 I'm going to be on the computer a lot just to take notes as people are talking because a lot of this was just feedback and ideas, you know nothing is set in stone in terms of what we're headed, where we're headed, we've got issues with the facilities, you know there's all sorts of different possibilities of working them out, but one of the reasons that this topic is pertinent at this point in time, there's actually two reasons. The first one is that the state, I don't know if folks know, the state legislature a year ago had begun requiring PCB testing in all buildings. And buildings typically that were built prior to 1970 are likely to get hits. We lucked out, we've got two buildings that are in that category, one's Brookfield, one is this facility here which also includes the Tech Center. They did do the testing in Brookfield that came back clean, doesn't mean that there aren't PCBs present, but what it means is that my guess is that the ventilation is so good after we upgraded things from COVID that you know it's an air test that they're looking for the PCBs in that the ventilation is probably good enough that it's clearing it out. I don't know what's going to happen here, they bumped back the PCB testing until 2025. The problem is, is the way the law is written, if you get a PCB hit, it has to be remediated immediately and at pretty significant costs to that remediation, especially looking at two of the schools that are going through it right now. So then the question became, the superintendent's kind of talked with the legislature a little bit and said, you know, you guys as a state and as a legislature, there's been no construction aid for schools and time out of mind. So is there a way to combine this need to kind of revamp facilities across the state along with the PCB piece so that, you know, we're combining the two ideas so that why would you want to pay, you know, $10 million to remediate PCBs in a school that probably should just be rebuilt anyway? And so they've kind of pushed the PCB piece out of the way a little bit with a stronger focus on construction aid. So what does that have to do with us? Well, construction aid means that if we're in a position where we want to do a major renovation or need to do a major renovation or we want to do a rebuild, they're going to come up with matching funds. How much? I don't know. Previously when I looked back through the history of Vermont when they were providing construction aid, it was anywhere from 33% to 50% of total cost. And so, you know, with that possibility floating out there, you know, I was always brought up if you can use other people's money, you know, to get stuff done. That's what you do. And if there's the possibility that, you know, if we're looking at a major overhaul or a rebuild here and possibly the opportunity to have somebody pay for a third or half of it, you know, we've got to have the conversation, especially given the standard things. In terms, before we kind of, I start to pick your brains a little bit, in terms of just general information as I was looking through things, and this may not be perfectly complete. It's based on the records that I could find. This high school RUHS, it looks like it was dedicated in 1956. So it's about 70 years old. About 10 years later in 1966, the population was increasing and it got large enough that the building wasn't big enough. And so they started to go out to try to see if they should build a middle school. The votes to try to build a separate middle school failed, but they did make the decision that they were going to add on to this school. So we have a middle school section here, right? We've got, that's part of why we've got the two gyms, you know, ones from the RUHS, ones from the middle school wing that was built on in 1966. There have been no major renovations in this building since 1966. The other couple of pieces to throw out there for data as I was kind of looking through, you know, what happens across the country. In the U.S., on average, schools are renovated every 12 years, so major renovations to them. And on average, in the U.S., schools are replaced about every 44 years. Right now, 76% of the schools across the country are considered to be in good or excellent shape. We are not in either of those categories. We're in the fair category, so we're in the bottom 25%. The other piece that was interesting was that as the state was doing an examination of what state the facilities across Vermont were in, they did a pretty big study because they were trying to figure out should they, you know, redo the construction aid piece, what they discovered through that work and coming out and kind of doing surveys and facilities assessments was that this high school is the one across the entire state that they deem to be the closest to the end of its useful life. So we've got that distinction out there. And then the other piece that's out there is we don't know about what the results of the PCB testing are going to be until probably 2025. So a part of trying to get people to come here tonight, the goal was really to give folks a couple of prompts, and I just listen and take notes to be able to use that information to create a survey that I can send out to the greater community. So before we start that, though, it might help if any of the three of you have any specific questions about the facilities as they currently stand. You work here, I know that. I know the other folks are probably familiar with the heating issues that we had. It's been 13 years since my son graduated, so it's, I haven't really kept up with things. I don't know if you have any kind of questions about the facilities as they currently stand. I just wanted to get a feel of what the meeting was. I've been hearing things now. I'm not. I'm not a Facebook stalker. I just hear things I hear. Where I work, I hear a lot of things. And I just want to know where we're at and what roads we can take to get to better either improve what we have. I heard building a new school right away and everybody's like tearing open an antelope and everybody's just like stirring around. I guess I want to know how bad things are, and are they fixable for now? Well, you know, head count. Throughout the years, enrollment has been going down. Here or not, here or not, with the exception of the lab this last year. So that's a good point. So I'm like, why build a new school if the numbers are... So what has happened, I started about six years ago when I walked