 all right guys we've reached the magic number so we have enough of us so we'll get started so we can all file the order at six o'clock that's any adjustments to the agenda Kathy if you wouldn't mind passing around a sign-up sheet for those in the conference room so i can add to 20 minutes jamey's on it i'll actually just take notes all right um approved approved the minutes of monday october 25th final motion and a second second any discussion on the minute hearing none so we'll approve the minutes of monday november 8th okay any discussion hearing none board correspondence communications anybody have anything they need to share i would like to bring something up i think um at this point in time bill and i are the sole survivors showing up to beatings for schools that we're rotating to go to so i would suggest to make it easier on everybody for setting up the meetings that we hold them at the central office until we're actually out meeting in public again and people are coming to meetings we were in royalties and then we've been here and it's been bill and i and it's a little bit complicated to get everything set up at the different schools if nobody's attending there so how do people feel about that sounds reasonable i think it's reasonable i had meant to be there and just got delayed and couldn't couldn't get there so because i do believe we i personally feel with the mask i can be there right and we can go to the central office so it's not saying we're doing all virtual meetings but instead of setting up for two people to show up it makes sense for them to be able to do the meetings where we're already set up if it's easier on ray that's the key yeah all right so next month we will be at the sq office guys all right go ahead anybody else anybody has correspondence there they want uh yeah just uh just enormous appreciation again for all our teachers and all the contact tracing that's happening with the cases um it's really an enormous amount of work and it takes up you know the weekend goes usually um so i just appreciation for all the work that's going into that and the care i would totally second that 100 percent it would be really nice jamie if you could share that out for us for the teachers that i'm listening to that absolutely we really appreciate it i it's not a job i would want right now all right um board development theory is jamie that's just a standing thing but i have an update okay um so susan as she had indicated our last meeting is retiring from the vsba i received email from her today saying that they she believes there'll be a replacement but they won't be onboarding until sometime in january and that they won't be prepared to continue with our board development series in february when we're supposed to pick back up with it so i emailed her and said should i be expecting sue um the executive director and or this replacement to reach out to me soon to let me know what that um revised schedule may look like and she said that she was going to pass that information on the sue and that we were a top priority so i would say it doesn't look promising for february i'm hoping that we can pick back up with it in march but i just want to give you that update on that and right now they don't have anyone to do board development in general and i know some other boards have talked about that work and right now they don't have anyone to support us in that work at the moment jamie i thought susan said that she would be available to do some of that even if she retired that is not what i gather from her email today but i'm happy to follow up if the board would like i mean that's what she said um you know it might have changed but that's at least what i heard um email today's essentially said we don't think we have anyone for you but we'll be in touch with you when we might so we'd be meeting we'd be missing two development board development we weren't planned to go september no we weren't ready that we were not planning to start back up with them i believe i'd have to look at the calendar i think it was february and so or january that's what it says bill so they don't even have anyone hired to start sue did not offer her services maybe sarah she talked to the vsba and was decided that that would be in conflict i don't know but i can ask her and inquire more i just was giving you the update to the vsba who we had talked to to do it which is part of a service that you already pay for we don't have to pay for that right she just comes as part of your guys's membership she said they would not have anyone hired until january in that she was not confident they could service us in february either i say it's but what was what was on tap next for us to do was it two more sessions or did we just have one left and was there a topic i think it was four oh four oh my well just so what it's worth i found them really helpful so thank you for doing that great so we had board meeting protocols scheduled for january 24th and establishing a vision and engage the community for february 28th and uh policy and monitoring for march 28th yeah all those sound great and the format i like the way that you were doing it where was that first 45 minutes of these meetings so and i have tried to push those out after two for folks who can't be in attendance and have tried to encourage our board members to watch them it is it worth spending the money to see if we could find somebody i don't know lost in messachusetts new hampshire to come and do these to keep it going or we think we could just wait well i think we wait until that's month and see if they have any updates jamey yeah no like i said um i haven't heard from sue directly right i just heard from susan okay um and so i did follow up with an email and we'll see what that was reply is i just got this email this morning so i would suggest that if susan is is retiring and and we want to if we get to the place where we want to pay my guess is she'd do it for a fee i was gonna say that um um the vermont school board association is very important for us and but and i think their number one priority and a very important priority for us is to make sure and to strengthen the effectiveness um of the boards and the su board on how we operate and how we work with our superintendent and his team um so this is these development sessions are great i think our key priorities not only for us to do our jobs as well and as best as we can but the vermont school board association and i my recommendation is that jamey um or kathy communicate um our strong interest in that we get that level of service continue as soon as possible and um these sessions are very important i like the framework that jamey worked out we're not using the whole session but uh we all can learn from them and the quicker we learn the better we'll we'll be as effective board members and effective leaders educational leaders so i i'd like to let i think we should let su know directly that um they need to make this a priority i don't mind sending off an email okay so jamey'll follow up and i'll also send out an email but i i agree with bill they're important and we're we're paying for the the sba service in general so i think they should be providing the service that they commit to for us okay and then we'll we'll talk about it again and we'll put it on here talk about it again in december if we've got any update we can together is there any public comment tonight okay you're none um reports to the board jamey uh good evening you have my report in hand i'm not very articulate tonight so i apologize i think i have coven uh on the mind but uh i uh not coven brain coven on the mind um and so i i gotta say i'm really excited that our vaccination clinics are happening i'm excited that uh we're starting to pcr test we should be ready to antigen test soon um just to give uh the board uh an approximate number of um students we have currently right now quarantined across the su i expected to be around a hundred if not a little more so that's the level of antigen testing we would be doing um the rate of positivity in the su over the last two weeks has been significantly higher than it's been at any other time um our contact tracing efforts are happening almost daily and um even you're absolutely right it is certainly uh taxing but i would say that it is incredible um just how many folks have stepped up and uh we've had some community members step up who are supporting efforts to do antigen testing in the mornings who are retired nurses um we've had three different medical professionals who are retired who are gonna step back into the workforce and support these efforts uh we're leveraging FEMA money to pay for this and then what FEMA money cannot cover we're then we'll then leverage ESR money just so folks know um we do have students getting vaccinated that will assist greatly with the contact tracing efforts because a reminder those who are vaccinated if they have if they're asymptomatic they remain in school um and so that's exciting news those that are unvaccinated as soon as we are ready to roll with the antigen testing uh which will be within the next two weeks they'll be able to be tested first thing in the morning and then remain as long as they're negative we are not seeing significant spread in the building just so you know but when you look at our data in general in the state it just means there's gonna be more positivity coming in right and so that's what's occurring and so when we do have positivity the Department of Health then does require us to contact trace um I will say the Department of Health has been more responsive recently I think that they've been able to increase their workforce we're getting more timely data from them I will say one of the most frustrating cases that we've had was that there was a lapse of seven days at one point between a positive a positive result and them notifying us um that was very uh frustrating and certainly frustrating for our families to let them know that their children had been identified as a close contact and that contact had happened over a week prior um and so what I would say is is that all of our efforts are to keep our students in person learning and having less disruption on the educational operations meaning having to go consistently back to remote back to in person back to remote is not conducive for best learning and it's certainly not conducive uh it's not I actually would say it's just not sustainable that it's pretty taxing right now and it's not a sustainable way for it so certainly us getting our everything in place to try to keep our students here and to not have to quarantine significant amounts of students is the better done you had a question I did Jamie what's the method that the antibody testing is done with is it a nasal swab or how's what's the process yeah it's a nasal swab um and they're all front swabbing is what I guess the technical term is at least that's what my contact tracer uh my my uh COVID coordinator called it earlier today and uh so we'll be able to swab right at the school we'll have a different entrance for those students who have been identified as close contacts we will swab we have the results within 15 minutes done and if they're negative then they stay and you know in general like I said we would expect them to be negative based on the data we've been collecting it's not like we've had positivity come in and then seem you know significant spread um and so if a student is then identified to be positive we would PCR test them and they would go home just to confirm the positivity and we would await the PCR test if they test negative then they stay and the data that has supported this effort um has mostly been out of massive juices they've had really really good indications that this antigen testing has worked successfully uh in predicting uh positivity thank you Stacy thanks Jamie thanks for the update I was curious if the case involving seven day delay between identifying the positivity and contact tracing resulted in any additional spread you know that case did not that I am aware of good I'm aware of some situations where there was but appeared to be