 May I make an addition to the night's consent agenda, please? Yes, yes. The finance committee would like to put forward on the consent agenda approval to liquidate the earnest rich fund, which had existed in the Roxbury School District in the past to be liquidated and incorporated any residual revenue into the Merb's General Fund. So this is essentially an accounting cleaning up process it grants them working on since the merger that was directly very clear before the merger. So we finally got some clarification on this and we'd like to wrap it up for granted. Does anyone want to discuss this? Just one other point is this, what this will essentially do is take $12,000 that was being accounted for in a pretty labor intensive fashion and bring it into the district's general fund. Okay. We skipped an agenda item, but I'd like to pull the policy monitoring from the consent agenda. Yeah, we're not going to consent to do it. Okay, that's what I'm going to do. Okay, we're also going to add to the regular agenda an discussion about a possible lawsuit regarding the company jewel that our district lawyer brought to us. So I'll make those two additions adding the Ernest Rich fund cleanup to the consent agenda. Why don't we do the jewel one before the learning focus? Is that okay? Yep. Is there, how is it, would it be possible to put this fund into the... Regular agenda? Yes. Okay, thank you. Okay. Should we need a motion to put this in the regular agenda? I don't think so, I think. As long as it happens at the very beginning... As long as it happens at the beginning. Okay, yes. But before we do anything... Because Brian's read Robert's rules all of the 600... Is that a big paper on the 272? Now to Tina's point, public comment. Seeing none, we'll move to the consent agenda which no longer has the Ernest Rich proposal on it. So... Never had it. Never had it. Well, I think it had it for like half a second. No longer does. Okay, sorry. Do you need a motion to approve the consent agenda? Yes. If you've pulled the policy... Yes, you wanted to pull the policy. I'll move, since it wasn't seconded, I'll withdraw that and move to approve the consent agenda minus the policy monitoring report. Second. That was a paper. Fine. You opposed? So, let's talk about the Ernest Rich fund. Can we give it to the PIE? No, I think I'm going to talk about it. The parents, I forget what PIE stands for now. All the parents in education, partners in education. Partners in education, agreed. Yes. I'm not sure how we could give district money to another organization. That's a good point. I guess because it was a gift, rather than part of our... It didn't seem right to me to put it in the general fund if it's not tax-raining. It's from... So, it was a gift in the 1990s. It just seems like it would be cool if we could... Because if you could put it in Partners for Education, then it could keep its name on it. And maybe if it were used for something, they could have the name associated with something fun that the community would appreciate. Like I said, I know Grant. But Bridget is right, it's a different organization. Since it's a donation, are you allowed to do that? I don't know. This is something that had already been verified with the auditors. Who's the auditor's recommendation to put in the general fund? Yeah, for how to clean it up because of the amount of time. I was going to say Grant wasn't able to find any records on what the money was donated for. He had had conversations with previous business managers in both the old districts and there was really no... The money had never been used once it ended up in the district. Is it still in the form of staff? Yes. Well, there are four checks as well, totaling $4,000. It's held in a district fund. Now it is. Well, since when did it get there? With the merger. With the merger, it came. It was in Roxbury district before. It was in a public entity's bank account before the merger and it still is. Well, it was held in stocks. Oh, it was held in stocks, OK. So Grant has done a lot of studies. The original gift was stocks. Nobody had stock certificates for it or anything. So Grant had to request that. Like had to go through a regular rule but he couldn't request it at first because it was a new district, he's not Roxbury. So it's taken a lot of time to get this straightened out. At a certain point, over $12,000, the labor costs start to really cut into the value of that money. Well, without a donor intent, there's no memory of a donor intent that would surely make no point in getting fancy. Something we could always do, too, is if we do vote to move this into the general fund and we could follow up with Grant. Well, if we move it into the general fund, that's discretionary and we could do anything with it from there. So if we wanted, if we did find it, that there are, if you want to do some sleuthing in there in a stretch. Right, I mean, if we ultimately found out who he was, do something like. Are we owning stocks then? Is that something that's equal for a school district? It is. It's like, I'm trying to say, it's highly visual. Wasn't there like a $700 transfer fee just to move it from the district into an existing school district? Which is why probably our auditor was just like, get rid of it. Tony, what exactly are we going to do with it? Go to the general fund. But are we going to equidate it? Yeah, we're going to equidate it. That's not America. Proposed actions liquidate the stock. Oh, there it is. Last line. So then, can I make a motion? We're taking a motion. Are we just having a general? I think we're just having a general discussion. I move that we follow the, I move that we direct the administration to carry out the proposed actions for the earnest rich fund. I second. All those who have ever. Hi, I'm Ian Post. Thanks for watching, Carries. And if you want to talk about the. I know. I'm thinking the same thing. Rock Street? Rock Street? No one. The monitoring board, the very last thing on the monitoring board says more guidance from the board is helpful regarding what data they would like to see for all of the subscripts listed within this policy, particularly, yeah, yeah, yeah. See that last number six on here. And so I thought maybe to Libby's benefit, we pull it and say, not that we have to do this this moment, but how will we do this? So my question there is how, how do I gather that data around family? Like what data would you see? It listed these subgroups under data the board would like to see about our student family population. So one, how do I collect that data? I could just do surveys. That's going to be very limited. And then would you like to see it? And it's hard data to collect. And it's private data. It could be private data to collect. I'm saying I didn't know me. Yeah. This come out today from Center of New Directions about the at risk population and encourage and parents kids from sixth grade to 