in the door. Brookfield and Braintree, especially the two smaller schools. I think Brookfield was about 37 to 40 kids. Braintree was probably 60-ish give or take. And so we actually had that discussion and I upset a whole bunch of people just by having the discussion about should we be consolidating those buildings? We got space over at Randolph Elementary. Should we be shutting down those facilities and having the students come to Randolph Elementary because there would be significant savings in terms of taxes at the time. And as is normal across the country, you don't mess with local elementary schools. So people wanted to make sure that they were preserved. So at that point in time, I talked with the community and said, look, I said we'll do what we can to try to increase enrollment. If you're not supportive of this, that's fine. We're going to try to increase enrollment and depending upon what happens over the next couple of years, we might come back and have this conversation. Well, Braintree is up, it'll be over 100 next year. Brookfield is up, it'll be probably mid-90s next year. So they've doubled the triple of their enrollments. And of course, those students trickle into this building here. Randolph Elementary has been stable. They'll go up a couple of kids one year and go down an equal number the next year. So their level has been stable. As far as the high school is concerned, there's been swings up and down due to COVID. You know, when COVID is bad, everybody pulled their kids out, went home schooling, COVID went away, everybody kind of came back in the school, so the enrollments went back up. But the interesting thing that we've got going on here is we have a significant number of students from outside of Randolph Brookfield Braintree that pay tuition to come here. So we bring in about a half million in revenue every year from the tuition payments to students that want to come here. So our enrollments in Randolph are going up a little bit because of what's happening at the elementary schools, even though the bulk in those populations, they started out in the lower grades and they've been slowly working around. But a lot of the population increase that's happened here is from students from other districts that have come. Now we had our controversies at the beginning of this school year, which we're probably going to see students that don't want to be here and I can't blame them after the controversies that we had. And by that, I mean, we went through three months of death threats from across the country here for holding, enforcing the state's LGBTQ laws and things like that. And so that's left some students. So I expect to see a number of students probably leave this year in a year or two to have a resurgence again as things have calmed down. So the overall projection, at least for this area, as things have been on the rise for six to the seven years that I've been here, I expect to see a debt because of the controversy at the beginning of this year, which I expect to reverse. In terms of the overall status of the building, it is getting close to the end of its useful life. We don't have areas with the exception of the Field House, which is why we're renovating it now, that I will say are unsafe. But we do have sections of the building that just aren't conducive to properly educating students. We've got an aged science wing that at the very least if nothing else happens and that's a major job in itself that needs to be completely renovated. We've got new programs that we brought into the district to help kind of support the kids. So we've got a three-quarter of a million dollar STEM and robotics program that we have brought in over the last couple of years. And the spaces aren't quite right for that kind of work. We, especially over at the Tech Center, because this rebuild or renovation could potentially include the Tech Center, as we've been putting in more technologically advanced programs over there, like advanced manufacturing, we're finding that that old infrastructure just doesn't support the equipment. We don't have the electrical supply that we need. It's not in the right phase. And so, you know, every time we have to upgrade those things that would be a normal part of the new building, you know, it's 300,000 here, it's 200,000 there. And so, you know, while it's not as expensive as a new building, it adds up and it's a yearly cost. The heating piece when the pipes that carry the hot water under the ground out there failed, that was a $350,000, you know, work that we had to do to get that up and running. It had to do it in a quick time to try to get the kids back in school. We have constant pipes that burst and we ended up shutting down school for a day when that happens because it looks like it's been improper repair of the plumbing over time. Folks coming in, you know, when they cap off the end of a pipe instead of using the cast iron screw piece to put in there, they've been putting in plastic, which fatigues and wears out and then burst. Of course, they're in the walls, so until they burst, we don't know. And so there's a lot of that. We've got a whole wing of the building that is almost uninhabitable during the spring and summer months just because the heat up there gets to be too hot and we don't have the electrical system in grid in there to be able to at least bring in an air conditioning to be able to cool it down. So there's a lot of parts and pieces that just in general would need to be fixed. And so then the question becomes, do we rebuild? Do we renovate? Do we take a look at Vermont Tech if they're shedding some of their buildings and potentially buy the buildings up there and move up there? And so there's a lot of discussion on the table of what's possible in white. But let me stop talking and give folks a couple of prompts and an opportunity to kind of chime in. And again, any questions that jump up along the way that you want me to answer about this, I'm happy to answer. But start off with the basic, you know, what are the thoughts that the three of you have either for or against new construction being blunt and honest. I mean, I have no investment in this other than I got a school, I got a, I got a building that we got to do something with. And I want to make sure that I'm in line with the community in terms of what we do. I guess I'm taking mostly just to listen because I don't know a whole lot about it. You know, I'm kind of personal kind of looks at the long run. And