in school transmission we don't determine that though the department of health does and I will say another frustration I think for us has been that we try to report that data off of their dashboard and that dashboard seems to be delayed and so I think that that has been frustrating for some of our families because we want to give them accurate and reliable data and the data we report from is their dashboard but I would say that that does not it's updated weekly although I don't feel like it's necessarily always accurate thanks Jamie I agree with you that dashboard is not always accurate by my mind Sarah how many of our schools have um positivity well over the last two weeks all of our schools have had positivity about one it was two until today but there was positivity at strafford today I must say I think I don't know if people are as sick of hearing my voice as I am doing the alert now just because it every time my heart drops and I get to say I just if families are hearing and it and just for the board members it has I have been I actually I did well up with tears today doing it because I know this is going to really impact Thanksgiving plans for some of our families and this impacted Thanksgiving last year and it just I feel really badly that that could be the case again when folks are being identified as close contacts so I just know that that's certainly I guess it's weighing on your superintendent I'll just say totally support what you're doing and this is what this is how we're doing it and they're you know everyone's got to be ready for this and if they're not that's their problem not ours ours to keep ours is to keep the schools open and healthy and educating and you're doing a great job nope there's a lot of good instructional stuff happening too and that's why we brought onto onboard so that when these things hit the fan that we could still continue to focus on instruction so I get excited when her can have her report thank you and I think that's even a true word hearing from families whose kids are home remote learning which is fine but not our preferred method how fresh how upset the kids are and how eager they are to get back to school which is like the best thing that you can hear when you're in our roles that like kids want to be back in the classroom with their teacher and with their friends and this isn't just sort of a way to you know stay home and and skip out on school so I think that's from the the family conferences I've been in recently that's what I'm hearing the most so that's that's I think a good a good sign too um you also have my report the first part there we've really um been focusing um with our school leaders and and school-based leadership and and teachers on having these MTSS leadership teams this is something that really got launched this year though there are kind of pieces in place in previous years and it's been a really good way to to have really regular conversations that connect all the dots so how do our how does our continuous improvement plan at the school level connect to the ongoing professional development plan what are we learning from the assessment data how does that and so it just it has um the kind of the regular conversations with a good diversity of people at each school or district um is helping to really connect the dots and also across the across the schools knowing what um with me participating in all the meetings I can sort of share practices that are happening across the schools that's not as easy for people to do who are you know in school specific locations so we've had just a lot of success with those meetings um getting going and really informing practices at the schools I talked a lot about math because it is really an area of um of focus to try to bring it up to the level of the literacy focus that we've had for the last couple of years so one place where we are focusing right now particularly in um conversations with teachers is just how to address the different needs in their classrooms and I think they may be wider than they sometimes have been before because of the disruption and learning over the last couple years and just a lot of you know a lot of different factors and you know one interventionist in a school or in a district is not someone that's going to solve sort of that level of um of different background knowledge and skills and so really working with our teachers around how do you differentiate in that universal instruction block so that's that's got a lot of our focus and we have a lot of good practices that happen in literacy and translating some of those more of those over into the math context I think will be helpful because it's a familiar practice but just putting a new a new content in it so that's what's happening on um sort of the personalization side of things um and then as I started we've had you know we've just come through sort of the month of um uh conferences parent guardian teacher conferences um and generally I've heard really good reports back on that um they were offered in person and virtual depending on sort of where what families were interested in where school individual schools were in terms of um you know number of cases they had with COVID and I think I've generally worked really well um and we've talked a lot about student voice and I just had this great hearing about this these kindergarten-led student conferences at school where the you know we I think we often think about student-led conferences at the middle school and the high school level and to hear these kindergartners um share sort of what they've been working on and what they were excited about and really give and I think it's important for our youngest learners to be um you know leaders of their own learning um and it's a great practice that we will look to be expanding uh across all of our schools in grade levels and it was really fun to hear it it's already in kindergarten and some of our school so I am happy I you'll hear more from me later on the um on the achievement goals but I'm happy to take any questions on uh on any of this yeah Ethan um I guess what we're three months in now to sort of the updated math curriculum is um or you know really focusing on it is there any signs of a change is there any sign of rethinking and the teachers what's what's sort of what what's going on with that or what's your feel yeah that I mean that's a great question I will um I will say that when I think about adopting new instructional resources I often think of it over a three-year span of just like the first year year is really trying to get familiar with it in some cases people had some familiarity with the the resources in some places it's totally new to them so that part looks a little bit different in different schools one of the biggest changes is that with the bridges in math which is in our elementary school is the number corner which is just a way to sort of um both sometimes introduce new skills but really review skills and put it sort of in a calendar format like you might see in a morning meeting um and I think for some teachers that's a that's a that's a that feels brand new and trying to figure out how does it fit into my day and how do I get through this and how do I leave good number discussions around the patterns that are being built and that's where we've seen a lot of growth over the last two months of people teachers feeling a lot more comfortable with it um and I mean I every time I go into a classroom the number corner which is this calendar is totally up to date it's like right on that day so you know folks are doing it and are having these good discussions and it really builds sort of that that skill base so I think that's one really good place one place I think where we're going to continue to work is on the hands on part of it for some folks like are just there's just making all of the manipulatives and the models that are available available to kids so they can really like dig into them um and have the space in your classroom where kids can access those tools and I think that's a places where we're still working on figuring out how to how to shift sort of our mindset around math is really getting your hands into it it's not all stuff you just do in your head um and memorization and so I think that's kind of one of the next steps for um people's familiarity with the program is to really see those manipulatives as like just the same as a pencil and all the other tools so that's I think that's where we are but um I think people are feeling more comfortable certainly with it good no thank you thank you that's just what I want anyone else I'll just add uh to just piggyback on a little bit teachers you know I think organizations have to have stress you know what I mean by that I think there's an optimum stress around change and so part of what we're trying to do is change the teaching practice in math and I hear from our teachers they're a little stressed in their math practice right now so what I would say even that means that we are creating some change now it's our job to try to decrease stress so it doesn't become a barrier right but the fact that there's this talk around some stress and math says to me all right that means we are creating some instruction to change and so I would say that that's another indicator that um I'm happy about because that means folks are really trying to implement and so kudos to them and it's our job to help support them with those efforts all right thank you on that thank you guys you're up all right good evening um hi balsam have you also on my reports uh I included the child count number from December of 2020 our child count for December 2021 is in due to December 15th so I'll include that um in my report for next month um so you'll have an updated number but I did include um that chart of our initial special education evaluations so those are students that have been referred in and then gone through the evaluation process to be eligible or not eligible for special education within our su and as you can see I included the uh 19-20 school year which was cut short um because of the COVID closure um so that means all evaluations kind of halted and were paused um during that march to the end of the school year your date so what my prediction is is when you're looking at the 2021 school year a lot of those numbers are higher because that's the carryover from the year before and I can tell you from the numbers for this school year so far um those most of those are also a carryover from last spring that were approved by the previous director of special services but also um we have had quite a few students move in from out of state and when a student moves in from out of state who is in special education in the state they're coming from we need to do an initial evaluation to find them eligible here in our state um so that number is also included um and we have quite a few um move in from September until now out of the 12 initial evaluations that have been started to have been completely finished it can take about two to three months to do a complete evaluation it's a long process I've included the process in my report so you can have an idea of what's of what's kind of done and looked at in the process it's very thorough and includes you know a couple of meetings and a lot of data collection and assessments and observations and conversations with parents and teachers and even the students so it can be a long process but two have been fully completed and both of those students have been found eligible using the current Vermont regulations those regulations just so everyone knows I've also included it in my report are going to be changing slightly um due to you know act on 73 it's caused Vermont to look at and reevaluate special education regulations in law here in Vermont so starting July 1 there will be some changes in the definition of special education which we learned more about today in an office hours there's going to be new sections added to the IEP for parental input there's also going to be a change in the way adverse effect is used in the special education process so there's a lot of changes