 discuss ends we're going to talk about the learning modality of education in the district we're going to review a first review of budget materials first I'd like to assign a meeting evaluator do I have a volunteer to do that work catch it we'll do it thank you all right and before we get started I'd like to vote to appoint Megan salt salt is the way to our replace Paul Putney as our Randolph representative she her resume was approved at the Randolph select board meeting she would fill a seat vacated by Paul that will be up for reelection in March so do I have a motion to approve Meg Salt to be our Randolph representative all those in favor please say I any opposed all right welcome and congratulations thank you and it's perfect you get six months that you like it then you can decide so that's good all right next we do have some time for public comment right now which I will open it for public comment I also want to let you know that we're going to review and discuss ends and learning modality and there will be public comment time for public comment after that as well as after our discussion of the budget so we're getting comments that people can't hear okay Lane is working on the hearing we're sort of muffled all right so as I was trying to say before this is a time for public comment if anyone would like to make a comment right now please unmute yourself and go ahead we will have time later in the meeting for public comment none we will move on and please let us know if you can't hear us because that's I know so annoying all right next we are going to review and discuss ends and that Lane is up to you so we'll start off talking a little bit about where we're at where we're headed with the ends this year remembering that SBAC and a lot of the testing data including a lot of the ACP and the SAP data is not available because it just didn't happen last year so what we are doing right now is we are converting over and we are going to be using our track my progress on our start 360 data that the staff track my progress they've been collecting for two or three years now so I'll have some longitudinal data there start 360 is new this year so that'll be baseline data for the upper grades at the high school that should be available for the November meeting today in lieu of that Richard discussion about student performance but we can talk about as we'll talk about student enrollment and we'll talk about take a look at the home school data especially given the crisis that we're kind of facing so give me a moment to pull up the switch it over presentation so these are the enrollment numbers that we're going to talk about across the schools in the district as well as the district as a whole we'll take a look at special education numbers kind of is a little bit of a review from from last month we'll take a look at them over the last four to five years and again the big thing to keep an eye out for is this current year 2021 because that's going to give us an indication of things that may be happening around COVID we'll talk a little bit about this data and how it kind of meshes in with the home school data that we're going to look at if you look at the total enrollment and brain tree elementary you'll notice going back to 2016 2017 right started off with 81 students and slowly built up to 96 and then we looks like we lost about 20 of them between last year and this year so it's been on the rise mostly even the trend line right now if you go across those years is still up a little bit what I did in this graph is I took the same data and I've normalized it and by that what I mean is that I took a look at the number of students that started home schooling when COVID started in March and I added those numbers back in the last year's data in this year's data and you still see that brain tree has had a drop but it's nowhere near as significant as it was before we normalized it and not our fact they are still on a pretty healthy trend line in terms of growth and you guys here can stop me anytime you want a discussion oh that I don't know anything about the other thing that we could do is we could shut the owl off and go back to just using our using our local laptop so what this means is you only turn your mic on in here when you're speaking okay and then the only speaker that'll be open will be mine. Give me a second to switch over that may help. Give this a try let me turn my speaker way up so everybody can hear people out there and talk. All right can you still see the presentation? Okay so brain tree enrollment this is what it's normalized again it's adding back in the people that dropped off starting in March presumably due to reaction to COVID. In terms of Brookfield right started off in 2018 with 60 students we were up to 76 last year in the midst of COVID we're down to 71 but they still have a pretty good growth rate of them they're adding about two students per year over the entire time period that you're looking at. If we normalize it it gets a little bit better right they're actually adding once it's normalized about 3.1 students per year and the growth is still trending upwards. Randolph Elementary had the highest number of students that chose to go to home school this year so you can see they've kind of bounced around they're at a low a five-year low right now of 270 students and they're trending downward. If we normalize the data however they're still down about 10 students from last year but the trend line across the five years is still slightly going up. Again it's hard to anticipate it's hard to predict what the impact of COVID has been in terms of enrollments and decisions that people are making to either have their students in school or out of school but you can see in all the cases that we look at there was a clear trend upwards until we got close to COVID right affected two years affected the end of last year when people started to choose the home school and then it definitely affected this year. Randolph Union High School before it was normalized they actually are doing pretty well you know before it's normalized the trend line is down a little bit but we actually have additional students than we had last year even despite COVID and then when we add in the people that chose to home school since COVID started you know we've actually got a pretty strong trend line going up. So again across the district the trends in terms of that goal to increase enrollment it's not rising as fast as we'd hope but we've got two years quirky going on and sorry about that it's getting noises didn't know what it meant something quirky going on but we're still in pretty good shape whereas most of the state of Vermont the enrollments are declining. In terms of total enrollment across the district before we normalize it right we tend to hover somewhere and this does not include preschool we tend to hover somewhere between 830 and 850. We're at a low now again not normalized data of 805 again due to COVID but if we normalize it you know the district trend line is up we're adding about six or seven kids a year we have those numbers back in. So questions on any of the school or the district total data again big focus and we spoke about this a year or two ago is this idea that districts in Vermont survive or fail depending upon enrollment as the enrollments go out the door every student that walks out the door is a loss of ten thousand three hundred to ten thousand six hundred dollars in money from the Education Fund that's paid for by everybody across the state and over time that can add up significantly and then schools get into this problem and districts get into this problem of having to start to cut programs and start to cut staff as those enrollments go down and then you set up the cycle that kind of reinforces itself as we cut programs as we cut staff the quality of education isn't what it used to be and then enrollments tend to go down even more and so we've been trying to reverse that trend as we build enrollments as we get more students coming into the district through school choice through hopefully people moving in then what happens is we can kind of reverse those trends we're able to build programs be able to kind of improve the instruction that we offer and then hopefully that's a bigger draw for parents and it builds on itself over time total number of IEP students we talked about this extensively at the last board meeting they are on the rise in this district and they are rising dramatically we're getting about 10 more per year across the entire district and as a percent of our total district population right now our IEP students are 22.3% of the entire district population the state and national average is somewhere between 12 and 14% so one of the reasons that we had this strong focus at the elementary level in terms of revamping how service delivery is offered to those students one of the reasons that focus was so important is because we got to reverse this trend we got to begin giving those students the skills to be independent so that over the course of time they're on more less and less restrictive IEPs and eventually come off their IEPs and we need to keep working on that until we hit that threshold goal of about the national average somewhere between 12 and 14% so there's a lot of restructuring going on to kind of address this problem because of this the special education budget is up about 37% over the last two years so it is takes quite a bit to serve these students and if we're going to be spending that kind of money then dang it we should be serving them well serving them well enough that they're gaining their independence or eventually coming off their IEPs so questions at all in terms of district enrollment so just shut my mic off well I'm just sort of curious so we said we were talking about ends but our ends are about what you're going to accomplish for a district in terms of students having the skills to get to the next stage of their life how does enroll I mean you sort of said how enrolling helps that but I guess I don't well it just seems like Vermont in general all of these schools are are losing students I think that might be something you might want to pay attention to but I would as a I would prefer that our attention be more on the students we have now and and again trying to get them the skills that they need so that when they finish in our system they're ready to just take the next steps toward where they want to go so if you want to spend time on trying to market and promote our schools that's great I think it's great that you're trying to make sure that our IEP students have the skills and are gaining the skills but I just don't want to lose sight of the ultimate goal which is to have those skills in place for the students that are here now whether or not we can entice people to come to Vermont seems like or into our district seems like a difficult thing and I'm not sure not sure how much effort we ought to be putting into that versus trying to to make these ends happen for the students that are here this goes back to the adaptability end right we are trying to survive in a difficult environment in environment or enrollments are going down the way to survive is to try to prevent those enrollments from going down and I'm in a hundred percent agreement with you on the ends piece and on because that's the performance piece right if we serve the students here well the school gets a good name we start getting students coming in from other districts under school choice so it's not so much necessarily about having to move to the state but it's about having students choose to go here when they especially when they hit that high school level and they have the choice to go anywhere they want under Vermont law we've actually been doing a very good job of that we had I believe last year it was either 35 or 37 students that were here under school choice and those students brought in around $350,000 of additional money that we were able to use to improve our programs that we didn't have to go directly to the taxpayers in the town for the funding of the performance some piece in terms of academic performance like I said at the outset we'll be talking about that in November because at the beginning of the year we geared up those assessment systems for a couple of reasons one we had to find out what the students had lost during the remote session last year so that if they had some real significant deficits and skills and knowledge we had to build that in at the beginning of the year before we could build on it with a new curriculum. Two was also to be able to provide the board with some meaningful ends data and that data is kind of neat because it ties directly into SBAC we've kind of scaled it as such so that kind of has the same meaning as that you would see with the SBAC scores. In front of you I was going to talk about this a little bit but just to make lives a little bit easier and I apologize that folks at home won't have this but that colored sheet there that is the strategic plan based upon the ends the district is working on it has been working on for the last two years or so. Okay thank you. Lane how many students do we have this year that have left the Randolph school system for school choice to go somewhere else and did we see that number change from last year? So the last time I looked at that data which was earlier this year I believe it was three or four which is down from previous years again we've got some good trends that are going on they're not happening as fast as we'd like and of course we don't know the impact of COVID over the last two years has had on this but you see there was a before COVID hit there was a solid three years across the district that things doing this and a lot of that was school choice students that came in we've had some movements from the outside primarily to brain tree but that's kind of been after the the COVID piece people are moving here to telecommute and for some reason they're picking brain tree to do that but everything is going in the right direction it was a very low number like I said I think the last time we talked about it was two or three which is good I think it was maybe it was Brian that it remarked geez we got that many kids that are coming in from the outside I think it was a surprise to somebody on the board I remember them making that that remark it was 30 35 or so last year yep so good questions all right let's go over to the homeschool data this one's a as I'm getting kind of settled in and getting used to the fog on my glasses let me just a second to pull this up homeschool enrollments am I still in presenter mode are you guys seeing this perfect so this is as of October 2020 and we're going to look at the schools first so there's a couple of weird things here I want you to notice there's actually two lines there's the blue and there's the orange the blue dots represent the total number of students in this case and at Braintree elementary that are homeschooling right now so you'll see in 2021 which is this current year right now there are five the orange dots represent how many people are new since COVID so in the case of 2021 and I'll normalize this anyway you can see there there are five this year four of them are new this year probably due to COVID so that means had it not been for COVID we probably would have one one homeschooler at Braintree okay does that make a little bit of sense if we normalize this if we take a look at where things stand and kind of pull out the new additions due to COVID you can see that the number of students that are choosing parents that are choosing to homeschool at Braintree has been going down how significant is this I'd like to say it's really significant that these are small numbers to start I mean the highest number on there is three so they tend to hover around the the two to three range tends to be the norm in terms of Brookfield right again Blue Line is telling you the total number of students that are homeschooling the orange dots are telling you the total number of students that are new since COVID so in 2020 that's new since March 2021 that's new since the start of this school year now these numbers may fluctuate a little bit they may change the state as a whole had a huge number of applicants for homeschool and they are still I