 Let's take, we're going to get started at 6.15 to this be back at 6.14. So seven minutes. And we'll get started with our budget forum and we'll welcome everybody. Okay. Thank you everybody for being patient. We'll be back. I'm going to be live in one minute. We're already recording and we had called the meeting to order before 5.15. I'm going to go ahead and before we get started with the adjustments to the agenda, I just wanted to express our. I just wanted to say thank you to the Vice President for this. And for Sorrow in our deepest condolences to Mrs. Ganon, who has been with us for 41 years. And her husband passed away last weekend suddenly. So we want her to know that we're thinking of her. And that the whole Washington central district is thinking of her. She has educated many of our kids. And we're thankful for her. with us and for her kindred spirit, because she's definitely Anna Green-Gable's kind of girl and definitely one of the big push on teaching science in the elementary school from a long time ago. So thank you, Mrs. Ganoff, and we're thinking of you. Now let's move any adjustments to the agenda board members for Megan. Okay, good, reception of guests. I see we have 31 participants. I don't see a lot of faces, so hard for me to tell if we have any members of the public, but you guys would have an opportunity to make public comments right after the presentation if you are here with us right now. And with that, I think we should, our intent is to have a short presentation of the budget and we'll move into that and we'll give you some guidance as we start the presentation. Megan, if you don't mind sharing your screen, here we are. So good evening, everybody. This is a time for us, a very short reform for us to share our proposed budget and inform our communities so they can make an informed decision at the polls. The expectations of conduct tonight, as always, there's no wrong questions. So feel free to ask any questions when we're done, be kind and we're here to listen to your questions. And if you have anything that you need to know before you vote, please reach out to any of your board members if you don't wanna ask the question tonight. Okay, next slide, thanks Megan. This is, I'm not gonna read this slide, but you can see there, this is our budget development timeline. The budget is actually a run process that helps us actualize our mission and our values. As you can see, we kicked off our budget pretty early on in October by training the board and also training the board on what the Education Funding Formula is. We looked at draft one budget, which was what our level service budget was. And then after that, we had two other drafts. First, I'm summarizing a little bit because I wanna make sure that we spend more time with questions. The board through this process hosted additional community forums for presentations of the budget and community participated and provided input. The board approved the final draft in January 18th and for the annual meeting to be on time so that we can send everything to print also, but we had a lot of feedback from our community and our board and our administrators. The next up is the hearing, the public hearing will take place in March 7th, March 6th and it would be at U32. And also we would have the ability for you to join remotely and that would be at 530. And please don't forget to vote. That's March 7th, town meeting day. Next slide. These are our goals for tonight in order to paint a picture of what we're trying to achieve with all our resources. This presentation is organized as you can see here in this slide. Staying student centered throughout the budget development process and remembering our why and keeping our three pillars has been important for us. Next slide. So now we're gonna talk about the what and our three pillars, our academic achievement and student outcomes, student and health and safety, humanity and justice and our equity and our equity work. Now Ursula is gonna walk us through the what? So we wanna remember an underscore that our budget process should be grounded in our mission. The budget is a narrative that when done well should reflect our students' needs and our community values. And our mission is that WCUUSD exists to nurture and inspire in all students the passion, creativity and power to contribute to their local and global communities. Next slide. We believe this budget will meet our kids where they are and allow us to remain committed to our work in academic excellence, safe and healthy schools and humanity and justice. District wide areas of focus came out of our continuous improvement planning. Academic achievement, we will reduce the difference in math performance between historically marginalized students and historically privileged students using first instruction systems and systems of intervention. Safety and healthy schools, we will increase our students access to classroom instruction, restorative practices and social and emotional learning. Humanity and justice, we have the equity book study and the humanity and justice coalition. It is expected that our students will meet or exceed rigorous standards for core knowledge of essential academic subjects and transferable skills and behaviors that prepare them for a lifelong learning and success. Now Jonas will talk a little bit about budget context. So the leadership team identified the current realities that are impacting the budget, including rising costs, declining enrollment, staffing shortages and changes to the way that Vermont funds special education needs, as well as changes to the weighting of pupils for the equalized pupil calculation. We're looking forward to assess the impact of reductions in grant funding, including the sunset of ESSER funding in fiscal 2425, which has so far supported additional staff for nursing school counselors and interventionists throughout the pandemic. Based on our board's recommendation that we made last year, we discontinued the use of fund balance as revenue to support the equity scholar in residence and the new teacher added at East Montpelier and I'll pass the conch to Diane. I think you had, oh, okay, I see. So we had this, sorry. We didn't rehearse this, so I'm a little off there. So anyway, so this slide represents the three lenses that we've used. The leadership team and the school board consider student needs, equitable distribution of resources and education quality and evidence-based practices to make decisions for the development of the budget. We leverage our current strengths to take advantage of opportunities to develop a budget that meets the needs of our students in the face of many challenges. Next slide. So this slide shows the realities of our enrollment and it illustrates a decrease in the total student enrollment from 1,594 in FY18 to 1,436 in FY23, or 9.9% decrease. This is the biggest reality that we need to adjust to both in our short-term thinking and over the next several years. A 23% decline is represented here. Next slide, please. So this was our budget process and this is just a recap of what we've been doing. So in November, we looked at a level service budget and then we also said, okay, now we know what that looks like, what would it look like at 6%? Again, remembering that these were unheard of percentages. We typically in a year would not even be looking at this, but as we all know, this isn't a typical kind of year. And so it did mean we needed to expand what those percentages were all the while keeping our lenses going. Then in December, we looked at a draft two and then we also saw where that was putting us and then we asked for again, what does it now look like at 9.7 and then at this actual 7%, including combined services and other opportunities. And then the central office and leadership team have been very responsive and sent us additional drafts for us to consider in January, which we then took a look at and made the final decision. And now I will pass it on to Kari. Thanks, Diane. So Kari Bradley from Calis and my role is to share a summary of our proposed budget and show how the numbers come together and actually affect our tax rates. So keep in mind that this year's budget is a level service budget. So it means that it's basically providing the same programming