coming in the way for special education which I'll be rolling out to special education special educators towards the end of the school year I've kind of already given them a heads up so they are aware and so we're going to be working through that process together on the next section just talks about we're still going over flexible pathways and the importance of flexible pathways and personalized learning plans especially we're finding more students are having some difficulties right now with mental health and social emotional concerns and I think some of it is brewing more because we're still in a pandemic you know kind of atmosphere and students are always still feeling those effects so um we're definitely having more conversations about flexible pathways and then lastly um talking about uh interventions we are going to be offering in early December math intervention from the bridges math bridges intervention so to align with the bridges curriculum that we're using in some of our schools it's a standalone program but it is from the same same company and has similar philosophy so that'll be really great because a lot of our special educators were kind of coming up with their own activities and nothing really you know standardized and tested and proven so now they'll have a natural intervention program so we'll be going through that process starting in early December and there'll be some coaching and everything afterwards throughout the year and then Jamie Feinberg is also coming back to do more direct instruction reading um coaching and instruction so we're really um we're really getting deep in our intervention process um with our special educators and even some of our para educators okay then yeah hi thank you um uh wasn't there talk so it's all going to become block grants and yeah my memory correctly has that been instituted and are we dealing with that now or is that still to come it's scotch july one that's act 173 yep good question that's the connection and is that so how is how i mean are we preparing for the changes what is that how is that going to affect budgeting and things like that yeah good question they just started rolling out some the a we just started rolling out some guidance about it today um so far what it looks like is um the service plan that i needed to put together uh back in october was abbreviated um and it looks like the seer grant we found out today is also going to be abbreviated um and what it means sorry what do you mean by sorry what do you mean by abbreviated what does that mean on the short short end they're asking for less information oh okay thank you yeah so even financially the budget you're seeing it tonight is going to be the expenditure side we are budgeting for the revenues that we expect to receive based on the block grant the new funding formula so we don't expect it actually to impact us all that much um and so like less than one ft we do expect that there may be a little less revenue that comes in but you'll see we we're proposing that we keep special education expenditures down again this year and so that speaks to that our system of supports is working and so you know i think that we're primed to implement this the other big piece to this though is it does make funding more flexible so the money that comes into us for interventions and supports is not tied directly to those services in an iep and so it allows us to provide interventions and supports as the teams of teachers feel fit and see fit and it it also gives us more flexibility to say if you're a special educator and you can best provide the intervention to the student then go ahead and do so even if they're not in on the iep also the same holds true oh we have a reading interventionist who is the most skilled person to provide the reading intervention to a student who served the nip you go ahead and provide that intervention so it's not that you know the intervention is tied to this iep and that the funding formula just supports that method so it gives us more flexibility which is what that whole study was about and what the act was built on so i'm actually really excited and i'm excited in certain supervisory unions are seeing more significant financial hit we we are coming out in a pretty good place with us we will not take it as hard as other SUs are so we should be okay all right thank you yeah any questions yeah i'm sorry um and i could you i'm not sure i understand what these graphs mean and i are they telling us that this is good news are these people that we have fewer to evaluate that means we have fewer and special ed and we're trying to move our school population so that they don't need special ed um or is this so hard just the evaluation head count right now what how do how do i interpret this is this good news or well i don't think we know yet okay um the hope is that the amounts of initial evaluations will go down per year because that's the case and that means we are we are collecting students quicker um to give them interventions and strategies that they need earlier and that those strategies are working so the hope is that we will catch them earlier so they will not need to go to the level of an initial evaluation so is this the 43 to 12 and should we celebrate um well 12 is only till november and the rest are are august to june so maybe we can celebrate in june is the hope that the number will be less yes and you've mentioned 220 240 students are 19 percent that was from the last last year's time uh those the ones that were evaluated or those that were evaluated and declared need uh the state standard for special needs those are all of the students that are s you got qualified for special education so our goal would be if you remember we've talked about this in the past research really speaks to students with specific learning disabilities is about five percent right so i mean really a goal for us as an su as we continue to make indicator goals on our overarching right like these data goals would be a good indicator for mtss would be if we could get that under 10 percent yes we're not going to do that overnight but that would speak to the fact that we have a real intervention happening and folks may say well jamie why is 10 verse like why is that well we should be able to meet students needs without them demonstrating a specific learning disability through high quality universal instruction in intervention right and so i will say 19 percent though is when you and we can find this data and start to report this out to you next month when we do the child fine numbers again you're going to get this year's data the state average we're right there if not better um and so that's that's not we're not in a like a bad place but there's room to grow thank you i i'm very helpful anyone else thank you sorry you're up right yeah hey thank you for chair uh you have my report and i would entertain any questions from board members at this time as i try to scroll through my own report here uh he parts about uh the increased amount of communication coming out of the superintendent's office and then uh average daily membership and the update for today is we're at 1645 and still awaiting some from one specific school that's huge yeah so we're probably going to come in pretty close to our high water number there in 1920 at 1653 we might get to 16 65 you were taken that's awesome now uh ADM average daily membership is the feedstock for equalized pupils which Tara will be talking to you more about in the future i will entertain any questions thank you okay anybody got questions for right can i just say something okay sorry i i i gotta tell you the work that's being done on ADM i will put the team effort around Ray's work with our registrars and connecting with Tara's office around pain tuition i'll put this process that's been developed up against anyone's i believe we are counting every kid that is our kid and that's important and i think that's part of why you're going to see this number possibly at the highest it's been is that we're making certain we get every student and so huge thank you Ray it takes a little bit a lot of effort by a lot of people absolutely and i gotta say that has been a huge learning curve for me because i always had my kids in my building and so this idea that we've got students who we haven't seen for multiple years who maybe left one high school to go to another high school i mean it is pretty incredible as we sit down with principals and registrars and look through the list it's yeah it is massive um stacy so yeah it's that part is uh it's it's labor intensive but it needs some money it does yeah just a quick question i think i usually think of adm as really relevant for building level like when we or for specific districts as we pass those budgets because that's how we're calculating the per pupil so i'm just kind of surprised to see it on that grand scale and i'm wondering if you could help me understand a little bit like what's the difference of is that just i mean it's awesome and i agree that that's a very crazy number to gather but then does that just translate out to useful as you then like deal it out to each of our individual schools or is that useful to you at the su level as well well so this is an su meeting that's why you're seeing su numbers but yeah the this process the review process starts early october so i would have met with your principal multiple times talking about what students are in the building and what students are being tuitioned out either to public schools or to independent schools i think when megan's asking is you know usually the adm is about an individual school how is this useful to the su having this overall number of the su does that affect budgeting does it affect how does it what does it affect what the budgeting is at the at the district level so no the the number itself doesn't really mean anything in the abstract to the su right it will it will become important at the district level once it be once they once the adm becomes equalized pupils got that means that's justification is that your adm could actually go up while your equalized pupils go down depending on the weighting factor applied to us if you if you've got a lot more pre-k's but graduated some out some high schoolers your adm could go up but your equalized pupil numbers go down okay so we do look at the number as an su why we have certain reports that we have to file with the state as a supervisory union how many adm's we have so we do also look at it as an su level and our entire supervisory union like certainly that number does impact at times what we get for federal funds like asset funds for example that come into the su and are not don't come in directly to the districts and that number will also affect um our block census grant which is the new funding for special education that's the number that they'll use um for the amount of money that we will receive so it's great that a large inaccurate yes can i give a um you know i'm positive thinking guy but doesn't the ad the um as it goes up mean that we're attracting more kids and families to the supervisory union to get the best education we're competing in my mind to every su in the state of vermont i don't even want to talk about new hampshire massages this is vermont and so to me i look at this as a key indicator one of the key indicators that we're we're attracting families and that's exactly what we need to do we need to grow um so that we can have more resources and more teachers and more opportunities and so i like this is i don't know but to me it's an indicator think of it as if we're shrinking um wow so and um so i don't know i this is the number i like to see the arrow going up then and thanks to raise that efforts and the efforts of all the schools attracting a new students and families coming back from homeschooling or whatever they're doing or moving uh come to us all right guys any more questions for right thank you red sure you have my report which outlines due dates coming up so if there's any questions on that i will happily answer them otherwise we'll switch right over to the first quarter FY 22 projections