think a month and a half behind in processing them what they do do though at least is they give us the number of applicants that haven't been processed yet and this number is based on on that if we take out the ones that are new since COVID this is the trend for homeschooling in Brookfield again how significant is it well you know they were starting off around six kids homeschooling you know technically they'd be down to one right now if it weren't for COVID so it is in the right direction but again it's a small population of students Randolph elementary school again blue is total orange is new since COVID when you normalize it they're a little more steady state you know they are decreasing the number of homeschool students over the trend line that is here but there has been an increase this current year this seems unrelated to COVID even after we normalize RUHS this one is actually very interesting right again blue total number right now orange is what's been added since COVID if we normalize it things are going in the right direction you know they started off in 2017-2018 with about 25 students out that were homeschooling they are now down to around 12 so they've cut their numbers in half so again we talk about education and drawing families in for the most part people are becoming more satisfied I think with the education that's offered across the district at the whole which is why we've been seeing over those three years we saw those increases in enrollment and we're seeing a decrease in homeschooling so questions on homeschool oh sorry about that it'll it'll beep when you try to sign back in because they're too quiet either that or I was completely nonsensical and so in terms of these pieces they're not an actual end goal but for me what they they do two things they are a minor goal but to me they are a reflection of the overall quality of what we're providing to parents which does relate to the ends right if people are happier with the education their students are getting they're more likely to hang around we're more likely when people are making choices about where to send their kids we're more likely to be chosen SBAC has been a little problematic in the district I think you're going to be pleased when the we look at the track my progress in the star 360s data next year SBAC's been a little problematic for a couple of reasons one for a long time it was not a focus of the district right it was not something that folks I believe were too too concerned about it was very hard it's been a cultural shift to get teachers not all but but some of the teachers a little bit more serious about it especially during the administration of those assessments and to get the kids to be serious about it so there's a little bit of lag time between having them take and take those exams seriously and you know being able to rely on them for accurate results but the track my progress is a little bit different because the kids have kind of grown up with that now in a sense and so you know they've taken it just the way they do any other assignment any other work that they do during the school day so it should be much more representative of what's going on so question let me get the big one coming up next yeah would you share your the four goals that you gave us knowing your priority as you presented them as the OSSDN's plan I think those are important for people to know yeah so the the ends and again I've got the document I'll get it up on the website we've been talking about it a little bit in the cabinet meeting you know it's the stuff that we've been working on for a couple of years now it's just we finally things have gotten to the point where we can start to really put the ideas down and writing the reason that I haven't shared this widely at this point in time is because under the identified gap that has last year's a year year old data in it because we didn't get new SBAC data so things are significantly different now than they were a year ago and so I'd rather kind of wait a little bit before putting this up until we get the new data in there but I'll put it up anyway I may take that out because I don't want people confusing that with our current state but we basically have four goals that we've been working on the district and two of three of them excuse me relate right back to the board's foundational knowledge ends and one of them relates to adaptability as well as foundational knowledge so in order of priority the first goal that we are working on and have been working on for the last couple of years is decreasing the number of students on IEPs as a percentage of the overall student population and the threshold that we're shooting for is we want to be within one percent of the state or the national norm which is around 14 percent so we want to at least get down to the 13 to 15 range before we can say we've done a good job doesn't mean that we're going to stop trying to make it better than that but it does mean that that's the goal that we're shooting for and we need to start making progress on major structures are going into place this year last year was planning was thinking about it was getting the plan in place was trying to get people on board we did some structural changes there were para professionals that were laid off so that we could shift those resources to hiring more special education teachers at the elementary school this year they are moving to a cohort model from a case management model which should have an impact that was chosen because when we looked around the state that was the model that seemed to be having the most positive impact in the schools where it was was put into place and so again lot going on there to try to to try to improve this we also spent a lot of time and I give the special education team a tremendous amount of credit on developing a rubric that you will have the baseline data from for the first time in November and what that rubric is is it's putting a number that is showing how restrictive a student's IEP is oh if I've got a five that's really restricted if I've got a one that's the least restrictive we could have and still have an IEP so you've got a range of numbers there and we can add up students in a grade we can take an average and then we can use those numbers to see how things are changing over time to determine if what we're doing is having an impact in the right direction the way that we want it to the other data that we are collecting is literally the number of students on IEPs how many are coming off each year that one gets a little more difficult all this data is a little bit difficult with special education first because we've constantly got students moving in and constantly have students moving out and I don't want to penalize in the data our staff who may be doing really really good work but all of a sudden get 20 kids that move in that are on really restrictive IEPs right we've got a system in place to try to try to normalize that data a little bit we also have a way of kind of tracking the data that uh crystal was pulling together is also tracking the number of years that students have been on an IEP with us right because if they've only been with us for a year you know you should expect some improvements but not a lot they've been with us for six years on a pretty restrictive IEP then darn it we should be seeing some really really good improvement so there's a lot of parts and pieces there that we're taking a look at that'll give us some insight into the nuances behind working with special education students this is data that hasn't been collected before as well so it might require some adjustment we might start digging into it and find out that hey you know it's not telling us quite what we need to know for where we're trying to get and so we may need to adjust it but it's a very good start it was very logical it was very well thought out the work that was done so I'm very proud of the work that the special education team has been engaged in so that one end plays into both adaptability right our students able to adapt and be successful but it also plays into all the foundational ends because if the students have the skills to learn on their own independently without needing a significant amount of intervention they are going to be much better able to achieve the foundational knowledge ends than if they were goal two now we get into the foundational knowledge ends English language arts high priority increase the number of students achieving proficiency on the ELA smarter balanced assessment consortium what are we shooting for across the district on average we want 70 percent of the students in the district to be crossing the proficiency threshold I think it was Anne asked at the last meeting you know why 70 percent well the reality is under no child left behind what percent are we supposed to be achieving 100 70 percent is reasonable step for now given where we're starting given the structures we're putting into place given the funding that we have to support this work and when we hit that 70 threshold consistently then we'll take a step back and see what more we can do but the goal set on us by the federal government is a hundred percent that's what no child left behind needs why English language arts why is that a higher priority than say math or science because you have to be able to read for understanding and write for purpose to be able to be successful in all your other courses fundamental foundational mathematics same deal we want 70 percent to be hitting that proficiency threshold on the SBAT right federal government says it needs to be a hundred percent but given the resources that we have the structures we've been able to build over the last year or two 70 percent is reasonable once we get there we can take a step back and kind of reassess see what else we need to push it further the other reason that these are important is because they are high visibility when people look that are moving in potentially from out of town or they're looking at schools across the state this is the data that they see right SBAT it's published out there by school by district they look at math they look at ELA and hopefully they'll be looking at science now that they've kind of switched around to the remote science assessment the ELA and math are key the last one that we are currently working on right now is science and again the only difference between this and the ELA and the math is we're trying to get 70 percent of the students across the proficiency threshold on that Vermont science assessment again this one does not have a federal government telling us that we need to be at a hundred percent but we want our students to perform equally across those three areas as a start now the board's ends play into a couple of other parts and pieces there's a fine arts there's three or four other ends there the reason that we chose these is because they all need work and significant work can't do them all at once these are the most visible these will have the most impact on students ability to be successful in the other ends once we hit that 70 threshold across the board on these three i'm going to come to this school board and say is this enough and your job is going to be just either tell me yes 70 percent is good keep it there try to push it a little higher but we're satisfied with 70 and if you do that then these will stop being a priority and i will start to pick up the other ends and start to work on the districts in the cabinet whether if you say no no you know the federal government is backed off a little bit on it on the last reiteration of no child left behind but we're still interested in trying to get that that hundred percenter as close to what is possible this is where we want you to focus then we stay on these for now the other areas will improve a little bit just by the fact that students are improving on these foundational skills math is foundational the other disciplines el is foundational to almost all other disciplines science helps you practice both math and el a plus learn some interesting things depending upon how it's structured and if it's structured well so those are the ends pieces that will be taken a look at next week so questions thoughts too quiet again hopefully i'm not i'm i'm making a little bit of sense it's been a long day but i have a question next subject for discussion um will be the learning modality and laying this is again you presenting um how you and the cabinet have discussed since phase three reopening um a couple of weeks ago how have you decided to move forward and for what reasons so we'll talk we'll spend a little bit of time on this i know that that folks are interested which is awesome um i know there's been a lot of discussion on facebook which i don't follow i don't have a facebook account which is why i'm glad there's so many folks here and hopefully we'll get some good questions that come out of this let me see if i can get this up and running and we'll talk about kind of the things that we look at things that we're concerned about things that are good and things that will change if we make a determination to go to full in-person learning can you guys see the presentation that's up there all right so a couple of basic things um when we're looking at a system especially one that has the potential to have poor outcomes is there's two type of factors there's protective factors and there's risk factors um and they both play into probability protective factors are pretty simple conditions and behaviors that reduce the possibility of the poor outcome risk factors increase the probability that a poor outcome will occur right now the thing about probability these are all probabilities it doesn't mean it has to happen you can have a high probability that something is going to occur and it doesn't have to happen and that's what makes all this tricky right so in my case in our case when we discuss this i'm always looking to play the odds in our favor it's about probability it's not about fear it's about what's likely to happen doesn't mean it has to but it's about what's likely to happen the protective factors um that we have in place right now under our current learning modality learning modality is is how we're presenting teaching to kids right now we're in a hybrid learning they're learning remotely a couple days a week they're in person a couple days a week on the health and sanitation side it's allowing us to maintain that six feet of social distancing this includes on the buses um we've been lucky right when we've only got about 40 of the kids coming into school on each of the in-person days that a lot of the parents are actually dropping their kids off um so there are very few students right now on the buses which is good because those can be some pretty cramped quarters there's mask wearing right which is required that's an easy protective factor we're doing daily health screenings when the kids walk in the door they are finding that temperature which is a major component of these health screenings is not as reliable as they thought so that one's a an iffy one hand washing routines are in place at all schools that helps we do have well maintained and functioning ventilation systems a lot of work was done this summer to get them working optimally and not only that but to increase their filtration ability we've got the merv 13 filters in there so as the air is passing through them they strain out particles that are small enough not to catch the coronavirus but to catch the aerosols that the coronavirus attaches to the aerosols that we breathe out right we have increased the disinfection cycles in the schools they happen three times a day the physical structures that we have in place and this is going to be important a little bit later in the conversation is we've been able to build these learning pods this is true at the high school there's about five of them at the high school these are isolated groups of students that work together in a pod in a in a group with the same teachers so that they're not intermixing with the rest of the schools this doesn't necessarily prevent transmission what it does is it prevents spread right if a student comes in and is infected and is in pod one then pod one students get affected not the other four pods that are happening at the