as this current school year. So next slide, please. So there's several factors that contribute to our tax rates. I'm gonna give a quick summary of each. This first slide looks at the spending and the revenue components. And you can see that our spending is projected to increase 7.6%. And that's actually pretty close to the rate of overall inflation. Right now, what you might expect in this inflationary environment, specifically some of the key drivers in this budget are healthcare and salaries for our incredible staff and also additional expense for special education, among other things. Unfortunately, our revenues are also expected to decrease. And this brings the net difference in our local education spending to just below 10%. So next slide, please. So next we combine that spending plan with the latest student population data, which is measured here as equalized pupils. And since our numbers are decreasing about 2.5%, the local spending per pupil is expected to increase just about 13%. And note that the $23,022 per equalized pupil, this does put us slightly above the state's excess spending threshold. There's no penalty for that, but we just wanna be transparent about that situation. Next slide, please. So this next slide combines a lot of information. It combines everything that we talked about so far with the remaining two factors. In the second column from the left titled common level appraisal, this is the, the CLA is the state's estimate for to account for the difference between the appraised values of our homes and the actual current market value. We all know that property values have been increasing pretty dramatically in our towns, these past couple of years. And so the appraisals the towns have are more out of date than typical. So for example, you can see that Berlin's CLA is 85.96%. And that means that the state believes that the appraised value of a Berlin property is on average around 36% of market value. In Calis, there's an even bigger difference at 80%. And so when we look at the final tax rates, those are gonna vary by town based on how much these CLA rates have changed from the prior year, okay? And then in the second column from the right, these are the estimated tax rates for each town. So this combines everything we've looked at so far with the tax commissioner's estimate of what the state will contribute from the Ed fund as a result of this year's legislative session. So we won't know those final numbers until the legislature and the governor finish their work this spring. That's always the case, but this is our best estimate and we are generally reasonably accurate. Okay, next slide. So ultimately all of this results in the impact on our actual tax rates. And this slide estimates the impact of our proposed budget on the taxes for each town. So we're showing it here as properties that are valued at 100,000, 200,000, 300,000. So you can see what the ranges are. Berlin would experience the largest impact at $116 per 100,000 of value. That's because Berlin had the largest decrease in their CLA. At the other end of the range, Worcester residents would pay an additional $50 per 100,000 and then Calis East Montpelier and Middlesex are somewhere in between. Keep in mind that these rates are prior to any adjustments for income sensitivity. And I believe it's still the case that the majority of property owners or towns receive some sort of adjustment. So that's my portion. That's a lot of information in a quick amount of time. I'm happy to answer any questions when we get to the end of the presentation or if you wanna contact me later, I'll put my email address in the chat and it's posted on the district website. So back to you, Floor. Thanks, Gary. So as you can see, we know that our district is entering a difficult period of time given our declining enrollment. It has sunset of our ESSER funds, inflation, labor scarcity, future negotiation commitments and economic slowdown. We're committed to working with our communities to develop a long-term plan that is fair to all stakeholders and will work for all students. We're committed to continuing our budget work year round and are hoping to kick off our visioning and strategic planning work as soon as possible. Our goal is to fully engage our communities and identify the opportunities we have together as a district and intentionally focus on student outcomes. We want to lay the groundwork for collaboration and trust for years to come as we continue to best serve all our students. And why do I say that now at the end of this presentation is this is what we were talking about. We are starting our work again. After the budget passes, we would be starting our strategic planning work. We have already hired a contractor and we would be a professional that will help us with our visioning project. And last, I just want to give you a little information about the Career Center. The Career Center ballot won't be mailed to you. Your local school ballot will be mailed to you. So please remember to request that ballot. And I know that for some, this year is our first budget together. For some people, that is a little confusing. But this is the first time our 18 towns and our six funding districts had a real input into our budget. And even though we're in this, so we plan, Suzanne, plan those $8,000 into our budget already. So don't buy by, you know, by supporting your funding, you're helping us maintain the programming through those tuition dollars that have already been budgeted for in your local district. And that's it. So let's move into questions. Please raise your hand. Amona, maybe let's take off the presentation, Megan. Thank you for sharing so that we can see people. I don't see any hands. How do you do the hand? How do you do it? You can do it just by hand or you can just, Adam Rosen, welcome. It's the first one I see. But so if I miss somebody, I apologize. You know what, Michelle, I go floor. Adam, go ahead. You have a question, please. Oh, well, I did more of a comment. It's just about the enrollment numbers. I, you know, it's kind of shocking how much of a decrease they've been. And I've seen this trend before, not like this extreme, but it does go up and down. And sometimes when it gets predicted to go low like that, it unexpectedly swings up. And, you know, I just wonder, are you looking at things like new housing starts and just sort of factoring in that empty nesters move away, sell their houses, people with young families buy their houses. It's, you know, it's pretty hard to get into the weeds like that. But I just think looking at the downward trend of a graph is probably not sufficient. And I did have a couple other comments, but they're not, they're just about other board business, not about the budget presentation. Will there be a time to do those later? There'll be time to do those at the end, Adam, but you can answer, why don't we answer this question? I'm gonna let Megan speak a little bit into the enrollment. And then you can ask the other two. I'm gonna let people ask budget questions. And if we have time at the end, you can add. Is that okay? And Bernie, you're next. Very. Hi, Flora. Of course, I just- Just wait for it, wait, wait, wait for Megan to respond. And then you are next, okay? Okay, thank you. Sorry. Adam, it might be helpful just to know what, how those numbers get created. So I'd say two things about our enrollment trends. The decline has held for a very long time. And the decline has matched our prediction for a very long time, long enough that it isn't, we don't have data to suggest that it's a blip. And the other thing I would say just in terms of the makeup of those numbers, we do both an internal analysis and we have an external company called NASDAQ, which is in New England. I'm not gonna remember the firm. They do take into consideration new housing developments, things like that, zoning, birth rates in hospitals. So the numbers, our numbers, our predicted numbers track well with NASDAQ numbers. So it just might be helpful to know that that's part of where that chart comes from is it is taking into considerations kind of community impacts. Thank you, Megan. Yeah, Bernie, it's good to see you. Hi, Flora. First thing I wanted to thank all of you for serving on the board. I always said it's one of the hardest jobs to do, so I appreciate it. I had a question, just say that having been involved in Cal State 50 years and also the school, we looked at numbers in the 90s and they showed this trend based on birth rates, et cetera. And so it's played out consistently over decades. My concern only, and I know you have good staff and Chris O'Brien, but I'm a little concerned about putting in a new pellet system for close to a quarter million dollars with the numbers so low. So I haven't been privy to any discussions around population in the school building. Just having, that's only a concern. I trust all of you in making judgments with more information. So I just figured I would share that with you and move on. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bernie. Barry, sorry. Yeah. Okay. And then I can, what I can say to that Barry is that they're still our buildings and we're doing the best to make sure that we maintain them. And the population is not, we will know more after admission system, but we would still use our buildings. So for now that is on the table today, Barry, but we will, that's one of the recommendations on our finance part a little later. So we appreciate your feedback. Any other questions? Oh, I see Mr. Dwayne. Yes, thank you. I had a governance question about the ballot and I see that we're voting on the career center's budget. And I'm wondering what is the process if one of our six sending districts does not vote in favor of the career center budget? And the second part of that is what if the career center budget does not pass on the career center ballot? What's the process if those eventualities come to pass? Thank you. So, Michael, those are all good questions and our questions that we've been asking with our superintendent, Jodi, it is new territory. We did agree to commingle all our ballots. So we won't know and usually it doesn't tell you anything to have just one particular, no, that one particular town didn't vote it on. So we are giving our town clerks 10 days to commingle the vote. So we just get one vote out of the career center. We are hoping the question that we ask our lawyers and AOE and other people that helped us put our articles, if agreement together, seems to point that if the, because of it's embedded already in the school budgets, in essence, we have the money to operate, but there's no clear. So I'm not giving you a final answer. We're just hoping that the budget is gonna pass and everybody's gonna vote for the career center. And we've been, you know, moving, posting and there'll be stuff in the Time Sargas in the world, both for our district and for the career center this week. So that's all I can tell you so far. Good, thanks. Okay, any other questions? Michael. And so just to clarify, do we request with our town clerk to get an absentee ballot for the career center? Yes, if you're voting absentee, you can request it through them. They wouldn't just mail it to you directly, but if you request it, you will get it. Any other questions? Seeing none, if the board is comfortable, we've moved on. Oh, sorry, Adam, you did, so we have a few minutes, we didn't have that many questions. So if you have any other public comments, you can go ahead. Well, there's two of them. One of them is specifically about the Clerk of the Works Award. And I worked with Bill Ford when I was principal at Rumney and there was a construction project there and he was Clerk of the Works there and he was wonderful to work with. And at one point, I actually provided a reference for him. I'm a little reluctant to do this in public, but at one point, a couple of years ago when I was speaking with the late Nate Picard and I was just asking him how things were with the construction and he said, he mentioned it like a significant error that the circulator pumps had been installed backwards and that it was a big project to redo that. You know, I'd rather just do this in an email with you, Floor, but I just saw that Bill was the Clerk and it just seems like being worth looking into. I know there's so few applicants for Clerk of the Works and he's got such a good reputation, but what I heard from someone was that there was like a significant error under that project that I hadn't known about. So I would just ask you to do something with that information, but what you do with it is up to you, but I did wanna bring that out. I was surprised to hear that he would have made an error like that. And my other comment was, I saw that there's gonna be a strategic plan study next year and I saw that the wording was careful that it's really about community values and not actually planning for any kind of consolidation. And I kind of disagree with that approach to it. There's been so many strategic plans and studies of community values in the last 15 or 20 years. They all kind of say the same things. I think we know the values this community pretty well, especially the folks who go to strategic planning. And I think it's kind of squandering the resource of that money for the strategic planning not to address the issue of the declining enrollment and consolidation directly and without waiting for another year of fact-finding. That's all. Thank you for your comments on the visioning plan. Adam, I just, because I've worked, I usually don't respond to comments, but in this case, I feel like it's something that has been said in public about somebody that works for us. And I feel strongly that Bill has worked for us now over several years. And he also did the East Montpelier renovation and construction and has been excellent to work with us. He's been guiding Chris O'Brien also at our district. We finally, he was a big proposer for us finally getting a facilities director too. So I just wanted to share that with you just because it was sad. Bill has done excellent work for us over the past few years. Thanks. Okay, let's move on into board operations. Yeah. Okay, I'm at a little off right now. I'm just getting into my agenda, sorry. Yeah. Michael has his hand up. Yeah, we, yeah, we have moved out of public comments Michael, are you, okay. Let's see, so we haven't started. Go ahead, Mr. Dwayne. Thank you. This is just to follow up question to my other questions. And again, this is about the ballots and budget and garnets. If one of our, if the Washington central budget doesn't pass and hopefully we all hope that it will, but if it doesn't pass, what happens to the career center budget in that process? I'm just trying to get my head around the new district of the career center and what the governance is for that. So is there an answer to that question? I'm happy for us to, Megan to ask. Sorry, I didn't mean to jump in. The short answer is when whatever budget in our district was represented would still have to factor in a tuition cost for the tech center. So that would either be a known cost because it will have passed or not, but to some extent it's not, it's not really connected what it, the one failing and one not failing. In this case, if our budget went down when we proposed a next version of the budget, we would still assume a tech center tuition cost and it would be baked into our budget. Okay, thank you. Thanks, any other questions, last call? Okay, being none that we would move into the board operations for communications and outreach plan, we have drafted a letter that is gonna be published in the world, in the Times Argus and on behalf of the entire board and we've been doing some posting in front push forum and Melissa just posted today that letter. And what am I forgetting, Megan, basically. And the only thing was that it's also gone out in our school newsletters, a blurb and our district newsletter. We won't have a second district newsletter until after the vote, but it will get pushed out again in building level newsletters. Yeah, and Steven sent it to the entire high school today via email too, and we appreciate all the principals helping us out, spread the word. Kari? Just wanted to remind everybody that we were recording tonight's presentation. So that's another item that we can share with people and just to emphasize the importance of individual contact, please talk to your friends and neighbors. Yeah. Thank you, Kari. And we're gonna not post the entire meeting, we're