 And first of all, reception of guests, Matthew. Thanks for coming again. Anything in particular you want to have to list about tonight? Really? I can talk about goals when you get there if you want. OK. Thanks. Matthew, are you a Berlin parent? Or? No. I've seen you before. No, I'm on the Worcester School Board. And on the SE School Board chair this year. So just visiting a lot of meetings. Great. Cindy, welcome. Cindy Goth here, third and fourth grade teacher. Sorry, I was late, Cindy. We'll take a look at the agenda. And does anyone have any comments or revisions to the agenda? Any public comments or correspondence to the board? I'm sure this is the right time. It should be brought up during the resignation. I assume we won't go. I guess no, it's the right time. Just so we had reached out to me about doing whatever it takes to keep a chef nice to be here at the school. So can we maybe discuss that under the executive resume? Maybe not. I had to actually just comment on a few people. I was also wondering, speaking of resignation, I noticed a paraeducator position posted over at the town office. But I didn't see anything about somebody resigning. So I was wondering if it's an additional or if there's another resignation we haven't seen yet. It's an additional paraeducator that we have in the budget for next year. We had done some. We did a deep analysis. Carol, I don't think there's a replacement of somebody. I don't think so. Nancy, I'm the living. OK, Nancy, yeah. Ms. Clifton? Yeah, her half time part of the paraeducator. And I'll just note that I received an email from Jeremy Hansen regarding the telecommunications district meetings. I didn't realize he hadn't approached the school yet. So I'm going to direct him to Bill and to Carol to talk about the facility use for the telecommunications district meetings. Let's see. Any other public comments or correspondence? Just note under 1.4 that we have a future meeting on June 6th. And that's a supervisory union board meeting and a carousel meeting. Item 2.1 to approve the minutes of April 9th and May 1st. And it'll start on page 2. Does anyone have any comments about the minutes? In 1.3, where I said something, it was, I think it should read, C. Streisberg passed a long appreciation from Mike for the successful, that's what I thought I remembered saying. And then with 3.7 under the student artwork to have it clarified, where it says prohibited from posting this last circulation, shouldn't that be specifically by board members due to FERPA? You're on line 3 at 3.7, Karen? Yep. Does that apply just to board members? Staffing that. Staffing as well as receiving them. And then you have to have permission. I'd love to get the word in again. Prohibit from posting circulation from board members and staff, because board members are considered staff under statute. And can you give me in form page 3 again? I couldn't quite understand all of it, sorry. 1.3 C. Streisberg passed a long appreciation from Mike for the month. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Any other changes to the April 9th minutes? Any comments or changes on the March 1st special school board meeting? If none, I'd entertain a motion to approve those minutes with the two changes by current. How much motion? Is there a second? All second. Those in favor? 75 by saying aye. Aye. All the minutes are approved. And next we have our discussion agenda. We have a city we have you at. Item 3.2 may we'll move that ahead Item 3.1, if no one objects. No. Kick it off with you. Sure. Yeah. Just to assume you. Well, I just wanted to come and have a conversation with you about my retirement and just to express deep appreciation for all the opportunities that I've had here. It's more than a job. And more than a job for me, I think you probably know. And there are some things, as I'm leaving, that I just am hoping that you will hold dear to your hearts, like I have. And some of them are financial things. And some are just things that I hope somebody will pay attention to, especially with Carol leaving and several other people leaving. I just did just some things mostly in the letter, which you already read. But I just thought if I spoke to it a little bit, it might help you think a little bit more about it. I did want to mention, as I went through the letter and things I wanted to say, how much I just appreciate the teachers that my own daughters had when they were here at U32. And some of the people that really stuck out for me was Ellen Cook, Randy Brown, Caroline Grace, Julie Seussman, and Jane Boucher. And those people had significant impact on their lives and the people they've become. I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you continued support of dental and health insurance. And I know that's really hard because it's so expensive, but it just makes such a big difference to know that you have a job that supplies those things. I was kind of surprised to find out that in leaving, you get $10 for every day that you haven't used. I mean, I know it's in the contract, but then just seeing it there thought, hmm, that's odd. And I've always had a lot of sick days. I've luckily not been sick. So I'm able to have that maximum benefit. But I think about other people that maybe have used up their days a little bit more quickly. And I'm glad that we can share those days if we have extras and people need them. So I hope that will continue. I appreciate the professional development opportunities that you continue to support and keeping those things in the budget. And I know there's negotiated issues, but I really feel like it makes a big difference when people can go and take classes and learn the things that you want to learn. And I mean, I've been so fortunate that you've earned, I earned two master's degrees from working here that I've paid very little personal money for because it was part of my professional development money. And I hope that you'll continue with that. It's just been such a blessing for me to have seen kids over the years and then I talked about in the letter having the two generations of being able to teach two generations is just so rewarding to see that. And then to know that you had maybe a little piece in who these adults have become and then their children are becoming. I wanted to mention Kim Farone because she is an amazing teacher. And I don't think people really always realize how good she is. She works very, very hard. She is here early in the morning. She is willing to be with teachers. She meets with kids before school. She meets with kids during her lunch period. I don't know if she eats a lunch at all, but she's very dedicated and I don't think that people always recognize that as much as I do. And also, having worked with her on the time, I don't know if you remember or you were on the board at that time, but she was rift and then I took her place and she was so kind with that transition and it just helped me understand that job and where somebody else might not have been. So I really appreciate that in her. I really appreciate the Washington Central staff and all the support that they give. And people like Bill Carol Freeman, who is no longer there, but she was, I really enjoyed working with her. Jen and Ellen Dorsey. Ellen is just a God sent to math. So I hope if there's any way that we can keep her and keep that work going, I think it's really been important. I've worked at the summer school and I love working with Kelly and Allison Fale and Robin Gannon and Cara. And I just feel like those summer opportunities are super, super important. I wish that we could find a way to broaden that out for other kids that don't have IEPs. Similar to what we did that one summer with the Math Monday, where we had opened that up to anybody that was interested and they could come and we worked in the garden and we did math and it just kept them going a little bit more I think. So I don't know if there's any opportunity for that, but I would encourage you to continue that if you can. Of course, the farm to school stuff, you know from that recent presentation how important that is to me. We had a nice tree planting on Friday. We collaborated with the Central Mont Rotary and the Central Mont Career Center. I had a conversation with Carol and Earl at Barry Opera House at an event and it sort of sparked it off and Carol and talked to the Rotary and they were planting the trees around Central Mont. So I said, if I got the place, perfect place for you. So now we have 21 apple trees out there. And so hopefully people will care for those and be sure they're maintained. I think Dave Wilcox is definitely going to help with, you know, being sure that they're cared for properly with the pruning and all of that. Some other, you know, kind of little things, but the Bobcat Trail that we worked so hard to fix that path up and, you know, replace the bridges and the boardwalks and it gets people down and using that wetland and the hardwood forest and just seeing those different habitats. So I hope that that will be continued to be maintained, of course, field trips to try to close that equity gap. You know, we do have children in Berlin that don't have a lot of the resources that some of the rest of the people have and if they can have those field trips and, you know, get to places like Boston or Montreal or, you know, the Shelburne Museum or Fort Ticonderoo but those kind of trips that we would take our families to but some of these other kids will never get there if we don't take them. So I hope that we will continue to do that or you will continue to do that. I hope that the responsive classroom will continue to be a central focus with the teaching people how to care about each other and I know we have PBIS and we have some other things but I really feel like that grounding that in responsive classroom is still important and along with the farm to school, you know, just continuing to keep this garden going, maybe somehow, I don't know if it's possible, thinking about it more of health and wellness and, you know, we have an athletic director but maybe there's a way that that could be rolled into, you know, like a health and wellness coach or something where instead of just athletics, it's about health and we know that the exercise through the athletics but also, you know, eating healthy and helping with like things like the junior iron chef team, those, that's not a big financial responsibility for you all but finding someone to do the paperwork and work with a coach and just to be here when the end of the day, it really needs to be somebody that's at school. The other, another thing is our robotics. I hope that you will continue to push that forward and as far, I think Berlin's the only one using still the old technology so it'd be great if somehow their robots could be updated and they could have the newer technology and another thing that we've lost is the foreign language so I don't know if there's any way to bring that world cultures back in. I know way back when Carolyn Grace's son Nicholas was in kindergarten, we had the French five students come and we did, you know, what we could do one time a week with them and then we ended up bringing the French and the Spanish five students and then when foreign language came that kind of ended but then foreign language ended and so now we don't have anything and I feel like, you know, it kind of puts our Berlin kids at a disadvantage to the rest of the district so hopefully they'll find a way to bring that back and then I was thinking about how Jen just asked us to think about what makes a master teacher and I do really appreciate the Danielson model and all that that pulls in but I almost feel like, you know, this love of children and then that strong work ethic which I don't know how you do, you can't really dictate when people are here beyond the contract hours but just somebody to encourage embracing the community, not just having this be a job so that's all I have but I'm afraid if I just spoke to it that I might be able to encourage you to carry those things forward. Thank you. You're welcome. You have the letter. It's all in this. Cindy, could you make me a copy of the second page? I didn't notice until I saw you referring to it that I only had two pages. I just want to say thank you because I am one of the ones that put out for the future. And then you realize until you're going to your list how many things I've been connected with whether it's the apple trees and Craig and I bought a few for my grandmothers, remembrance, the garden, the farm to table, the nature trail, the booster clubs, the summer bath program, I've been very much a part of a lot of those programs with Cindy and I'm gonna miss working with you on those things but thank you for for everything you've done. You're welcome. Yeah, I'll be around. I'm sure I'll have some time in the garden or maybe I'll see, or maybe I'll teach in Thailand. I've had a job offer. Oh, and then there's so many, many things that I'll remember wonderfully as I can hope that you were instrumental in them. So thank you very much. Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome. I hit my 20 year milestone at work and I was trying to think of just what I've done, right? What I've done over my career and I can't compare to what a teacher has done in the lives that a teacher touches in such a legacy that you have in the school and outside the school with all the people who passed through your classroom. I'm just sad that Calvin doesn't even have you as a teacher but I'm very lucky that you're there. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you, Cindy. Yeah, you're welcome. I'm really appreciate it. Thanks for listening. Hopefully I didn't overstep my bounds. Thank you. Thanks. So we skipped over to 2.2, we're back to 3.1. The winter SLO monitoring report. So this is the outline that we're giving is going to be given some more outline to all of the boards in the district. I know in the past we've talked about it's very hard to give you a full picture because what we're doing is spring monitoring. We're missing out on the end of the year assessments to see even further growth. The agenda is to understand the MTSS system. What does our student data tell current state? What has worked well? What do we need to investigate further? What sports do we need from the board? So multi-tier support system. It is very well researched here in Vermont. I did bring along one copy because it's pretty dense but if you would like to borrow it and take a look at it and read it, you can find it online. So if you would want to take a minute and look, we're going to emphasize, it emphasized the importance of effective, culturally responsive, differentiated first teaching which you might hear as tier one teaching. That's the teaching that occurs in the classroom. Effective early intervention supports for both academics and behavior for all students and that's something that we're really looking at here at Berlin. There are several components to the Vermont which is the one that I'm showing here which is the MTSSRTII which is response to intervention and instruction as well. So you might want to take a look at the whole document if you go to the AOE, you can look at that. So we're going to be talking about those different components in that as well. So our fall reading data, this is based on our scores in the younger grades. In fall kindergarten does not do assessments. First, second, and third, do what we call Pontus and Pinel or F and P. And the older grades do the DRA2 which also goes up into U32. So, sorry. So what we have here is a look at our fall data compared to the winter data. One thing that I do have to note, the level four is the highest level that is a level that is advanced past proficiency but because of the way it is reported in IC and I'm not sure other schools have, there's one other school that has those scores in it and I'm not sure how they did it. It doesn't go, it only goes to level three. Yeah, so it's not going to give you that higher score. As you can see, we've had gains. Of course, this is fall to winter. A lot of learning goes on after the winter break into the spring, so what will be happening and what we're doing coming up will hopefully be able to really scrutinize those scores further, see how we're doing, what we need to move forward on. Carol, can you just remind us when the fall assessments and winter assessments are given? Just so folks have it. Fall assessments are given in September, right when the children come. Winter is in January and the spring ones are coming up. We have a couple of assessments above and beyond the DRA too but the FNP but those are the ones that are reflected in here. The other one is more of a screening diagnostic, you know. So here's the cross, Bill Campbell put this together and it's looking at schools across the district. So I don't know, you can look at the scores, you can pull up ours, ours is column two. So as you can see, we're pretty in line with the rest of the district, doing well. Our math data is based on the star 360. Math data is, the star 360 is more than one year of a screening tool. What it does is it's diagnostic, it gives the teachers some ideas of what students need assistance in. So again, if you look at the difference between the fall and winter math data, we are making gains and this is a real positive because in the past, we really were not making gains and sometimes we were making deficits. We have deficits in that area. I'll talk about that when we get further to successes. So across all schools, again, if you look, we are two and we are pretty in line with the rest of the district, which again, was not the case for our math. Our math is growing, it's getting stronger and that's a real positive. The, again, you've seen this before, it's our multi-year PBIS data and I think I've given this previous, it's just updated, but our data for our ODR is what we call office referral forms is again showing progress in that area, strong PBIS and responsive classroom working together. So successes, the trends overall are good and positive growth in all areas and we're seeing math and behavioral. Maths work are comparable to the district's average and we continue to make gains and the reason why I focus particularly on that is that wasn't the case and I believe it was the year previous to my coming. There was a real shift in what we were looking for, maybe two years before I can shift into our math. We started looking at working on digging deeper into concepts and having children understand and be able to explain why different math concepts were happening. Because of this shift, some of the teachers were still learning what they were doing. There was a hard alignment, people were having a hard time getting that done through the hard work on a build, getting a math coach in place for us, a lot of training, a lot of summer help. The teachers have been working very, very hard on the math and we continue to grow. Kim Perrone has been doing an enormous job helping individuals move in that direction. So we're starting to see students that are coming along that have really strong understanding of math concepts, of where a very strong platform to build on. So they are not just the children who can memorize, that can gain, that can remember the rules. Now they understand concepts behind those rules, why those rules apply and when they can apply those rules. So that's really a wonderful thing in literacy. We're working far more on getting the students to comprehend what they're reading, to truly dig deep and to look at what it is that they are gaining from the content. Again, we have the interventionist working, but the tier one or the classroom instruction is really strengthening as well. And that's what the MTSS is wanting to do. That is where the true learning should happen in that first classroom setting. And all of it works together. If we have the behaviors in the classroom, there have been some behaviors outside of the classroom that we're working on, but in the classroom, they can focus on the learning. And it has shown very positively. The last bullet that I put in is not in the presentation, but it's something that I felt should be focused on is what our language make Dawkins works with students quite a lot. And we don't really see, she's like a behind the scenes kind of person and we think, oh, she just works with one or two people. But in fact, she's been working very hard with the kindergartners to help to strengthen their phonological awareness, which is the building blocks for reading and understanding. She uses visual phonics, which is incredible if you ever get an opportunity to go in and watch her and that she has trained the kindergarten and first grade teachers. So when you have a child who is learning a sound and they're having a hard time hearing or saying the sound, there is an actual visual that goes along with it. It's adaptation of sign language. And I have in my walkthrough observations or just in the classroom working with students seen where a child in a kindergarten level, even first grade level is struggling with the sound and the teacher makes the signal and the child just gets it. So that is only going to help our reading scores even farther when you have only 24% of the kindergarten students meeting the standard in the beginning of such a key concept. And at the spring level, this was a spring level, 96%, only one student did not reach the level. So again, Meg is not someone that we hear frequently about, but her work is very, very important to the school. Possible improvements. We need to strengthen professional learning communities and enrich team discussion, improve data-driven decision-making practices. We really need to continue to look at the data and determine how we can best meet and change our instruction at the level one, tier one level. We do that frequently. That's why teachers prefer to have teams that they can work with and meet together to look at the data with the interventionists to determine next steps. Analyze efficiency and intervention model in literacy and mathematics. My suggestion and what I am doing, Erin is coming to the school early in June. That's the new principal. I have set up a schedule he is going to meet. I have told the interventionists to present to him what we're doing. My strong suggestions would be in there aware of it. We have now a good two to three years of data. We need to, and we were starting it this year, but it needs to continue to dig deep and to look at retention of what the students are doing when they are intervention. If they are doing, working on a specific concept and they go back to the classroom, I want to see assessments done three, four months out and then continue to make sure that they're retaining that information that they're getting at that tier two level that it's being maintained at the tier one level. If not, we need to look at, is it the presentation of the tier two level so that it is not, do they need more time at practice? Is it something that's lacking in the tier one level or the classroom level so that the children are not having enough chance where there's not enough connect between the interventionists and the teachers to allow the children to continue to practice that work? Do you understand what I mean? So create a schedule that enhances the effectiveness of interventions and we are working on that, but the schedule also will allow that team time for individuals to work together, to plan together, especially when you have multi-grade and people working in teams, continue to support learning about the implementation response to trauma informed classroom that is ongoing, that's ongoing district wide. It's something that Bill has supporting greatly and the other schools have as well. I think Berlin is a little ahead of the curve for many of the students in the district, but it is a way that we need to keep going. Identify, and this is something that was in our continuous improvement plan before and I feel it is still so important so do the teachers. Identify strategies students need to build stamina to determine how these