so again this year we're doing this on a quarterly basis so for first quarter we focused primarily on salaries once we were able to complete negotiations for support staff and we could get contracts out i was able to calculate salaries that were budgeted versus contracts and we have a projected savings there of 91 164 dollars and then health insurance is budgeted versus enrollment but we are in open enrollment right now so this number can change once we have final enrollment done for january one but right now we're projecting a savings of 131 623 dollars for an overall projected savings of 222 787 dollars i feel like i'm screaming at you all i'm sorry i think if you're talking about projected savings you can be loud with that so the second page is on the revenue side so obviously revenue through september we don't have a lot coming in at this point we don't do many grant submissions and so we get past first quarter but overall i do anticipate we'll still get our 24 000 dollars in direct rate we've received so far to get 1560 dollars in interest income i anticipate getting our full Medicaid funding i anticipate getting our full EPSD T MAP funds and i anticipate getting our full title funds so i don't see any revenue shortfall there and same thing with special edit this point in time based on the expenses that we're seeing projections that i've had in conversations with annette and tracy i think we're on target so far so i'm not anticipating any substantial revenue shortfalls at this point in time so down below i have updated based on general fund balance at the end of 19 audited the end of 20 audited and then the 21 non audited and to give you an update on the audit i received first draft of the su audit on friday nice so we are going through it adding and updating any documents that we need to update so we are on timeline with audits very good news so any questions on the projection or anything else at this point i like that we have a third love very exciting good news they're drawn in the right direction a lot of hard work by our faculty and staff i also i also liked that the audit who knows maybe the audit will be a nice quiet but no you know it'll just happen and then suddenly we'll have the results and that would be just wonderful throughout the that sounds like a christmas wish even well there you go it's my christmas wish i hope i can fulfill that christmas wish at this point i'm pretty positive i can we have faith in you thank you all right well that's it for now i come back on when we talk about the budget okay policy committee we got to get back to meeting um yeah the last couple policies we we did create priorities coming forward so we'll get back to an agenda and get that up and rolling again i think i'm looking at kathy because the calendar is pretty full with budget right now and negotiations and so trying to figure out when that group meets again we were doing it prior to these meetings but we've got tasks going on in places so kathy and i will put our heads together and email the policy committee about some potential dates does that sound all right and it may not be until january just so folks know just because we've got some standing weekly meetings right now um but okay okay um superintendent evaluation committee i did get an email back um and they're going to send me a contract the vsba is um so when i get that i will schedule another meeting for that group so we can continue on our journey negotiations council uh i we are working now and setting up a meeting with um the teachers i've sent out an email um and i'm waiting for a response back to give that initial meeting meeting set we're hopeful it may be next week just so folks know yeah we just we haven't heard back yet um okay we're on to discussion item nine five one uh we need to use the discussion of the academic achievement goals okay i um included the the presentation in the board packet two just so you'd have it ahead of time not try to see all of the little numbers on the on the screen so uh there's two parts to this the first one should be quick but i um i think there was a request when i presented in october just to see a little bit more of where we're trying to head so there's an additional line and set of points added to these first two graphs which is where the um the the benchmark is for the end of the year for each grade level so the three sets of lines um are sort of where our students were in the fall assessment window which is the only one we've done which is like with september sort of pre instruction the benchmark for the fall as set by the the assessment platform and then the benchmark for the end of the year or the spring will do those assessments in in may um but just to see a little bit more of where you know what the kind of what the goal line is for for the each grade level um so that's you can look at that more but i think that was just people wanting to see a little bit more beyond just the fall goals so that the first one here is reading again just to remind folks there's two different sets of lines because we have two different assessment platforms that we're using across our our our district so that's they're not comparable to each other in terms of the numbers but we just have laid them because it's this you know some grade level so the first one is reading and then you can scroll down to math um and it's the same the same setup in terms of fall performance fall you know kind of goal performance and then end of year any questions just on that updated those updated graphs okay so then the second part of this is um is just um more detailed we you know um we got i think from the conversation we had in october to continue along the same path in terms of where we were setting our potentially setting achievement goals for the su and i just wanted so this wasn't sort of operating outside of our you know our overall work just make sure um that we were actually thinking about the three goals that we already have as an su around sort of a comprehensive mtss system our proficiency based learning system and then looking at equitable educational opportunities and student voice and so those are sort of the three sui goals um and we think about these as being kind of some of the the academic indicator so i sort of swapped out the word goal because i think we've got our goal set but these are some of the indicators we'll use to measure progress on those goals um so the next slide is um thinking it shares those those indicators the update here um was uh i think they're they're generally the same um you'll see when we we pull out indicator two that we figured out what the actual um reducing in half would look like at each grade level rather than across the su because i think it'll make it a little bit more tangible to to figure out um where we're where we're making progress and where we still got a lot more work to do so on the next slide you've got the i think this is also a new graph for folks because we've got um the recent results from at the state level of the summative um the summative assessment in the spring the s back we just received the state level results we had shared sort of the uh the su and the district and school level results earlier in the fall um but this uh this graph shows it's a little it's it's all kind of combined together because there's just not that much of a gap between uh particularly in reading about where we are where the average of the whole state is and where the sort of the goal is for proficiency they're all they're fairly tight in there but you so you can see and they're kind of tracking along um and you do see as we've talked about before a little bit of a fall off at our performance um in sort of the upper upper middle school grades and so that's certainly an area that we're we're talking about and thinking about more there's a bigger gap between us in the and the state and the um like the marks for proficiency so to kind of taking that that information then sort of informed how we set up the indicator for that for for the first um the first indicator which again was taking our current performance looking at trying to exceed the proficiency benchmark by the year 2025 which aligns to what the the goals that the the whole state has set um and then taking that the difference between those two and setting interim targets so that this just this just confirms where those targets are um and the proficiency benchmark has stayed the same there is a mark down at the bottom that it could update what the most recent information I have from the state is that that benchmark is is staying the same so I think we only anticipate that it would change if the the whole assessment system changed um but those are those will be our goals and um we'll look at those targets each year and see how we're doing for English language arts from the tested grades which are grades three through nine just stop me if there's anything that needs a little bit more explanation um the the last graph for this indicator just takes that tat that that table and puts it in graphic form for if that's an easier way to see um where you are so the red dots are where we are right now or the the end of the end of last school year and just heading towards the our 2025 target uh is in blue and you can sort of see that some of the grade levels have a little bit more room to grow um and then some of them are a little a little tighter into the the mark um the other thing just to know as obviously every year cohort moves up a grade level so there's both right like there's both work to do in the in a current um grade level around if we've got any gaps in our curriculum and have any improvement instruction but those kids are moving into a new grade every year and so things may not always you know project along the exact same trajectory may see leaps in improvement or places where we fall off that that um that target a little and we'll certainly pay attention to that but there's your sort of cohort level goals and then kind of grade level goals any questions on that no we're going good all right the next one is just the same um the same indicator but looking at the math performance so again this is where the this graph shows where we were in the spring that's the dark black line where the state as a whole was in the spring that's the the gray line and then the green line is the sort of that goal line that's where the proficiency is as established by the the state some of them so there's certainly a bigger space between uh where actual performances both in rsu and across the state and where that um that goal is um as established by sort of the the assessment as it was written um and so there's there's work to be done both here but also across the state yes don yeah is there any danger of the state coming down on schools that fail to perform up to the set standards i know i think that's a good question i that certainly has been something that's been talked about i don't know specifically in vermont but certainly you know across the country in past years i think although we continue to use this um as a measure you know as a measurement of progress um even the state was uh you know a little bit slower i think in getting this information out i think there's real recognition that things have been incredibly disrupted over the last 21 months and so i i don't anticipate that there would be there would be uh kind of punitive um a relationship associated with the performance especially given that it looks like it's pretty universal across across the state um to put every to put every school and and district on a um some level performance plan i think would be hard for them to even manage so i haven't heard i don't know if you've heard differently on super tentacles no i mean i think the goal would be to say this is baseline data and they're going to be looking for now that we're past covid although it's sort of laughable right because i would say that we're in the fit in some ways that they're looking from growth here on out yeah they have discouraged any sort of comparison of these results with past years so you won't see that in any of ours because they don't