your hand raised? No, okay. I notice it's 8.09. We've been going for two hours. Some of you with education quality have been going for three. Do you wanna continue to plow ahead with a target time of 8.45? Or maybe if you need a break, just feel free to black out your screen or do whatever you make too comfortable and just grab a bite or a glass of water or whatever and we can continue going. Because I think we're into the policy committee as has been kicked down towards the bottom of the agenda. So we're now at, if I'm not mistaken, at the consent agenda. So do we have a motion to approve the minutes from our retreat on September 12th and from our board meeting on September 16th? So moved. Thank you, Chris. And Brian, sorry, yes. Yes, I would like the board to correct the mistake in the minutes located on page 42 of your packet. Great, Brian. Do you mind holding that far just until we get it second? I'm jumping, sorry. No, no problem. Jaya, you have a beautiful cat. But would you like to second that consent agenda? Sure, I'll second it. Wonderful, thanks. I have to go feed him. Okay, that's fine. Now, Brian, please. Sorry, so if you look at page 42 of your board packet, the date for the budget timeline was, it says October 4th. It should read November 4th. Lisa, you got that? Thank you. Great, thank you. Any other changes to the agenda? Minutes? I'm sorry, to the minutes. Thank you, Chris. Yeah, I'm gonna ask that they do any attendance that they don't use invisible ink because they didn't include me at the board retreat. Maybe that was hopeful or wishful thinking, but I was there. And I remember you well, Chris. Yes, so Lisa, I know you weren't taking notes on that occasion, but... Yep, I'll let Michelle know. She can change it easily. Very good, thank you so much. Any other changes to the minutes of either of those meetings? If not, we can go to a vote. All in favor of approving the minutes of the 12th and the 16th, please click yes. Opposed? Aye. Aye. Or say aye. Thank you, Dorothy and Chris. And I'm seeing all green and hearing all eyes. So the motion carries, the minutes are approved. Um, Lindy, you're usually pretty good about having the board orders available. Is that true this time as well? Would you mind making the motion? I always find my cursor here. I make a motion to accept the board orders in the amount, in the amount $318,987.08. The next one is for $15,229.95. And the third one is $77,209.80. Thank you, Lindy. And Diane, now you have the magnificent cat. Would you like to second Lindy's motion? I second that before there's a crash behind me. Okay, great. Any questions or remarks about the board orders? If not, we can go to a vote. All in favor, please click yes or say aye. Opposed? Thank you. And once again, I'm seeing all yeses and hearing all eyes. So the motion to approve the board orders carries as well. Now, we're at the point where Chris, Chris's request for an executive session address picture. Yes, Chris. I'm gonna withdraw that request. You're gonna withdraw the request? I withdraw it just because I had misread something. Oh, okay. That's absolutely fine. Nobody objects to withdrawing the request, do you? I'm not seeing any expressions of dismay at this prospect. Great, okay. So, thank you, Chris. No executive session then. We can move to personnel action, the approval of new teachers and so forth. Would anyone like to move to approve the new teacher nomination? I can do that, I have it up. I make a motion to approve the employment nomination for Jason Kelly as a math teacher at U32. Wonderful. Thanks, Linda. Any second? I'll second it. Thank you, Gail. So, a discussion of Jason Kelly, sort of harking back to a comment of Flores about diversity. One area where diversity can manifest itself is in a teacher's background. And I have to say, I really appreciate the wealth and variety of experience of this math teacher. Any other, Chris? Yeah, I have a question. What type of appointment is this? Because it says, it doesn't say permanent. I'm not sure what type of appointment is this, Brian? Yes, all appointments that occur now in the school year are for the entire school year. Okay. And only for the entire school year, is that correct? Okay, thanks. Also, it looks like he has been teaching as a math teacher at the Laraway School in Johnson since April of 2018. But it also says years of related experience, zero. Is that a typo? No, it is not. That he's a teacher who's taught in a different school, but a public school. This will be his first role in a public school setting. Okay. So, is there an experience rating different between public school and private school? I'm trying to think, is there an experience rating depending on? Yeah, it says years of related experience, zero. But his experience in biography looks like he has about two years of teaching as a math teacher. Yeah, we calculated that as zero for this hire. Okay, thank you. So, that relates to placing him on the pay scale, Brian? Yes, yes. And it's always, you always want to make sure when you're placing folks on a pay scale, we are a unified union school district. We work with our labor and we want to make sure that when you do this kind of work, you're making sure that you're doing it in a way that is fair to the other staff that already work in the district. Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome. Any other questions? If not, we can go to a vote. All in favor of approving Lindy's motion seconded by Gael to approve the nomination of Jason Kelly as math teacher at U32 for the year. Please click yes. Aye. Or say aye. Thank you, Dorothy and Chris. And I see all yeses and here are all ayes. Thank you. Great. Now, I believe we have a resignation. Would anyone like to move that? Oh, Brian. Do you have something to say? I just wanted to let the board know that it's effective. The resignation is effective October 16th. Okay, 16th. Yeah, instead of the 23rd. Okay. I'm sorry. Did somebody move that? Did I didn't hear quite? I will move to accept the resignation of Mary Lynn Cross and Stewart as a U32 nurse. Thank you, Jonas. Do we have a second? I'll second it. Lindy seconds. And my lights are flickering so I may be leaving the meeting in a minute. Understood under duress. I hope it passes. So any questions for Brian on this one? Is that going to be U32 short staffed from a nursing capacity? It will. We are working on it. We may have found a good nurse sub to fill in while we find a active replacement. Unfortunately, we also have our COVID-19 coordinator who has been going over there to help out when necessary. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks. This seems to be an example of where we're stretched thin. So any other questions? If not, we can go to a vote. All in favor or Dorothy? Dorothy, do you have a question? No, I wanted to just say I. Oh, okay. Great. So let's vote then. I've got Dorothy's eye and all other yeses. And Chris, I didn't hear your eye, but I hope I'm not asleep. Wonderful. No, eye. Thank you very much. Thanks everyone. Great. Okay. So that leaves us with the second round of public comments. Are there any public comments to close this? We're still going to do as much as we can of policy before we conclude in order to listen to that or watch the vice presidential debate. But I have two. The first is a telephone 1802 ending in 622. Could you please identify yourself and first click star six to unmute yourself? There you go. Hey there, Corinne and Berlin. Hello, Corinne. So I'll make this really brief, but I'm really having trouble wrapping around the decision that was made for remote learning. And Brian seemed to speak as if this was something being offered, where to me it certainly sounded like it was forced and it was unexpected. And it wasn't at all what the families believed would be what their student would be doing this year. So I just had to express that, even though I don't have a student or even a grandchild in the particular grades that got moved over, I'm just, I'm really shocked. I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Corinne. Jessica Hines. I just want to say that it seems pretty clear to me that the superintendent and the board don't seem to really care much about the six guiding principles that were laid out for the remote learning option. And it's obvious this decision was made in the best interest of the district and not in the students. And it's very disappointing and discouraging, especially as an employee of this district, a parent and a taxpayer. I'm very disappointed in this decision. This is not how things are done in this district. And I believe that the board should do something about it and should have a say in it. You were the ones who asked for a change and to say that you don't think it's appropriate now to make a statement or to even ask more questions or to inquire or even talk to the parents or look at different options, I think is a bit ridiculous. And I'm not done with this. This is an unacceptable choice for my daughter. And I'm discouraged. I'm really disappointed and as well, I'm shocked. Understood, Jessica. Are there any other public? I see HQ Lane. Could you identify yourself, please? Hi, yes, my name is Holly Lane. I'm a parent in East Montpelier. Sorry, I'm having internet connectivity issues like everyone else. I can't really get my camera on without fading away. I'm a parent of three children in the district and have a child who went through the district and I have a son in fourth grade. I wanna start by saying that I think Kate Robb is an absolute superstar and superhero. And I feel very frustrated having listened to this conversation. I feel that there was a great disservice. My husband and I wrote two letters to Superintendent Olkowski expressing our concern about equity issues and the overcrowding of the classroom. And I just feel that this situation was not handled well. I need to echo Jessica Heinz when I say that I feel like the district, it feels like the district made this decision based on a bottom line and I'm a little shocked because I thought we were a district that was about our kids and not just our pocketbooks. I feel that the fact that Brian Olkowski right now is writing notes and not even paying attention to the people who are talking on screen is a huge slap in the face to those of us who just sat through this meeting. We moved to this district because we believe in what this district stands for. And throughout this entire process, families