strategies will be taught. Some students cannot stay at a task for very long. It's sometimes hard because if you look at some of the things that some of the students do in their spare time, it's a lot of instant gratification of video games and things like that. So we just need children to be able to stay on task. The genius hour is one of those, building those transferable skills, looking at those kinds of things. Build a school-wide culture in which the ethic of presenting best work is the norm. So I've talked about, I love the genius hour, but I would love to see a more polished piece of work at the end of that time. Having students take more pride in what they're presenting and how they're presenting their knowledge. And then advanced tier three PBIS supports. We are a tier three school, which means that we do need to look at the data to determine children that have higher needs that can be met at the tier one level or the tier two level. Tier one is the classroom level and continue those supports. Tier two examples of those are Lucia and the work that she does, which is phenomenal with students to help them. But sometimes we need a little bit more support in that area. Board support, keep on supporting the math and literacy and prevention positions. We've had this on before and it is moving, but support of change in the school start and dismissal time. Support the work and moving forward and meeting the goals set out and student learning outcomes and transferable skills. That work that this district is doing is phenomenal. And I highly suggest that you really dig deep when you're looking at your own work goals to make sure that you have a clear understanding. And we have been doing some work with the transferable skills and we'll be doing a presentation at my last board meeting because this won't be long about a team that has went to training last week and the work that we're starting towards building habits of mind and those transferable skills here at this school and continue to work to educate the community, and public education is our responsibility to meet the all students that we care about. So that is what I ask. I guess Cindy had her request. And if you think of that as my request and I know this is a phenomenal school and there is growth in all areas and you should be proud of the support that you've been doing with the schools and helping us continue to move forward. And I think you're going to keep on seeing that growth and those stories can keep on going up and we're at far with the rest of the district and I think we can surpass. Thank you, Carol. Does anyone have any questions about the update and monitoring report? I did. I'm wondering how much movement we see with kids moving in and out of our school in grades one, two, and three. I seem to recall that over the years for every time you get excited about seeing two or three students move in, that some are moving out. And I'm just wondering if there's much of that going on right now and how that affects the testing, like if their test scores would come with them. Yeah, no, I haven't seen a lot of movement in and out this year as we have. There is some, but not as much as we have seen in the past, and you're right, there would be, like, we would start school and then there'd be a shift and not that it hasn't happened, but it really hasn't happened a lot this year. So I hadn't even thought about that, but. Do their test scores come with them if they've tested elsewhere? Well, these test scores are what we do district in our district. So if we have a child who moves into district that has done F and P and Fontes and Pinot, then they would move with them, and they would be there, but they wouldn't necessarily be in our system. We keep our information in what we call infinite campus. Oh, thank you, thank you, which has been a wonderful addition again, something that Bill has worked very hard to get into place, knowing that the way of, you know, to look at the data, we need to have it all centralized in one place with teachers having easy access to it. So that would not be in there to compare them necessarily. I was also wondering is how they do on the tests in the fall, is that what helps decide what extra help they're getting going forward for the rest of the year or is that based on other? Well, the screener, the Star 360 is a good screener, and that does help, yes, and that is very important. We use that, what it has in the fall, but there is constantly, if a child does get intervention, the interventionists are doing running records and reading. Kim is keeping her own formative assessment, which could be looking at how the children are doing on-demand tasks as they leave her room, things like that, so those always influence. It's best to use many different sources of information to look at what children's needs are, but these are areas, the FNP and the DRI2 and the Star 360 are areas that we use a lot in the beginning. And my only other question is, maybe I'm just missing it, but you seem to have two boxes of board supports, and I only have one in my thing here, but I was pretty sure you flipped to a second page of them up there. No, I think only have one. So there's just four bullet points over board supports. I thought you went over more than four items. I just seemed like I was giving more than I did, but I don't- Well, I didn't take notes because I had this, and then it didn't seem to- Maybe because of this, the format's the same, but she had the three slides you could see there at the end. Yeah. Okay, so I'm not missing something. How about you, Gery, any other questions? Yeah. So when students are taking either the Star 360 for math or either one of the literacies to be- Depending on the grades, are they taking it at the grade level standards, or are they taking it where they're at? They're to be taking it at the grade level standards. Yes, and that was something that Jen Miller and the Curriculum- Individual on the Curriculum Committee had talked about. It's very important to make sure that we have this data to be able to compare across districts and to make sure that we can see the way our students, but yes, they are taking it at their level. I'm curious, Carol and Bill, when you look at these numbers, and it's great to see some improvements and trends in a good direction, how do you apply it to what's happening in the school? Do you use it to inform more focus on a particular area or more support for a certain area? And again, I think that it's really important to look at this and to dig a little deeper so that if we're seeing that, say in an area of math, there is a pocket of students that are having problems. So then we might look back at the instruction and that's one of the problems that we've had in the math is that two, well, three years ago or when I started, there was such an influx and it was hard to look back. First of all, we didn't have the data. And second, it was kind of a little bit intermole because people were teaching math, but the alignment wasn't as strong as it is now because of the enormous amount of work that Ellen has done, Jen Miller has done, Bill has done to help to make sure that we pulled of that math, aligned it and created a very strong curriculum. And we're starting to see the fruits of those work now with the scores that we're getting. And I don't know if that really answered your question. What you need to do is just dig deep and see, okay, is this a problem that we're missing something in the classroom that isn't being done? Or is it just, you know, these students, certain students are just not getting it. And if they just get that little bit of oomph from Kim, they get the rate, but they get a little bit to feather out those misconceptions that they have in that area, then they'll fly. So that's again what I was saying. I specifically set up time, talked to Bill extensively about this as well with Erin, with the interventionist and making my suggestions and they're aware of what their needs are, is to now look and see, are these interventions being successful? And if a child is going out of their intervention group as being proficient, do they continue to hold onto that? If not, then where is the problem? Is it at the tier one level or the two or a combination? But it has to be addressed. If it's not addressed, then those students won't continue to grow. So that's going to be something that we're going to have a pretty hearty discussion with Erin and further, I'm sure. And he, I'm sure, will be very supportive. He seems like the kind of gentleman that we really want to get that hold of as well. There are other ways that you're trying to ensure some consistency so we keep that momentum going. There's a lot of transition in the schools over the next year. I imagine the curriculum alignment helps so that everybody's kind of tracking just the same way, but with a lot of new teachers and a new principal, there are particular things that you're doing to try to keep that momentum going. Well, one of the things that, again, Bill and I had talked about early on was when we had the great ability to find and recruit someone within district who already knows some of the initiatives that we're working forward on and has, from my understanding, and I heard great things and seen things when we went for the interview to observe, that we'll keep that work going in a wonderful way. There are strong mentorships of that. Bill has put in place in this district that I have not seen in other districts, that I think is a phenomenal way to help people stay informed. There are summer offerings. We're having Mahesh Sharum, who is one of the individuals whose focus in our math work is very involved and we're advertising with our new individuals to do that. There's responsive classroom work going on over the summer, so there are a lot of things in place to help those individuals move forward. Again, the mentoring program, I think, is huge. And to have that in place and the support from Bill and Jen Miller-Arsono in that is, I think, a real plus as well. Thanks, Carol. Any other questions on the report? Thank you. Item 3.3 is board goals, and that's around page 6 of your packet. You can see some goals that we'll put together by the executive committee. Matthew, do you want to speak to this at all? I don't have them in front of me, but these are, I think everyone will remember that these were the topics that were prioritized by the SEU board at its meeting in late March, and executive committee was more or less charged with kind of flesh these out. So we discussed our meeting at the end of April. This reflects kind of material that we put together and all we can put in on this from that meeting. So again, just to repeat, personally, my hope or aspiration would be that boards, SEU boards, the district boards of the SEU, I should say, would adopt these goals in common, even if there are other goals that you may feel are specific to building an elementary. But obviously, that's at your discretion. And just to refresh everybody's memories, we've had in our packet almost every month we've had our Berlin board goals, which were four or five different categories. And Matthew came and spoke to us and asked us to kind of wait and see what the executive committee would come up with before we adopted any new board goals. And personally, I think the three big categories we have here encompass just about everything that we had in our board goals. Ours were very specific and didn't necessarily attach well to an activity or a timeline. So there was some discussion about maybe doing them in a different format, perhaps start from scratch. But now we have in front of us what the executive committee has come up with in the three large categories of, I think, the larger SEU board. So I guess open to suggestion about how we proceed from here with board goals, with these three in front of us and knowing what we have had in our Berlin-specific goals before. Concerns about maybe these being too compressed or too narrow or non-addressing with Berlin-specific topics that we have come up