high school right so it's to reduce the overall impact if we do have an outbreak here the other thing and I have it in blue is the ability to teach outside that's a protective factor because the ventilation is better of course the reason it's in blue is because that's changing right we're getting into the colder weather we've been hitting in the 30s at night last couple of nights and it's getting colder outside so at the very beginning of the year is great I go around to the elementary schools and they be outside all day teaching they got a lot of neat little learning areas they're set up not happening as much anymore because you just can't and right now under the current structure we have enough staff to safely manage students by managing students I mean hey your mask is a little bit down can you pull that up please hey you guys are a little bit close can you spread apart right it takes a lot of interactions the kids are doing a great job but by managing students it's making sure that they're following through on those health and sanitation pipelines that are a part of all this and then the other piece that's a protective factor across Vermont right now it's it's changing a little bit as it is across the nation we do have a very low rate of infection in our immediate surrounds right in terms of risk factors we have a couple of things that are unique to our district right first thing is that we've got the tech center here that takes in students from nine different sending schools so when we're trying to preserve these students in pods and trying to keep the mix down and trying to keep as many kind of people that aren't in those pods out of the buildings it's a little bit difficult right because we've got students coming in from all across central Vermont that are coming into our buildings on a daily basis we also have those 3035 school choice students that are coming in great for our enrollment numbers and helping us out in terms of our tuitions that are coming in but again it's increasing the risk because these are entities from outside our local area now there has been a reduction of restrictions across the state and the nation that's a risk factor right anytime you open things up you're exposing people to more risk the probability goes up that you are going to have an event one of the biggest things that happened to us lately which is i think is awesome is athletics right they moved us to phase three and so now we can have athletic events but now we've got more mixing now we're not just you know having students mixing from central Vermont we've got students potentially coming in from all over the state for these events the other thing in terms of a risk factor right now at the two or three events that i was at i want to give the parents in the community a lot of credit because 95 percent of the people were wearing masks and doing what they needed to at those events but there was about five percent that worked again it's outside that's that lowers that's a protective factor but when you got 150 people all crowded together watching a game and some aren't wearing masks it adds to the risk the recent move to step three that happened step three for the state of Vermont is the least restrictive step in the state it's left people with what i'll call a reopening mentality and again this is my personal take on it people can disagree with me and i will respect that but what i've seen happening is i look across the country and states are reopening right they start off with some things that are fairly innocuous and then they move on to things that are a little bit heavier a little bit riskier and what do they do they reopen this and they reopen that and they keep reopening until all of a sudden they get an outbreak and then what happens right they either go back to square one or they just say hey we're going to stay here because this is an acceptable rate of infection okay so for me at least and again these are just my recommendations i do not have the power to tell people what they should or should not do that's a board decision the board reserve that to itself for me at least when i look at it it doesn't make sense to play rush on roulette and keep pulling the trigger until the chamber goes off and then you decide what you're going to do to me it makes sense to find a nice balance of risk and protection and maintain that until something significant changes in the world outside the world has not changed outside that much since march when everything went into closed down except that we're back up to 50 000 cases a day in the country the cases in the state have actually gone up a little bit too but our case rates are so low you know you know going from you know zero to two a day to six to eleven a day you know it doesn't sound like much but it has gone up in the state over the last week the other piece that has been concerning and this is a risk factor in this school and i want the parents to take this message because it's important a lot of people are doing what they need to do we have a lot of parents that are traveling on the weekends the hotspots boston new york further afield and they're coming back to school and not sending their kids to school and not going through the mandatory quarantine period that is required by the state of vermont how do we know because we see it on their facebook pages we ask the kids the kids tell us the truth or in one case the parents said no that's an old facebook post we didn't go and the grandparent picks up the kids and says what are you talking about they were there all weekend those are risk factors okay and we've got to do a little bit better about it and we've got to do a little bit better about that in the mask wearing at the sporting events too in my opinion you know if we're going to be looking at bringing clusters and clusters of kids back finally winter is coming because of that all of us including the students will be spending more time inside this is a corona virus and the health professionals can correct me if i'm wrong but corona viruses are seasonal usually the lowest rate of infection for corona viruses occurs in september and then it starts to increase through february and then it gets the highest rate in february and then it starts to decrease after that back down to a low the next september we are also getting ready to enter into the holiday and vacation travel season which happens at the same time that infection rates for corona viruses tend to go up all folks will be spending more time indoors around here just because of the weather and like i said cases have been rising nationally since mid september okay don't know much about the death rates yet because it usually takes there's about a month lag time between when you know people get infected and the the death if it occurs is reported okay so risk factors and things to kind of consider if we switched to full in-person instruction right i'm going back to the protective factors that we talked about the ones in red and yellow are the ones that we will lose so we've had protective factors that we have put into place that if we go back to full instruction full in-person instruction we will lose right so the balance of those scales will switch one of the reasons that we chose the hybrid schedule out of the gate was because in most classrooms there are a couple of elementary classrooms where this is not true but in most classes if we have all the students back we will not be able to maintain six feet of social distancing and i cannot imagine how close the students will be on the buses social distancing is the prime protective factor for this disease physical structures those pods we talked about those will disappear right all the students will be back we're going to have to redo the the master schedule for the high school which is fine it'll take about a week to do but all those students will be mixing so it means that if we do get an exposure here we're not just exposing a smaller group of students we're potentially exposing the whole school instead of exposing potentially 60 students we're now going to be exposing 300 plus potentially the ability to teach outside is going away right because it's getting colder we're entering winter and then we have the question that's been out there for a long time is will we have enough staff if we go back to full in-person instruction to be able to safely manage the students even under the hybrid schedule we have had 10 resignations since the start of this school year okay mostly paraprofessionals and custodial staff but we've had a teacher or two as well and it is expected because people are anxious and people are nervous that if we go back to full in-person instruction that that is going to accelerate can't guarantee it high probability it will we also to add worries to this as part of the staffing piece we haven't been able to get substitute teachers which we'll talk about in a little bit but right now we've got multiple people out with symptoms right cold and flu season is on us it's coming up as people get those symptoms they mimic covid so you don't know so they can't be here how long are they typically out well in a normal year they might be out a day or two until the symptoms start to subside in most cases now they're out at least three to five days in most cases seven days it takes seven days in a negative covid test right to be able to return so we're now amplifying right our problems with staff because as they get normal sicknesses that normally would have taken them out of school maybe for a day or two because they don't know if it's covid we've now probably doubled or tripled the number of absences that we're going to see this year again you guys can interrupt and jump in any anytime because i think it's an important conversation i'm going to give my recommendations at the end a lot of people have asked me what my concerns have been and i've talked about the concerns but i haven't talked about what my recommendations are operational considerations to be considered of if we move to fallen person again we just talked about that the schools are tightly staffed we currently do not have enough subs we've already had to shut down the preschool because when the teacher was absent we couldn't find a replacement right for a day or two again we talked about this more staff will likely resign or seek medical exemptions remember people that went to the doctor and got checked out under this hybrid schedule with the social distancing and all those other protective factors the doctor said okay some of them were on the line and they're here because of the hybrid schedule if we switch the conditions on the ground so that things are more risky and there's a higher probability of contracting covid more teachers are going to be eligible and seek those medical exemptions to not be here right and legitimately sell things got more risky what was acceptable under the hybrid is no longer given the conditions that some folks have going to be acceptable under falling person so we have to be aware of that and then again those symptomatic absences we are going into the cold and flu season as people get the sniffles as they get the coughs as they get the body aches and the flu symptoms they're going to be out they're going to be out for longer periods of time because we have to make sure they don't have covid before we let them back so we're going to have a hard time i believe keeping enough staff to go fall in person uh operationally uh ruhs spent an incredible amount of time this this summer building a schedule to put those students into pods they also did a couple of other things they made sure that the students in their core courses got the same amount of time on learning in those core courses as they always had before covid how did they do it more time on the core courses got rid of a lot of the electives so there was the hit on the electives but the focus on the core is the same as it's always been that schedule will need to be rebuilt from scratch takes about a week to do also means that students may not have the teachers for the classes that they have now once that transition occurs again operational considerations is all this is but you know it's this is a fairly major one it means that the best time to make a changeover if we do it is at the end of a marking period end of a semester end of a quarter the other piece is the budget it's been climbing and matter of fact we're up another hundred grand now so 900 000 above and beyond the budget that we plan for um has been spent so far as of right now that is due to all the additional supplies and equipment and cleaning required to maintain a building that's operating during a pandemic and it is extensive and it's adds up every month if we go to full in person the needs for disinfectant and cleaning and everything else is going to increase as well which is fine but just be aware that that will accelerate this cost now the legislature did approve more money in terms of crf funds for us we still haven't seen a penny of it we're already nine thousand and nine hundred thousand in the whole most districts are about 1.1 million in the whole right now so we're doing a little bit better than most districts but that's a lot of money if you think about that across the state that's 70 million or so right now 70.1 million i believe it is of a deficit that was unplanned for is not in the current tax base to draw from and so if things don't come through we've got some pretty steep things we're going to have to discuss in terms of the budget season so what they what they do is um any expense that comes in we put it under a covid line in the budget and i'm happy to give that to you if you want it and the reason that we're tracking it separately is we need to do that so that hopefully as we put in the reimbursements that we have we've got all that information in front of us when they pull our state data what we're applying for a dang well better match what we put into our information that goes in in the state data draw that's one of the ways that they they check up on us make sure that we're we're doing what we're supposed to and right now this is actually interesting a couple of the other superintendents said this is the last superintendent's meeting that we're in the hybrid schedule things are working right now from an educational standpoint those initial assessments that have been happening right track my progress star 360 they show that the students right now in the hybrid mode are performing at or better than they have in previous years this initial data well why is that well when the students come in they're in smaller classes they get more time with the teacher the teacher can move through more material quicker while still providing them more one-on-one individual instruction the other thing that's probably an even bigger factor is that we're not having any behavioral issues in this district right now the students are coming in i think because the relationships are closer right there's fewer kids in the classroom the teachers are able to make better connections with them there's no behavioral issues getting in the way of learning and it was interesting two other superintendents at the last WVSA meeting i was at said the same thing about their hybrid schedules they said where it's kind of interesting our assessments our assessments are up and the behavior is down which was good so it seems to be something about the hybrid schedule and no i am not recommending it permanently i want to see students back in person um at some point in time but the current system is up and running efficiently and well and it took a lot of planning you know we we planned all summer i got burned out staff because they worked their tails off all summer um getting things happening the the the way that it's happened and we've only been in this mode for what four weeks feels like forever but it's only been four weeks people my recommendations to the board because again you guys reserved the decision to yourselves which is perfectly fine um first thing if you intend at some point in time of going to full in-person instruction first thing you need to do reach out to the union and begin negotiations around it you have two questions because i looked at our MOU that we negotiated in August because i saw that you had