like ours who have chosen to go remote have been shut down with comments like the one that Brian Olkowski's message back to me basically saying, well, why don't you just send your kid back to school? So I would like to echo Jessica Heinz. I sat through this meeting and really thought about whether or not I should make a comment. And I put a lot of faith in a number in this board is full of really smart, compassionate, caring, committed, dedicated people. But I have to ask, what has happened here and why has it happened this way? And I really feel like this ball was dropped on behalf of any families who had any number of reasons why they might have chosen to go remote. And it wasn't just some option that we were just granted. And I take exception to things like the comments that the superintendent made in the September 16th meeting about how we're all just worried about our babies. We are worried about our kids. We're worried about many, many things. But mostly right now, I am worried about our kids. And mostly right now, I am worried about a group of third graders and a group of fifth graders who are hurting and not understanding that there's no plan to talk to the families of fourth and sixth grade families, even though this has an impact on our children as well. These are their classmates. I don't feel that the teachers were given the appropriate support and tools that they needed to support families and support kids. And I just have to say, I appreciate you taking my comment, but I am unbelievably disappointed. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just, it's understood by board members that public comments are that it's not part of a dialogue. But Jonas, you have something that you'd like to... Your hand is raised. Yeah. I just want to say that I hear everything that Jessica, I hear what you're saying. Our kids were classmates for a minute. During my tenure on the board, there have been a number of times where I have wanted to get involved with the district's decision-making, but I have not and the board has not. And I think that those have been wise decisions. A comment was made a number of months ago when the board was facing a difficult situation. And the comment was that the board stepping in to countermand or take decision-making power away from the superintendent is an extraordinary. And fraught process. And I just want to go on the record as saying that this is Brian's first year here. I can't begin to imagine the difficulty he's had in adapting to a new place, new place for his family, new regs and everything in Vermont. And then the coronavirus crisis. It is understandable that people are so upset. Hearing that the decision was made, Brian stands by the decision. He says that's his, right? And he stands by it alone. It was his call. I think that's appropriate for him to say, but the fact that it was made in consultation with people that I've met over the last couple of years and have a lot of respect for gives me some confidence that while there's a lot of downside to this decision, that the downsides to the other options may have been worse. I don't know that for certain, right? I wasn't in a meeting with Brian and Jen and Kelly and everyone, but Jessica and Danielle, and I forget the name of the one who just spoke. I apologize. We, I hear you. I think the board hears you. To take action on this would be extraordinary. And I want to hear more about it as a parent and as a board member. But for me, you guys, this is not a place where we can step in and exercise some kind of veto power. All we can do, what we need to do is observe this as it plays out and as the people that we, the guy that we hired and the people that are employed by the district, they need to be free to make their decisions without the fear of the board stepping in and without having to look over their shoulder all the time. That doesn't mean necessarily that I agree or disagree with the decision that was made. It's just an extraordinarily difficult thing. And I just don't want the concerned parents to think that the board, or at least me, I don't want you to think that I am indifferent to this or uncaring the position that we're in, we don't have a lot of options, it seems to me, without taking really extraordinary action. That doesn't, I'm sure that doesn't make you feel any better. Yeah, I see that, yeah. But I'm sorry, that's, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Thank you. And I think, thank you, Jonas. And this is something just as you were saying that will continue to observe and continue to follow. And it's something I'm sure that the administration will continue to work on. I noticed that there's another member of the public, Brooke's hand, if I have that correctly. Yes, please. Hi, it's Danielle, my internet cut out so I missed the last probably two comments. So I apologize, I can't segue in. I wanted to say that earlier when Jen was mentioning about the third grade class and I'm on a small detail, but it affects my eight year old. So that's why I'm talking about it, but it's not just the difference between synchronous and asynchronous teaching that's happening. It appears to be a mastery learning model that excludes the ability to monitor and