gonna cut just the presentation so that people can access the presentation. And also one last thing is you'll be getting a postcard with a QR code that will send you directly to a report. You would be able to request a copy being mailed to you or you can pick up a copy at any of our schools or any of your town clerks too. And that will have all the information of the school report that you get every year. Okay, preparation for our annual meeting. On March 6th, we would be doing the same presentation that you just heard here, basically doing the presentation if we have public in attendance and asking questions and seeing that if anybody has questions on the ballot or similar questions to what just came up today. And that is gonna be at U32 in room 128, 130, right? And we will be able, you'll be able to join, not be entire board, it needs to be there, some of our members are gonna be away, but if you can attend, please come for members and we would just be answering questions. And I know for some towns, it also conflicted with their select board presentation. So we try to move it around, it shouldn't be longer really than a half an hour, but we move that around so you can join remotely or come in person to the school. And now we're gonna move to a little debrief with Phil. Phil, thank you for joining us tonight very timely. And I'm gonna pass this on to you and grab my book. Okay, thanks Floor. Can you see my screen okay? So the book we've been looking at the last six months is all focused on school board improvement and specifically school board effectiveness. An underlying theme throughout the book is what boards may do that can have an effect on student outcomes. One of the things that emerges from the research is the way a board evaluates a superintendent has been correlated with the likelihood that the district is improving in student achievement. And so I know my slides is chapter four, I'm reminded it's chapter eight, but this opportunity of superintendent evaluation. I wanna wanna share with you about and have some conversation if we can is what is the opportunity of superintendent evaluation? What, this is not about a current superintendent evaluation, this is about your superintendent evaluation next year and what the board can do to improve its work inherently within this is a connection to what the superintendent can do to improve her work. So what are these opportunities to strengthen board practice? One that's identified in the book is working together and with the superintendent. I have a personal bias that there's no room for a minority report in a superintendent evaluation. The superintendent needs to know what is the will of the board? Not what is the will of 15 individuals or five individuals or any combination, but what is the will of the board? So superintendent evaluation done well thoughtfully allows the board to come together in some kind of consensus of understanding and agreement. It has the opportunity for the board to increase its understanding of the superintendent's role. And particularly if you use a rubric for evaluation where there's a gradation from does not meet standard to emerging or distinguished, whatever the categories are, those rubrics can show here's what the superintendent's job is and here's what improvement looks like. Here's what growth looks like. I think it's important to always recognize when we're evaluating a superintendent, we're not evaluating the individual as a person. We're evaluating the effect of leadership. So what leadership have they exercised in the organization that is moving the needle toward the direction the board would like for the district to go? Obviously, I think the easy low-hanging fruit, if you will, when you evaluate a superintendent, it's often the time to decide whether or not to retain them or give them a raise. But again, back to the piece here of the board practice improvement, it gives the board a chance to calibrate their understanding of what good performance looks like. And those conversations are probably one of the most important takeaways of the process. Ultimately, superintendent evaluation can help improve the leadership of the superintendent, but it can also help improve the collective leadership of the board, help the board come together. Now it only works this way if superintendent evaluation and superintendent performance becomes kind of a centerpiece for conversation. How are we doing? How are we doing as a team? How's the district doing? Are we progressing on our roles? There are opportunities inherently in superintendent evaluation for them to strengthen their practice. The conversations and the work together with evaluation can help the superintendent work well with the board. And again, getting away from working with individuals to working with the entity of the board. It can help the superintendent decide, do I wanna stay here? Is this board asking of me the things that I want to give and are we in sync with the direction the board wants to go versus what I see in my expertise or from my perspective, we should go. As said earlier, it's an opportunity for the superintendent to improve their leadership, to be able to listen clearly what does the collective voice of the board want in these situations? What is important to them? What does success look like? And really as the book, and again, sort of that underlying theme throughout the book, there's this opportunity to focus on student learning. Folks, the reality is that systems will improve what they choose to focus on. And as a school board member, if we're distracted, whether it be community concerns, criticism, challenges, what different single issues are that emerged throughout the year, if we're distracted by those, it's all takes away from the potential for maximizing improvement in student learning. The superintendent through the evaluation process can have a great opportunity to better understand what is important to the board. And again, I'm referring to superintendent evaluation, not as a one-time event, but as a conversation that happens throughout the year. That's formative, if you will. And some of the things in the book that get to suggestions for improvement, number one, have a plan, right? You see that in multiple chapters in this book. Boards that have a plan and focus their efforts on a plan tend to perform better than boards that don't. It's about being intentional. And I can attest as a former school board member that too often superintendent evaluation, for me, what was an afterthought. You know, we evaluated our superintendent according to his contract in June every year, but sometime about the first of June, we would have a conversation about, oh, what instrument are we going to use this year? And embarrassingly, sometimes he wasn't evaluated until August or September to have it completed because we allowed it to be an afterthought. I've learned from those mistakes and I've seen how the conversation again around performance, about how the district is doing, how the students are doing, how the superintendent is doing, what the board wants more of, less of, having that conversation all year can help the whole system focus and be intentional on those things that matter most. It's very, very important. And I think the timing of this conversation tonight fits well. The expectations for what success looks like need to be determined at the start of the cycle, not the end of the cycle. Oh, well, we really wanted you to do this and why didn't we improve that? And why was she upset about that? And why did these people know the criteria for evaluation needs to be established and agreed to by the board and the superintendent at the very beginning of the cycle? One of the things we can do as boards to improve the value of superintendent evaluation is to really allow it to help us focus as a team on our long range goals and on our role. I've said many times, you've heard me say it before, superintendents can't do it alone. School boards can't do it alone. This is a very interdependent relationship. The superintendent needs the board to do its job of creating policy, of gathering community input, of having a focus on long range goals, setting parameters for the budget that are clear and focused. The board needs to do its job in