mentioned something about negotiating revisions i didn't see in that MOU do you have it up uh i can get it if you look at the very last provision on there if there are other changes this is definitely you know if we mentioned a hybrid modality in that or specified we did talk about ending it the MOU in June of 2021 or earlier if they do away with the state of emergency but the very last line in those MOUs if i remember correctly is if we will come back together if there are other changes and i guarantee if we try to go to full in-person instruction that is a pretty significant change you can talk yeah so see i think it's the very last and even if it's not it's important to keep them in discussion the last says the party shall negotiate any additional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic as they arise that's right and i would argue that they mentioned a hybrid modality we did allow Fridays for planning so that no student will be at school on Fridays but i looked through and i did not see any you know there is modality language in it and i you know i couldn't miss it and i did not see it so we were we worked all summer with the staff for the hybrid modality that's what they were expecting that's why that Friday piece is in there so i'm not i'm just taking i did not see that specified in the MOU so to me i mean my review did not show that we would have to renegotiate the MOU if we decide to change the way we operate the school read that last sentence for me one more time any impact let me find it the party shall negotiate any additional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic as they arise changing the learning modality is going to be a significant impact specified i think it might not specify nice may i say something i'm i'm just taking the i'm giving you my recommendation and my best recommendation based upon that wording is that the first step would be to begin calling them in having a conversation with them about adapting the MOU to full in person but i would i would talk with them about their feelings on it hopefully there are a few on i think i saw Nora on there who might be able to talk about that as we get towards the end the second piece would be to send out another survey we started off the year with a survey about modalities that folks preferred and it was about 80 that wanted either hybrid or and or remote was about 20 that wanted full in person at that time that may have shifted and i do want to caution folks in terms of this recommendation that just because it's a desire does not mean it's making things more safe or unsafe it's just a desire it tells us what people's appetite is so it's not it's not in with the protective factors or the the risk factors it's just this is what our appetite is for so it is important information to have if there is a plan to change the full in person instruction i'm going to recommend that is no sooner than the end of second quarter right at the halfway mark why well we've got two or three schools that are going to full in person at the start of this winter season with all the things that we talked about going on it would be nice to learn from hopefully their successes but if not successes there are mistakes it'll also provide time for the the massive change that's going to be required to the ruhs schedule allow us to kind of take advantage of the time while we got it avoid a lot of the the the risky season where things are building across the country and potentially across the state during the riskiest months of the year when people are inside and then the last piece of this is if we do go back that we use a phased approach it's not everybody comes back all together on the first day we start off with the youngest kids first maybe two or three grades give it a week or so see how it's going learn learn what we can from bringing them back in give people a chance to adapt to the new cleaning responsibilities and disinfectant responsibilities and other protocols we're going to have to put into place and then bring in another three or four grades and another three or four grades until we get them all back again my recommendations i if the board decides something different you know i will support it do my best to try to make it work i do not see even on the staffing side especially without having a conversation with the union which is appropriate um uh that it will work um my recommendations this would be a good time for discussion i have a question all right so first let's start with discussion amongst the board um so if you want to say something or asking some question please unmute your microphone and um you know say what you need to say and then we'll open it up for public comment i'll go first um thank you lane for your presentation um my question would be about uh we're hearing a lot about what the union would like um how the approach to the school all of the very thoughtful um modifications that were made coming into the building for all of our students what about the human tool um what about the way that they're responding to this um schedule that is actually um you know it's just you know one day's one day perhaps one day is out in school and in those minds that you're forming my concern really um are we thinking about the kids in these discussions so i think one thing that people can't forget is we are in the middle of a global pandemic the likes of which the world has not seen for a hundred years and what that means is that all of our lives are disrupted what that means is that we are all suffering hardships that we do not want to suffer i am in agreement with you is hybrid the best schedule um for students no but that's not the real question the real question is is hybrid the best schedule for students in a global pandemic going into a time of the year that is the most riskiest for all involved while rates of infection are going up across the country and even a little bit in our own state is that the wisest choice i don't want to sit down even with one kid or one teacher at the end of this and have to look them in the eye knowing that something happened that could have been prevented this disease kills this disease maims people for life yes the risk is incredibly low how do we mitigate that risk we put in protective factors if we switch to full in-person instruction in the worst time of the year to do it we are increasing those probabilities that something bad will happen does it mean it has to no it's probability and i accept that but again i don't want to have to look look at a family in those those situations knowing that we could have done something better they are learning our assessments are showing that they're learning at or better than previous years not all students the students that are participating in the hybrid schedule are the students that are not performing very well right now are two they are our students that are in remote session fully remote session because that's what the parents wanted that's the the students that are struggling right now and we also have a number of students that have high needs many of which right now are actually coming to school more than just the hybrid schedule to try to serve those needs but these are students with some pretty intense intense high needs so again it's it's it's a matter your question is a good one but we cannot forget we are dealing with the situation the likes of which we haven't seen in our lifetimes so again i don't have a good i don't have an answer for you better than that i worry about the probability piece that's what i look like look at i'm not fearful about it i'm a scientist i'm a physicist i'm a geologist i'm also a bit of a mathematician i just look at the probabilities it's a good question i appreciate it other you mentioned at the beginning that unless there was a major event or change to how this is going you didn't really it didn't sound like you saw a way to kind of bring back to another point with modalities i'm just curious if you feel that the major issue that we're waiting for is a vaccine is that what you're seeing is like once that comes out that would be a way to lower risk no um historical data is good too if we make it through these tough months from September to February things are good we're able to manage the situation we don't have an outbreak and we know that from February on the probability of infection is decreasing and we know the spring is right around the corner and we can get the kids back outside that would be the perfect time to go to full in person so for me if it were completely my call i didn't have to consider anything else except the probabilities my argument would be end of end of third quarter April bring them back for one quarter get things again we don't know how long this is going to go on we've all got i and push back on me if i'm wrong i think including me i think we've all got it in our head that you know by the end of the school year everything is back to normal there are people out there saying four to five years now we may be living with this in some shape or form or fashion for quite a while um if we get students back full in person at the end of third quarter get some real practice during a safer time of the year with all the additional protocols and safety pieces that we've got to do um get everybody practiced on it then we'll be good to go that next fall full in person um hopefully there's a vaccine at that time which brings you know another protective factor brings risk down doesn't eliminate it brings risk down um you know will be in a much better place again my opinion it's just an opinion a good question i just have a couple of comments um as we go into this giant discussion you know and i've been reading the some of the facebook stuff i've been overhearing conversations at soccer i don't know the grocery store um and and my comment is that we have to be really careful with how we're speaking about this and how we're um sometimes speaking for um a group of people that we are not a member of um i mean that to say well i hear a lot of teachers feel this or sorry about that do you have your mic on i do have my mic on um this is what the the union most likely will say about that i think um we have to be really careful and and um deliberate in getting information from the people we need the information from and not speaking for them um i think we have to be careful about language teachers who are working remotely are working they did not request or choose not to work that that wasn't the option and if they did choose not to work it i can't speak for them i don't know why they would have done that but the but they given the option to work remotely was not them choosing not to go back to work that's a big one for me and i think it's really easy to kind of quickly say it in that manner but i i'm recommending and i'm i'm holding myself to this too to slow down and be careful with my language and how i'm speaking about that uh the the the one the last comment i i want to make is um i'm a i'm a parent i'm a working parent i work full time and i've got a kid in in hybrid i also have a preschooler um but as a board member when i come here as a board member i'm trying to remind myself that i can't come here and only be thinking about my kids or only be thinking about how hard it is for me right now to be on a zoom meeting where i'm talking budget and then help my kids spell a word it it is hard and that's always present for me i can't put it aside but as a school member i i have to think about the entire community i can't just think about my bubble i can't just think about my own family i can't just think about my one the the one school that my kid does go to it's my responsibility to think about the entire community and what is healthy and safest for the entire community those are my comments any other comments actually one one quick one um from what i'm hearing too that the idea of potentially approaching reopening with the elementary schools would be a recommendation it sounds like the elementary schools would be that are equipped to deal with the influx of students coming in rather than potentially the high school middle school i would uh again when i make in the recommendation about the phase that's you know second semester one of the things to remember about our district um is the elementary schools not every classroom but especially if you go to res in some of the classrooms in both brain tree in brookfield they got 20 kids per class right so bringing them back they're going to be more overcrowded than than many of the classrooms at the high school not all but yes there there is there is going to be an overcrowding problem in some classrooms if they come back that's why again i again i'm just i'm looking at probabilities and that's why at least for me um it's hey you know let's get through this this this this time of increased risk first and then once that that increased probability goes away lowers down we can replace it with something else which is bringing the kids back full-in time you know it's always about trying to balance risk and risk and protection um to me i guess i would be interested to repeat that public survey especially for k6 families because you said 80 prefer the hybrid or fully remote so maybe we only have a handful of families that would say yes we definitely want our kids our elementary kids to go full in person um and maybe it would not be enough to stress our current system um you know if truly there are many families that are happy with the current modality you know perhaps it would just be interesting to know how many kids would be coming back to to that four-day a week scenario are you looking for a question on elementary or just in general or split them out i guess i was you know i think it probably makes is more important for k6 students and the families that have k6 students um all those parents are probably more burdened than the ones with kids in in middle school or high school as far as trying to balance this work uh home life situation so i personally would be interested to know you know whether it would be possible um to bring more kids back in um in the k6 yeah that's easy i i wanted to wait to talk here to get some of that information that you're giving me right now i was going to put the survey out actually last week i said now let me talk with the board because they may there may be other information that's important to them that so that's a good one so i can do that next week easy enough yep other second one laura said about asking that but i can stay from from my experiences when we had that survey come around there was only two options to choose from we had remote or hybrid there wasn't a full school option so that's when you were saying that most people chose hybrid or remote that's the only choices they had because i mean i know i would have chosen full in school at that time i chose hybrid because those were the only two options we had so i think we definitely need to ask the people what they really prefer and um i i'm not opposed to your idea of waiting to kind of see what other people are doing but also maybe we should start planning before that time and then even if we as a board could get something from you at some time you know in the next two three months of of a plan of how it would work to transition to a full in school that's that's if you're hitting exactly on the recommendation that's the recommendation for me that would begin with talking with the union about that mou what do we need if we go to full in person what are things that we need to tweak about this to potentially make this happen because if we don't have staff buy on if we don't buy in if we don't have staff that are able or willing you know it's it's going to be a moot point right off the bat and i think the survey is incredibly important too at this point in time again it's not telling us anything scientific about safety just do people have the appetite so i think i'm i'm i'm with you a hundred percent on that on that piece i think you could tell us what the balance of risk coming back we might find in a month everything is fine i doubt it into probability but it's possible and again this is remember these recommendations are me sitting here right now looking ahead to a future i can't predict in a month from now that recommendation