with? Well, number one, I'm fine with. And goal number two, I guess I'd rather see it a little more specific to go on. I think if our government is to be setting goals and achieving them, it's hard to, for me, to just assume that something's there within what's here, but it's really not. And if we're asking the administration and the staff for very specific things that I feel are truly important, but again, that's my opinion. I think you could add on to this a little bit, but I'm not sure that kind of goal three, I think, again, it's pretty. I like it, but again, I would want to tweak the activities on the timeline for what's to go forward. Curring to those three categories, cover what you'd like to see in board goals or is there something that would fit outside of those three goals, larger goals? I was just going back and comparing to what we'd have been talking about. I really think along it, other three goals kind of fit in me. That's what I'd definitely. I tend to agree with Vera as far as I think a lot of stuff could be part of this, but we wouldn't necessarily be running it as far as the specific activities timeline that I see here. And I got to say, I'm still at the point where I'd like to see something more specific as far as board policies that's not going to go away until it's happened in my mind. What are your feelings, Ms. Frambs? I think I'd like to, I mean, the broad categories are great. I think those encompass just about everything that I'd like to work on as a board goal. This is a question of how we feed into those. These are much broader for the district. I do think there's some more specificity around Berlin Elementary that I'd like to see. I don't know if we can take the broader goal and then underneath it put in some Berlin specific issues we'd like to point out or address or guide the administration with. I think that's what I struggle with, too. So many documents become a living document, like what you're going to do for that year. And I get, like, WCSU as a whole, these are great. And then you take the individualized communities in the schools, and then you got six more documents to read from. So not everybody being on the same page is difficult, too. So I struggle within myself of, do you take broad and work on that and hope that you're working together as a team to achieve the more individualized pieces? Or do we change the document and have that meeting? We do have differences up in schools. There's no way to get around that. I totally understand that. And I struggle within myself to find the right answer and how. I would say it shouldn't be a really much different approach in most schools to most issues on board documents, or board monitoring, or even community engagement. And maybe what we're struggling with is, can I reflect on something that I heard at the executive committee? On goal three, with community engagement, it quickly became apparent that with six board members around the table, there was probably four different definitions of what community engagement is. And who does it and how it's done. I mean, even who does it and how it's done probably quickly became a different one for everyone than the ones around the table, quickly myself. So I think that those are good conversations to have. I think tonight, also I would add to that, I think tonight you should talk about what you think those idiosyncrasies are, because in the end of May, on the 30th, board chairs have been invited to attend if the executive committee member is not. The board chair, Chris happens to do that. Chris McVeigh is that as well, the rest are separate. And so there's going to be more of a discussion about, I think this is going to be the exact discussion. So I think having that information to represent that meeting will be very crucial in trying to bring something through the 6th of June forward. Like for an example, for something that I have, in that it's very specific. And again, it's probably so specific. But one of the goals is, how can the board support the growth within Genius Hour and students are empowered to explore their own passions and interests and to focus on science and world studies, which sometimes that kind of gets put on the back table, because math and literacy take priority. So but it's so super specific that I don't know. And that's just one of some that I've gone through and written down. So Bill, how does that one fit in your mind? This is not governance. It's not monitoring of student learning. To me, it would be in the monitoring of student learning. How it's worded might not seem like that. To me, that's where it would fall is the monitoring. But it's very specific to also grades, because it's only fourth. So for me, that's a means to an outcome. So that's a way to get to personalization for students. Which is up. So I mean, I think about that's a solution. That's a way to find that. And so I think this goes right to board governance. And what's the role of the board in establishing goals? And there are some pieces that boards should have, they should have some say in the inputs, and they should have say in where they want the outputs to be. And so I think that that's one that you need to talk about as a board, as where is our role in the governance of the system, and how far are we into ensuring that to happen. And I said I would be a total fan of junior software, but I think we need personalization for all students all the way from pre-K through graduation. And we need to, that's one thing. Carol's worked hard with the team to really bring about in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. So does a specific goal like that help you, or you would rather see something more broad that talks about personalization of education? I'd rather see something more broad because that allows the ownership of that creative idea to come from the teachers. So to piggyback off, now the next one is to maintain and deepen opportunities for peer-to-peer learning and flexible pathways. Think of that right there. That just encapsulates what you said before. Which is what I have read about. And so this is another example of I have students that are meeting grade level expectations at the end of each grade, K through sixth, report out three times a year to match the local assessments scheduled. I think I'm here, I don't know if I'm reading it, but it's twice. It's twice right now. Is there any, and this is a question. I'll just ask it. Is there any way that we can get this bring assessments before the start of the next school year? So really? I know we kind of miss out on this. Right. It would mean a September and an October presentation. And so we try to do it once together so we can bring everything together. It's the speed in which we're able to report those back. Right now, Infinite Campus is getting, we're getting the procedures. It's literally the human procedures, not the computer procedures, to get all that data turned around and get it back. We had the data as a system in the beginning of April. And what we're trying to do is, as you saw tonight from Carols, this is a template that we all agree to on leadership team. We're gonna use the same template and then just plug in the data. Our hope is that we're gonna have, Infinite Campus is gonna get better and better, and it is with the work that Michelle Supka is leading us through as the data manager at the central office to create literal dashboards within the application. The reason we can't turn it on today for you to see it is because there'd be student names with student data on there and we're in a public setting. The hope is that eventually we'll have reports embedded in there so we don't have to make the PowerPoints anymore, it's just, we'll show you the data. It looks good that we're gonna be there for the beginning of the school year. I just can't promise that 110%. And so that gets to Vera's place of we should be able to instantiate it. Once the teachers are working on the results, we should be able to give you these high level because what they do is they're gonna take in, okay, now we need the names there. We need the other information that we had that Carol was talking about with the teachers and those team names to drill down and understand what's brought by the drivers. So I think we can get there Vera, I just don't know exactly today. I know we're, every day we're closer and closer. Matthew, did you wanna add something? Yeah, I mean, I guess just to try to talk about why the goals are kind of phrased this way and why they landed, why they landed. Because I think you all know that I've been going to a lot of these, a lot of workings. And before I did that, I really thought it was gonna be a drag. It's just gonna be a grind, I guess is a way of saying, right, just a lot of time sitting through the meetings. But to my surprise, it's actually been incredibly valuable. And the way that I kind of describe it is, you know, the parable of the linemen and the elephant. One's got his hand on the leg and thinks it's some kind of certain kind of animal. And one thinks it's a snake because he's got the trunk and one thinks it's a piece of paper. He's got the ear and nobody's really seeing the whole animal. I feel like really for the first time in many years of board service, I'm actually starting to get a glimpse of the whole animal a little bit. These goals are actually broader than I, as an administrator myself, would prefer to see them and as a board member. But I think, and they really kind of take the nature of commitments on the part of the boards to have conversations really like the one that you're talking about here. Because I don't think that we address issues of monitoring student learning and how we want to operate these boards and how we engage our communities. I don't think we have those conversations in the group. We have six different conversations. It's increasingly apparent to me that that is just baked into the way we operate and have operated for a long time. So these goals are really more commitments to have those conversations as a group and to try to figure out and get the input of the administration is crucial. I think what Bill's saying is how we operationalize some of these things. We can't do that without the administration. But at least we're committing to have conversations with us together and take some decisions ultimately about what we mean by board governance. What do we mean? What really is most important to us about that we want to see around student learning and how we engage our communities and figure that out in the next year. So that's why they're kind of phrased that way. And I understand, I take your point really here that they lack specificity. But I think that's kind of the point. That's the point. Yeah, but I'm really excited by what the school quality community is doing. I was really blown away by that last meeting. I'm excited. So I think that that committee's already in a way part of down that path and what the rest of the boards are as you've already been looking at this and asking these questions. So for whatever it's worth, I just want to explain kind of why they're, why they're afraid of the way they are. But yeah, we are having this meeting on the 30th and there's certainly another round, at least one more round of revisions. And if people want to make changes or think they can be strengthened or be better or have more specific things or if you as a board think that you can accept these but you also might have a fourth goal that addresses something specific to the building and all that obviously is fine as well. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. So I think one other piece that we had on our previous goals was policy work. And can I just say that I still highly suggest that the policy committee resend like every policy and start fresh from the recommended policies and then we can work from that point forward. The policy committee can't do that. It's gotta be individual boards that voted in policies that would resend. Right, each board would have to resend the policies. But it just gives us a starting point where we're on a fresh slate. We're in a place where we can really address a big issue I think in a way that we're more likely to be on the same page. And by adopting the policies, the model policies and if we really, like if a board feels really out of it but they have to change the wording on something then at least they have a starting point of the policy exists. That's the policy they have and they have something to work from. Because I still feel like some of the policies are just kind of, it's gonna be really tedious for somebody to go in and see when something was first read, second read or adopted. And I think it would really address that one goal that was still kind of hanging out on our list. And I think it's still hanging out on the list for a lot of schools. I said to the policy committee, when we met last week I said, we've done the best we can. Here's the stack of policies. And it was tough for them to come to consensus about how to deal with them. And so we're gonna start with something we tried four or five years ago which took a lot of time was take a few policies at a time. And go through them from the recommended. So I don't know where I'm at. It took us, doing that procedure took us four years to get through the required policies. Well, and it really is a two-pronged thing even if it was, even if something like you're talking about is done which I don't really think you can. I mean, you need to have a policy ready to go in place before you can just get rid of stuff. But so even if you had your work inside of policies the other part of it is to make sure that online and anywhere that all the most current policies are there. So we're all working from the same stop. And that's, it's not there yet. Right, and I guess in my mind what I was thinking is taking the recommended or actually the required first, everybody would, when I say everybody I mean the boards, all the boards would, do they still have to go through the first reading, second reading, and then adopt? So do we need these out? No, you don't have to. The policy on policy allows you to read it one night and adopt it that night. So I guess that would be, I guess in my mind we would read the required and adopt them. Those would take, like those would be the required. Those would go on the website, those would go on the handbook. Like that's what we would build from. Well, we have those now, right though? People have gone through all the time. We have them, they're not all uniform. And they're not all the BSBA templates. Right, that'd be invited. But even so, out of the required that we have, whether or not they're all the same, if you go to our website, which is where I was pointed when I said, can I get policies? Those are not all the most current ones. And it's not just like from the last few months. There's one where our website has a 2004 version, but there's a 2015 version. So there's a couple of things going on. And I'm not sure how it stands at the other schools. I don't look through everybody's website. Yeah, I think my approach was so we could eliminate. Like having that happen, because everything would be at that point taken out of the website, all the new ones would go out. We know this date, all the policies were adopted. So we know this is the date that we started to work from here forward. And the only reason I bring up that one policy is because it's under board governance, it's there, but it's still one that is hanging out with them. There are different versions of different policies. And when different issues can come up and people can find different policies, they thought we're the last ones adopted. And they really were not. And it'd be, I don't know, I guess for me it'd be one of those that would hold other school board. Could follow along to do the same thing for that fresh starting point. Just a thought. Yeah, no, I... Who, you're the policy rep right now. Did they have a meeting recently? There's some minutes, they're not approved minutes, but there were some minutes in here of the meeting we had. That's been the only meeting, as far as I know, for several months. Just ever since I was on the policy committee, it seemed crazy to me that we had so many versions and it took so long and it's an impossible situation when you want to be clear and you want to have a single policy and you want people to know what the rules are for a particular situation. And I just thought, Bill, you sound as frustrated as any of us that you just don't know. I have a solution with the boards. My solution is very similar to Beers and it's that you do the boards that take care of this and keep their policies in good shape. They use the BSBA models because, and this is what my experience, there's no blame, don't take this as any blame. My experience is when board members have wanted to work with it, it really slows it down. So I understand the wanting to do it and it's just being able to come through it, come through that. So it's either if we want to do it, where we do a lot of reviews and input. The only way I can do more to have that be faster and Krista expressed it, the last policy meeting, we need to dedicate more staff time to it. So if that's something that boards want to do, it's gonna come right to take staff time away from something else. So that's a question that I'd like some to know the answer to. The boards that do this quite, they usually do their policies in June and they do them as a slate. And they say, here they are and here are the BSBA updates. Up they go, they do one reading. The boards, the district boards, SU, not ours, no one, no one, no one does that. You're saying boards that do it that way, so you would be in favor of this. I'm in favor of what Beerus talked about. And that's what I would recommend that the policy really consider, the policy committee, really consider like opening their minds to something like this. Because I think it can be really helpful if, you know, I was on the policy committee for many years and it was just the most tedious task ever. The policy committee is an SU committee, right? Yeah, so? The policy committee does what the SU board instructs it to do. So it's not, I mean, the policy committee will consider it if we tell them to consider it. If they would mean it, we would get in there. So the reason I say it that way is because again, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, I see it as part and parcel of that board government's goal. Let's figure out like how we wanna operate. And one component of how we operate could be that, look, we're just going to simplify this entirely. Let's rescind, you know, pre-disposited, we'll follow the DSP model, and this is how we're gonna do it. And we'll ask the policy committee to do it and see. There we are. But I think the only way that's gonna happen is if we are having that conversation. So would you be satisfied with pursuing that under broader board governments discussion? That's the number of goals that the executive committee has put forward, or do you rather see it on the try-out? No, I would rather see it as SUI and each, obviously each individual board, isn't it? I can definitely bring that feedback, so the chair's meeting. That would be great. In the interest of time, I think we need to try to move through this board goals. Is there anything specifically that you would like to point out on behalf of Berlin, or what you might like to see modified out of these executive committee goals? One thing that Bill mentioned, what is our, we have different definition of community engagement, what does that mean to us? Some, at that executive committee meeting, we were talking about, for some people that meant, let's get people involved in the Act 46 discussion more. Just educated about Act 46, and for others, it was getting more people to volunteer at school, or actually be in the school. Are there very specifics there that you'd like me to contribute to the discussion? I'm just saying I think what our homework at this point might be is to take those Berlin goals that we, the old goals that we have developed and see how well they fit under these broader goals, perhaps whether we would want to see any of these broader goals modified and incorporate some of those things. Everybody be okay with that approach, or would you still be in favor of very specific Berlin goals? I would like to get rid of the old goals. And I would like to support these goals and maybe build off, and again, it's just having those conversations, and I'm not saying we need to have them tonight. It's continuing the conversations about, and I'm not really sure how to write a few of my thoughts as a goal, but it's just literally having the conversations about increasing academic growth, success, and maintaining deep and opportunities for peer-to-peer learning and flexible pathways, providing support for professional development for all staff, and then I had a few things underneath there. And again, it's just having those conversations about what each of us thinks is important, and how it comes in. The biggest piece for me in the goal is the monitoring, which I think we're just going to learn as we go, how to monitor what, to monitor who's monitoring, what, that's a piece for me. I just, I need to learn much more about what we're monitoring and how. But I think most of the boards are in the same place. Would you say about me about that? For monitoring, goal? Well, I think it's clear that it got very fast. Yeah. I have a lot of good goals. I think it may be similar to the community of engagement, and you get a few different answers. If you ask different people what they mean by monitoring, so I think that's kind of where we're at. I think everybody is feeling we need to get better at this. People may have different ideas about what that means. What are your thoughts as far as the old goals? Oh, yeah, I'd like to start, I know. The old goals were good for the time, and I think it framed some of the issues that were sitting right in front of us, and it framed the issues from a very clear perspective of the people who were sitting around this table. They were board members specific, and they were issue specific. I like the thought of working together with the other boards and coming up because we're all reinventing the wheel. I don't think there's anything. There are some things, but there aren't very many things that might be that are so Berlin-specific that we can't wrap them into the larger picture. I think one of the documents that can be looked at, not just is there anything that we wouldn't want to see fall off that wasn't the old board goals, but is the Act 46 survey. And that had a few things. You asked about community engagement, and that mentioned a few things as far as some people were saying, this is the first that I've heard from the school in a long time, or what happened to having photos in the world, and just that type of thing where some of that may be Berlin-specific. Like I think it was Chris Dodge that used to get photos into the paper on a really regular basis, but I think we could all benefit from what our communities collectively wishing for engagement. In with that, when we were doing the principal interviews talking about what our traditions are, and I think all of the schools have traditions, and some of those I think we kind of take for granted that they're happening, and maybe we don't do as good of a job communicating that out to people who would like to be involved with that in some way, and it's, how can we make that happen? Where can we have that information for them to be aware that it is something that's still happening? Matthew, let me see this one playing out under goal three, community engagement. It's saying that the individual boards will have a discussion about the purpose of board-level community engagement. You draft a written, the executive committee will draft a written purpose and strategy, and then the boards would approve that purpose and strategy. Can we, if we have those conversations, they would funnel up, they would get filtered in some way or prioritize