adjust in real time with real students at their level. So I see there are communication problems, there are technology problems, there are transition problems, there are tonality problems and many of those can be addressed. I hope they can be addressed, but it's going to boil down to, I think this mastery learning and perhaps the skills of the teacher within the paradigm she's teaching in. I don't think there's malintent anywhere, I don't think there's lack of skill, but we're having a mismatch and a gap. And while there may not be funds that can be spent right now in a way that I would like, although I do hear about the coronavirus relief fund and I'm not educated about the details and school funding, but I'm wondering if part of this issue can fall under that anywhere, but that's a separate piece. But at some point there needs to be, if right now seven out of, six out of seven students have not been able to transfer to the other format. Your child was not incorrect about the third grade still being there because they're still there. They can't connect, they can't connect with the relationship of the teacher, they can't connect with how it may be national core standards, but it's not in a way that an eight-year-old can shift to. And so that third grade is still in the classroom because they can't figure it out. Their parents can't figure it out as well. We're right there trying to support them. So, we're melt, I'm really myopic here. My family is melting down. My eight-year-old is melting down. And I understand the greater good of all students, but I'm living with one of them. And that's where my focus is. And I encourage, okay, so I'm gonna lift off a little bit here for two. I encourage, I wanna open the board's mind about remote learning. I've been teaching remotely for 11 years. I feel like the investment in, I was so excited to see Canvas. That is a critical, I've worked with Blackboard and Moodle and now Canvas. Like I think in terms of making public education relevant for the long haul, for climate change, for the next pandemic, for whatever else we can't see, that if we invest in remote learning, not only Canvas, but people who can teach in it, the district is going to be more agile to meet whatever is coming. And so I just want to plant those seeds and ask to really hear that money would not have been dedicated to another teacher. But if you invest in another teacher who knows how to do this and can teach others, you are not only taking care of my eight-year-old, but I think it provides agility for where we're going, for the district. And I realize these are hard decisions and I am personally incredibly discouraged, which I will handle on my own. But as we move forward, I please beg of you to keep in mind an eight-year-old and to offer the support that's available. And I appreciate that everybody must be in a really difficult position. Thank you again for the time. Thank you very much. Jessica, I see your hand is up, but generally we only offer one bite at the apple. I would urge that we make an exception here, given the impact that this situation is having on families and children. And if she's not blocking anyone else or taking the opportunity from someone else, I think we should give Jessica another opportunity to speak. It's somewhat of a dialogue, which is good for us to hear. I should just- That's a motion. Well, let's just sort of do it by consensus of board members, because this is something that can, there's no natural sort of conclusion to this. I think the views have been expressed quite eloquently and movingly. And as Jonas has pointed out, I think with his usual clarity, there's nothing that we're going to be able to do at this point. I think the value of hearing what members of the public have to say is in this forum is that administrators here too, and their work will continue. And this is like everything else, something that is happening in time and that we need to allow time for to adjust, to adapt, to take whatever additional matters might be necessary. So I, with my just limitless respect, Chris, I would prefer that because of Caitlin, who's sticky has also put up her hand. She is, she hasn't yet spoken. So I would give her the floor for the moment. Hi. I'm gonna make a few brief comments and I would be happy to yield my time to Jessica. I'm the parent of a fourth grader in the remote classroom. Scott, your comment tonight that no good deed goes unpunished. I felt was insensitive and harsh and I would ask you to rethink that sort of commentary. I had asked for the remote school class size to be reconsidered. I felt it was unreasonable. I CC all of the board, at least the board members who have an email listed on the website in my email. I certainly did not want seven students from my daughter's three, four class to be pushed out, which out of the district, which it seems they are being. The superintendent has emphasized that in school is a priority, so that many times in many ways. I'd like to remind you that the remote school as of the last count I had had 88 students. This is more than the number of students in Doty or Calis and that's significant. Everyone should be a priority. There should not be this sort of tier of we're not going to