it's going to be 500,000 here every year type thing. Maybe it's worth it to do something new. I'm kind of intrigued the idea you just mentioned about VTC buildings. Yeah, VTC is intriguing because as they've kind of cut back, as they've done that reorganization for the colleges, they've been kind of get each of the state colleges to kind of specialize in a set of degrees so that it's not replicated at all the rest. So they're finding that they're able to give up some of their building spaces. It would take a study to see if it was cheaper than rebuilding because it wouldn't just be purchasing the land. That would have its own cost. But the buildings that are available, you know, might have to be renovated then to suit our needs anyway. And so, but that's definitely a part of the study that we could conduct if that was on people's minds to investigate. Yeah, I mean, state legislature could also instead of having to buy the land, you know, say as part of the process to help the district, give them the land in the building. And that's actually worth investigating. That's why we have these conversations because folks have good ideas we can investigate. And I'm telling you a whole lot more than I know at this point too. No, we're all just thinking right now and trying to get a feel for things. So thoughts that you have? Well, I guess just more questions. I mean, if the decision is made to replace the buildings and stuff, you're not going to do that over the summer. So what happens to the, you know? So there's been a couple of thoughts out there. There is adjacent land. You know, Heather was actually pretty good about having people kind of investigate that a little bit just to try to see what possibilities might be. There's 30 acres that are right off the side there. The question is, you know, are they, we need an engineer to kind of go out there and also check the zoning to see if it could be useful. You know, if you purchase the land to build on it. The other possibility is to use what we've got. We've got to keep this site active if a rebuild was done because we need a place for the students to go when they go to school. Yeah. Right. And so the other possibility, again, it would take the engineer to come out and do the survey and give us feedback on it. But we build the new building on the back athletic fields. So while that construction is happening, we can still use this building. When that construction is complete, we move the kids in there. This building comes down and the athletic fields come to the front of the building which would actually solve another problem that we've had is that those athletic fields need to really be cared for the way that they should be. You know, with the kids out there all the time, the soil gets compacted and so that, you know, it's more likely to have injuries. It's not quite the right grass out there anymore. So it's an opportunity to restart that. You know, then we can talk about wild ideas that if we do a rebuild like that is the idea is, you know, do we want to put in a track that we've never had? You know, it's an opportunity, maybe we want to put in a turf field or even if we don't put in a turf field, maybe we put up lights at least on the athletic fields that we have so that they can be used later in the evening by the community and by the rec centers. The turf fields are great. You know, if you're going to spend, you know, 100 million or 75 million on a rebuild, you know, why not spend another, you know, 1.2, 1.4 million to get a turf field in there. And then because we're central in the state, we become the place that all the athletic teams across the state come to for their end of season tournaments and charge them a little bit to do that. So there's a tremendous number of possibilities. But again, those are some of the things to kind of talk about as well as, you know, if we do do a rebuild, what are the priorities that the community has? What do you think is vitally important that that district or that building has? Do we want to step back? Is that something we should prioritize? You know, do we want to track in fields? And so those are questions more for the folks here. I'm curious. You mentioned a potential 30 acres that's next door. Where is that? I think it's the Johnson's farm right behind. Oh. Or it's adjacent to the Johnson's farm. So as you go that way across the athletic fields. Okay. So over the main street, near the old stallion Inn? Close to that. You know, is it where the solar array is? Oh, that's on this side. Yeah. It's on the other side of the group. Is that important? It's broke. There's broke. That's on the other side of that. Okay. It's undeveloped and explicitly exception of the solar array. All right. So it's around the solar array. Got it. Yeah. It's a good piece of land. It might be a good capital investment. You know, because when you talk about what Lane's saying to become a hub, a centralized hub for people to come for sporting events, let's say, we currently don't have the parking to accommodate them. So it's not just, you know, we have to be thinking about, okay, you know, what's our vision? What's our brand? You know, and there's other things that have to go along with it. You know, do we want to increase access to affordable housing in the community? There's a desperate need for housing. You know, how might we utilize our tech center to leverage opportunities to build housing? Things like that. Like, do we want it? We're looking for vision. We're looking for ideas so that we act in accordance with like a five-year or a 10-year strategic plan. We have our own ideas, but our ideas don't matter. What matters is the ideas that the community has for what it envisions that its building and its school should be doing for the community, and that's a part of the conversation. You know, what things do we value, what things are going to help these kids get as far in life as they possibly can. But, you know, the piece that we've talked about was there was an old program in the state of Vermont where the state gave some seed money, which we still have sitting in an account from long before that I was here that was used to actually go out and purchase houses in and around the town that needed to be reworked, and then the tech center students would go out and would revamp the house. The houses would be sold, the money would be used to go and buy the next house, revamp it, and then sell it again. And through that process, over time, we were updating