think they're just they're even comparable well one of the reasons i ask is some of the some of the history of of uh state action has has got me a little sensitive about goals not being met and then they come down and they put other things in place to try to remedi you remediate the proposed episodes of the school so okay just that green mountain star 64 indicators as a principle it was yeah it was intense i haven't heard of that i mean i think what they're trying to do is say is part of our actual recovery efforts what what supports do you need how can we support you what pd do you need uh it's the first time i've had the agency call and actually say we're offering math pd and would you like to participate as like like being proactive in the sense of offering something like that don instead of coming down and saying you have to or you're doing x um so i will say that thus far it's been pretty collaborative in that regard but you're right in the past it would have been we're recommending you do x or maybe not even recommending you are doing it yeah mega thanks um thank you for this i've been sitting here with a question i think i'm going to ask now because it seems like it kind of goes with this this thread that we're on which is that i'm seeing this information and it's admirable and it's looks um like great goals but then i'm also kind of hearing earlier in the meeting just thoughts about like teachers being exhausted and staff being maxed and kids needing this social emotional attention and i'm just wondering and i know like the data looks one way but i want i wonder if you could shed a little light on what it looks like and what it feels like in the on the ground through your eyes and does this feel achievable and like the right priority at this time yeah i know i think those those are really good questions i think um i think there's a couple ways of looking at it one i think we we are doing these goals sort of at the at the su level for the reason that like i don't think this is about sort of individual teachers and thinking about what's happening um or looking at that closely what's happening each at each in each classroom or each school at this level just figure out like where are they got like that's that's work for us to do in support um i think i don't feel like the i think the literacy goals feel like they really are right in right in our in our like in our reach there's been so much hard work done around literacy in the last number of years that you know we are tracking fairly closely to that proficiency mark and i think just you know keeping our eye on that thing you know makes sense uh the math one feels a little bit more of a stretch and i think we're right at the beginning of a you know a increased focus there the i think our primary goal like this is these are not i don't think i don't hide anything from teachers but this is not what i would walk into a classroom with and say this is this is where i you know this is where i you know we need to be and this is the work you need to do you know when we're heading into classrooms it's you know looking at what's having an instruction how can we help it where you know where do you need more more support and so i'm hoping teachers you know continue to feel supported in it and not that we are holding them to a number um that they've got to achieve you know on their own but i think um and so that's one piece and i i continue to want to get feedback on it if if we are if i am hearing or anyone else is hearing that it feels different than that in terms of what we're doing on a day-to-day basis then we do see we need to sort of change you know even how we're approaching teachers i i also sort of label these as the academic indicators because i do think it's really important for us to think about all the other pieces when we're looking and thinking about what are the supports so what is it looking like in terms of you know attendance and engagement like our kids when they i shared earlier that like i'm hearing that kids really want to be back in our schools you know that may not be across the board so how do we continue to think about we know what that looks like because teachers are teachers are i think that's as much work on teachers to make sure that you know students are coming in and they're engaged and i think that's a lot of where um that can get exhausting these are um to even you know setting up remote learning packets you know it's a lot of it's a lot of work to do and so i think we're continuing to think about what are the supports that we can we can offer to help do that um and not make sure that this feels like it's overshadowing any of that sort of um you know in daily connection with kids and so i appreciate i appreciate the question to make sure that it's not this is we don't tip the weights and this is the only thing that we're focused on thank you yes even this is probably more of a comment and a question in some ways but just you know over the last year as we've talked you know mtss has come in and these wonderful graphs and i'm really impressed i mean this is this is what bill was asking for is just incredibly specific data i i just always come back to what are we doing for the art of teaching there's a lot of science here and i and i really appreciate the science and i really appreciate you know the specifics but i um and as i said you know i'll take my answer offline in a way i just i there is an art to teaching that goes beyond numbers in science and i hope that in the workshops where we're not seeing it or stuff that that work is happening yeah no i think that's i think that's a great a great question i think again well this is you know this is sort of the primary way that you all i have engaged with you all like i feel like this is again this is not at all sort of the conversations that are happening with teachers in terms of you know specific scores um it's much more about you know as i'm saying you know engagement with students how are we ensuring that they all feel have a sense of belonging in our classroom i was working with teachers who are working on their parent conferences and they're setting goals for kids that are around you know i want to hear more of this this the student has great ideas but we don't get to hear them in the classroom how do we how do we ensure that they feel like they can share their ideas how do we get all you know other students to listen to it so there's a lot of conversation around what i are you know maybe dean the more soft skills of both you know learning and and being a learner and so i think we are like i think i think the focus is is on that in our classrooms um and gosh those are really hard things to measure and and share with you all so i think we've talked a little bit about like what's the other way that we get information you know outside of our classrooms about what you know what student success looks like what student progress looks like because there are a lot of different pieces i think that we think about and you guys know individual students like there's just all sorts of things that are you know are in play to what makes you know a successful day week or year in the school and some of those feel harder to communicate and share in ways that would make sense to a broader audience and you know sort of respect privacy and all of those pieces so we'll continue to talk about that on our end and think about any new ideas of the kind of information that would be helpful to you we would welcome them i i mean i i gotta say it'd be really nice to hear from a couple teachers at the su level just bring some people in and have them talk to us and say what are they excited about that they're teaching what are they excited they're seeing and i think you give us a broad range one from different schools i'd love to see that because you know and this is just i won't speak for anybody else but i love these graphs and they're great but they're also i feel like i'm always looking at the same thing and i think it needs to be backed up with some human human you know even we're gonna have celebrations of learning at every local district monthly starting in january and so i think that that part of the intent with that too right like where you had a teacher come in actually last month oh yeah for a teacher to be able to share and showcase what's happening in their schools i know i just this an su meeting i i can't help but notice you know a lot of people's video screens are off i just want to i want to i want to get them excited so they actually want to be you know part of the conversation here um and and i'm not we can think about how to do that at the su level as well yeah that's what i'm saying is that's just an idea i'm throwing out how do we how do we keep us engaged so that it's it's not all technical jargon coming at us there's a little bit of um and i get the spirit but i just always want to encourage you to keep pushing for ways to communicate the spirit to us i would say though there is an intentionality around doing this data with the with the board oh i understand that to just say to the board though i don't think we were an analytical organization what i mean by that is i don't think we were using data to inform instruction and part of what on a regular basis right and not about it being punitive about saying how can i use data to say how might i use it to inform what i do in the classroom and so what you're saying even is how we why i'm so excited about the work we're doing with upper valley educators institute is it's about using protocols at each of our building levels and teachers are leading these discussions to say what is the data telling us and how can we use that to better practice i mean what resources do we need so maybe that's a next step too to even to have a few of those data leaders talk to the board about how they are utilizing uh data to look at instruction that way because it's it's the other side of that it's the other side of this graph i mean we're getting we're getting your side of the graph and to hear from a teacher or a lead a lead person and that thing what they're taking from the graph and how they're transferring it that would be amazing that would really get me excited to hear thank you um i'll just go quickly through the the next couple and see if there's um any other questions around that so on the math indicator we've got the same the same graph the you know the goals for each um of each interim year are you know a little bit larger um given where our starting spot is in in math um and we're aiming again for that proficiency benchmark and that's an average um and we talked about a little bit before why we use the average i think it it gives us a good sense of you know where the the whole the whole su is um and doesn't get as thrown off by sort of the small the small school sizes or just getting over that um you know kid uh every every score count that's not either you're in in the proficiency range or off if you're fairly close and your average still contributes to that so the next slide is just again the graphic representation you can see those dots are a little bit more spread out we got a little further to to go on the on the math side so we will be working on that and certainly that gets a little bit wider as we get higher up in the grades the second indicator that we talked about last time is around and talked about the importance of looking at the average but we also want to focus on these on students that are you know um sort of in the furthest from meeting the proficiency mark and they're kind of in that in red in this graph uh sort of the way we've received the information from the state um and this is just looking again across the whole the whole su and the percentage of students that are in each of those levels um again we think about spring 2021 is being the baseline so this is where we're kind of starting the goal setting from this graph is for the for the reading levels and then we're just looking to basically have each of those those percentages in red for each grade level so that's what you'll see on the next slide with the the the goal the difference