12th grade to take parents to take this survey. I'm wondering if there's somebody that would get at some of the gender identity sexual orientation mayoral states identifying kids at risk wondering if we could get some sort of report from them. From the use risk behavior surveys? I think we can, if that's not out yet. It's not out yet. But yeah, when that comes out we plan on fully analyzing that and I will share those results from the board. Because that might get to some of these. It gets to some of them, things it doesn't get to is marital status, family composition. Well, when I go back up to the original, the last line says the board will receive reports that monitors data to this end. So. So the discrimination are discriminatory. Right. So maybe that is. We talked about this in the different drafts of this policy, the data piece. And I feel like we had some indication from the administration at some point that everything was something that could be brought forward. It was achievable. I don't remember, we didn't get in specifics, did we? In those conversations when we were drafting this. I think it could. I mean, we could bring information from survey data. This percentage of our student body identifies this way. And has this family composition. Would it be identifying in some cases? I think it would very well be identifying. And we, I would end that, you know, if the inside was too small, I wouldn't state that to the board in any way. But I tell you that, right? As far as how, I guess, monitoring the policy makes me look at it a lot closer. And so how do I let the board know that we have or don't have equitable practices for groups of people that concern their marital status or family composition that's harder to say? I think one thing we were looking for, you do have number five here that we're working on complex resolution, but I would say incidents or complaints from students. You know, one thing that really moved a lot of people, a lot of people's awareness was the students of color bringing complaints of specific incidents that they were experiencing. And the family composition thing, actually I added after hearing that a student who was... Make your comment, Michelle. A student who was adopted and who was of a different ethnicity from their parents was upset about a class assignment where they had to write an essay about how resembling their parents affected their experience in life. And the student said, I can't write this essay. And the teacher said, yeah, you can. Go for it. So I doubt that was reported to anyone other than the student's friends. But, you know, any kind of incident like that does come to the attention of our administrators if we can see a decline over time in those incidents arising. So the issue of reported discrimination, that would be the data in preference to who falls in that category. Maybe it doesn't matter if nobody's being discriminated against. I know that sounds a little strange, if we had some accounting of reports. Incidents, yeah. Because I think, you know, we have a tendency to think, oh, everybody's happy here. Everybody's nice to each other. And then we hear from the students that that's not the case, but it's... Actually, I was thinking as you talked about it, maybe it wouldn't be bad if the incidents reported went up, if that was the case, right? Yeah. I'm going to grapple with that a little bit more. Is that okay? I was just remembering that I think that's what we were talking about. Was the student experience of feeling... Marginized. I have a question on it. Number four, under compliance, and if that's correct, we have not addressed religion on our policy and on our data measures. And we've been asked to do so. So there's... I talked to a former school board member about the religion policy that the former district had that was not picked up by the new district. There wasn't any institutional memory left on the board about the origin of that policy. So I think the policy committee just thought, well, this isn't a VVSBA policy, like maybe this is just an out-of-date policy. So it wasn't in the first tranche of things where we were doing all of the required policies. But it turns out it was never a VSBA policy, and it had been a very specific community effort to address religion. And it's a very thoughtful, it's very detailed. I mean, it goes to the level of a procedure in some cases, I would say, but it was addressing scheduling, awareness of holidays, curriculum, how religious holidays are acknowledged in the classroom or not, music, education around religion, the difference between teaching about religion and celebrating religious holidays. So it's something that we could probably should, actually we should look at that policy again and think about whether or not we didn't address the issue. When I was having conversations with the group who brought this to my attention, we looked at that policy together and came to, well, I don't want to speak for other people. However, it was my understanding of the conversation that I was saying, I'm monitoring the equity, diversity, and inclusion policy upcoming because it was very recent. And I said, I wonder if just adding religion to that policy suffices the need from this particular organization. And they said, yes, it would instead of having a separate policy. Because we got into lots of good conversations around when that policy was written we had a different population of students. So which religions do we teach and which don't we? And how do I get my teachers trained on all of the religions of the world and how do I get them experts so they're not just talking about multiples? And I was asking some questions around that kind of thing which is my reading of the original policy, the religion policy, was asking our teachers to do. So they were like, those are all very good questions. I think you just need to put in your equity policy. That was the final kind of conversation point. But I also want to speak for them. How does that look? I just want to shut up. My understanding is the big issue is kind of awareness, especially awareness of like this we have. Our calendar schedule tends to revolve around primarily Christian holidays and I think there's some awareness of Jewish holidays and very little awareness of Muslim, Hindu, even other major religious holidays and virtually no awareness of minor religious occurrences. So when we schedule something on Yom Kippur, that creates a problem for a lot of our families. Yep, we had those conversations. Jim has been involved with myself and Anna as we've pulled, we've made steps already to pull lists of all the major holidays and make sure that everybody has those. They're not scheduling field trips and they're not scheduling big track meets and things like that that happen this fall. We messed up this fall, right? So we're going to fix that through other means, too. I'm not sure our policy is