the housing stock because that's been one of the critical problems in getting more students and getting staff to come to the district is we just don't have housing in this area. And what we do is aged and needs to be reworked before people are going to find it, you know, something that they want to buy. So there's possibilities there. So, you know, if we bought the 30 acres, even if we didn't build the school there, if that's our intent, it might be we could work with the technical center to actually build a community of affordable housing. You know, a nice brand new that people can move into that will actually help get the population up a little bit around here. Schools in this state, they survive based upon enrollments. You know, if the enrollments are staying steady or they're growing, the school is going to perform well because the more students you have, the more funding you get from the state. And so the more students that come here, the more we can build things. You know, if the enrollments are going out, you know, the revenue that we get declines and then you end up having to cut stuff. We've been able to build things without charging the community more for the last couple of years because our revenues have been increasing enough but I'm not having to ask for more in taxes. Your taxes have gone up because your property values have changed, but in terms of what the school has done, I've actually brought your taxes down the last two years on the school side of things. But ideas, I know it's tough in a small group. If you've got checked, rebuild, renovate, leave it alone. And everything is okay to say. This is not a... I found it interesting when you said about, you know, the average life span of the average high school in this nation is significantly less than we are. No, like I said, they did the survey, they came in and inspected the facilities and when that group got done, it was a group of consultants that stated, put together, we were the school that was targeted as number one for being at the end of its useful life. And, you know, I think we experienced a little bit of that this past year. If we were to rebuild stuff, folks' feelings on priorities, you know, do we prioritize athletics? Like I said, do we look at a turf field? Do we look at a track? I had some other ideas that other folks had talked about, you know, a stem wing. The other one is a childcare center, you know, do we integrate that into the school that serves both the community as well as would help us retain staff? Because we've got a lot of staff that we cannot hire or who do not hang out because there's no childcare in the area. And so when their kids are out of school, often their own home district, they have to stay home, they miss a day here. It makes things a bit messy. But as you know, that also ties into the affordable housing. Yeah, because it's something that we could integrate a little bit with the tech center. It's really one of the problems with it is the childcare piece is so highly regulated. The rules are so crazy that, you know, we couldn't just have the kids do it with a teacher, we'd still need an extra body or two. But if the benefit that we're getting, you know, in terms of getting a highly qualified staff to come and stay, it's probably worth the outweigh because it costs a lot of money when there's turnover. Just out of the curious comparison, how does the elementary school across the street? Which one? 1995. Oh, sorry. Yeah, they're a little... Say that again? 2000. It was built in 1995. Oh, but it has the cornerstone? Oh, that probably was when they started. Yeah. You know what I know is because we moved here in 2000 and it was a brand new school they were just moving into. Yeah. That's actually a beautiful building. I know it's at least 20 years old because the roofs are good for 20 years and we just replaced the roof. That's usually the hallmark for it. But... Yeah, I know we'd even talked about, you know, the other piece, and again, if people want to have input. Again, there's not an agenda to it. These are things that have come up in discussion. You know, if taxes are... the biggest concern, which they should be in the state, is that there's also the possibility of consolidating. If we were to rebuild a new school, maybe we'd bring everything together on one campus. Maybe you've got a central portion of the building that has all the things that are kind of common and shared. Your cafeterias, your gyms, libraries, things like that. And then there's separate wings off there. One's for middle school, one's for the elementary, and then one's for the high school. Tech center, if we did something like that, the other things that folks have talked about in other meetings that we've had is so you get all the students here on one campus. There's cost savings, because you're not managing the other... having to maintain the other two buildings. And then the possibility is that the tech center then moves over to Randolph Elementary School. We renovate Randolph Elementary School to accommodate the tech center. So those are other possibilities that have been discussed. But I'm talking too much. You guys got to give me some ideas. You know what most of what's going on, more than we do. Oh, you think that. I just, I play it really well. But we're supposed to believe that. Yeah. Lots of ideas, concerns. Be honest. I personally would like to see that the other people's money gets out there. You know, what you were saying, does that go for renovation as well? Or is that just for... It can. It can. And the renovation might work. The next step that should be taken is a study. You know, we get an architect, we get an engineer in here, and we ask them those questions. It's okay, if we were going to try to renovate this current space, what would the cost be as opposed to building new? Sometimes it's cheaper to build new. Sometimes it's not. It depends what they decide they need to renovate. I think the complicating factor and the thing that might get into ramping up the cost of renovations is right. We've got to redo the electrical grid that supplies the schools. A lot of the plumbing probably has to be redone given the state of the pipes that we're bringing the hot water in. Because that same system that uses the hot water for the heat also provides the hot water for the sinks. And so if those pipes were degrading, it's likely that they probably have degraded throughout the whole building over the last 70 years. And so having