or take the best ideas, so how do you see that playing out? Yeah, I think the, I mean, in my opinion, the first step is kind of giving everyone a common frame of reference and set of understandings about community engagement, so, you know, when we discussed the idea of having a board retreat in August, I was mentioned by the way, and you're from here in Korea, which is fine, but. I've been away. You've been away, okay. So, about having a retreat on August 2nd, if your people are available. I did that, but you know, I'm sorry. No, it's no problem. But I think the main topic that's risen to the service of eating some common training and discussion is community engagement specifically. So I think that would be kind of a first step. But I also think, I do hear the district board's, you know, having a lot of different ideas about can I respect that? So, you know, yeah, I think each board needs to, I just like to have that conversation together and then each board can discuss the way to do what it means to them and then yes, we can meet and figure out by, remember if we have something in common, we can express and then pursue. Thank you. When was the time for the retreat? August, what time is all day? Is that what we're looking at, yeah. Okay, so it would be all day. What all day means, I guess, is still. I don't know, yeah, it's not. We'd be done, like, 4.35 o'clock. Oh yeah, I don't think we would. We'll get the disco set up at 6.00. So, we could put board goals on the next agenda. Again, we'll see where we are, but give it some thought in terms of putting it within the broader framework and the specific Berlin actions and goals we'd like to see incorporated in some way. All right, so let's move on. We can go quickly through construction. The capital list with the dollar figures is still there at some point. I think we should try to prioritize this capital project list. There's still a few gaps there for filling in dollar figures, which is on my plate, and I apologize for not having anything in there yet. But just keep that one in mind as far as prioritizing what comes next. Who is there, any update to what's happening with the roof? Yes, the roof will start probably the day after the kids leave. So, they were ready to start actually a couple days earlier than we had in the last few days. And we just wait until the kids are done. And I haven't heard anything back saying it quickly, so it would be a positive event. Cheryl, do you have any pothole reports for us? Well, they're working on them. We're putting in the fill, and I know Aaron had said that he had something that he thought might work better and then he found out it's what we've already tried. So, now that the weather's better and he did some work out there. So, beyond the only, was I thinking that the sinkhole repair is? It should be off the list, it should be off the list. That should be off the list, it was done. That's why I was assuming a few of those didn't have any effects on this. We actually had a discussion about if I take some sheets, do they work? That it's done. So I need to do some work on this list. Strengths on the list. I can. So you seem to have the same conversation though. Yes, let's not do that again. So I'll try to update that for our next meeting. And if there was. Another thing is we are getting the cubbies for the kindergarten. So we can take that off the list. At some point, I'd like to add to that where the old ball field used to be, where the sinkhole repair has been. I don't know if that's on a list anywhere, Carol, but as far as we're making that, like a playable field again, there's some ups and downs where the equipment was in there. But it would be really great to have kind of a second space for baseball. I mean, on the practice season. The gentleman that had that ball field originally put in in honor of his son had just come in and we talked with Lori and discussed that he had also pledged to upkeep him. So that is, I think, in the works. Oh, he might work on that. That's great. So hopefully we'll have some more information on that next time around and we can start prioritizing. Next on the event, a 3.5 board member appointment. I did get an email from Peter Schober. His email interest is in the packet where Peter was not able to be here tonight. He had a previous appointment, so he couldn't come tonight, but we wanted to when he asked this correspondence to be his statement of willingness to accept a temporary appointment to fill out a vacant and expired term at the Berlin Elementary School Board of Directors. I have served on the Berlin U32 and WCS SCU boards previously and recognize the importance of having a full board. Thank you for your consideration, Peter Schober. I don't know if anyone here knows Peter, but I certainly, his previous experience would be welcome on the board. And we have an item below to point a board member should everyone decide we should appoint Peter Schober. I've definitely attended meetings in the past when Peter was on the board. And I would be willing to make a motion to appoint him to fill out the term. Great, let's do that under the action agenda. Any other general discussion about potential board member? Okay, 2.6, the annual financial management questionnaire. That's on page 10 for a packet. Yes, this is something you've seen the past three years as required by the state auditor. Lori fills this out and by our auditor's look to see that there was a discussion by the board. You don't need to approve it and then Chris would sign off at the bottom that the discussion was held. That's the board chair. And nothing has changed from last year to this year with this questionnaire. We haven't had any findings or anything in our auditors that could change you there, that this addresses or any questions? This is specifically for central office or is it specifically for Berlin? And then all this, most of this work, not all this work, but most of this work happens up at central office on Berlin School Districts behind. Lori, people, not. Thank you. Yeah, Lori. Lori Dunn does the supporting pieces here that you can get me here on site. Oh, visit. In view of item 3.7, it's just something that suggested maybe when Erin is next coming to Berlin, it is that we could arrange something I saw was coffee with the new principals of Williamstown, was doing. And I thought it might be a nice thing or a nice opportunity to introduce them to the community and we'll get to our community members who may get to meet them to come in and say hello and see what is all about. Can we arrange that? Could it be an after school thing, right? He's coming in the after school. Well, actually, I think Bill has talked to him further and he's going to be here and he's going to join the admin team meeting and then he'll be coming over. We'll be coming over directly after that. And like I said, I'm arranging some meetings with him first to keep people in the school and then it could be at the end of the day. He said he'd love for that to happen. Witnesses? Yeah, did you have a date for that? Yes, it was June 5th. It's a Tuesday? And you think we could arrange an after school kind of thing, come by and meet? I think that would be lovely. Yes. I think that would be very, very nice. But do you have any thoughts, ideas about that? Just make sure that you can get the word out. I can do a front porch forum and maybe Carol can do something for the newsletter or the Blackboard Connector. Just to put it out there. Stephen does it also, are you 32? The first, second, first thing. I thought you guys had one, Carol? Yeah. And I have very much taken advantage of going during this time. It'd be nice to actually maybe go and post your notes like twice a year or something. More right now? Yeah. Mr. Plains, I'll play with that. We'll move along. I'll be in touch on that, Carol. Okay, thank you. 4.0 reports to the board. 4.1 administration. I think one of the things that I really wanted to discuss if you want to open it up is just looking at our configurations for next year. And that if you have any other questions concerning the rest of the reports, I'd be glad to address it. But I think that one is a key area that we should look at. Presently, we have 11 kindergartners enrolled. I have brought this possible issue up to Bill about two months ago, Bill. Yeah, at least. Yeah, and he gave an incredible advice and was helping us through, but he said, got and beat the bushes. I want you to really beat the bushes to make sure. So Lori and I talked. We started looking for all the daycares, preschool programs, we know a lot of the preschool programs because of the Act 160 now, but we sent out letters, we sent out flyers, what we had in the paper, asking them to share them with Berlin parents. We had the open enrollment time. We put it out even afterwards and we still are at 11 students. We have one parent who is visiting on Friday to make a determination. Again, because of Act 160, we have a better grasp of who we have out there because we are supporting them. In the past, and it's been brought to my attention several times that in the past, we've had to hire someone in the last minutes of August because all of a sudden these students appeared. I don't see that happening now because we do have that Act 160. We do have the idea of who's here. And also we have this extremely strong preschool program here at our school that is really getting accolades around. We have a waiting list for our preschool right now because of the connection between community connections and our preschool and our excellent teachers in both programs have really good reputations. That being said, I think at a certain point, we are going to have to make a determination to move forward. And at this point, my recommendation will be to move forward three, three floors in one kindergarten. Something that I will talk very specifically with Erin about, fills the tension extensively so that she can pick up with Erin over the summer. I'm more than happy about working this summer so I'm more than happy to come in and help out in any way I can. But it's going to be a tough decision, but I think it's the route we're going to go at this point in the year. I mean, it's being... Yeah, our conversation, Carol and I had this conversation on our break, why it's probably 21 for kindergarten. If you think about point two, that's a very large kindergarten. And that may mean some other hands, but at the same time, how you distribute the student load across the system and meet every student's needs. We don't like kindergarten that are bigger than 18. That's the recommendation, school quality recommendation, but we just don't know. And I think Carol, I know Carol has done a great job with canvassing as many people as she can. And in the past two years, two other schools have had to reconfigure two weeks before school starts. So we just wanted to alert you and read. Carol's doing the best with her team here to figure out what the number is for kindergarten, but we may not know until a week or two before school starts. And we're, she's being very transparent, both with the new hires and with strategic that way, with one of our new hires that you already approved, that knowing that they have experience in three, four and in the primary grades, but also transparent with all the teachers in the building as well. And how many, what's full in preschool? Pre-school, we're actually over-enrolled. We have six on the waiting list and we'll set the changes last week. I believe it's at seven now. It's at seven. We're investigating a couple other ways. I'm trying to, I haven't yet, just my task list to do, but have a conversation with Head Start and Campstone to see if there's a possibility of partnering with them to bring in a third classroom into the building. So how many is full? What's capacity for preschool? We're allowed to have up to 15 students with two adults in the room. That's a para-educator and a teacher. And so really to make that third classroom, we need to get to 10 students to make it, to make it kind of be cost-neutral with what we receive in ADM. So we're losing like 15 or 16 or 17 or something kids because the numbers I'm seeing here is 175 K through six. And if you add on 15 preschoolers, that's 190. 