might change but right now you know looking at what's out there in the data looking at what out there what folks are talking about checking the cdc that's the concerns and so you know future is foggy right now so this is the best best recommendation i can give you under the circumstances and it may not be right okay i'm going to open up this discussion to any questions from the public or comments or points of view or whatever you want to say every person has well we've got a lot of people on here so i'd like to limit comments or questions to three minutes a piece if we can thanks i think your name you're going to have a question so somebody has speakers on if you're facilitating i have a question if no one else is need needing to speak first okay well thank you for your presentation on lane and i my um comments have um are going to resonate a lot with what laura and ashley and and brian said um you know as a as a pediatrician in town i'm not trying to speak for every family certainly but i do speak for a lot of them when i say that a lot of parents are at their breaking point right now and ashley mentioned the human toll you talk about probability um but there is a human cost to this right now um that at the moment is exceeding covid risks uh and um we do it is important to understand that we live in vermont our state is much different from a lot of the hot spots nationwide um and i think it's important to keep that in mind um the kids i'm i'm happy to hear about the statistics that you know seem to indicate that the kids are learning well but i'm concerned that a lot of them are very unhappy um maybe that has a lot to do with the home life they're experiencing because i think again parents are many of them are at their breaking point and can't take much more of this uh economically i think a lot of parents are at their breaking point and they don't know which way to turn uh and i think it's really important to consider that in any kind of reopening plan um the the third thing i'm concerned about is that i'm watching other schools open fully some of them are going to be opening or some of them are already open and some of them are opening october 26 and my concern is that we're going to have you know families watching that and i'm not being able to maintain their jobs in randolph anymore if their kids are not in a full learning modality and that they're going to leave and seek to enroll them in other schools that are open they take a risk that those schools then close if they have an outbreak certainly but if they don't for a few months that parent has now gotten an income back you know that otherwise wouldn't and so i really love laura's ideas about reissuing the survey when i took the survey you know my children are in preschool and second grade i was i wrote in i need full-time learning because of my job and um my husband's job honestly too we've been making it work but barely and and we have more resources honestly than some families do but we weren't given that choice and i think that um what the community wants or needs is not accurately reflected from that earlier survey and i would be very interested to have that survey issued again because if there are only a few handful of students that want to go full-time and those kids can go full-time it would help out you know a lot um but um we are not the rest of the country we're vermont and it's not that we're immune to this but realistically covid isn't going anywhere it's not going to disappear there's highly unlikely that we're going to get a vaccine for children anytime soon because their adult trials are far before the children trials and so i don't know what our end point is here but you know that i you know i just can't see this going on much longer but if there are a few families whose kids want to go full-time and that's actually not a high number it would help a lot of families flu didn't go away after the pandemic we're still dealing with this right and nobody cared about the risk of flu deaths prior to this now granted coronavirus is so much higher um than flu but it didn't go away and so we're going to have to learn to live with this at some point there's never going to be zero risk anymore ever so you know my my other question it speaks to hiring of more staff do you have a plan for that okay those are the end of my comments thank you for listening to me yeah i can uh i can go through the the questions that you have and in good ones as well and a lot a lot of thought and i appreciate that an awful awful lot let me just write down the hiring one so that i don't forget that hiring so in terms of um opening the other schools i can speak a little bit to that because i have met with like i said i meet with the wanuski valley superintendents association frequently um so the other superintendents we talk about what they're planning what things they're encountering um there were two that we're talking about going to full in person but they both said exactly the same thing um and it was the primary thing that guided their decision and it had to do with the six-foot distancing um they were in districts whose enrollments had gone down over the years like has happened in much of vermont in bigger schools and they felt that they were able to bring their full student body back or as much of it as possible and still maintain that full six-feet of student distancing because of it we're not in that boat our enrollments as you saw with the numbers you know for three years were going up so we do have classes that are going to be a bit crowded so it's it's a little bit different in terms of the comparison there we did make a very strong commitment to trying to maintain that six-foot distancing until the guidance changed the guidance has changed a little bit for i believe it's k to six right they're saying three to six-foot distancing you know they still prefer the six if you can do it but three three to six-foot distancing is okay it's still six-foot distancing at the high school level currently right now but their decisions were based upon the fact that they had space and they could continue to maintain that that six-foot distancing piece and i'm in agreement with you it is a hardship it's a hardship on everyone um and i do have to stop for a little while and make sure that people remember you know what the schools have done you know over the last six or seven months um we feed everybody in these three communities that need it we stepped up to the plate when very few other districts could do it this past summer to make sure that essential workers got childcare that they needed at the beginning of this this pandemic we provide mental health services to students we provide medical services to students we have counselors that go out and meet in the homes um we are doing and working um maximally for folks and i don't want folks to kind of forget that because we have our own hardships as well and i think we all have to expect the fact that things aren't going to be great for a while until something something major changes our hope is we want to go back full in person eventually when it's safe and appropriate to do so and the difficult part is trying to figure out when that when it's safe um when it's safe to do i'm in agreement on the survey piece um i mean that's that's why you know it's part of the recommendation it does need to go out i had forgotten about that so i'm glad that brian and that you brought brought that up when we did the original surveys um at the time and again guidance changes um at the time we were going into school in step two and so at that time they hadn't separated step two from learning modality so we were all assuming it was going to be hybrid that's what step two meant at the time and then later remember just before the school year opened september eighth came the governor came out and said oh we're going to control the the steps the phases you know one two three but the school board now it's in your hands to decide what happens locally in terms of learning modality that's why the survey was that way up front so you're right and i i forgot that so i'm glad that you reminded me in terms of hiring plan we need people people are not applying for positions we have a plan in place we hire what we need i've even gone to the board and the board was fantastic in terms of the custodial additional custodial staff that we needed they gave us the funding from the reserve funds to be able to supply those we have what we need except we don't have people available to fill those positions they're you know the best of times in vermont they're fairly scarce but now with the added risk and the anxiety you just can't get them and it's worse obviously in some some categories depending upon what we're looking for as opposed to others so it's it's it's a matter of supply and demand the supply just is not there at this point in time we can afford it but we just we don't have the excuse me we don't have the bodies so i appreciate the the the questions and thoughtful ones and and intuitive and informative would anyone else would anyone else like to make a comment or ask a question norah i well thanks thanks so much well well first of all i i would like to just thank lane because i think he was really um articulated well the the needs and the risks and and um the the thoughtfulness behind all the decision-making that that's happening um i i do want to put out that um i'm going to speak tonight for for myself more than for the union because um i agree i don't think that we should be um i don't feel comfortable speaking for others um without first discussing it with with those others and we have not had a chance to to do that um i i do want to say though that um and maybe this is in my roles as a union leader that um i i think i can be fairly safe in saying that that all teachers um are feeling that they want what's best for students as well as as looking out for their own safety that there is not a teacher working now who is not going on the extra mile or the extra distance um to to make sure that um students needs are are being met the best of their abilities um but at that to that end um i i would also say that that we do want of course to have students back full time um in schools there there isn't a teacher who does not want that but to do it in a way as lane has said so so well in a way that is safe um and and with the least amount of risk possible for for everyone involved and that includes this the students as well um it is not possible to maintain um that six foot on physical distancing in as he has said in many of the classrooms um throughout the district if we were to have everybody come back right now and and he has given i think i don't need to to repeat all of his reasons why that's so important to do right now um so i i did want to make a comment about the the MOU um it would be definitely a huge change um not that at the MOU is not going to be something that stands in the way of switching back to full being fully in person but it is something that we would need to discuss and to work out and and to have those discussions be open and ongoing um between the board and the association so thank you anyone else yeah yes hi lindsay hopp here um just a couple of um sort of sort of fast things i'm glad that lane kind of brought back out that for the younger students right now the recommendation is the three to six feet and i think that especially in those classrooms where we might be looking at the overcrowding if we consider three to four feet the use of you know music rooms libraries gyms you know ip rooms and things like that i think we could definitely consider trying to get creative and i i really think that um you know the idea of a phase makes sense and i think the elementary kids make sense especially when we talk about the well-being of children um the child care issues i think it definitely affects them more so even if there's overflow for some kids to be in the high school so i think that's one thing that we just want to continue to keep in mind is what the true recommendations are for each age group and really try and go to them but if we go to the six foot max every time that may mean we can't and if we go to three to four maybe that brings us back um i think the other thing that would be helpful to think about is not just school spread but community spread so as a two family working home i am piecemealing my children throughout the community three days a week i have no choice i work in house care i have to treat my patients i have to be there my husband is a builder he has to build homes we can't stay home so it means our most vulnerable people for a lot of us are watching our kids it's our grandparents our great aunts and uncles our friends from other districts i own a business in town that's currently holding hybrid camps which is great but it means you're bringing kids from brain tree brookfield and randolph together we wear masks we clean everything just as much as the schools are but if we're able to do that wouldn't the cohort make more sense to be the young kids that are less vulnerable than making all of those individuals exposed to everybody else throughout the community staycare providers babysitters i mean all of those people are taking that in so it's not really like every parent's just staying home with their kids we're really exposing our community and the more vulnerable members of our community more by being in this hybrid model for those working parents and i really think what christina dina cola and the medical professionals that um are putting out there is really the fact more than some of the numbers that are being driven by i mean the state didn't decide to go to phase three without looking at all the same probabilities but they looked at vermont's probabilities you know these other school districts are not all ignoring these probabilities when they're making these things happen and so i think we really owe it to our our families and our teachers to make a smart move but really start talking about it i think trying to say to families wait until february of march while everybody else may have a successful nine months and we may miss that boat is just is overwhelming and so i think we really need to focus on the next steps and kind of realize we can't stay stuck here and maybe the next step isn't full in person but that's where the surveys and stuff will help but there needs to be i think some forward movement at this point towards some change because we're in a good place so that's my two cents and i thank you all for listening thanks very much lindsay uh anyone else have a question or comment for the board and for the superintendent um i have a comment this is tev kelman um yeah just just a couple things i want to add on i also want to really thank and uh appreciate just the way that may and laid out sort of both the the risks and the the assets that we have is uh um as a school community so and yeah like no i'm not speaking for anybody but myself but but i think that um i'm very much behind what you're saying but i also want to speak to you know as also a working parent you know i guess one point i just want to make is um it's important to remember that many of us who are employees of of you the board of the district and of the town we're in the same boat as you right we're trying to work and we're trying to raise kids and deal with um what mishap that thing was speaking to it just like a society that has has so many institutions are like run running on fumes and and we're now running up against that and so um yeah i mean i i don't have very much to offer other than like a lot of compassion um for the situation that y'all are in um and a hope that we can find a way to like talk about what are some of the things that we need obviously it's not a board conversation but um a conversation i think we really need to have it's like we have a lot of common interests as um teachers and custodians and food service workers at this school and as parents and a lot of us are the same people and so um i think that a lot of the the decisions we're being forced to make by you know not just the lack of vaccine but the lack of um of the ability for families really to make choices um to to do what's safe across the board i i think is something that that's a conversation