to rip through the walls to replace those, you know, you're talking significant expense. If it were just a renovation or a touch-up where, you know, they're changing the chairs in here or they're painting in the basic cosmetic pieces, that's a whole different story. That would probably be cheaper. But the next step logically would be to get a group of folks in just to do a facility study and say, you know, based upon, you know, a cost analysis, this is your best bet. Best bang for the buck. And so that's something that I'll be asking for the board. We have reserve funds, which is good. It means I don't have to go and ask for the taxpayers for more. It's a good study that would answer all the questions that we need to answer, including taking a look at what's possible up at Vermont Tech. You know, we're probably talking in the $150,000 range to do that work and have that study done. But we also would have architectural plans and things that are up and ready to go at the end of it. That could either, you know, be used in an error, they could sit for a while until people decide that they want to pull the trigger on it. And so that's like a let's, which is a good logical piece, is let's figure out what, I would say let's figure out what the costs are for the possibilities. I'm going to buy a car without a gas. Okay, I got to buy another car. Pay attention. I want to see, I guess what I would like to see is how much it would cost the renovation. You know, get a quote. Yeah. Just like if you're at your house and you want to do some renovation work, ask other people to see how much their opinions on how much it would cost. And then how practical it would be and how it's going to cost more to fix than it would be to build new, like what you're saying, then that's going to bring it. But if we can fix, you know, or if we're not ready for it right now, if there's something we can do, I don't want to say to patch something to better it, I personally would like to see that happen before building new. It makes sense. So if I'm typing, I'm just taking the notes down to the stuff to follow up on. Which is a good one. I'm trying to do some other thinking, brainstorming here. So the quirky part about this building is it's very spread out. And so part of the analysis will be, you know, heating and cooling. We've got a building that's just this large. You know, the heating and cooling expenses can be pretty steep. Typically the newer buildings, you know, would be three, four stories tall, right, because you get the heat rises, it's more contained. In a situation like that we probably would have been able to keep the building open when the heating system failed because the temporary heaters that we brought in, we would have been able to get the heat molding from those temporary heaters. So there's those thoughts as well that go into there. And then the other question is if we do renovation, you know, is it worth it taking some of the land space to try and put solar out there, you know, and do most of the heating and cooling with heat exchangers? You know, if we can get depending upon where the state is and how much they'll let us generate, they used to have caps on it. But, you know, if we could generate the majority of the electricity we needed to run the heating and cooling, that's significant savings. You know, that's probably that's probably a million a year in savings of the taxpayers. That kind of an outlay. Thoughts on STEM. If things were renovated or rebuilt, what would it look like? Oh, I have to think much more about it. But actually what I was thinking is one less quantifiable thing is the value of having a walking village, right? So I, when you said when we started talking about VTC campus, I mean, I think it's great campus, you know, my son went there all that jazz. But I do know kids who like walk to moto for an hour and then come back for their sport practice and, you know, just having our school close enough that kids can walk downtown and back it's, I think there's value in that. Yeah, and it's a good point. They also, you know, they go into town they hit the little coffee shop, they're spending a little money so they're helping the businesses out as well. So there is a good point to be made there. I think VTC is just worth looking at just for the cost comparison. My guess is the buildings that might be available that they haven't been using you know, that was one of the things that they were having problems with was the deferred maintenance. And so, you know, again my biggest fear is that, yeah there might be some beautiful things that we could do up there but the cost to actually renovate and get the buildings up to the snuff really push the cost through the roof. But we got to have the study happen to figure that out. But yeah, I know definitely in checking in terms of what a full renovation, you know, would kind of look like. So all we're doing, we kind of did some background on the and it's good to see you here some background on the building and the facilities that we currently have and we've been kind of brainstorming possibilities of things that we should be checking on and taking a look at and things that we might want to prioritize so that I can use that information to build the survey to get out to the greater community. And so what we've been talking about is you know, the need to check get a cost estimate as part of the study of what it would cost to renovate as opposed to building new, potentially investigating what's up at Vermont Technical College to see as their college footprint is shrinking if there are buildings up there that might be quite viable to move the high school to. Then kind of the last comment that we kind of checked in on which was a good one was the recognition that it's kind of nice in a sense to have the students down here because they've got access to the town. We do have open campus for the students that earn it so, you know, if they don't have a specific class, you know, they got 45 minutes or whatnot that they can run over and grab a coffee really quick and whatnot and come back. I think that's an important point. Yeah. Because there was, you know, the use-worth behavior survey keeps coming back here that the kids do not feel connected to the town. Feel connected to the school but in terms of feeling a connectedness with the town that's been a difficulty over time. What percentage of students have tried? Oh, that'd be hard to estimate. I would say the juniors and the seniors, it's