going to help. You know, like if we need to take that step or not. But adding something to the equity policy might be a problem. And it would remind you in monitoring something that's being monitored for. Yeah, I think whenever we have these discussions about religion, I talk with my wife about these. I can't help but think about two of my best friends in high school practiced Ramadan and they wouldn't eat for a month during the days and all day long they were hungry and having to go to school and they were brothers. One of them was the goalie on our soccer team and like 30 minutes before a match was going to begin, he was eating for the first time all day and I just felt for him. But, you know, there are a lot of different considerations. I don't know exactly how a school schedules around all of these different. I mean, and it practically can't make everything stop but I think awareness and an attempt and I think also knowing the demographics of your community, too. It's just more of an even distribution across the calendar year. Rather than making sure all the sporting events don't fall on one religious holiday or one religious tradition versus another. That would really be the best case scenario is that everybody has one sporting event and they can go home and celebrate with a traditional festive meal. A traditional festive meal? I think it might be helpful and this is going farther than we're contemplating but to invite in either families or probably families would be best. Invite in parents of non-Christian faiths and ask them which days of the year are really non-negotiable because we don't, you know, as... I don't know. There are differences in the seriousness of different holidays and it's going to be a big problem to schedule an event on this holiday but not necessarily that holiday and if we just ask. So again, I ask how? So how do I ask people when I'm not identifying their religion for them? Could you use a Google Form asking? Could you put it in the principal's newsletter? Hey, if you want to help us learn about what's important, contact us. I think also Jim's point about awareness, the bottom line for me would be I wouldn't want you penalized. So if you took off today because of some holiday that was important to your religion I don't want the teacher to be giving you a gulf or you to lose something because of it, you know, that sort of... You know, I wonder, do we have this data already? If we went back and we looked at attendance records and we found that there were certain weeks throughout the year that we were having high absent rates because there was a tradition that was being celebrated that it didn't fit with the school calendar. I don't know if our end size is big. Yeah. You might not be able to do it just from that because some students might come and feel very conflicted, you know, families might feel conflicted because they're not doing well on... They have an exam that day and they want them to do well in that exam, but, you know, they're not having a certain... We have ideas of how to work through this. It's just in terms of a policies perspective. This particular organization asked if the policy committee would consider adding religion to the equity, diversity, and inclusion policy. I thought it was already on there. Yeah. I think it's certainly worth it. But that in the oversight category. Yeah. Thank you for that discussion. I move that we accept the monitoring report. Second? Second. All those in favor? Any opposed? Great. Yeah, I can give a brief... Yeah. ...of what you can fill in. So, Pietro, then, the attorney who does work for the district, contacted us. He's apparently been in touch with some other attorneys and there is a class action lawsuit that is being put together against a company jewel for basically practices that target youths for their products. And as you're probably all aware, the more we know about vaping and, you know, kind of smokeless tobacco and, you know, et cetera, the more we're realizing that the health risks are huge, the addiction risks are huge, and there does appear to be a very deliberate approach to mark these products as important. So, there's... I see several upsides to this for a few downsides. It would be a litigation focused on holding the company accountable for their practices targeting kids with the possibility of a large settlement that I think would both be punitive for the company, hopefully result in changes in their practices, if not, changes in their business model, and it has the potential to bring not insubstantial funds into the district as part of a settlement award. And I think, as long as we continue to check and it's very legit, it seems to be very legit. Yeah. I don't see any real negative downsides and I think the community would be supported and I'm certainly supportive. Would it do more than just target with this lawsuit potentially established precedent for other state makers as well? I know Jules is like the big game in town, but... It could, yeah. I mean, it could certainly set a signal that if you target kids to school districts we'll come after you, but it's not okay. And has this lawsuit already been filed and there's just more parties that are joining or how? I can't push the email that it was in the works. I don't know if it's filed in Vermont. So we wouldn't have any attorney fee liability? It's a contingency. It's a contingency. Is it going to be filed in Vermont or is it a national? I don't think it's being filed in Vermont. There was an article on it. If we win, Pietro gets paid, but do we? Well, that was going to be... Is Pietro counsel in the case, or is he just referring us? He sent us an article and it's been a few days since I read it for the Los Angeles Times about this. So I think it's... it may be originated in California. He said other districts in Vermont are interested. There are four already who have signed up. Four who have signed up? Do you know who they are? Yes. Should I say that now? Let me bring it up. Have you been told not to say it? Okay, go ahead. It must be public now. It will be. If I haven't filed suit, why not be public now? Mabel Run, which is St. Albans, a 6th Westford, Addison Northwest, Colchester, and others will join. Yeah. I think it's a good idea. Do we have to... Well... In principle, I'm all for it. I don't know what type of liability would be exposed to the expenses we could be exposed to. Exposed to... I mean, the only possible one if it was... I mean, I can't imagine it's such a baseless case that they built the doctors for fees. Right. That's a pretty high standard. There could be discovery. So you could end up having to turn over documents for records. So if the operators get deposed, could happen in any lawsuit? Do we have any basis... Do we have any basis beyond obvious to claim that our kids are harmed? I mean... We know there's use, right? Yeah. Are you asking whether or not our kids are