that we needed to have um and then the the kind of more concretely to the um to the mo you i think there's no there's no other saying there's no desire to like use the mo you as a sticking point um to you know to prevent going to the next phase i think there's anecdotally i know there's there's many of our members who want to go to that that next phase as well as many of our members who are terrified um you know for for legitimate reasons of going to that next phase so um i think i hear a lot of people talking about wanting to have the conversation and i think that's something that the union is very much open to um and i think also hearing a lot about how it's it's kind of a different conversation at different you know in different buildings at different levels um the concerns of the high school are not the same as rtcc or the elementary schools so i yeah i guess i just want to like say that that we're open to having those conversations um one last piece is just just to call attention to and i think lane you spoke to this a little bit you know in terms of like the time we take to rearrange the schedule but also um thinking about the friction that's created by a schedule change or changing teachers in mid-year which is something we've already done a lot of um and and it's um just something to factor in when we're thinking about making this decision so i i think um starting to have the conversation is a good idea but i think it's a really complex one and and to dr d and i call this question mou is a memorandum of understanding a side agreement to the contract thank you laura i have a um thank you for your question um anyone else laura i have a question um so amy ferris again an elementary teacher a two-parent working home with two teenagers um and i would echo many of the thoughts that i've heard tonight but i think one of the thoughts that we really need to factor in for both the kids and the teachers is the lack of staffing and substitutes um i know for both of my teenagers they've had staff and i and we've had it in the elementary school too who had to be out and as we start to see more kids starting to sniffle and have ear aches and things like that um the lack of substitutes right now is going to present an issue for both the kids and the teachers because they're not going to have a body or someone else may not have a body because somebody's got to cover and they've got to sort of prioritize who gets coverage and who doesn't so i just i think that's an important issue to look at moving forward thanks amy anyone else who's next could i jump in here um a comment and a question i just want to underscore what tev was talking about in terms of how complex it will be to switch modalities so i wonder if lane you could give any idea i mean i'm aware of to get to the modality we're at even just traffic patterns in in drop-offs i mean the amount of work that went into it it i can't even list all the things i mean it's it's overwhelming to think of it and it actually reminds me of when i you know have a question for my daughter's teacher on a day that she's remote and that teacher can't get back to me right away because that teacher is teaching the other class and i think it's it's hard for me to remember that just because my daughter's remote that the teacher is still in the classroom teaching um so to to switch to a new about modality very complex a lot of work while the other work is still continuing so how long do you think we've been at this you said for four weeks i can't believe that i mean it's that's mind-blowing it has only been four weeks um is it realistic if we wanted to shoot for the second semester or you know the third quarter coming back to in person the the workload the complexities is that doable realistically so it's a it's a good question it literally and again first first step is talk talk with the union because there's going to be some good ideas about the best way to make it work there it would be pulling the teams back together to start to discuss it including our covid coordinators who have the connections with the department of health in terms of what it would look like for protocols and procedure but there are two things right off the the gut sitting here right now that i think are going to be impacted the first is that we still have a tremendous amount of professional development planned for this year for in-service days for for half days and things like that um especially the second half of the year designed to getting us towards those performance sets i'll set up i'll plan you know prior to the start of this year those would have to go away to provide time to do this planning and or we may have to take a few days off with no no kids here to get the staff together um to be able to sit down do the brainstorming and do the work about really getting down to the nitty gritty of the logistics i'm yeah i'm i'm really good in leading the general this is kind of what you got to do fill in the details but they need to fill in the details because they're closest to the work they know what it means they they know how to apply it and that's going to take some time um we are in a bit of a bind in terms of time this year um the state has already approved that the school year is only 170 days um that that came out of the last legislative session that ended last week um and so anything above and beyond that that we take to do this work is going to require either extra days added on the calendar now um for the kids which we can't do because you know we'd have to pay the staff to both do the work here on the days they're here doing the planning and then the extra days for the kids or getting a waiver from the state and i don't know how willing they're going to be to provide a waiver if they've already cut us from you know 177 required days down to 170 half half a day for their teaching planning the other half of the day is actually so that so that we don't lose a learning day um they have created and have set up asynchronous work for the other half um so it would be adding another whole set of duties on them on that day i mean again the easiest way to do it is to go to to professional development days and try to rearrange what we'd already plan but um again it's it's anything's possible it's not easy it would probably take until the if we started working on it now and and the path were clear and we knew nothing was going to change between now and then it would probably take until second semester to really do all right go ahead in the chat um and you may have just addressed it with your discussion about fridays but she said if we were to move to four day four days in person is that considered still hybrid and would the mo you need to be addressed at that point so if we can address from my perspective um and again folks can push back on me you you may have different ideas as long as covet is there and we're still in a state of emergent state of emergency if full in person means four days it still means they get that friday to me again doesn't mean that can't be changed or that's that's my impression off off the cuff because we need the time in those cases especially since we'd have more kids in the school more interactions we'd need the time to air the place out over the three days and do a real deep cleaning um right we're doubling the population doubling exposure risks if not more we're going to need that time to do that work so good questions the mo you can be a public document yes it can yeah it's a good point right now that amy is is bringing up is we are trying to balance out time in the buildings we have two basic functions that are going on one is the teaching and the learning and being open for the the teachers to do their planning where they have their resources the second is it takes a significant amount of time to do the disinfecting and the cleaning that must happen every day and so we spent a good week at the beginning of the year kind of working out these agreements between the facility staff and the instructional staff and the principals about okay how much time do you need to make things work on the instructional side is that reasonable giving the cleaning task and the time it's going to take to do the cleaning that happens and right now things are in a very good balance and it would be very difficult to disrupt that you know if they get more time in their classrooms we don't have enough time to potentially clean every room the way that it needs to be which means we would have rooms that would be closed that affect social distancing and we would have problems we have the agreement that if we don't get things clean the way they need to be that we will shut down those rooms and not use them until the cleaning occurs so right now everything is in a nice balance between those two two functions so Amy good point more time for public comment so feel free to ask a question or make a comment can you hear me yes we can okay sorry I had to dial on my phone um so I want to go back to addressing Lane's presentation about protective factors and risk factors and the idea of going back to in-person training or in-person learning as this game of Russian roulette and just as a parent and I and I have hardships with this with three children in the elementary school it's it's a game of Russian roulette that I'm ready to play um and I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around how we can just living this that we're saying that the assessments that the children are actually doing better because I just I'm personally not experiencing that and I have yet to meet a parent that is saying that so I guess I'd like to learn more about that is that at all levels is I mean are all the kids doing better so I'm not echoing here so the the initial data coming from our our k-12 directors as they're working um on those initial assessment is coming back it's it's very positive and they stated the same two reasons that the other superintendents did and that was um you know it's more intensive one to one time with the kids because the classes are smaller and fewer behavioral issues there are groups that are suffering um some of the high need students which is why we do have some of them back um to close to four four days per week now um and also the students that are in for remote learning now again we're looking at a conglomeration of data does that mean that's true for every kid no I've got two kids at home um one of actually both of them went through the remote session last year one of them thrived in it the other it took patty and I took my wife and I every ounce of strength that we had to keep him going so I do know where people are coming from on this um it's um it's not again it's not the best modality um for normal operations but right now you know it was chosen because it seems to be the best modality for the situation we find ourselves in with covid um but hopefully I didn't get too far field to your question but no I do I understand where you're coming from and you are correct you know when we're looking at the data it's conglomerate it is not um true for every kid hi bethany silhouette here um I just want to speak you mentioned that the behaviors of the kids were better in school which I guess I'm happy to hear but I have to say on the at home level um I'm watching my five and a half year old daughter just spiral downward she went from having consistent five day a week daycare at robin's nest um all the way up until the start of kindergarten and now she has absolute zero consistency uh due to my husband and I both um working full time being bounced around from wherever whoever and whomever we can find to take care of them while we're at work and trying to get educated she's getting kicked off of google meets um because she can't sit there and be quiet through them and I guess I just can't really blame her for that but I've been sitting here racking my brain like why is her behavior getting so much worse and I just can't help but feel like that's not coming from the lack of consistency um that she is not you know she's just getting no consistency and school offers that um and in reflection I'm so thankful for that and I also am watching kids who typically thrive in school just really spiral um with this current situation and I just have to believe that um you know some of that is coming from all of us parents just circling the drain right now with stress and um struggles and just everything that we're dealing with and I know that everybody's got struggles and we're in a pandemic but something has to be done before February hearing February and April just I want to vomit um because I don't know that my family can survive we're fortunate um we have a tutor right now for our kids on two of our remote days which we would not be where we are right now without that but I can't sustain that until April um it's not cheap to have a tutor and you know I count myself fortunate that we can do that right now but I know many families can't and um so I just want to echo a lot of the concerns I've already heard tonight some of you took the words right out of my mouth so thank you because you said them far better than I could um but yeah just I'm let's get these young kids back I appreciate that the high school they have a lot of struggles and I think that it's easier for those kids to be doing this hybrid model but for us parents with young kids the child care portion is just it's killing us so thank you thanks Stephanie um next hi my name is Megan O'Toole I'm a parent of an elementary school student in Braintree and I just wanted to um say you know thank you to everybody for all the the thought and um the work that has gone into developing developing and implementing the current plan of hybrid learning that that we're currently under but I thought that um you know Hannah's question and point about the the planning and the work that is going to need to go into switching modalities to either a four day or full in-person five-day plan um is going to be a massive undertaking and I would support that work starting now even though a date for returning to a change in modality hasn't been set yet I think it's it's vital that that work begin now because I certainly recognize that it will be a huge undertaking and so I think that you know the I don't think the first decision should be when I think it should be how and then um you know determining when that should happen and um you know I I am not trained in um in the field of education I do not have any advanced degrees in early childhood development but I have close friends and colleagues that that do and speaking with them you know their thoughts are that it is vitally important that the younger children return to in-person learning as soon as possible and that their ability to you know engage in the online learning and use the computers at home is much more limited and should be much more limited at their stage than older middle school and high school age students and so I am supportive of phasing in you know more in-person days for younger children first um and then I think I just also wanted to make a comment and I think some people have kind of touched on this regarding the data that we're seeing with how students are reacting and responding to the hybrid learning mode um I I guess I I don't think it's fair to really highlight that data or that information at this point in time given that we we have um so little time actually participating in this this form of learning and this modality um I think it's fair to say that we don't know what's going to happen with you know with COVID and how that's going to continue to impact our community and that's a real wild card um but I at the same time I don't think it's fair to um really hang your hat on or draw significant conclusions from um you know the information regarding how students are doing under this modality um so again thank you very much everyone for your hard work it's certainly recognized and greatly appreciated and I appreciate being able to make a comment thanks Megan um who's next we have plenty of time for more public comment or questions in terms of um teacher recruitment from a hiring standpoint um have you I mean it's hard for me to imagine that somebody somewhere who's living a hellish kind of existence right now in a hot spot wouldn't