the majority because the parking lot is full. I've worked at buildings. When I was a principal whose population was, you know, three times what the district is and there were fewer cars in the parking lots from the students that are here. Yeah. Going way back when I was in high school they built a new building that was like a half mile away from the school from the town. There were certain places in the town where kids went to after school and it made no difference in their business. We weren't allowed to leave the building so there was no going into town for an hour. Yeah. Once you got there in the morning you had to stay there. Yeah, I couldn't give you that. We could go and investigate. I could probably find out the first thing tomorrow morning. My guess is the percentage is high. For the upperclassmen, the juniors and seniors, the ones that would have licenses, I would guess to make 75-80%. In terms of what you want to DTC or if they're going to drive anyway it wouldn't be a big thing if you're not this close. I got what you're saying. No, that makes sense. So if we got a lot of drivers and they still have that access to the village. Yeah. In terms of again, I'm not advocating for it, but it's a worthy discussion if we're talking about making these changes. What is the general feeling of folks of consolidation of schools? So if we renovate or we rebuild, we rebuild one large building here and eliminate the other schools. Just for and it would just be a cost saving mechanism. That would be the only benefit to it. Yeah. I agree with you. Yeah. But I got to ask the question. Yeah, I'm just we've been here now 23 years and anytime they were not doing something with one of those two schools it's like the world was coming to an end. Yeah. And their enrollments have been going on. Yeah. I apologize for sitting down here. It's quite comfortable. I appreciate it. I'm indulging me a little bit. Other parts and pieces and then we can kind of turn to other things. Other discussions at once. Just about the general idea of either renovating or rebuilding or relocating. Yeah. Just assume that hey, starting ahead before you're joining this stuff would be part of the process. Yeah. The next step potentially would be I want to get a survey out just to gauge the community's interest. My guess is what I'm going to find is a very similar yeah, we're interested but what's it going to cost which is which is perfectly appropriate and then that'll give the impetus don't lose your thought that'll give the impetus to get the study done to get the professionals to come out and do the estimates. Go ahead. Back in December we were looking at the eating issues and looking for additional spaces. I know that you did some exploration up at VTC. What kind of space considerations do you see as being a possibility up there? It'll have to have a good discussion with them because I think the context has changed right since that time you had the state regions come out and say we're getting rid of all athletics at these schools and we're getting rid of the libraries and they've reversed a little bit and so I know that they're in a state of flux. My expectation and I may be wrong but all things point to this is that they've got their campus up there they're going to need to shrink their footprint there's only certain of those buildings that they will need to continue the operations at Vermont Tech and that's assuming there isn't a decision made to just move the whole shebang to the Williston campus because that's where there's a bigger population up there to get more folks up there. If they shrink the footprint up there so that they only need to maintain a couple of buildings the buildings that remain something needs to be done with them and maybe those could be purchased for the high school and so we talked about two things it's a really kind of nice idea they've got nice fields they've got pretty nice buildings but the big questions for the study team would be how much do those buildings would they need to be renovated to suit our purpose and I do know like I said as their budgets got tighter there was a lot of deferred maintenance on those buildings that weren't used as much and so how much work are we going to have to do to get those up to speed? To be some of the dorm type buildings that are more accessible or to you to consider and how readily can those be converted to classroom considerations? I do know I have not been in what I don't know if they changed the name of it but what used to be called the old dorm when I went to school there in 1986 I did my first year there before I went over to Castleton the upper floors were the dormitory spaces the lower floors were actually classroom spaces which were pretty good but again you're talking if that's still the state there that building in and of itself might be large enough to do most of what we need to do for the high school it would have to be converted but there's other buildings there we're going to keep the advanced manufacturing building that's there or would that be something that they'd be willing to sell because that would be ideal for science and technology you know we might even you know if we talk about the fact that the tech center needs to be renovated as well maybe that's where the tech center goes you know is the library going to be available now that they're saying that they're getting rid of the library because classroom spaces can go in the library as well as still have it serve that function you know and what about the field house you know they got the nice pool they got quite a bit of equipment I think it was David Walk was putting it at all the state colleges at one time so you know if we had the old dorm if we had the advanced manufacturing building if we had the library that's up there and probably the facilities center that would probably be a doable a very nice doable situation for a transplant what's that what's the age of the old dorm they seem to have taken fairly good care of it it was an older building when I was there but it was pretty well taken care of like I said I remember taking it was the elective classes that they offered through there I took a lot of my English and my straight math courses there when I was there the years is the life expectancy is it already approaching that yeah but that's a part of what the study would have to determine you know we can talk with them these are the buildings that we'd be willing to part with and then they'd have