15 in the morning and 15 in the afternoon. So then we're still over 200? Yes. So 205, but that's still down. Yeah, I can't even tell you that that's even a projection. It's variable. I mean, as Corinne asked Carol earlier, what's been the transit rate this year? It's a pretty small blow, but Berlin in the history that I've been here, it's been rather high. It's around 40 to 50% kids who won school year. So that includes the summer. We'll see that type of rate of turnover. So you've heard the board in the past kind of pushback on too many multi-age classes. But this gives you the, I would imagine, the greatest amount of flexibility should a handful of new students arrive on day one, where you're not pushing a particular fifth grade teacher over into an impossible situation and then you have the reconfiguring that you, in this first couple of weeks that we didn't go well. I mean, it didn't go well. It wasn't ideal, but we didn't wanna do a couple of years. I think that gives you the flexibility like that. I would wanna say that Carol's worked with the staff here really well to, while this is the classroom, the starting out in the morning, instructionally does happen. They're able to differentiate more flexibly for students and be able to say, hey, we can move groups of students to meet their needs better, as well as look for single grade instruction. So you might see a one, two. I know her math is not being taught one, two. It's being taught in straight grades. So the kids move around. And the schedule that we're looking at right now is also utilizing the 40% of the math interventionist and the reading interventionist to help with those multigrades as well to make sure that we are doing some great likes looking at more looking at student need actually than just grade. So that's very important as well. The teachers love it because they are the team together and work together and look at the data together and plan together. And that is really important for them as well. That is very helpful. It's to do it with a team compared to do it in isolation is night and day. So I know you had some, I had some feedback. I'm sure you did as well from parents who are concerned that their child was either not in a multi-age group or was in a multi-age group. And how do you make a distinction? And why does this child go here and this child go here? If you have three one twos and three, three fours, does that help make that go in because everybody's in a multi-age group? I'm gonna move so this person as she goes back and forth. Yes, I have to say that also helps as well. Some people feel because their child is in the one twos and they're a first grade, or if they're going to get the advantage of, thank you, of being, you know, getting some second grade curriculum that's the first grade. So some people who are in the first grade only want their child in the one twos. Then if there are second graders in the one twos, they don't feel like their parent is saying, well, my child's gonna be getting the first grade. If you have those three one twos and the teachers have the ability through Infinite Campus and looking at the assessments that we have in place, working with the interventionists, they can set up where they move and kids go into different classrooms and they're working at the level that they need so that they can have, like they're having a guided reading group just because they happen to be in the homeroom with K. McCue, our new Kelly who is coming up might be able to better meet the needs, she'll move them into a group and she'll take a higher level, you know, that, that, and they have the time in their schedule to plan that and work on that and get those groupings going and moving the kids out. And I've sat in on some of the meetings whereas I'll be talking about, you know, I think little Bobby is ready to move out of my group. I think that that child should join this group because they're advancing so well, I think, or this group is moving on and little Bobby isn't doing as well. Let's see with a little intervention what might help but they might do better in that other group to that's focusing on the skill that they need. So to be able to meet that, that's true MTSS, what we were just talking about, a multi-tiered, you know, systems of support. I'm definitely more of a proponent of best fit for the numbers we have with you, you need to have so much flexibility on what you guys can do with each classroom by doing it this way rather than one, one, two, switch, a straight first, a straight second. Because then I do think there's that perception of disparities if you do the three different classrooms like that, so I support this. Thank you, I think it's a great way to solve it. Up for limits again, earlier, ideals for number of students in a full classroom for one, two, three, fours. So K through two, it's 18, and then from three to six in Vermont it's 24, the international research is a little higher than that, but that goes against, but we pushed it. The only thing I, I didn't write a report here with all the boards in April, but we give you a color coded calendar, we still need to give you negotiations. If you have the black and white version, hopefully your electronic one is at home, so you can use that, it's hard to use it when it's black and white. We still need to fill negotiations on here and some of the schools start time after June. So we do not have a school start time right now. Right now it's, it's current. It was current. Yeah. Does anybody, have you been going to that? I went to the first couple I was available. What I had noticed on this calendar was that I would still advocate for us to still, us meeting the Berlin Board to have a meeting in the months, even when there's a WCSU meeting. I think in order to really feel like we're moving ahead in dealing with the goals and other things that we have, not knowing for sure what's gonna happen with Act 46 or anything, but to make sure that we have the time to have the conversations we need. And they don't have to be long meetings, but just to keep that. And to me, that's part of public engagement too, is just having a time that people can count on. Just trying to see that still on our, putting that on our future agenda items for a while, all right, to have that conversation. Yeah, well, and we were kind of waiting for this, I think, as far as what the minimum would be for the number of WCSU meetings. Not that I want to meet on the first Monday because that's Labor Day, and I really don't want to have a meeting on the holiday. Whatever the, we're second. Sorry, Chris. Yeah, go ahead. Sure. If I could ask, are you suggesting that the minimum would be every month or every time that there's a care center? Okay. So that, and sometimes with it being, I mean, during budget time, we need to have, or at least we have had, try to have more public outreach and all to give people the opportunity to come in. And so I, there's also been a few times where we've had staff come and present and I felt really bad when it's ended up being at U32 because it's not only further out of the area, but it's a much later meeting. So these meetings in the WCSU won't start at 5.30, but if we have a meeting after that, then it's seven or so that anybody is joining us to present. So can I just offer a couple of comments to go ahead? So the suggestion or the idea and the commitment to go to using the carousel meetings really came with two primary purposes. One was kind of to take a step in the direction of addressing what I sort of referred to earlier about this issue that we really find it very challenging to work together as boards. So if there were any way possible that we could gather together as boards and address in one sitting as it were, issues or priorities or decisions that impact on us all in common that carousel meetings would really be a way for us to do that throughout the year. We also feature the carousel meeting in our AGS proposal as a specific example of how the SU boards had taken a step towards in the direction of working together more efficiently and as a group. So I'm just pointing out that we really sort of hung our hats on that in a way. I'm not saying to get rid of it. No, no, I understand you. I'm just saying like the second priority of the carousel meetings is for the sake of the administrators who for better or worse are really have to be at these meetings. So if there's any way that we can kind of reduce the burden on them, that also is sort of a part of the carousel meeting in the concept as well. So I just offer that up as comment like to do it the way you do it. Appreciate those comments, Matthew. I just want to make a comment that in my time here I believe we've lost three or four board members because of the amount of time spent on meetings and not just here with negotiations and the other meetings that individuals have to be involved in so that they volunteer for these meetings, but then they don't realize that they have to volunteer for so many other times out. So I'm just putting that out as a thought. It appears to me we lost several school board members due to that time commitment. I just. Those are all appropriate things to consider. Any other thoughts, Corinne? I don't think there's a perfect solution, but as I said, if we want, we've also, in having the turnover, there's more to, I think need to discuss and get on the same page about and you can't do that if you're not meeting. I mean, and I've said everything else as far as it ends up being a seven o'clock meeting and if you want to have somebody present something, it's either pushing it off or it's asking them to be out late. It's asking people to leave what could be perceived as their comfort zone coming to the local school as opposed to going up to a school that they may not be familiar with. You know, I think we kind of take it as a just in stride as far as, you know, the meeting is gonna be in room 128. It's gonna be in 120. It's gonna be wherever and there's no problem going up and navigating that. But I think in order to encourage people to feel comfortable with coming, having it locally is good. No, I don't disagree with any of that, although I just, I haven't seen people coming to the meeting's here either, so it's hard to justify it based on that in my mind. I also just wanna make sure that we actually have work that we need to, I mean, are we running out of time to get our work done so that we would necessitate another meeting? I don't wanna just kind of fill time to say that we're getting together, but we do have a lot of work on our plates that we couldn't be working on. I think having some of the board goals and things like that. Some of the presentations that we've had, I think have been really awesome. I mean, to hear about the farm to school, to hear about genius hour, there's been a lot of, you know, good stuff and I'd love to see some of that continue, not that we need to repeat the same stuff every year, but to just make sure that we have time in our schedule to have that. Any other discussion? I guess that was your report, Bill. Yes, I did. You have the finance report. Finance report, you've had a little more interesting miscellaneous income. This month I'm on page 16, sorry. And we've had the need for additional student support, so you'll see down the expense change. There's a behavior interventions there for the students. Besides that, you're staying. Maybe with that change first. Yeah, you're still doing well. You're still doing well. You know, I think we're gonna be asking you in June to move some money over to the, more money over to the capital fund. And, you know, having that priorities and talking about how we might be able to contract some things out. The one I would put up there is painting because it's, as you know, Chris, it's very labor-intensive because it's not the painting, it's the scraping, the scraping. And to ask our custodial staff to do that, you know, it's a big driveway, which we all experienced. But everything else is doing well. You know, we'll tie up after the roof is done, the total of where we are with the bond and all that. Okay. You've been thinking the positive that they're just natural speed bumps. You could think about that, that'd be a good way of putting it, I like that. Bill, how long is it projected that the roof will take? I believe it's five or, I think it's five weeks, but I'm not exactly sure. Corinne, I'd have to check with John and Bill for it. Will it be a concern that we're having summer school here? Yeah. Okay. Because they're gonna get it done. Okay. All right, is that it, Bill? That's it on the finance. 