want to live in our community right now so have you put ads out in the Wall Street Journal have you um have you have you exhausted all avenues for recruitment and have you exhausted avenues for recruitment while we're recruiting for diverse teachers as well so that sorry about that a couple folks so the primary mode is usually school spring which is a national job boasting board for education it's where educators go it's where they expect um to look so all of our stuff is posted on school spring when we have um difficulty we do go to um papers that are far in a field to try to get some some hiring out it has not been effective at all the reality is too that we have to consider is that you know if I've got people that are resigning that's one thing the position's open I can replace it if I have people that are just unable to work um who still have a right to the position that's a whole different ball game because that gets into a significant budgetary impact but yes no we've been doing the recruiting as best we can but if there are ideas out there above and beyond I am happy to take any ideas that folks have are there other questions or comments a couple sorry a couple questions from the chat from Dr. DeNicola have you consulted with other schools who are fully open on how they are managing these issues such as staffing and cleaning how are they able to do it so the the question in consulting with the other schools um yes we have in some cases the schools are bigger than us and they just yank people off the things that they should be doing and put them in in other places and a lot of them the principals are actually going in and teaching and serving as substitutes because we all have a substitute shortage so there has been some discussion about that we are not a administration heavy district so that would be difficult to do but that is one of the emergency backup plans the other emergency backup plan that we've got in place right now is if I have too many teachers out in a building especially like the smaller elementaries we move to remote learning for the day because that can always happen you know it's not preferential it's not the best choice but we cover what we can with the resources that we have including the paraprofessionals and then if things get really bad if we have a lot of people out then you know we are potentially looking at going into remote learning for those days again it's just not safe to have a large conglomeration of students here and not enough adults to supervise and to manage especially given the constraints of covid so good questions this may sound like a ridiculous idea but there's a lot of unemployed parents right now I don't know what the criteria are to be a substitute teacher but have we looked into our own population in our own community as a potential source of you know responsible caring willing individuals yeah the the principles reach out to reach out to recent recently retired as well as folks that have been retired a little bit longer they're just it's not the strong impression that I have there just is not the appetite to work in a school around lots of folks for one of these positions right because you're kind of going against in a sense you're going against the CDC guidelines right you're you're coming together you're congregating together you're gathering together and that makes folks nervous I think that's the real reason why it's been so difficult news letter that's come home so it's also going out to all parents not just and and the retired book as well I've seen it no even we've twisted some arms too would not too too much luck so I want to thank all of these parents and folks for joining us tonight I think it's brought up a lot of really good points and I always think it's important to remind everybody what I have heard to make sure that we are on the same page with Lane moving forward so Lane it appears to me there's the commitment to do the survey beginning with our elementary kids K through six to look at a increased presence in the building that could potentially be prior to the second semester if the spacing works we said that we would make the MOU public to per Dr. DeNicola's request that the high school because it sounds like the master schedule at the Randolph Union High School is of concern with the amount of time it would take to reestablish that that that is a project that could begin working now so if we are able to go to full in person that work is completed and not delaying that and that we are going to continue to base the choices on scientific data and not so much fear I'm keeping in mind that our words matter on how we talk about this amongst I think that of course Heidi has had some great Hannah sorry has had some great points about you know making sure that that how we talk about this is not based on our personal bias and our personal fears but on science and the fact that we thankfully have a hospital local to us that we could be asking for feedback there as well so I think it's important to acknowledge what we've been asked to do and to confirm right now that we are making those steps sorry about that no the those were actually the recommendations I made to the board in the presentation so that's was the plan again a lot of it is making sure that they're informed in in their duty as they are the decision-making body for the change in modality and making sure you know I'm giving them my recommendations they can take take them if they want they do not have to follow through on them but it sounds like like for the most part that they do with the one exception of a stronger focus on the K-6 but no it makes sense and one of the reasons I'm making the recommendations now is because we recognize that there is a lot of planning that would need to take place for this to occur so all good points and I appreciate folks conversations tonight I appreciate the talk I do please believe me my heart does go out I recognize that every individual's hardships are a little different and you know we do the best we can for the greatest good and it does not always serve everybody as well as we'd like but I appreciate the understanding I'm going to give one more chance for public comment and if we do not hear from anyone then we're going to move on try to sum this up and talk about something else okay hearing none thanks as Ashley and others have said for so much public interest and comment we really appreciate it from what I hear it sounds like our next steps are for Lane to go ahead and issue the survey Lane is holding a public forum tomorrow night what what time is that Lane 6 30 okay I'm gonna probably tomorrow morning I'll resend out the links and whatnot and remind folks I'll probably try to set up a protocol I expect there'll be a lot of questions just to make the questions for a little bit smoother so yep I look forward to it okay and so as a board we will continue to hear from Lane and you know I hear everyone's interest in moving more towards in-person learning and you know I think that we will continue to work to make that happen as when we can and yeah so it's going to be a partnership between you know the work that the research that Lane is doing and the teachers and the community as we try to make this you know happen as fast as possible all right next in line on our agenda is a review of very preliminary review of next year's budget which you know because it's so early there are many sort of concerns about or questions about is how this is going to unroll turn my mic on budget overview this should be a fairly short one me too so budget overview again we're early early in things things that budgets usually get kicked off in October you know things should be pretty solid by the time the board votes on the budget in January oh by the way just so the board knows in your packet that had the strategic plan in there there is also an overview of the current budget we're going to talk about you really don't need all the details unless you want them the bottom line is kind of what we'll focus on a little bit here but there's also the timeline in there that I mapped out that gets us up to the the big vote in January where you vote on on the final budget budget goals for this year going into next is a level service budget thankfully and very thankful to the community for the support over the last two years in providing us with the resources to build the supports we need to go after the ends that we spoke about a little bit earlier so going into next year we're looking at keeping things level service what does that mean it means we're not adding staff that's not the intent we're not adding anything other than the things that we have to which is usually the the pay increases that are stipulated by the contracts it's kind of all that we're looking at the other thing that is on the agenda here is to plan for any overages right any expenses that we're spending above and beyond um this year's budget uh due to the pandemic in case god forbid the government doesn't completely come through um and supplying us with all um that covid is costing the district uh our district is all the districts around the state um no change that's what this budget represents except for salary lines 2020 2021 the year that we are currently living in our total budget is 20 million six hundred thousand dollars next year if we are only increasing um what's required under the salary lines plus an estimate of wire negotiations will come out to be which we'll talk about in a minute um we're looking at a total budget of 21 million 136 thousand dollars which is an increase of 535 thousand dollars 2.6 percent okay and that's just for salary obligations it's adding nothing else in which is not the intent unknowns right now that play into this is again we are back at the negotiating table um and i'm going to suggest that we get there as soon as possible and i'll talk a little bit about that in a moment that we've got negotiations with the bus drivers this year negotiations again with the support staff um this year and the teachers union negotiations um for this year when i say for this year we got to do it this year for next year's budget um the other thing that will become known in december is remember last year we had a huge budget increase the the majority of the budget increase was due to the addition of potential health insurance um for the support staff and an hra and a couple of other benefits that came out of the state um negotiations with the union in december around mid december we should have the actual numbers of who's applying for what and what the actual cost was going to be um when we started this process the total liability if everybody switched to the maximum plan was about 1.3 million we planned it out based upon a kind of our survey of folks where they were at their families that it would probably you know be an increase of 730 000 which is what we planned in this budget my hope is um that people get the health insurance they need but it's something less than that um other things to consider um is the cost of health insurance goes up on average about 14 per cent per year so that's quite significant so that's factored into this as well but given the impact of covid on the health insurance industry they may be looking for a bigger increase than the 14 percent that we've kind of grown used to um can't say for sure but again it's one of those unknowns that's out there but we planned in the current budget that's before you that 535 000 increase includes that that 14 percent um increase cost for health insurance the only major initiative um that we're going to be looking at for next year and this will be covered under the uh k to 12 professional development budget line that folks were um very generous with last year and helping us develop and add that into the budget um has to do with English language learners um English language arts excuse me um the new assessment systems that we put into place over the last a couple of years have identified a fair problem that we need to address what we're discovering is that students at the high school um there's a number of them that have significant reading delays um when we took a look that k to 12 team um that we've got um the real reason that we've identified and what we really feel that it is it has to do with the the preparation programs for elementary teachers elementary teachers are awesome they do fantastic work but the preparation programs don't really delve deeply enough into the special skills required to teach reading and so the plan is as part of the the foundational knowledge um in English one of the board's ends um is to work with the Stern Center out of uh Williston Vermont who specializes in language acquisition and they're going to be putting together a training plan for the elementary teachers as well as the special education teachers to give them those skills um so that as the students are working their way up and learning through the elementary levels um when they get to the high school they're on grade level or higher um so that they can participate fully in the curriculum that the the middle of high school has to offer again um this is a significant cost it'll be about 50 000 in the first year 38 000 in the second year and then it will go down after that we still it'll always be something because we always got to be training the new people that are coming in as we get normal attrition each year um but it's a major expense for next year but it should be encapsulated with the money that was already given for that uh K-12 professional development budget um next step in the process right now um the cabinet is meeting with their staff between now and the end of the month they are reviewing the strategic plan and their own local initiatives their own school-based initiatives um to identify the budgetary supports that they need we're trying to do this and accomplish this and accomplish this are there pieces that we're missing that will help us on that way that's the discussion they're happening they will take a look at that um when that list of items comes up and they will separate it into two pieces the things that should be coming out of their own normal local budget and then the things that they might need district help with and then I will assign um from that K-12 professional development line um their needs up until the point in time that we run out of money this should not add to the budget requests this discussion it's just a matter of rearranging the resources that we currently have uh one of the things that we are going to talk about and this is important for community members and parents and one of the things I'm going to be harping on at my open forums um right up until the vote in March is this idea of reserve funds and COVID overages um I'm going to be asking um both the board uh to support me on this but this will have to come down to a town vote um to create an operational reserve fund we currently have three or four reserve funds that are out there right now we have one for facilities we have one for transportation we have one for legal we have one for special ed and what happens with these reserve funds is at the end of every fiscal year if we have a surplus the town members vote during the March 3rd vote to move that surplus money into those reserve funds so that we can use it as needed and not have to go back to the town for money um if it comes up I am going to be asking for the creation of an operational reserve fund so that if we are short due to COVID I have money that I can draw from to keep the operations of the building going without running a deficit. If it is successful the other thing that we could do um is use it to hopefully mitigate some of the tax burden on folks next year we have a significant amount in our facilities reserve fund we could move some of that over to this knowing that the money is there and available we will not have to ask for as much potentially for next year's budget because we can subsidize it a little bit and get people through what is predicted to be the toughest financial year because of COVID that's next year so I apologize I don't have COVID so I'm going to highly recommend to the board that we start negotiations on the new contracts as soon as possible and the reason that we do that is because every year because