that strategic arena so that the superintendent can execute effectively according to what the board's guidance has been. They can't come to the board every day or every week and say, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? They need to be empowered to do their work. And when boards focus on a strategic role, it allows the superintendent to focus on their tactical role of executing on a day in, day out basis, what the agreed will of the board is. So at the end of this chapter, we talked a bit about increasing effectiveness. This is really important. I don't know if you have a job description for your superintendent or if her contract refers to how she'll be evaluated when she's evaluated, what the criteria is. I would encourage you to take a look at these things and to build alignment or coherence into what the job description says, what the contract says, what your board policy says, and ultimately what the board practices. If those things are out of alignment, it can cause kind of a wobbliness, like a washing machine that's off balance, right? But when everything is aligned, then there's clarity about the direction that you're going forward in. We encourage in this chapter to set specific and measurable goals, a fuzzy goal like improve the budget. What does that mean? Does that mean fire people? Does that mean go out and bake cookies and sell them at the grocery store? What does it mean improve the budget, right? The board has to get more clear and more specific about what exactly do we want the superintendent to do? I borrow this word iterative and I like it. Bamboo grows in a way that's iterative. It has nodes where you'll see the one shoot come up and then the next bump come up. So if you think about your district improving, you're not going from here to here overnight, but what step can you take? Now think about that in terms of superintendent evaluation. You probably weren't perfect in the way you evaluated the superintendent this year. You're not likely to be perfect in the way you evaluate the superintendent next year. So what about what I'm saying or something you've read or thought or you could contribute to the collective would be sort of that next step? What would it look like for this board superintendent team to improve the way they evaluate the superintendent? To make it objective and fair, transparent, you know, what would that next step be of improvement? So part of this is really, and I mentioned having a plan earlier, but it needs to be clear who does what by when, right? When will reports be given? When will the mid-year review be given? When will the final evaluation be given? All of these things need to go on a board calendar. They just need to be a part that functions in quarters or months. Here's when we get this, here's where we get that and correspond to the cycle of the work of the district. I'm gonna unshare my screen. I did more talking longer than what I wish. I'm curious if there are questions, reflections or something that anyone would like to have a conversation about. Floor members. Thanks, Karen. I'll go. You asked the question. I just wanna share what I'm thinking in terms of what's next for us. How do we improve this system that we started last year and continue on this year? We haven't completed yet. So this is premature and I'm only speaking for myself. Clearly, I think developing goals out of this process would be a good next step for us. So we have a rubric. It kind of evaluates performance on very sort of, just a bunch of different characteristics. But we also wanna I think complement that with some specific smart goals around what is most important and we'll work with Megan on that. The other thing I'd like to have us do is through our monitoring of both financials and ed quality have our performance evaluation carry on through the year. So it's not just this once a year process, a couple of thoughts. Great, yeah. Data becomes available at different times of the year, right? Someone else, what's an opportunity or potential opportunity for improving the way you evaluate a superintendent? How the board does its work? Well, I think it's back to that being an iterative process because we learned a little bit through our piloting with Jen and then we've learned some this, we're still in it as Kari was saying, but it's that kind of that back and forth as Megan shares information and then we share information and then we figure out together is that matching up with what we need to know or not? And so then not getting stuck, but instead making sure that as we are intentional it identifies what we need to change or add in. That's really important, that idea of calibrating, right? We're calibrating typically in evaluation of teachers people talk about inter-rater reliability. So would one administrator evaluate the teacher in a similar way to this other? When we think about school board members we think about calibrating is a two to the same person, right? Is a three mean whatever the label or the number is, are we on a similar understanding of what this looks like? Somebody else was speaking earlier. Jonas. That was me. When you asked us to talk about how we could improve the process I don't really feel like calling Kari out on the carpet because I think that we've done pretty well so far. Very good. Throwaway comment. I wanna call on Natasha, she keeps smiling at me. Anyone else any thoughts about how this board might sort of take that next step of improving the way in which they evaluate the superintendent? I have a couple of thoughts in, I think how you were talking about calibrating the system and also how we can provide clattery to our superintendent too as board members. So merging our monitoring work that we're working with the quality committee with having a better understanding of how we can support. Like you said, it can be done one without the other. So how do we support the system so that Megan can lead better if we help, by us understanding how the system is doing, how the students are doing and maybe then we can be better partners out of this evaluation too. Have a better understanding of how we can have a better partnership. Let me suggest that at the conclusion of an annual evaluation cycle it's a very mature question for a board to ask how have we as a board either interfered with your success this year or how have we supported your success? And again, asking the superintendent for their opinion what does improvement look like for us? Because at the end of the day, this is all about growth. It's not about gotcha. It's not about who said what, did what wrong, whatever. It really is about what does growth look like? One thing I would encourage kind of maybe some parting thoughts. When you think about data that reflects the superintendent's performance don't look for evidence of activity. Look for evidence of impact. So not was the superintendent busy but did what the superintendent do have a positive outcome in the system? How is their leadership influencing professional development and growth ultimately improvement in student outcomes? So I would just really encourage as you think about data, what data to look for what data to ask for the conversations around performance need to not be about activity but about impact. So and with that, in an ideal world as Kari mentioned, there's a process throughout the year it's not a one-time event. There's this reporting out on progress and performance and then the superintendent's able to put together a portfolio of evidence to support the goals that the board has established for her to accomplish. What evidence do you have in April, May, June, August? And have that sort of in a portfolio to be able to show the evidence of impact. I hope this was helpful. I look forward to being with you next month and having a brief conversation about your budget process and really the board's habits, behaviors all around sort of just a debrief on how you feel like that that went this last year to help set you up for success next year. Thank you, Floor. Thank you so much, Phil. We really appreciate your guidance and we learn a lot every time. So thank you for joining us. Okay, let's move into reports. Our students here, I wanna see their smiley faces. Oh, and they're with Steven. Yeah. Okay. Now