4.3 executive committee. You've heard a lot about what the executive committee was up to at our last meeting with the board goals that you've seen here. Matthew mentioned the retreat as a possibility. Hope that can pull that together. That's basically it from the last meeting. Do you want to add anything else? The only other thing is the topic that came up about stand-to-lose candidates potentially, especially in this framework. So just what came up was that some of the hiring gets done at the SU level, just to clarify this particularly. So there were three or four candidates who came up at the same time that we were in danger of losing because we didn't have any board meeting scheduled for weeks out, but Bill, we need authorization to kind of act in regard to extending offers and hiring. And then it happened again not that long after that. So we just had a conversation about to what extent we the boards need to be involved in what typically is a fairly kind of rubber stand-type process where we get the documentation. Just noting that we had that conversation wouldn't resolve anything or it wouldn't work. Policy committee, anything to report there? I think it kind of got touched upon earlier that we're supposed to go ahead with the recommended policies, four or five at a time and work through them. That Krista had just recently sent a bunch of approved required ones to the various people at the schools and the policy committee asked to have those sent to them also to have the final version of it. We didn't really come up with an outcome though as far as how to make sure the websites are updated. Although we did talk about how once we have more that our policies that are in common, they could probably be stored at one location and pointed to them rather than to have Berlin's policies and other people's policies that would just be a page of policies. We have the school quality committee. No one was there from Berlin for that one. There was there. Oh, there was there. She's here. Sorry, I'm talking, I'm thinking school starts. So just as that started, one of the things that came from, sorry, I'm just gonna say, one of the things that Susanna Culver asked last week as the board chair, she said, can you put the parentheses of each board member by each committee so they know they're ready to report what I'm doing with me? I think that sounds like a great idea. I might put that everywhere next to them. That is a really good thing. The minutes are in here. I love serving on this committee. It's like where my passion and my heart is. I think it's a great group of people that we're asking good questions and looking for, I mean, I've only been to the first meeting. But just diving into what is the data telling us and back to the monitoring team and the teaching I'm looking for to my community. Do you guys have any questions on? I guess one question I might have is, so do you see, can you see the school quality committee picking up that work under the board goal number two or whatever it was from the executive committee or monitoring? I would say yes, but I'm not sure. I think it can. I mean, I think it really can. I would definitely say that was very much part of the conversation. That's exciting. I'll just say, Kara, who's the chairman of the committee, had a huge hand in shaping the goal two is laid out. Sorry. All right, onto 5.0, the action agenda. 5.1 has approved non-bargaining contracts. So every time this year there, we talk about non-bargaining contracts and that usually includes the principal, but you've hired Aaron and set his contract. So really we're here to talk about custodians and the one administrative assistant that works that's non-bargaining. And so the ESP, what you've negotiated for ESP is a 3.5% raise for next year. And my recommendation is that you do the same for them. Many of them, all of four of those positions have, three of the four positions I should say, have counterparts that are in the association in other schools or in this school. And one of those positions, Chuck Paquette, is supervising folks. And that's been the recommendation if you're supervising ESP folks that you get the same. Okay. Questions for Bill? So you just need a motion to approve the superintendent's recommendation with respect to non-bargaining contracts. That's what I need, yeah. Only a portion, yeah. Second. Any further discussion? Dozen paper, signify by saying aye. Aye. And 5.2 accept a resignation. You have it on page 27 of your packet. And that's from Chef Austin. I've had people reach out to me and it sounds like there has to say, any way we can keep him here, he's done such a wonderful, wonderful job as the chef here. What is Fresh Picks Cafe that he's going to have never heard about? I'm not sure, something in New Hampshire that he's working on. So Bill, can you maybe tell us about the contract for food service? So food service is set in your ESP contract that you know with the association. So we have a salary scale that sets what the salary, the hourly wage rate is set at based on experience. And there is no loop over on that. And I can tell you I don't want to give too much, I want to keep, try to respect Austin's privacy. Even if you were at the top of the pay scale, he wouldn't get to where he's been offered in the private. And it is one of the problems we have. Are there any other creative ways of supplementing salary if we have a wonderful person? I would be going outside the negotiated agreement and then we have agreements. We tried to pull it up by having him be in charge of the healthy snacks and giving that more time, but it's still, as Bill said, I presented it to Bill and we have discussed it and he knows the figures. Yeah, yeah. I'm not saying in this particular instance, but for the future, if we can't keep a really great person like that around, are there any other options that we can explore? You are, when the employees chose to form the ESP organization, the job classifications came in. If you wanted to, you could try to bargain to take those out. That would be a very hard task to do. And that's the only way that you can do this. So this question is not specific to the situation. It's a very general question. So if again, you had that employee that you wanted to keep, is it in the negotiation, the contract that you can't receive the monies, whether it be a stipend for another program or fill their timing with anything else? It has to be very specific to that. It has to stay within the rate at which they are required for the job that they're doing. If it's called for, if it's covered by the negotiated agreement. I mean, I agree it's wonderful when he posts the lunch menu and we have students that are doing extra chores. He's taking his food. Yeah, I don't want to lose him either. He is a wonderful, wonderful person. I wish I had a way to, there are sometimes that different frustrations come out at different times. That's probably the best way to say it. All right, so I guess with regret, I would entertain a motion to accept the resignation of Austin Jacobs. I would just add with regret and gratitude for everything he's done, whether it be for the staff program or doing your iron chef, which was all volunteered at his own time. Is that a motion? Yep, of course. Let's hear a second. Yep. Those in favor say aye. Aye. 5.3 is a point to board member you saw or heard me read the email from Peter Schober of entertain a motion at this time to appoint Peter Schober as the board member to fill the vacancy until the next election. Submote. Is there a second? Was there any further discussion on that one? Those in favor signify by saying aye. And we have appointed each Schober as member. And we thank him for that. And I'll be in touch with him to let him know in the next meeting. And have him sworn in. Go see Karin. Go see Karin for this matter. Yes. 5.4 is a point of board member to the WCSU school start time committee. We lost when Carl resigned. Do we have any volunteers? Well, I'm already doing negotiations and school holidays, so I know I can. Should we see if Peter would be interested? We could. I think that's a new sign. I think that's what we should start with. That's a good idea. Is that the only one that Carl was on? Yes, it was, which is why I say I think it's unfair to see if he's interested. Well, it's still Jim and I can't get figured out. Let's do that. Table to Jim and I'll shoot him and he'll see if he's interested. 6.0 approved board orders. Did everybody get to see and sign? No, they didn't. I'll take it. Give Karin a minute to take a look at those. And if you're okay with it, Karin, I would entertain a motion. I'll make a motion. You want to open up for discussion after that? Yeah. So I really appreciate that Lori sends them out. People are going to be super helpful. And I just had a question that there's still the bulldog storage from the board orders. Yeah, so I talked to Carol about that today. There's still a bulldog container out there. Okay. I thought they were all gone. They're not all gone. They're not all gone. There's one right by the guard. They're gonna be gone. If not at the end of this week, the following week. I do appreciate Lori sending them out. Yeah, I appreciate it. Vera has made the motion to approve the board orders. It's going to be 106 minutes and 15 hours and 14 seconds. Is there a second? Yep. And all of the paper is signified by saying aye. Aye. Aye. And approve the board orders. Future agenda items. We have that local means versus supervisory meetings. And maybe we could make a decision on whether we want to do that at our next meeting. We had school safety. That's been on there. Carol, did we talk about that? Perhaps talking about what's been happening with school safety in terms of... I think that's on there for something coming from the WCSU from the committee, the school safety. Yep. Thank you, Jen. Did she see June? We are looking at that. It's something that we've been looking at that's been... No, just leave it on there. Okay. It's not anything. And I think we'll leave, we'll put board goals on again for another discussion. Can we really either adopt board goals in June or narrow down what we're going to do? So it's not carried out to September, October. Do we expect something? What's the timing of their board chairs meeting and maybe our modification of board goals? That's on May 30th. And the idea is to have the draft goals finalized for adoption on the sex. I'm glad. Okay. Good. Here's the appointment timeline. There you go. Was there anything else that anyone wanted to add to future agenda items? Some of these, no, no, nothing to add. But there, I know you'll get some of that. Carol, we took off the walkthroughs this time because of the length of the meeting. That's right. So she'll do that in June. Walkthroughs. I'll just give you the coming attraction as Carol is in classrooms a lot, giving a lot of feedback to everybody. Okay. And my recalling that perhaps the June 6th meeting is actually 5.30 to 7.30 instead of 7. For the supervisory union board, I don't recall right this minute current. It's been a 30 different start time? No, we've been starting at 5.30 for the year. Okay. Sometimes they end at 7. As long as it's five times, I just want to make sure I'm turning it back. Is there a motion to adjourn? Oh, there's a motion. I'm going to adjourn at 5.30. Excellent. Thank you. Thanks, everybody.