using these products? Oh, no, I know that the kids are using the products. That is not a question. But I just don't... If they charge us for discovery, they are looking for documents. Do we have... I guess we have documentation of when we've caught kids, but... We would have documentation of when we've caught kids. We also have documentation of going back to what Becky talked about yesterday, or a little while ago about the youth behavior survey that they're self-reporting data. Could it potentially have health records in it? Jim, is there a point in which if we're going to discuss possible evidence that the district might have that we would do this in executive session? Whether we do or do not have evidence that might support it, I don't know whether it makes sense to have that be on the public record if we're considering litigation. If we're... The decision to have to engage in litigation is not something that we would necessarily put into a closed session, but if there's something that would disadvantage or advantage in the case, then I don't know. I'm not even sure what our litigation approval process is. Whether... We've done some amicus briefs and the board has approved. But we haven't been playing it in a suit. We haven't. Which is why I thought it would be good to discuss it with the board. Because I'm not... It feels like a decision the board should make to me. It feels like a decision the board should make to me. Why would it be in the school district doing them? Why wouldn't it be the parents? Well, I mean... Because the school district incurs costs. Yeah, the theory would be that the school districts are incurring some particularized harm in dealing with the problem I see them I haven't read about the claims but that would be the theory. Does it make sense that you and Jim maybe would see the specific written complaint? So you... I mean, it's hard to answer when you don't know or do you have that already? It's a timing. It's a timing with the need for a decision. Right, so close. PHR got in touch with me last week. I emailed Jim and Renee for the principal to see what their thoughts were. Renee immediately was like, I'm all in. They're targeting our kids. Jim and I talked about it on Friday. I asked PHR a couple more questions like who's joining and did he see any potential downfall and he said no. He did not as our lawyer and he told me the other districts that have already signed on and then he sent me just this afternoon a client representation agreement. So he... I don't know. He hasn't told me you need a drop that date. Could we... I'm just... I think about a motion to have I don't know how the chair and vice chair feel about exploring this, taking a look at this language and then next meeting we could vote on it. You could tell us if you see any big disadvantages to doing this. Maybe we could have a discussion next meeting in executive session if we feel like that's called for. Just give both of you an opportunity to look it over a little more as the chair and vice chair lawyer. We are not the school district lawyers. No, not the school downfall but that's important to distinguish. Who's the client? Who's the form between us and who? Who's the sign on? As a client, representation letter. The district. It's the PHROS law firm. PHROS firm, okay. PHROS? They are the counsel. Frazier, ELC and Mele and Mele and ELLC so we would attempt to look and see exactly what they are. I propose that you guys will get it until it's next time. So they may have stepped into the Vermont schools is what I'm guessing if this is a national thing they may be rounding up all the Vermont schools. So we need to at least understand our relationship with them and whatever might come back. Okay, so let's go further. But there's in general yes. We don't have the issue of facing your kids. Figure out what potential liability the district could incur if things go sideways. Yeah. Okay. Or we just have particularly aggressive defense counsel who want to make us feel pain. So this is less me talking and more asking the board to look at the enrichment data that we have right now in terms of the money that's been spent. The board has discussed on numerous occasions how much and what we want to put in our budget in regards to enrichment after school activities. And as Grant and the administrative team and myself are forming this year's budget I was interested in you looking at the data that we have thus far and having a discussion amongst yourselves around where we want to go with this because a decision could significantly impact other things that we're looking at in the budget process. So there's no real learning here other than here's the data discuss what we want to do in terms of future budget. And maybe you would explain to the team that we had spent more this year on the after school program than we had anticipated. Yes we did spend we are spending more on after school enrichment than anticipated for several reasons. So the budget that you see here in fiscal year 20 canoes life jackets paddles kayaks and trailers were repossessed by people and we had to buy new ones for our PE classes to use. So that was an unanticipated equipment fee which we used fund balance money for. The bridges program at Roxbury was more than anticipated in the budget it was brought to our attention after the budget process after the budget had been voted on last year in the spring so that was more and currently the parent contribution hasn't come in quite at the exact rate that we thought it would come in at this point in the year. That could change over time. Drew is starting a new program technically and he's learning his ways around what he can and cannot do after school. So what are your questions to us? The question is the board discussed putting more money in our enrichment budget. Do we pay for it all? Do we not pay for it all? Why do we pay for some enrichment activities and not other enrichment activities? And so right now we will budget for basically again how this year has gone should the board not give us other guidance. But if the board wants more money put in that then you need to tell us now because we don't know where else. Why would we put the way you said it, it sounds like we're putting more money in some enrichment activities and less money and others, is that true? No, it's just differently spent. So we budget for sports. We don't charge kids for sports. But we charge kids for mountain biking. It's just differently spent. But all the things that fall under enrichment are sort of funded in the same manner. You don't fund more for canoes than you do for car. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That's funded in the same manner. It's kind of the bucket of what do we call enrichment? And what do we call extracurricular sports? Extracurricular sports. Is there anything else in that category? You got sports and then all these things. There's all these music. There's drums. There are some things that we offer from the co-curricular perspective that that are also covered in the way sports is. Isn't the plague. We have sports teams that fundraise, though, quite a bit. When sports teams fundraise, they're fundraising for extra fancy jackets. Yeah, fancy jackets or things with their name across the back of them. They're funding for things that are not going to be the property after the season is over, that the kids are going to take home themselves. And busing for transportation. That's included in the co-curriculars. I had a, I'm sure that Libby could tell the same stories, but I had an interesting experience with Drew in the last month. I went on an overnight camping trip with the kids who were learning kind of like the outdoor wilderness skills. And we went over to Grotton. We had a fifth grader and a seventh grader in that after-school program. And Drew and I got to sleep in a lean-to together and talk about kind of what's going on with the program and kind of challenges. And I got to observe firsthand some of the dynamics. And first of all, Drew's incredible. Number one. And his ideas are huge. And I know that what's out there, there is a ton of potential. I kind of feel like Drew sees it all as his own, he does it. And it would be nice if it was a team. There were more humans to execute the plan because there's only so much that can be done with the resources. I'm sure it's true throughout the school district. But one of the real challenges I could see and then it played out immediately afterwards was that fifth through eighth is a big range in middle school. And it's really tough to design a single after-school activity that would serve all those kids. And he was trying to do that. But what he saw was that it's hard to keep kids. For instance, if you had an outing kind of club or something and you tried to run that, you really need to dramatically change what you're offering from the younger to the older in order to keep the older interested. Then we had the sign-ups for the next section and my oldest was like, I'm not doing that again. And I'm like, why? I was a kid and I knew all that stuff already. And it was too bad because it's such a great program. But I get it and I just see that there's so much potential. So I would definitely advocate for the resources to let that vision kind of bloom a little bit more anyway before we kind of box it in with resources. So it's a big responsibility to put on one person's shoulders. I know he has the support of the administration but it is a tough job. On the other hand, this is sort of a new program that's just started and hasn't even played out. My first reaction would be to play it out another year in the budget as it has been this year and then tend to even what would he think he needed and he'd have a better idea. Yeah, he is fantastic. I want to make sure that we say that on public record. And I keep pushing him to get his license so we can use him even more powerfully. Exactly. And one of the, like he, it's a new season, right? So he was saying, I was just talking to him the other day, he's like, fall, fall sports teams are big. They're larger teams, right? And so he's like, that takes a lot of kids who might be interested in the things that I can offer. So I didn't get as many people who I thought I'd get for the fall. Winter teams are smaller, and there might be less of them. So I'm counting on more kids signing up for skiing and all the bigger programs that he typically runs. So he's playing with numbers still and learning what to expect from just seasons and sports alone. So I think he'll have a better idea after another year of what he needs. One of the things I know that he's experienced, or we've experienced experiences, scrambling to find advisors basically for the different projects. So it's not just him running from one to the next, to the next doing it himself only. He's getting a co-person to help him with some of those things. And I don't know how successful that is. I don't know how well that's going, but I think it's limiting or directing kind of what he can offer and what he can. Yeah, and that's been a new experience for us financially too. Is it a contract or contract that we offer? Is it a co-curricular? Then they become our employees, but they're not really our employees. It gets tricky. It gets really just the bureaucratic structure of how we have to run our finances. We have to... We're learning that still. We're making it work right now, but I know that he's feeling a lot like he has to do it all because it's the easiest way to do it because he's already our employee. So, yeah, we've had to learn how to do that. So on the finance side, the estimated compared to the budgeted amount, that difference. Have we addressed that previously? How we're going to cover that? Well, we don't have to buy canoes or kayaks now. We've got... Well, no, no, no. It's the current fiscal year. If you only have a certain amount budgeted... Say it again. I'm sorry. So there's about a $40,000 difference between what was budgeted and what the estimating is going to be needed for the program for the year. Have we had a discussion yet about how that's going to be covered? I mean, you've just mentioned it in the first quarter report. That's one of the things that we're over on. And these costs are addressed in the fund balance. Are you asking how we'll cover this year or what about next year? I'm talking about right now, fiscal year 20. Normally, we get a proposal to move things from fund balance. And we haven't seen that. That's what I'm getting at. Grant is on that kind of thing. I was wondering what the plan is. I think he's waiting to see what happens. Right? So just the fall thing I was just talking about. You know, like we could get way more kids in the winter. Taking part in our... So much program fees. Which means more parental involvement. That's already baked in here. At least in the 21 budget. Oh no, it's in here as well. You have your actuals there. We don't know what the estimate is for full year. Right? So we haven't gone through a full year yet. Yeah. I don't know what to ask for yet. That's what I guess I'm getting at. Okay. My question to you is how... And I think you just answered it, but I just want to make sure we're all clear. How do you plan to cover that difference if it ends up being the estimated amount? What is going to be the proposal? Is it going to be use fund balance? Is it going to be... For this fiscal year, I wasn't certain if there was another area of the budget. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. But it's a little early because it's only the first quarter, so it's hard to know where that will end. Yeah, but should that not happen? Should he not be able to figure it out in other ways? We just have to find out. The Joule Settlement. Yeah, the Joule Settlement. I'm sure it would be psyched. Is it... Well, that's kind of how we got the scoreboard in the middle school, right? It was like Coke's apology for caving the kids so much sugar. I didn't know that. I'm comfortable continuing the current level of funding given the newness of the program. I mean, it doesn't sound like we have a specific proposal for we need to do something else. And honestly, it sounds like because we really don't know yet. Let us play out a year. Is that kind of what you're recommending is that keep it the way it is? Because otherwise you might come in here and go, you know what, we're seeing this that really this isn't going to work unless we have next. We're not really saying that, are we? No, I'm not saying it's not going to work. I think we're servicing very similar amount of kids as we have in the past through this programming. It's just now we're dealing with the financial and bureaucratic things that we have to figure out and let it play. I would recommend the board that we budget this year based on what we are thinking this year's cost, or budget next year, based on what we thought about already and bumping it a little for the bridge's piece because we know they're going to come out and ask us for more and then let's figure out what we really want for the next year. And we did discuss this during finance committee. The issue of bridges it is something that deserves evaluation because that's about 20% of the resources which for after school which is going to this bridges program the question is could we use our might we be able to provide more for the same amount of money or provide the same amount for a little bit less? Bridges is part of the 21st century grant and so we have to decide whether we stick with that grant or it would be cheaper to do it on our own. We're paying that money goes to central finance. One thing that might be interesting to in this question I don't think is answered in here is to look at the ages of the kids or the grades of the kids who are taking advantage of the program. Am I missing it or is it not? You break it out by high school and middle school but I'm sorry and I think even more fine sort on it I think we might see some real trends in that you know I think that the intersection of the enrichment and the childcare kind of family need versus enhance enrichment and I think you can see it pretty clearly in the middle school that it moves pretty quickly from young to old in terms of the family that has much less need for childcare or perhaps the kids are more resistant to childcare as they get older either way it drops off fast and yet we really want to be doing enrichment for those kids who maybe don't even they aren't attracted to it naturally but it may be also the types of program we're offering aren't attracting those kids and so if there's no family need maybe we don't need to spend the money unless we see it as a value to do enrichment so I just think maybe if we knew ages it would help us sort that out a little more. And we'll know better as she was saying differences between fall sports and Drew I think has been putting some effort into learning what he can offer at a high school in particular. I mean you'll see that kind of down in the at MIT. How can he be in two places at once? He's a busy man. And we were previously spending what like between 40 and 50. Oh more than that. Well we were giving community connections last last year it was budgeted like $37,000 was budgeted for community connections and parents were paying on top of that. And this year we're looking at $93,000 for the same services and parents were paying for that. Oh yeah take bridges out so it's $78,000. Oh yeah yeah. So $60,000 but are we getting better value for that money from your perspective? I think that's yet to be determined. Okay. Because it is 20, 23, 24, it's almost like a 40% increase in what we're spending for the same. And the result and the question is whether our more kids participating and we don't know the answer to that. We are providing a higher quality job for Drew than he had I believe. Which is also was also a goal of the change. Also kind of a false comparison since the other program, I mean at least when you think about things like the insurance those things weren't really going to be able to continue the way they were anyway. So we have to be careful not to you know there's some, there would have been some escalation in cost. We tried to keep it outside the building outside the district anyway. The other thing, Steve to that end as well, the other thing that is not contributing to that which is an enormous factor was that basically the fees that UES parents were paying community connections for the after school care were paying for the middle school programming. So we gave $36,000 to community connections. However the reason why they were able to do enrichment programming was because UES was a very large money maker for them. And so you know it was almost like an add-on because UES was such a big money maker. So now it's too soon. Now UES is served by part two. As well as MSMS of 7 and 15 kids in that too. Our parents paying less. It depends on their socioeconomic status. I think it's too soon. So part two is also at the middle school. So we have in addition to this program at the middle school, we also have a child care program at the middle school. That only serves younger kids. That only serves younger kids and doesn't cost us anything. Doesn't cost the district anything. So we do have, we have somewhat expanded our after school options. Oh we have definitely expanded our after school options. I'm sorry, I was including part two of that. But I mean it's only November 6. I don't know how we can possibly assess what we're doing with it. It's just too soon. Well we can do it. If we're offering like double the programs that we were before and we have double the students enrolled this time of year. That's all I'm saying. I think it's worth assessing what we're three months into the school year. It's worth at least saying how we're doing. We want to continue doing it. Well it's now or never because we're building a budget. It's the problem of building a budget early. Minor assessment and then we move on. We just say, you know what, we don't have enough data. Let's keep going. That's why I'm saying let's keep on with what we've got and see how the year plays out. I would say though from the reckoning we just did that it's looking decent. I mean we are, our net expenditure is greater but we have added and we have, when we're providing better quality employment. Yeah and that's the general story that I'm trying to dredge out of this because we're looking at you know, if I'm a taxpayer who's watching this closely I'm like okay you guys were spending $37,000 before and now it's $93,000. We can explain the bridges component that's in there. And the equipment which comes out of there. But then you