between the goal and the current performance and then those in terms of where we're trying to and those numbers are going to go down each year because we're trying to reduce the number of students who are furthest from kind of meeting the grade level proficiency so that's the the English language arts the next two slides are around math again the taking that level one performance who are not yet meeting proficiency um and then and having it to by the by 2025 um and getting those down to you know between sort of 10 percent and uh and 25 percent depending on the grade level and then our our third indicator around academic achievement um is again we you know we we think really important work happens in our youngest grades they are not um they are not tested on the state summative so that's not you know that's not the right measurement we have another number of assessment tools that we use both at the individual school level and the district level and then across the su um and we're at the point now where we've got um kind of different tools some of them are the similar same and some of them are different um and we're sort of doing a deep dive to figure out what's going to give us the best information um and for us you know especially at that grade level it's most important that the information is helpful to teachers to you know to inform their practice helpful to parents so they know exactly and parents and guardians so they know where their students are and potentially even helpful to students so they can set their own goals and so that's those are the things that we are looking at when we're looking at all these tools um so we're not in a position right now to choose a tool and pick a goal based on that um but know that like that's that's sort of the work that will happen this year we'll do some piloting of different tools and look at it sort of su wide um and then be able to um to implement something next year instead of baseline based on that so we are that one's a little bit further away but the work is kind of ongoing looking at that information um to determine what makes sense for setting that su y goal and that's that's all i've got thank you so much for all of us thank you no no i wanted to thank jamey and ellen for their work we were back in october on it gave us a detailed report about academic performance perhaps and charts um great detail um i've been in organizations so when i when we talked about defining where we want to go and make it meaningful measurable and attainable um there's resistance there's uh apprehension there's a feeling that my gosh um who's to say i'm i'm going to sign in the dotted line that we can get here or there that's not the case with our supervisory staff and leadership i take this to mean that they welcome this as meaningful attainable measurable things that we can do we can achieve but we can meet or exceed the state's goals set by the department of education um and i think the building block of having sustainable sustainable goals that are actually met is the commitment of our administrative team and jamey i just asked you this question do you believe what on it has put down here as goals and indicators um for this fiscal year next fiscal year to fiscal year 25 are meaningful measurable and attainable by this as you absolutely yeah what we i think is important and i also think it's necessary is for the board to commit ourselves to the achievement of these goals we are part of the team and of our leadership our support um our diligence will help our staff our teachers um at every district achieve these very important goals these are not the only goals and Ethan is absolutely right there's so many things going on that we need to be careful caring about but these are fundamental i think these are the kind of the core of our moral requirement as school directors and so i think it's important for this su board to adopt these goals uh indicators and i'd like to make a motion if it's okay with the chair for consideration and vote by the su this evening and my vote is it all right to move yes and i'd like to move that the white river valley supervisor union adopt the academic achievement goals and indicator targets for f y 22 through f y 25 has enumerated in the white river valley supervisor union academic progress report dated today november 22nd uh 2021 i second that second that any discussion on the motion i would just like to say that i totally supported i think it's in line with everything we're working on in the su and setting goals and achievements and um it seems to feel like a great thing for the board to put their support behind all right so sorry can i just add one comment um yeah i i i also think that this is wonderful and thank you anda for um kind of hearing the call and moving it forward and moving it forward i think beyond you know what we had envisioned which is great um i would just add that i would like to see um just kind of regular check-ins on this and you know know early if we're in danger of not um you know if there are any challenges or if there's any um yeah if there's anything getting the way um you know as bill said the you know the board is here to help in any way we can many of us are not educators but if there's any way we can help um help you troubleshoot or get around potential blockers uh please let us know thank you i appreciate it all right so i will call the vote all those in favor say aye aye aye aye aye and nays all right hearing none it passes all right good thank you thanks anda jayme is that you next yeah so um this is just discussion and so i i mentioned it uh last month about preliminary discussions about how can we further try to partner with our neighbors to the north um so i've had a meeting with the net roads um andrea wassin who is their student support services person at central roman supervisory union uh chris lakarno the director of finance and operations for cvsu terra weatherall our our director of finance and um and i met um at rsu office and started to talk about how could we uh build support for our students and do it in a more efficient way um and not have to look to add a bunch of resources to either su and so with that framework what we realize is is that our alternative programming for social emotional supports is going quite well um across our grade levels that we serve and remember we added the high school programming to that last year they were in need of some support at the middle school level for social emotional supports and we've identified we are in need of some supports at the middle high school level around i'm looking at a net just to make sure that i'm not misspeaking just keep me in line if i'm not they that team does this team does a good job of that um of how to support students who have more global cognitive delays and or who are on the autism spectrum um our programming's not built to support students who would be served via those disability categories and so the concept that we wanted to share with you to see if there's support behind this is the concept that they would take on a max of five of our students who would fit those that profile note that would be tuition free and that we would take on a max of five of their students who fit that profile around needing social emotional supports tuition's free the location that we talked about doing our alternative programming right now it's housed in bevel this concept would be to utilize we're going to have some space available in chelsea i've talked to the first branch board about this and they at that point you know again it was discussion i didn't hear a big opposition about the idea of us moving our programming here to chelsea because the chelsea's wing next year at the elementary school will be vacated uh based on restructuring efforts between chelsea and tumbridge so we have a space there and cvsu also indicated that they would be willing to support us financially with some heating and electric because it will save them some money on transportation because they're they they neighbor us right in chelsea and so they would be willing to support some heating and electrical cost at the chelsea campus for first branch if the programming was housed there so we saw that as an added benefit as far as staffing for us the budget that you have right now does provide the staffing levels needed to support that middle school programming and what we would look to do is reassign one more additional para to the middle school staff and keep the staffing where we currently have it and again this would be just for the middle school programming for us but they would service some students for us middle through high school don yeah i just as a observation i hope that we would before we go putting a lot of money into the building has the school board solved their ownership issue between the town first branch yes yes so first branch owns the building there's some parcels of land under the building that they don't own my understanding is i'm looking at terra cathy though is that there's that that parcel is actually not under the elementary believe it or not it's actually under the library which is in the middle of the building and we are not actually looking to put any money in it i think what what we're actually looking to do is just offset the heating and electrical cost i don't see us needing to actually spend any money doing any improvements to the building the space is there right so if you guys are in support the next step would be what i would what i would recommend we do is we would we would look to work out an mo u and dina would create that our school attorney in collaboration with their attorney bernie lambek that's how we did the past mo u and then i would share that mo u with you prior to taking action and it really wouldn't need even action again we're not looking to add money to our budget so your decision actually doesn't even it doesn't impact our budgeting other than i would just say i do get really excited about the idea of having better supports for upwards of five of our students where we do have a gap and so we if we weren't doing this we would be looking to have to try to either build our own programming for those five students or possibly look at all the out of district placements and i shared with a board recently just so folks know out of district placement costs have gone up significantly in tuition and i'll give you an example that's real east valley academy which is connected with claire martin in east randolph their tuition went into from the low 30s and i'll probably be in genuine generous with this i actually think it was in the high 20s but low 30s and in two years it's gone up to over a hundred thousand dollars per student in tuition and so the more that we can partner regionally with our s us to try to play on each other's strengths i definitely think it behooves us um and so these are conversations that i continue to try to just put out there to my superintendent colleagues around working more regionally to better support our students in a more sustainable way um because i will say right now the tuition cost of um specialized programming seems to be increasing you know tenfold uh annually and it's really just not going to be sustainable for us which i know those are conversations you are having when you build your alternative programming to begin with right and so it's just saying what other specialized programming do we want to look to expand and not always having to build it in house are there regional partners that we can partner with jamie along those lines um in the past there was what was known as the green mountain forest green mountain collaborative and that was an association of school districts around the area that had those conversations ongoing and i believe that there were a lot of people that were involved in it and that's kind of gone out passed away since all this consolidation's been going on that may be something that you might be interested in revisiting yeah it's a great idea don because it's all now that you say that i think we're all new blood too um from who were the superintendents in that original group and i i