to go in and take a look at them and say hey to make this a viable high school tech center this is what you'd have to do and this is the cost and then we got that comparison versus renovating here where you don't think there a slight funding trail but my freshman year in high school we were part of it it was just freshman then the next year was freshman and sophomore and so on but I had English Latin and Cazette all in the same classroom yeah no we want to one of the visions and again until COVID hit and like I said the stuff that was going on earlier this year one of the visions was improving the academics to the point building some kind of magnet programs like the STEM and the robotics so that it was an attraction to other students so that through school choice they were choosing to come here and we actually had been fairly successful in that you know if we had a nice campus like that up there we could attract more you know how there's been pretty good at the technical center about trying to work on the programming we were talking about bringing in plumbing as well today to try to build that tech center up as well and if we can offer some programs in there that aren't offered at any other tech centers around the state the students will come here to take advantage of and so the part of the game is making things attractive to get people to move here to attend the schools well we at least have to do renovation my guess is is that we'll if we come in and have people kind of do a survey and do that study that's probably a years worth of work which isn't a bad thing because the state has pushed off till next year making a final decision on you know construction funds matching funds and so those two things could align pretty well so if they come back and say hey you know we'll pay you 30% you know or 40% to rebuild like I said for me that's a no brainer at that point in time I would go hard hard to get it going if that construction aid doesn't pass and again I'm just talking about where my thought process is right now that's going to complicate things because then all the money would be coming from the local community and I do not want to put the community through that and then probably what I would switch to is more of a tact of okay we're going to do the renovation and we'll do it in stages you know it may take us 10-15 years to get it all done but we'll start off with the areas that need it the most right now the areas that need it most in the science way like I said they're just not conducive to effective learning and they're also in that area that's really gets really hot in the springtime so that was part of my high school experience that they were still building while we were in school yeah so with that that's a pass that's the kind of the backup plan but thought's an advice and then we can kind of move on to other things was the conversation at least did you learn anything or was it helpful a little bit got an intriguing idea that hurts the big thing too is hopefully as people walk out as you're reflecting on things if you have other ideas that you think are important email call me so that I can get it on the list because it really does help me figure out the best way to ask the questions of the community the bigger questions and then kind of separate from the potential building and construction project is usually with the open forums is we have time to just talk about anything that's on people's minds and so those are the things that questions or concerns about the district about any of the schools, about anything that's been going on this is the time and I'll give you the most candid answers that I can if there's things that people are thinking about it's always fun because when I say that it makes people feel awkward and then when they start asking some hanger-naid type questions that's not a big deal people feel alright serious what's going on with the mascot as far as I knew there was nothing wrong with it all of a sudden we're all a bunch of whatever's so the mascot it was interesting and I think one of the reasons that the challenge kind of fizzled out so there let's start at the beginning so the mascot itself because I did a lot of research going back all the way to the 30s when the Galloping Ghost I think it was probably closer to the 40s that the Galloping Ghost came on the scene the Galloping Ghost was never a problem and was never controversial they had had an original mascot picture that was a grim reaper on a horse basically a skeleton holding a scythe wearing a rope still see an old copy of that on the plaque that's out in the front of the school it sits out there by the parking lot of what that original mascot was that mascot was in place right up until the 80s and where the controversy as far as I can tell started was in the 80s they started the students started doing a contest a yearbook contest every year with this question of what does the Galloping Ghost mean to you and so the students would draw pictures and then those pictures would go into the yearbook and so those were never the official image of the mascot but they started to use them in and around the school and some of them most certainly did based upon the shape and the conical hats and the conical hat with the guy with the sword and the colors some of the images that came up during those years definitely I could see people saying yeah that's getting a little bit close to potentially looking like a KKK emblem so there was legitimacy to that claim my first year here I believe it was I walked into the middle of that controversy folks were the image has to stay the image has to come down we need to change the mascot and I was looking at what was happening in South Burlington and Rutland at the time where the two communities were ripping each other apart over the discussions about their mascots and it had gone on for years and it was never settled and so to try to save the community from going through that sort of acrimony and I told the community in my communication I'm just going to this is I've never done this in my life but I'm just going to make a decision on this because there will never be consensus this will be a fight forever so the decision made was the image comes down but the name Galloping Ghost stays so that image that they were challenging us on earlier this year that image has not been in existence for seven years so they were behind the times in their challenge to us because that's what they were concerned about