know, there is enhanced if we're offering more programming that's you know that's part of it. I'm just looking at what's going on on the municipal side and I think that there's a very distinct chance that there's going to be some budgetary pressures this year on us that we haven't had in the past couple of years because of major health insurance overages and I think municipal tax rates. And infrastructure. They don't have to manage special education. He started steeped. You know, I think the other part of the analysis would be to look at the part two pieces going in how parents are doing with that and all that but I think we can call it, we can wait on that because it doesn't have direct budgetary impact but it will be part of our overall assessment of whether the decisions we've been making are going in the right direction. That's a good end of the year. I actually just spoke to them today about some of their numbers and things like that. Great. Maybe then at some point Do we have to what point do we have to renew the contract or not? I assume that you do that but isn't there a they are going to do summer programming and I mean it's kind of a year round continuation so unless we see significant reason to not use them so there's not an actual contract that's going to that has an end date. No, it has to be renewed. They will be doing summer programming starting up right after school. Well we have a contract with them. Some provision in the contract about renewal or termination or something. I have to check. Because that just might be a timing point. With ample time we should probably be looking at just to do that kind of do diligence hey we've made huge changes and now let's go back and reflect and how are we feeling about these changes and how is the community feeling about these changes and it would be great to have them come in or whoever not yet but at some point in January or something maybe or March. That's a different topic. Did you need something? No, so what I'm understanding from the discussion is that we're going to budget similarly similarly sorry similarly to how we budget this year using perhaps more of our actuals using perhaps more of our actuals and the board is okay with that. Okay, thank you. Great, perfect. So now we are on to board discussion. District enrollment MHS class sizes and motion to and with the action of being able to approve the one FD higher for the school year for middle school. So I'll open up the discussion. That's for everyone to scroll through the data. I have a general question. Other than wanting to take dystopian fiction I don't know. I don't take Irish. I know you can just watch me do this. We're talking about what high school classes we're taking. So we have this what you can see in the red and yellow table here and we were talking about this before as you can see a bubble moving up in terms of class size and there's a distinct possibility that our average class size will go back to our sweet spot two, three years from now in MSMS. So what are you thinking about Libby in terms of a plan for addressing this bubble? I'm glad you asked that question, Andrew. So in discussing this at length with Pam and Jim knows this as well as we're projecting out three years of what our needs are academically and social emotionally hiring one FD now to address the bubble of kids that will be there for the next two years after this year, right? So it's a sixth grade class now that is large and then 70, right? We'll continue to be large. Once that bubble moves through moving that FTE into an intervention position which is needed at the middle school as well and will continue to be needed. So that's the idea is that it wouldn't always be in a classroom teacher piece. It would move into a support, a teacher support not an IA but a support either SEL or academic intervention. And are you thinking it will be the same person or are you thinking that there's going to be attrition? Every year there's a certain amount of attrition and with one of those teaching positions you'll repurpose that. That is really hard to answer because it depends on licensure. Middle school licensure is a beast so you could be hired under a K6 license so you could teach up to sixth grade all content areas or there's a middle level endorsement which is a content specific so you could only teach seventh grade math math for instance. So it really depends who the hire is and what their licensure availability is. So do you think you might hire under a one year contract for next year and a one year contract for the next year because an interventionist might have you want to have other skills? If I'm... If you're hiring any new teacher it's a provisional for two years so technically when you really get down to it you're hiring it's a provisional. It's a provisional but I'm trying to be honest up to the teacher I'm hiring to so I might say this is a sixth grade position you might be certified to teach sixth grade this year but then you're not certified to teach seventh. Many middle level educators have dual licensure so we'd have to it's a... It's a tricky beast, right? So we want to hire the best person for the job and plenty of our educators have multiple licenses so it's an FTE I don't want to think of it as a person I want to think of it as an FTE and where do we need that FTE at the middle school? Currently we need it at that bubble it's just a classroom teacher Didn't we not approve this yet? No we don't This is the same thing we talked about before So has somebody actually registered for this in the sixth grade? The last board meeting you said a family was coming in to bump it up and they hadn't registered yet, did they actually register? I don't know It sounds like we're on this collision course regardless. Last meeting I think we had 35 new students enrolled to the middle school this summer We're on this collision course but the when we need to hire them does not necessarily come about unless there's somebody here to I guess the question is whether we want to have that bulletility at all times or whether we want to have be positioned Yeah Steve? I think that's the issue. Remember we entered this fiscal year irresponsibly close to the line that's one way to look at it and therefore we put ourselves in a position where mid-year we're doing a hire I'm not saying we were irresponsible I'm saying that you could argue that we were We talked about that at the last meeting that maybe we should have done that I don't think we were irresponsible We were over the limit The difference between being over a limit which compels you to action versus looking at your ideal distinction and I think that what we try to do is be closer to the optimal and then if we get close to that line we know we're playing with fire and in this case we got burned So I'm not thinking in retrospect we might do the exact same thing but the point is that there's a good reason to