think you're right it would be who best to revisit that you need a motion from no i don't need anything right now i just want to make certain that as like unless i wanted to see if the board was strongly opposed to us continue to pursue this if folks are feeling good about this type of concept then i'll continue to do my homework on it and work toward coming back to you with a draft mo u for discussion in december and then i wouldn't even look for you to take action to like january does anybody have any strong objections if not we're gonna let the sq continue on their path oh okay all right perfect awesome thanks okay and i'll come to the board with an update on that green mountain concept as well don for next month i'll reach out to those colleagues that were part of that and see what how they feel about getting that up and going again central office first we're gonna start with the central office expenditure budget first oh again we're just looking at the expenditures overall the suggested budget is up 7.7 percent which is equivalent to $139,091 and the areas that are impacted the most are under curriculum we're looking to add a support role there so we've added in benefits of salary for that there is and i just jump in real quick sorry sorry just to clarify that a little more so we talked about this last month and i will tell you that in general this is the biggest change to your budget and that's why i wanted to jump in and so really the biggest increase is this idea of having a curriculum coordinator position under onda to help facilitate curriculum alignment i would say in general um that is an area of weakness for us right now is having clearly articulated um standards around what we expect students to no understand and do at each grade level cluster and so it's become pretty apparently clear that that's going to result in needing additional support um the white river unified district which is a you know a 44 percent stakeholder in your su currently has a position that is doing that work locally for their district the issue is i have real concerns and i've talked andrew's here i've talked to their board about this is uh we have the largest district doing this work and i worry about stakeholder buy-in right like curriculum is su for statue and so i really think we need to make certain we have teachers across the su doing this work together i also think it's important we don't have districts getting out ahead and then when we because that could create frustration for rut right like if all of a sudden they're doing some curriculum development work and they go down in a direction and then as the su we've decided that that's not the direction that makes the most sense right because we have a lot more districts than we have six of us than just rud i really worry um about the fall off that could happen there and so the idea would be is to take the resource that's happening in rud rud would no longer have that resource locally in their district but we would add this cost at the su level rud would continue to get the service that they're currently getting right now locally but that we would spread that wealth across the su and so to be transparent there would certainly be savings for rud that money though would move over to the su budget rut still does cover 44 of the su budget but i think it would benefit all of our districts and so that's the proposal and i would say that that's the thing i need you guys to give us the most feedback on in this budget that's why i wanted to jump in and just talk about that for a little bit because that is the biggest that is really the biggest change jamey just um if i may kathy if that's okay um uh here's my first thought i just i sort of remembered my memory man your logic makes total sense but i sort of felt like we got rid of our curriculum coordinator at this su level to bring on anda anda and um i just i don't know i'm a little confused then that now we're coming back and adding a position that we had well rid of and so i um so prior to anda we had a curriculum coordinator and we had three other administrators under that were kind of in combination with the curriculum coordinator so we had a curriculum coordinator a grants coordinator we had the two instructional coaches one was trolly lotson one was amy top one was focused a little bit more on proficiency type work and pathways and one was focused on literacy and so we went from four down to one admin and i would say if we had curriculum developed i think that that would be fine what i would say is what i didn't know last october is how lacking we were in curriculum development in general um and so that is the that's the change the way is that is there a way to show us how much we were spending for those four people how much we see me on anda and then how much we're putting back i think that would help me absolutely because um then i would sort of feel like we're still saving money as opposed to boom we're just adding another hundred thousand in i think it makes complete sense okay if you look at the budget that was provided to you in your packet you will see the 20 budgets in there which provided that information so in the grant admin it was 63 thousand dollars and in the district wide which is where those two instructional coaches were was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars so that's i didn't get some numbers fast enough but we're talking so we're still dealing with the savings and what is that terry you're much faster with this than me hundred thousand something like that well for that new position we're budgeting 75 and essentially that would replace the two instructional coaches plus the you know the grant corner date or on that has taken on so what's the difference there yeah if you can no tears pulling that together but i also think we can articulate it next draft we're not looking for action on this tonight just it it's a good way to sell it as opposed to when it's out in the blue by itself it feels like suddenly we're adding things back in and i just we need no i hear you completely i i would say it's actually something that i've been concerned about it stacey you had a question while they're working on that number sure thanks hathy um i just wanted to make sure so it sounds like this is a position that exists in rod and is going to be moved over to the su is red still going to be able to manage are they going to suffer from not having full-time access to that are they going to be able to cover um any shortage or are they going to need additional support to replace that their board chairs on it they haven't pushed back against the concept yet and they've seen a few drafts of it so 141 thousand ethan savings savings yes savings from when we have roughly four or five people to on down then back to this on the plus curriculum partner is that yes good thank you um i just wanted to uh raise the point i i trust your leadership and i trust the wisdom of the group but i wanted to voice a thought that i i'm i'm not sure about this and i'm wondering about building leaders or building administrators as instructional leaders helping to sort of do this alignment i think we i think that jamie and andra are doing a great job as is and i'm wondering if we might want to give it another year to sort of move with that and see if we can um i know that our building leaders are maxed but sort of use go with that angle so that i guess i'm generally less um in need of the real alignment that you're wanting in the in the central office um anyway i think you're doing a good job as is and i'm wondering if we want to give it a year but i'll trust the group as we move forward with it board member my thought would be no i think we're moving forward to align our school's curriculum is something we've been doing probably we're trying to do for a while now sarah yeah i i have a real concern um i mean i this makes sense to me i can't say that it doesn't but um as we develop our local budgets it's going to be it's really important for me um as a member of the strapped board to stay under the threshold and um having this increase then is going to affect that and our ability and what we're going to have to take cuts and hits on and um that concerns me and um you know that concerns me um i just want to i want to voice some concern around this you know i think it concerns us too sarah and i appreciate that that's why i think we have to talk these things through i think what i what's been concerning for me as a superintendent is a big charge of mine and statute is to ensure you guys have an online curriculum and if right now i'm not delivering on that and so i least wanted to have this conversation even if it's through budget to just point out to you that we do not have a strong curriculum document right now literacy is the best but in the other content areas right now it is significantly lacking i actually had a rochester stock bridge resident requested in paper form who i'm actually meeting with tomorrow who was pretty disgusted by it um those were his words and i don't think he'd mind me sharing it um and i gotta say i don't i don't have a good way to defend it because it is pretty unacceptable and so what what i am saying is is that i i believe that we need support in order to carry that out and i don't believe my teachers in in uh principals right now have the bandwidth to want to do it and i think that that's the trying part we have right now is that we're supposed to have it but yet i don't know if they have the benefit bandwidth to want to sit down into to start to dive into it um at that level it would take without that coordinator position and so that's i think that that's the trying part we have right now the other thing that you know that we've done in the past like around our covid coordinator things is we've provided leadership stipends in order to get some of this work done and we've been somewhat successful with that so i mean that is another angle that we could potentially try to pursue it's just really i think again you heard me talk about the budget being a policy statement and so this is as much an opportunity for me to say we are in worse shape in this than i guess i realized it on does help me realize it um by really digging into it and just saying that we just need to understand realistic goals around it it's definitely a priority but it may take us longer if we don't have the horsepower to just get there that's all and and i would say that in general i i don't you could ask your principals this i think everything that i've been asking them to do is pretty much get them at their max at the moment and in certain districts we've actually decreased the fte in our principals and we're proposing to do that in first branch as well this upcoming year um is to go from two to one and so the principal bandwidth has decreased just a little bit as well i understand that and and i mean i'm the thing that a couple years ago prior to you we passed the su budget and then strafford had a real hard time um getting our budget together and and staying below the threshold and the only cuts that we could then make were on our budget because the su budget was caught up was was passed already and i just want to have that out there now um you know because i mean i feel like sometimes we're between a rock and a hard place the other thing i would say too sarah is for me i'm thinking about you know i think it's off of the su budget but we're also going to see our budget so maybe we won't feel as uncomfortable depending on what our budgets look like we won't feel like we're in so much crunch time um i'm hopeful that that might be the situation but we just passed a pretty healthy set of goals and i i don't want to i want to make i want to put the tools of the toolbox to be able to make those goals happen so i agree i guess i'm torn i hear what you're saying what um yeah what about what about halftime i mean are we planning to hire the person who's already there um no not necessarily no okay um i i don't know i mean this is it but everything's a trade-off i know we have those goals but it's also a trade-off to be financially responsible can