that looks happy. Okay, go ahead, guys. Bye. Bye. We're getting, we're getting, we're getting, we're getting. Oh. Okay, yeah. You have special effects now is better. Okay, go ahead. All right, so just to like start the report off, I'm sure you guys have heard, but there was a shooter hoax that happened around the state of Vermont. It did not happen to U32, but it did happen to schools around us. And it like the word was spread and a lot of the students knew before they found out it was a hoax and it was a scary day, that's definitely for sure. But the announcement was made quickly and the students like realized that everything was okay, but it just like shows how important all of the like safety measures are for our community. Yeah, to go off of that, we all found out pretty fast because it was, we came from a lot of Montpelier, friends of ours. And so we got like a lot of different words. And then they were getting a lot of different like stories and rumors. So like you could tell how fast like news spreads and like the effect it had on the students. Like you could tell the moment before everyone was like normal and like talking and then it like went pretty silent in class and then kids were like nervous. You could like visually see the effect it had. So definitely still a very like prominent thing happening within our community and the thing people feel as much as students on a happier note. Playoffs are starting soon for our winter sports. So the girls and boys hockey, basketball, the Nordic states are next week. We also today had, I think all of the students even if you fill out a snapshot survey, no, just 11th and 12, but later all of them will be filling out a snapshot survey, which covered basically the wellbeing of all the students and basically checks in on them. It's mostly anonymous, but if they need someone to check in, they do get contacted about that. We had Valentine's Day yesterday. And so our school purchased a whole bunch of carnations and so students were able to buy and send their friends or significant other teachers or whoever they really wanted themselves, some carnations. And it was pretty successful. I'm pretty sure at one point we were just handing out flowers. So if you wanted a flower, you could get a flower. Also for Valentine's Day, we had the conversation club have a table to talk about consent and healthy relationships and important topics like that. So that was really good. We also have next Tuesday a speak out that's being led by a few students on about National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. So that's being planned currently and we should have a lot of good speeches next week. So last meeting, we were talking about how we sent out a survey and we created this poster. So we're going to show you the poster. It's going to be really hard to see because it's online, but visually it's supposed to be overwhelming because of all the responses. So it will make sense, I'm sure about it. And I'm sure we can send out a photo later. We just didn't have time for this yet, but Willow made an art piece. I did. I can't read it. But this was a survey that we sent out and we asked all of the students, things such as if you could change one thing about the school, what would it be and what helps you get up in the morning, et cetera. And we got a lot of good responses. Some were a little bit hard to read, but it just showed us like how important it is to know these things and like keep working for a healthier school community and how honest students really were. So it was really nice to just see that like there needs to be changed within our community and especially with students' mental health, like there's a very big issue and you can tell by the responses. So yeah, a lot of them are also about anxiety or stress related to school, which we are constantly trying to improve. It is difficult, but it is also incredibly important. But yeah, we'll send the picture of it at some point as long as you guys. So yeah. And that's what we have. That's it. Thank you guys. And we have a couple of questions. Jonas. So you mentioned the survey that you took last time. But first of all, great presentation. You guys do a great job every time. You mentioned the survey responses last time. Could we see those? Could we see that information, that data? Yeah. Strictive personal information. Yeah, I think we can probably have it sent out next time. We'll send it with a picture. We got 93 responses from students. So there's a lot of in-phone data. Some of it not helpful. Some of it, like most of it incredibly helpful though. But we can try to send that out. It's a good range. Thank you. That would be wonderful. It was a great report. Any other questions from board members? What are you guys saying for dinner? We had, we had buddies. We did. Good job. Okay. Well, it's nice to see you. You can leave your camera on if you're gonna stay. It makes us smile. At least it makes me smile to see you. Hi, Mr. Rosen. Hi, Mr. Rosen. Mr. Rosen is our principal. It's great to see you too. You definitely made him smile. Okay. So let's move now into the briefing. Sorry. Superintendent, I'm like totally. Now it's the call, the call report. Megan, if you wanted to do some highlights and then if people have questions, I know I have a question. So go ahead. One, just highlight. And then one little bit of an update. So the highlight is welcoming Holly on board as our new payroll manager. That has been a heavy lift for Suzanne and her team. And we're excited to have her. It's great, it's great addition. So that is exciting. Our central office is fully staffed at the moment, which is great. And then the update, I gave a pretty good like 10,000 foot update about just sort of legislative issues coming off of our meeting with our legislators. And there's a tiny little paragraph about preschool because that update came out before the two draft bills came out. And if anyone is paying attention at another time, I can give more detail. And these are bills. And this is part of the process and they will take testimony and there's lots of input. But the pre-cables being suggested involve serving four-year-olds the way that we serve kindergartners, which has lots of implications in lots of different ways. So just wanted to highlight that and then happy to answer any questions. But I remember there's any questions for any part of the report. I know we all appreciate the report. I was wondering, I just see heads saying no, but I was wondering if it would be okay for maybe Steven to highlight the new club, which was I was so excited to read the most club. Is that okay, Steven? Or am I putting you in the spot there? I'm so excited. All right, sorry. I was just having to jump between cameras. Yeah, so we have a new club that we introduced to the faculty and that we will be inviting some young men to. It's called the Most Club, Men of Strength. And it really is a way for our young men and I would say that male identifying students for them to be a part of a group that explores healthy masculinity. And so we really feel like that this is a good start. Of course, there is a girl component to it, not just men, but women component to it. And it's the, we're trying to get this started and then we will look at how we expand with them as well. But one of the things that has been discussed many times is that to reduce a culture of sexual violence and sexual harm that we certainly need to talk to our boys and our men as early as possible and give them an opportunity to explore what it does mean to be an ally and advocate and healthy masculinity and all that. We have a great group of advisors. We'll have a group of young men in the middle school and in the high school as well. It's going to start with fairly small clubs. So it's gonna be about 10 to 15 students in each one of those. But we look to expand it as we gain more knowledge and more practice with it. To be a part of the club, they will have to be nominated and that's a process. So it's not, it wants to be a mix so that we have a good cross-section of students as well. And it also gives us a chance to develop some leadership. This will also lead us into some other things that we'll be working on, which is a program called Coaching Boys Into Men, which is a part