consider you as much and put the resources there or whatever. I can also say that the fourth graders were not told I actually found out by going and looking at the packet for this board meeting and I saw the memo that Superintendent Kowski wrote to the board September 30th and it said that students and families had been contacted by the remote school principal. I emailed Gillian to ask what I'd like this communication what is happening. I'm hearing snippets as I'm in the same room as my daughter and I don't know what's going on. So I just, this is, it's pretty upsetting. And gosh, my heart is going out to these families in the third grade. If it were me, I would be devastated. This needs to be reconsidered. I missed the comments at the beginning but I heard the very tail end and I heard I think it was Jessica say that her child was thriving with Ms. Robb. So that's not nothing. So that's what I have to say. And I hope that you let Jessica speak again. Thank you. Thanks very much. In the order of things, there would not normally be a second opportunity of public comments. Do I, does the board wish to override that? Yes. I'm seeing a number of agreements. Okay. In that case, Jessica. I apologize for my emotion. I just wanted to, the one last thing I wanted to say was that I really hope the board members will inquire with the leadership team what was discussed. Because I have heard that it was basically a top-down decision with not a lot of input from the other leadership team members as well as the remote learning principle. The teacher wasn't even, I told the teacher, I told Kate Robb that I had gotten a letter from this Vermont, this third grade teacher. She found out by me, which is ridiculous. She hasn't been involved in any of the discussions. This whole situation is just, it's shocking to me. And I just implore you to contact some of the leadership team and to really talk to them about how this all came out. And I've heard over and over tonight that it's not your decision to make, it's whatever. But it's your duty to do your due diligence in this situation. For these students who are suffering because they're being pulled out of their community and put into a different class, it's not okay. It's not okay at all. Thank you. All right. I'm not seeing any more members of the public wishing to comment. So we will move on to future agenda items. And I'm wondering if one of those future agenda items shouldn't be today's 4.2.1, the first reading of the policies for the policy committee. Chris, may I ask you how you feel about that? That's absolutely fine with me. Let me just explain to the board why the format is slightly different in terms of presenting the policies. And we changed it somewhat so that they went out on Wednesday for first reading for this meeting and then to be voted on next meeting to comply with a 10 day production, 10 day deadline that we needed to meet in order for voting on policies. But with that being said, I'm happy to do this next time. If that's the board's desire. Yes. And I think because it's on our agenda, we have to take formal action to put it off to our next meeting, to table it until the next meeting. Then I'll move to table section 4.2.1 to our next meeting. Thank you very much, Chris. Is there a second to that motion? It's Lindy. I'll second. Okay. We have two seconds. Lindy and I thought- Is there a 12 on that? I beg your pardon, Chris? Is there a 12 on that? We'll find out soon. So is there any discretion of this motion to table? If not, please click yes. If you're in favor, no. If you're opposed or say aye. If you- Aye. Aye. Thank you very much. I have all yeses and ayes. So 4.1 is until our next meeting. Any other future agenda items that you'd like to record? Brian. Yes. I have three possible ones. First one is just continuing to think about central office job descriptions. I may try to be brave and get another job description done between now and then. The other one is superintendent evaluation where I thought we'll have to warn that in executive session. And I don't know, Jonas, Diane, are we ready? Do you think we'll- Or maybe we should talk more about it, possibly having a negotiations executive session coming up? I don't know what your thoughts are. I do think we should. I had a really good conversation with Laurie the other day and to set the stage for things, as we progress into the fall, I think it would be good to fill the board in on where we are. Thank you. That's all I have. Wonderful. There are the lights flickering. Yeah. The lights just went off. Oh, yours went off? How are you? It'll set. Just went out. Hello. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it's about to be texted me. Just a heads up. The power is off on Collar Hill on its route to Worcester. Oh, great. Yeah, it's flickering here on Gould Hill where Jonas and I are. Okay. Norton Road, Scott. Norton Road. Okay, Norton Road. Sorry. So maybe we should adjourn by consensus before the electric company adjourns us for us. Any objections? If not, many, many thanks to everyone who participated as always and very best to all for the rest of the week and the weekend. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, everybody. Thank you. Adjourned at 850.