we afford a full-time position can we afford a part-time position i don't know these are i think i i i think i need to see some options tell if you can so yeah well i mean i'd be happy to come back in december you're gonna have your revenue portion of your budget too in december right and so in december we can come to you actually with three options on the expenditure side we could come to you full-time part-time no and then you can get a sense if we also remember break it down for you in regards to what does that mean impacting you guys at each district level and so we could give you those three options to just weigh and discuss that i i think yes i think that's a good idea me too meg i didn't see what you said but was it about curriculum being in statute yeah i just put the statute that you referred to in there it's right up in the beginning what you're saying sometimes i like to look back at those i like the idea of the um stipends for teacher leaders i think that's an interesting concept i could see that like working really well distributively and like spreading the manpower because i'll say another one of my concerns is just we're such an enormous su that like thinking about a person covering all that space and going to all those schools is like huge so i also just love to empower teachers in that way so i'll look forward to hearing back what you guys come up with yeah so maybe that's a fourth option in what you present us is no part you know teacher stipends or enhancement stipends whatever you call them part time and then full time you guys are making terrible over time don that topic might be something worth negotiating in the upcoming process yeah i'm hearing you don't yep all right guys all right so you want to continue that's the biggest part of the of the this su level which is i said to the team today we really need to have that conversation so i would just like to speak in support of this just in that you know apparently um our district has been doing this already so that means that things were deficient and we needed to supplement it on our own budget so you know i i do think this work needs to be done and it makes sense to have it done at the su level if it's supposed to be aligned across all the uh districts and the other part of it is we did just review all those goals and you know they can't just be random numbers that we're putting out there that we're not like actively working to meet and one of the main ways that we would improve our scores and math and all that is figuring out where we're not grouping our curriculum to get it better so having you know a dedicated position to doing that is makes sense to me as one of the things that we're doing to really actively reach those goals yeah thanks for that context andrew that's really helpful i wonder if you or anyone in the central office can speak to kind of where you identified the need for that within your district and like what like have you seen any quantifiable outcomes have you seen any increase in your own anything like measurable or just like teachers are happier the burden is off of them i'd have to let the administration speak to that okay fine jayme back i mean no i mean stacy i would say that it was the white river unified district principals who recognize that right like there was a failure in regards to having clear identical identifiable goals in each content area and saying we gotta move and so they came up with this idea of an academic coordinator to help do that work around alignment um and so they would speak to i think that has served them quite well and i would agree with them that has served them quite well i just see that there's an equity issue that we don't have that same level of service to the rest of your districts and so that's my concern um and you know it just it's it seemed to make some sense based on the fact that that was happening in our largest district and again just to point out you you're not seeing this in front of you tonight but your largest district does pay 44 of the bills at the su office so when we break out the assessment i think for the added benefit once we show you the revenue side of it we may recognize it's not actually increasing your assessment all that much gone i just like just we move on and come back with those options for the next topic the next meeting all right everybody's good on this topic we're going to come back next time okay um Tara we need to continue on that we're going to let Tara continue now so this year we had to add the next section which is your English language learner we actually had um a need for that so that is an su-wide position that is a shared position so that is now in your budget at the su and then the next section is our technology increase there is on contracted services and that is for contractors that we use throughout the supervisory even to support our technology department and that's based on projections on what we need in the next fiscal year no any substantial changes in the superintendent's office the next section is the preschool coordinator position you'll see that we had a substantial decrease there and that was in the way that we reformatted that position so rather than having a preschool interventionist full-time and also having the preschool coordinator position our preschool interventionist is now doing the preschool coordination on a stipend so you'll see that change there in fiscal services the areas where my increases were were offset also by the position that I cut so my increase is in the contracted services and that's for paychecks and I reduce the payroll position to offset that expense and then in central office not any substantial increase there the small adjustments I had to make were the increase on our rent based on our lease agreement our property insurance and our telephone expenses we've seen some increase there so I've updated the estimated expenses for that and then the instructional salary that's our pre-k interventionist and then grant admins been cut and then district-wide that's where those positions were previously and we just leave contracted services and some supplies books and periodicals inducing fees that are used throughout professional development for district-wide services so that is the overall adjustments in the central office any additional questions before we move on to special education right if you could put the special education budget up please section this is our triple E so this is early learners this is our preschoolers no substantial adjustments there we don't have anything in the idea of the pre-k teachers other than some I can only cut that out so that's all nothing in idea of the basic nothing in triple E SLPs that's speech language no OTs other than some contracted services that we get for some of our early preschoolers so down in the special education teacher salaries that represents 16 FTE and also the intensive program coordinator that we put in place this year that's grant funded and then the support staff salaries that is our paras and we have 38.8 FTE there and then the next substantial increase in the special education is down on special education tuition you'll see that's an increase of $711,468 and that is purely based on the increase in tuition that Jamie was speaking to earlier we have reduced the idea B tuition because that has come out of the grant so you'll see that reduction there and there is also a reduction in the psychological services that's our primary and classroom case managers are you I am under where it says total 2140 psychological services yeah thanks are you with me I can't see your screen on the big screen right so I don't understand yeah 2140 okay sorry I was going too fast so the next section is a special education SLPs again that's speech language we have 3.8 FTEs and 1.0 SLP 8 nothing in idea B speech disability the next section is our occupational therapist we have 2.0 FTEs there and then 2.0 of their CODAs which are their assistance so no substantial changes there we reduced the special education other support services because that's no longer necessary we've increased the instructional staff trainings based on what Annette had shared in her report and our plan moving forward with our ongoing professional development series and then the next section is a special education administration we still have 1.0 in the admin and 2.8 in her support team no substantial changes we have increased the contracted transportation so we're at 2700 right transportation almost to the end and that is what we pay Butler to transport our students but also what we reimburse parents who transport their students to their schools and then the idea B transportation you have a reduction there of 80,000 so overall the special education budget is up 154,321 dollars or 1.92 percent so less than 2 percent and as we indicated you'll see the revenue side which offsets the expenses on both the central office and on the special education side next month Tara on each section you've highlighted the FTEs is there any place that you could put those in there so that you wouldn't have to remind us what they what they're attributed to yes I can give you my note section next time thank you but it was in the the budget segments that I presented previously it was awesome in the notes there yeah I wonder if it would be helpful to have kind of a summary that would maybe have those notes but also you know it seems like there's the stuff we kind of control which is our local providing of instruction and then there's the stuff we tuition out and obviously the tuition out has gone up significantly and we've cut the local spending so it'd be kind of interesting to see that more directly if there was some sort of summary we could do any more questions about the budget draft tonight all right thank you Tara you're welcome thanks guys all right um for your change assistance program I think we've all seen this at our local boards at this point just a remind folks this is article 17 of the MA and what it would allow is for those who have provided service to us greater than 15 years if you were to approve it would then be allowed to apply for career change assistance which would result in a payment of 80 percent of their salary and life insurance benefit that would be a significant increase in this budget to budget for that um you're not seeing it budgeted for and um all of our our member districts have uh voted to not support that just so the SU board knows I'll make a motion to sorry go ahead don't make a motion to not go along with the article 17 verbiage seconded is there any discussion on the item all right hearing none all those in favor say aye hi hi hi hi any nays and it still passes thanks guys so article 10 we did our we've done both of our action items any reservations new hires we need to talk about do not any other business for the board tonight um next meeting date uh monday to sever 27 I wanted to talk about that so I was hoping to propose that the board calendar is actually open for the 20th um I wanted to propose I wanted to propose that it's a little farther away from the holiday and uh it also allows us some opportunity if the SU budget isn't approved on the 20th we could warrant a special meeting on the 27th and just take action on that um and again we'll have those couple different scenarios for you to wait on the 20th but we like to have the budget for the SU put to bed by the end of December because it does like Sarah say inform the budget process for your local budget so I'd like uh for you to consider the 20th and then we have some time if we need a special meeting on the 27th unless anybody strongly ejects we'll move our next meeting to monday December 20th and the location will be at the central office awesome no that's full board it will be a full board the December 20th full board at the central the central office will be the location okay um just to sorry just to clarify is that 27th meeting now on the books or is that only if needed it'll be if needed okay thank you great all right guys new emotional return 30 seconds not all right good night everyone happy thanks gimme thank you happy thanks