it's like I don't know why we're having this conversation because we made a lot of progress here the image is down the school has been working with the students to create a new image which actually is finalized I don't know if you saw the picture today but it is basically just the ghostly horse without the rider and it's a beautiful picture the kids had two rounds of voting on it the first one the first couple images they voted on they actually kind of liked the idea but they didn't like the images they didn't feel they were ghostly enough so this one a lot has been approved by the kids and so that one will be going up and so that's where things currently stand so that image will be going on up in the field house will be used on their gear if they want to they also have the RU which is a neat little symbol too that they can use so I heard from somebody who's my senior who's been around here longer and went to school there and said that originally it was something that Randolph was wearing t-shirts as their uniform and a basketball game back in the day and they were swapping they were taking the court by surprise and the reporter asked the coach and they looked like Gallup and Ghosts can I use that and there is no if you do the internet search and check the Gallup and Ghost what comes up when you type that in there is nothing derogatory or connected with racism that comes up in those searches the images however if you some of those recent images from the 80s and 90s again that were never the official images they were images that the kids were creating for the yearbook some of those are pretty close to some of the actual images that the KKK was using back in the 30s and the 40s and so there is, you know when people are coming in and they're complaining about the image yeah there's a bit of truth to what they're saying and so that's the reason that decision was made but Gallup and Ghosts have stayed the big change has been the official image we wanted to actually go back to the original the skeleton on the horse we wanted to bring that back up but the reason that we didn't do that was because COVID hit and we didn't feel it was right with all the deaths that were happening with COVID to have a grim reaper as our mascot it just seemed very insensitive and so that's when they started to focus on the horse so good question so again it's not a perfect answer there never will be one for items of controversy but that's the best that we had at the time yeah good stuff, other questions again no topics taboo so are you still tossing the thought of replacing the very odd here? say that again are you still tossing the thought about putting something equivalent to the very odd the very auditorium in the Randolph area that surfaced at meeting back at a growing timeframe well I know that Brian Rainville and I agree with him was very concerned about the status of this auditorium it does need to be revamped there is reserve money that could do it we've held off the last year or two about doing any we've done major construction when it was a safety concern we've held off on stuff that's a little more optional even though it needed to be done because we didn't know about the construction piece we didn't want to put a million dollars into the auditorium if we were just going to tear the building down in three or four years to replace it it didn't seem wise and so that's one of the reasons we're having these discussions now is because hopefully by the end of the summer you will have a pretty clear vision of which direction we're headed in and know what we need to do because if we come back to renovation this will be one of the first areas as well as the science wing that we'll be going after this is an auditorium I understand but I thought you were talking about saying Randolph is the center of the state and that's where there should be a new facility for all the state championship so that was what we talked a little bit about that in here is that if we're going to rebuild the school for 75 or 80 million whatever I can kind of estimate it might cost at that point in time it might make sense to spend the extra 1.2 to 1.6 million to put in a turf field of lights so again so that we're the central hub so that at the end of season tournaments and things they all can happen here because as one of the problems with Vermont is the travel right for the sports teams you gotta it's a three hour it's three hours for some of the when I was in high school it was three hours to get to some of the people we competed with but since we're dead center in the state and not I-89 you know it would remarkably reduce most people's travel time to get to those tournaments and we could charge them you know charge them the fees to be able to do that and generate a little bit of revenue off it and so yeah that idea is definitely a possibility but it would again that will be you know a question in the survey to see if we if we rebuild is this a priority you know at the very least I would argue that we should have a track you know so that we can have a track team and fill the track team we got a lot of really good runners and the other reason that running across country running are so important is because you can all you're almost guaranteed to get at least a partial scholarship to most schools if if you're a decent runner you know there's not a lot of other sports in Vermont where the kids are coming out and getting big scholarships but running you always can so it's a good thought yeah so you confused me with the auditorium stay not not really a stadium but like I said the the turf field of the lights is a good thing other stuff on anything I do appreciate the time and I know it's a tough tough time of the year like I said the attendance dwindles when we get to these the last two months of school but I've got some notes that I've been able to take down there's some good thoughts that came up that were above and beyond you know what what other groups have discussed that I'll be able to integrate so I appreciate that and if there's anything that that comes up my email is right up on the the website if you got other ideas or questions that you want to ask that you didn't want to ask in the open form shoot shoot them to me I'm happy to respond and appreciate so are you here anyway did you come back were you here yeah I didn't go home but luckily I'm only a walk away all right were you good it was nice to stand up and it was nice to sit down thank you good to see you