of an athletics program. So we've been working with Mosaic to bring that program in as well. I know this sounds like very men's centric right now, but it just gives us a place to start. We will certainly be expanding these programs to make sure that we have everyone in the school involved in it in some way, shape, or form. Thank you, student. Super excited about this and what it means for our school and to stop putting our kids in boxes, both girls and boys, they all need the same. So let's move on. Any other questions? The report is great. It really gives us a window into what is happening at schools. I was just super excited about this. So I asked particularly about this one, but I could ask every principal, but we also have a really long board meeting today. So your report is appreciated even if we're not asking direct questions for all of you here. Okay, so now I sort of put together both reports there. So if there's anything else on the principal report, Megan, that you would like to highlight? No. The next report is in the Central Vermont Career Center. The only one piece, we already did it as part of this presentation, but you can also request your report from the Career Center. You would also be getting just a postcard from the Career Center, not an actual report. And there would be reports delivered to all of our sending districts. So you'd be able to pick up a Career Center report. Two, let's move on into finance. And I'm gonna wait until the consent agenda in, and then we can, if people need a break, please let me know, but I'm just gonna, if people are okay, I'm gonna just keep going right now to try to get us out of here, not too late. Okay, so in the Finance Committee report, we have a few bits to award today. And we have moved the part of Suzanne always did finance as part of the CULT report. So I wanted to also say something that Suzanne shared with us at the finance meeting the other day, and it's the incredible work that, and you guys will know it, that Melissa also does by supporting all of this work. And right now we're gonna award bits. And again, thanks to Bill Ford, who spent a lot of time on this, and Chris O'Brien also who helps us guide us through this process. I'm looking, and Suzanne is here too, to answer any questions. And Megan, so I'm looking for a motion for the callous pellet boiler, and then we'll move into discussion. Or so. I moved that the board approve awarding the callous pellet boiler project contract to Frolien Energy in an amount not to exceed $251,900. Second. Thank you, Ursula, thank you, Eric. Okay, discussion, questions. And Chris is here too, I see your, any, anything that you would like to highlight Chris or Suzanne? I don't see any more questions. Oh, McKaylin, and Jonas, okay. Okay, go ahead. Well, I know that there had been a comment earlier in the evening by a community member, and I'm curious, not just keeping in mind, you know, the strategic planning that will be happening and not looking to close any schools, what would happen in the event that, like if we replace the boiler at Callison, something crazy happened and the school was closed, what happens to that building? That does that remain the district building? Or is that investment lost to the district? It is, so there's a unique thing with callous. I think they're one of the ones that, Flor, do you recall what happened with callous when you guys merged? I know that there's a couple of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we ended up not doing that. The school callous belongs to the district too. And if they want it, so that's where they're selling, if we couldn't sell it to it, we could sell it back to the town for $1, we bought it for $1, we could sell it back to the town for $1, but the equity of the building is the district's equity of the building. And I would say that, you know, just, we're still responding, there's nothing that is gonna happen suddenly, as long as we operate even one grade in that, in any of our buildings, the buildings still require us to take the best care of them and the pellets allows us to save a lot of money. That is the eldest pellet system in the entire state. And actually, Barry help us work through and look at the, he came to look at the pellet system with us and we're still looking at hopefully getting some grants, if possible, to offset some of that cost, right, Susan? We talked about this at our finance meeting. Yeah, and I would also say that Callis is at risk having only one very old pellet wood chip boiler. If it fails, we cannot use our school. And that's a problem, we need to think about risk and ability to run our schools. So I think it's important to replace this boiler. Thanks, I just wanted to make sure that question was addressed, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Any other questions? Chris, anything that you would want to add? No, I'm all set for. Okay, Daniel. I was just going to point out that, you know, if we're looking five or 10 years down the road and, you know, what McKaylin hypothesized it became more realistic, it, you know, as a property that, you know, the district has that you know, we might want to market to maybe some other Callis organization that wanted to use a space or part of the space, it becomes that much more marketable if it has redundant heat systems in it. So it's just one other though, or what other replacement. Thank you, Daniel. So if the board is ready, I'm gonna, all of those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Hearing none, the motion carries. Thank you. And Lisa, you're all set, right? I haven't checked in with you today. Yes, thank you. Okay, sorry, I meant to check in with you before and I had, okay. The next one is to award a bid for the parking, the U32 parking lot. Could I have a motion please? Woo. Who was that? Somebody's singing the motion back to us. Sorry, I was, I thought I was muted. I wasn't offering to read it, I had to pull up the agenda. Okay, somebody else ready to read it or so I don't wanna put you in the spot again. Thank you. I forgot it was a separate memo, I should have to bring it up. Yeah. But I moved that the board approve awarding the U32 parking lot and sidewalk replacement project contract to J.A. McDonald Incorporated in an amount not to exceed $1,476,217. Thank you. So that second. Second. Thank you, Erin. Any questions? I almost called for the vote. Any discussion? Jonas. I would just love to be made smarter. Why does paving a parking lot cost so much money? Yeah, because it just doesn't involve just paving the parking lot. Chris, I'm gonna- That's why I'm asking, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Chris. You're muted. You're muted. You're being very eloquent. Thanks, Laura. Yeah, it's not just repaving Jonas, it's, they're gonna be digging several feet down to replace the subgrade in certain areas that need it. Mostly where all the parking spaces are. And there's some other parts of the bus lane that need the same type of work done. And then some of it is just milling and repaving, but mostly a lot of, it's gonna be a lot of excavations. It's gonna be a lot of dirt work and new material coming in. It's the painting of all the lines, it's the signage, it's a lot of stuff. So it's not just coming in and repaving the existing. It's basically a reconstructing. Got it, I appreciate that, Chris. Is this gonna be done in the summer? Yes, seven and a half weeks. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of drainage. Megan, were you gonna say something? No, yeah, and a lot of drainage and we are putting it onto it. Yeah, and we're putting it onto it. Yes, that's right, yeah, there's conduit for EV charging stations that we're gonna put in a future sidewalks. That's the conclusion. Yeah, yeah. All right, Floor, I just wanna do like a little quantifier or something here, a question about it being done in summer. The contractor has asked or if there's potential for extra time. So we may, and we're not certain, have to overlap with opening of school and coordinate that some, but at this point where you're hoping it will be finished in the summer, I just wanna, because the question was asked, I wanna make sure that we quantify that. Okay. Yeah, there are two phases. Phase one is the, I think, August 15th date and then phase two would go into September 15th, which would be, we'd get the bulk of it done and then some peripheral stuff for the last four weeks, but the hope is to get it all done in that short window of time, seven and a half weeks or so. Okay, thank you, Chris. Before we vote, Lissa, do you need clarification on the motion? Yeah, because I'm not finding that in the packet. Yeah, I'll send you the memo. Is that, would that be easier? Yes, thank you. Yeah, okay. So, and you can, yeah, take notes of the vote and then all of those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Seeing none of the motion carries. Okay. And the last part of this is our project manager, the clerk of the works contract on page 34. Could I have a motion and then we can discuss or so that, thank you. I move the board authorized the superintendent to sign the contract with WF project inspections for services as owner, project manager and clerk of the works through February 9th, 2024, not to exceed $89,732. Thank you. So that second? Second. Thank you, Jonas. Any discussion? Hearing none, I'm gonna call it to vote with appreciation for Phil. Philip, a little bit. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, thanks Bill for taking us on one more year. Okay. Now with that, let's go ahead and do the consent agenda. We have several minutes to approve. Could I have a motion? I move to approve the minutes. January 11th, January 18th, January 31st and February 1st, 2023. Thank you, Jonas. A second? Second. Thanks, Eric. Any discussion on amendments, everybody? Okay, I can see any. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Hearing none, the motion carries. Thank you. All right, approve board orders. And I will remember to send you an email too. It's just gonna pull out my board orders. Vindi? Sorry. The next two are yours? No, or whoever wants to do it. Sorry, we have rhythm here. I just have to get un-muted here. Okay, go ahead. Very well. I make a motion. There's actually three, well, two dates and a total. I'm just going to do the total. I make a motion to accept the board order as presented for the total amount of $796,667.63. Thank you. A second? Daniel, second. I couldn't hear you, but I see your hand in second. Any discussion? Any questions? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. So approve new teachers extend the leave of absence request. You want me to do it? Please. Okay. I make a motion to accept the request by Noel Drowne to extend the leave of absence and return to work on May 22nd, 2023. Okay. Second. Do we say the name right, Megan? Yeah. Noel Drowne. Yeah. Second. Ursula. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Hearing none, the motion carries. Megan, update in vacancies. Yep. Just a quick update in addition to the welcoming Holly, a central office. We actually had a couple of support staff resignations, just people moving on to different things. So that's not the direction we want to go in. Unfortunately, continue to be in a tough place at U32. We did have some activity in the applicant pool, still have not hired in the maintenance custodial. So not really a lot new is the update. Thank you, Megan. Any questions to Megan about vacancies? Okay. So future agenda items. Oh, go ahead, Maggie. Sorry, not moving very fast here. I did read that East Montpelier is fully, is it East Montpelier that's fully staffed now? Somebody in their school newsletter. Berlin Senate. Berlin, yes. So that's a celebration. It is, thank you. Thanks, Maggie. And Megan. So now a future agenda items. So we have a, our next meeting is on the March 15th and also put a placeholder and potential meeting on the 10th if we need it. And then we can check our board calendar work plan. I can share. Yes, you might share in your screen. So we do have the annual meeting on here also, but we talked about that already. Yes. So we'll be doing the annual million to six. And this are what we have in our to-do list so far. So as you can see, we're reorganizing on the 15 after the town vote. So have you taken it? Yeah, go ahead. No, sorry, I just had, we made some adjustments. Committees made some adjustments because of the reorganization date. So you'll see that on the right-hand side. They, they're moved or just are waiting until the following month. Any questions on that? Okay. And our next community forum is not until April 5th and we would wait until we have more information about, oh, there's two questions. Eric and then Daniel. I just wanted to request a calendar appointment in March 6th meeting. Doesn't appear to have one yet. I can handle us to send a calendar invite for the annual meeting. Yes. Thank you. Daniel. I was trying to frame this as a question. I guess I'm thinking about the community forum on April 5th. I'm hopeful that there'll be some public discussion about what engagement for, like subsequent engagement for the community will look like in the strategic planning process and in any follow-up conversations. I guess like if we're not able to lay up that calendar of community engagement, an explanation of how and when that will be laid out, I think we'd be really welcome. Yeah. Why don't I just give a really small update? You'll get a more substantive update as the process goes on. But I'd remind the board that the first step of the strategic planning is bringing together a well-represented committee to actually build the process. So the last three community forums of the year are placeholders for community forums. And one step in the process is actually that one of those forums would be to engage the community about the process itself. So even before we begin the process, the community would have an ability to weigh in on that. And I would also just share my initial conversation with our consultants is about using that opportunity as one way to get input, but there are also gonna need to be other ways for to be able to tap into those voices that don't come to the meeting. So that's gonna sit there as a placeholder for a little bit. Just know that that's what the next step will be is actually getting input on the process before it even begins, which I think is really what you're, is part of what you're talking about. Thank you, Megan. Okay, so we can close that board. Any board reflections from the meeting or anything that is in your mind? I don't see any hands. So, right, I don't see anybody. Another opportunity for public comments. Is there anybody in the public that would like to raise their hand and have any comments? I see Adam, I'm gonna wait a minute just to see if there's any others that haven't had the opportunity. I don't see any, unless I'm missing, I don't see anybody else. So go ahead. I just wanna say it's been years and years since I've sat through an entire board meeting and how lucky for you all that you didn't have to do the budget process in six different schools and the Supervisor Union. And thumbs up to this new way of doing things. It's not even new anymore, but I'm sure you all appreciate the efficiency of it. Thank you. Any other comments? Seeing none, the purpose of putting all these executive sessions at the end was so that we wouldn't be holding people waiting for us. The board has three, as you can see from the agenda, a student, negotiations and finalize and not finalizing, but superintendent evaluation too. So we are gonna move, you don't have to stay. So, Oregon, everybody, we appreciate you being here, all of our administrators. Thanks for being here, all of the principals. Thanks for being here. Lisa, I think your hero, Jonas, can take over now. You can't seem to know, right? I will send you that memo. Sorry, I haven't sent it to you yet, but I'll send it to you in a couple minutes. Okay? Thank you, guys. Good night. Thank you, Lisa. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Lisa, as your last official act tonight, please record that I move that we enter executive session for the purposes of a student residency request, negotiations and superintendent evaluation. To include our superintendent. To include superintendent Megan Roy. And who else? And Suzanne. And Suzanne Dan. Yeah, second. Okay, so Jonas, and was that you, Megan? Yes, right? Yeah. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, Mark, do you mind moving us?