negotiations don't end and this isn't the board's fault or the union's fault it's just been timing of things um every year before we wrap up negotiations and know what we're going to have to pay in salaries I have to predict it because you have to vote on it and it has to go in front of the voters it really would be nice to know going into that vote exactly what we need so we're not asking for more than we need right so part of tonight when you get to it is you're going to have the request from both the teachers union and the support staff to open negotiations for next year's budget and again the sooner we can get teams together working on that you're going to make all our lives a lot easier because I always put on a standard amount if I know it's going to be something less than that then I'm going out to the taxpayers for a reduced amount when they go to vote so just my thoughts and if there's any questions on that that budget piece at this point in time I'll answer them are there any questions or comments from the public around the budget presentation hearing none are there any questions from the board let's move on then um all right next we have a discussion discuss negotiations with the unions so I saw that we were handed requests to begin negotiations by both the support staff and by the teachers so we're going to Lane you want to talk about that do you want to talk about that any further than what you've already said we should talk in executive discussion on sorry about that so what I was saying is that I'm recommending again to the the board that you know they vote to open up the negotiations they get their teams together today if possible and so start getting some dates together to get this negotiation process happening so that hopefully we can wrap things up before the actual budget vote in January tight timeline but it's doable um so that we know exactly what we need when we're going in to ask the communities for funding you know I'm not asking for more in anticipation of what the we come out with for salaries um out of the contract negotiations set up the negotiating teams while we're here and discussing this um we need hopefully three board members for each team teachers and support staff um you know for whatever you'd like to do um so happy to work with the support staff okay I am happy to stay with the support staff as well okay I'm happy to stay with the teachers all right all right so um we've got three uh Hannah, Brian and Meg for the teachers and uh Katia, Ashley and Anne for the support staff all right um so likely we need to vote on whether we want to open negotiations yeah you'll need to vote separately on each I'm going to make a further request when you get to the consent agenda um actually it went really well um this last year we had folks head board members at each of the meetings but just on the off task that something blows up and it's just me sitting down which has happened in the past um Pietro and I if the board could vote to allow me to tentatively agree with the union that doesn't mean it's a final agreement it just means that you know if things look good and it's based upon what we've discussed I can TA all those agreements when they're done and in full they have to come back to the full board on our side for you to vote it in and then on the union side they have to go back to the full union so a TA is just you know we've reached the tentative agreement on this it now can go to the full board for a vote part of the consent agenda we'll get to that okay so next we've got the first reading of the title nine policy which is a federal policy um it was included in our agenda is there anything you want to bring to our attention lane well lots of stuff with this one but I'll keep it short title nine um has been around for a while it protects people from discrimination and harassment based on sex um it has been changed significantly which is why that policy is so many pages long um it changes the process for investigating accusations determining the findings it changes the length of an investigation and I want you to think about this the weight that's on administrators and other staff members from the current five to ten days to up to 80 days the um it's going to take a significant financial out outlay to train the staff to perform um these functions it's very prescribed it took six hours for them to just talk us through the basic steps um so this should give you an idea of how expansive um this is and if you mess up any any part along the way there is significant liability that will be incurred on the district so we have significant training that we're going to need to put in place so that all the people that are a part of this the investigators the deciders the supervisors who oversee it all know their roles and know them well um so just just so you know this is a huge uh undertaking and it's going to be a huge burden on the district but it is what it is it's required under federal law the policy that you are looking at was created um by Heather Lynn and P. H. Rowland in conjunction with the remote school boards association it's the one that they recommend okay great thanks we'll um have time to look that over and we'll approve it at the next meeting uh next week we've got two uh Edo reports from lane 2.1 and 2.2 um these were both first reading so this is treatment of staff and communication with students in parents um additional materials are available at the office if you'd like to see uh sort of the background in the area that Lane references in his reports um chance this month to review and then we'll approve next month Lane do you want to say anything more about these reports uh just the basics so the EL2.1 as Laura said treatment of students parents and community members um the basics are the superintendent will not treat folks in an arbitrary or capricious way and will not seek unnecessary information from them um basically the way that you don't treat people in an arbitrary or capricious ways you follow the rules that have been set down and the protocols that have been set down by the board um there have been no issues with that the one that we didn't see if I can say this right will not seek unnecessary information from them that one we have sought some unusual information this year that was out of the norm but it was in line with the policy um we had to solicit information um in terms of COVID you know will you be riding the bus you know what learning modality are you open to what were the weaknesses in last year's learning modality that is not information we typically correct collect either for state reasons or or N's reasons so just to throw that out there but I am reporting that all the provisions of EL 2.1 are in compliance um and then EL 2.2 executive limitation 2.2 is about the treatment of staff and this is basically ensuring that we have rules and procedures that are understood by the staff in which are followed when we interact with them and that all comes down to all the work that we've done on contracts and MOUs and and and that piece so I report compliance on that as well unless there's questions I'm sure yeah no definitely I'll fix them okay yeah part of it's my old eyes part of it's we've been sitting at the computer for ages this year it's felt like this year's felt like 10 years did anyone attend the local the vsba regional meeting it's okay I can talk a little I can talk a little bit about it it was actually it was pretty low key um it really only looked at two things um the first half of it was really uh just kind of superintendents and some some board members talking about the work that they did to get schools reopened um you know the the troubles and the travails they faced um and some of the unique things that they they came up with um in terms of being able to kind of manage things as we were open under COVID the other half was an overview from the Department of Health um we've just kind of some guidance in uh where to find information in terms of how to respond to an outbreak if it occurs in the schools and it was actually really good because as they were talking I was able to follow the links they were talking about and I I pulled out their um their plan for contact tracing the forms that we would use um as well as they had a bunch of uh letter templates you know um that were written with the intent of going out to a community a school community if there's an outbreak in the school so I found that very helpful but it was a it was a short meeting I mean usually that's a two day and that this was uh this was about what three hours I think so it was good one of us to be a visit proxy or give that power to our regional representative is anyone interested in being our representative on those two um sort of regional groups that are associated with the BSBA doesn't look like anyone's interested in going to the meetings so it's the insurance bit of that and the teachers bit and so it's sort of representing our interests it's uh I've never done um I think they meet quarterly and it used to be in here now it's like zoom you know so you could do it from wherever um it's more you know governing the states um you know for months full boards of subjection so the entire open and focused state um so if no one's interested in attending being our representative then we will designate a proxy you know I think yes we use how it used to be the representative for many years well if they don't change their mind but otherwise I'm just going to designate a local representative to represent our interests okay all right um next we have a content agenda we've got minutes from the august um meeting from the september meeting we have to approve a professional contract so just a few changes can be signed in um then we need to approve the teachers union request open negotiations and support the union request so I'll take um the minutes first we could approve both the august and the september minutes together does anyone have any substitutions or corrections on those that they missed as they've read them over hold those in favor uh any post okay and then to approve the context they are in our agenda yeah so there's sort of a switch um is there a option to approve we've got two um title funding switches okay and then lastly um we approve both the teachers union and support staff unions request open negotiations as well as if lane you call it a t a the ability to tentative agreement reach tentative agreements during the negotiations tentative agreements in our stead if one of us is not present for those meetings we'll have a motion to approve those three uh things okay all those in favor any opposed all right uh next we hear from Lane in his superintendent's report do you have anything to add to that or elaborate on unless there's questions I I think the biggest piece was the legislative update right that the big bill there that 969 that got through the house and it was signed I think October 2nd by the governor so that's the one that um did a whole bunch of things but one of the things that it did was it rearranged the funding when they originally were going to give us funding from the the CARES money that came to the state you know they had given us a certain amount for the entire state and then we actually put in our applications saying what we had spent on COVID they were three times too short so they actually adjusted it to make sure that they covered all our current requests through December 30th oops sorry about that so that that was good so the legislature has been doing a very good job and the governor as well in terms of providing us hopefully with what we need question is is when are we going to see the money to help us out well we'll be fine until March but if we don't get something rolling in March we're going to have to think of something else so hopefully they they put a timeline on it which I didn't see yeah as far as financials how are we doing this year I guess we have some extra actually I'll give people a quick thumb quick way of looking at things real fast things are good I talked with Rob and she's is satisfied there's nothing unusual happening right now considering but if you flip to the very last page of the booklet you look down at the very bottom on the far right you see 78.69 percent that's what remains in the budget for this year remember our budget year starts in July so rough rule of thumb if things work fairly linearly and they do is that every three months right you divide 12 months into quarters every three months you should be down 25 percent so we should be at 75 percent we're at 78.69 so i'm pretty good shape so if you guys use that rule of thumb if you ever see this you know you're halfway through the year and it says there's only 10 left we got things we got to talk about but we're in good shape right now and that's a real easy way to tell you you know without looking in too much detail if things are on track no no these numbers are with the COVID that that 900,000 that you had said before that's not looking at that number right now we're keeping it separate so I have a question on the numbers in your report in earlier you said we had lost nine staff members um it's gone up we're at 10 now okay we've lost 10 staff members so I would assume that this actually would be less because those salaries are not being paid unless those positions have been backfilled which didn't sound like they were so it actually appears to me at the 900,000 is not in here we have 10 less salaries that were paying which would also benefit that these numbers actually aren't trending in a direction that we should be pleased about and remember this um remember that this budget ended at the end of September resignations were fairly recent some have been replaced and in the early cases especially we were able to provide subs which costs as well not as much but some um in the interim so can you tell us the positions we lost yeah I actually had a sheet at least on the first nine see if I can find it if not I can email it to you actually Linda prepared it let's see if I got enough efficiency staff who resigned let's see if I'd not go through the name so we had three pairs custodian two food service workers a sped teacher a long-term sub another custodian and more recently a teacher without going into the names I'd have to go back and look I think most with the exception of potentially this bed teacher again we've only had though the one to two teachers right now those are going to be the difficult ones to replace we had a lot of issues early on with the support staff folks especially the custodial it was interesting that was during the time that they were getting the relief funds you know the 600 extra dollars and so they literally were coming in and going we're not going to we want the job but we're not going to go to work until the relief funds are up and so in some cases we had to wait a little while until those ended and then they started looking for us so but that's parents so mostly pair mostly in the in the support staff lines right now it'll be the teachers it'll be difficult yep and subs teacher subs let me talk about substitute teachers is there anything else we want to add under the incidental information line not unless there's other thoughts or questions there's nothing new given all that we've talked about today at least for me I got the front page down the second side I saw some questions on um so basically five down for our self evaluation on general meeting behavior again agenda plan we saw the agenda the meeting was very well attended tonight we were prepared proceeded without interruptions or distractions our processes were understood we had a lot of viewpoints I think we did a very good job especially of allowing for extended period of time for comments from the community members participation was balanced everyone listed attentively we treated each other with respect and courtesy and we had an atmosphere of trust and openness so yes meet our best expectations on those okay so this public session or section of this meeting is um is over we are going to enter executive sessions so thank you everyone for attending we appreciate it and um thanks you know continue to let us know um of your concerns and um we like to be made available we are your representatives so thanks and have a good evening