step back from the edge and whether or not we cross the over or not and so if we step back from the edge we don't have to be so reactive My question though was Libby that we need an interventionist Are we prepared to wait until the 22-23 year to get that interventionist? I mean if you know now that you would ideally have one and we're going to see the bubble start to relax at that point is then the time to hire the extra FTE for that or do you feel like well there's still partial bubble there or I'm just wondering how you I get to me it's an easy one to say look we're going to use the FTE through 21-22 then that position may evaporate because we won't need it, that's fine it's hard personnel decisions but it's the way it goes but then what about this interventionist and putting it off for that long? My best answer for that state which is a very good question is the administrative team is prioritized needs and right now the intervention position at MSMS while has been a stated need has not reached the priority level in other areas so there are large priorities that we can only ask for so much in a budgetary year and we have prioritized other things so that by no means sort of the hard plan is that that position will become an interventionist it just sounds like it could be because you may need it earlier or you may decide at that point that's still not the need as we think three years out which we are thinking right now prioritizing next year versus the year after versus the year after as of what we know right now from our system and our needs at this moment in time which could very well change that is what our plan is You had said before there was something about getting the system in order also before you needed those people so I assume you're still working on that Is the maximum of 25 I'm seeing the way it was presented here it looks like it's greater than 18 or less than 25 it doesn't look like it's less than or equal 25 but I might just be looking at that too literally so if we're at 25 are we indeed at 25 right now because we have yellow as 25 close to the max as soon as if we get one more student in the sixth grade we'll be at 25 we're at 99 so the red boxes are where we're at 25 and the yellow boxes are where we're at 24 and it says 25 and it's in the yellow you know that's wrong where are you 19 to 20 you may have included oh I don't know that's what I'm saying I'm saying are we actually already at max my understanding is currently without this particular student registered registered that we have 99 students in four sixth grade classrooms we're right there and there's a question of what's the goal so we have 25 in three classrooms and 24 in one classroom which says we need one more student and be at your max I'm sorry I'm wrong but that one student will push us over the max sorry I was doing my math wrong thank god we don't have to get in to this level because it wouldn't be our job really so it's also an average that each classroom has to meet that some are above us yeah some are above us so I'm curious to ask if there was any consideration since it's a student that maybe hasn't even registered yet whether it was a consideration of hiring a halftime person would be there for reading and math let's say and because it's only one student over the limit I think there's a question though what's our goal? is our goal to kind of stay in the optimal green zone or is it to stay absolutely positively as close to the red lines our goal is to be supposed to optimal the word optimal indicates that's where you want to be I want to correct myself earlier I found my notes from we are at 100 right now we are not at 99 so we are at max I will prove that the administration hire one FTE for the remainder of the school year for main street middle school that was important oh is it over? are you opposed? abstentions can I ask another question about the enrollment which is unrelated to the middle school this shows that the high school has 60 more kids in it this year that I had last year how's that going? that's a lot more kids in the building it's like two thirds of grade it's a 20% it comes in the building a lot of kids enrolled this summer my kids impressed by the difference in the feel of the school did you like it better? she's just like there's so many kids yeah that's a big increase are there any issues with big like lockers or sports teams or accident capacity I don't know we did figure it out a few years ago that the high school capacity is 500 like the cafeteria and the auditorium I think maybe hold 600 which gives you 500 students any associated adults if I remember correctly so I'm curious to know given that although we've changed the number of seats in the auditorium it ended up being like one or two rows it's not a considerable amount so it's definitely more kids but it seems like the building can fit maybe not at lunch I've heard the kennel they don't all go to the cafeteria but they're only two lunch periods so they seem to fit I've never seen anybody standing while they did they also eat all over the school that's what I mean they go outside they go outside they meet under the stairs it sounds awful they're all over they're all over dropping their food over so I'm curious to ask given all those numbers so for example in algebra 2 first semester you have four classes one with eight, one with five one with six, one with eight why weren't the first two combined to be 13 and the next two combined to be 14 so it's a scheduling issue it's with a small school and a limited amount of people teaching each class and the amount of classes that are offered to kids kids put in their preferences in April for what they want to take and then power school has an algorithm to try to get rid of conflicts and power school does most of that to try to get rid of conflicts now this is an area that I was talking to Renee today about I want to dig into this more to understand why things are happening however things like chorus and band and those kind of things are only offered at very certain times because they're shared between schools and so it gets to the point where things have to be offered at the same time that they all go into they have to take algebra they can't go into it because one class because they're taking chorus as well it's a choice when you get smaller to be economical you don't have as many choices can I just interject though that I had this understanding at least from geometry that there are math classes where honors and regular class are the same class and I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a class and the algebra two honors class could be the same class because geometry runs that way it could very well be that way it's the same class, same teacher some kids are doing the honors version and some kids are not geometry looks the same way because of how power school prints it out this is a print out from power school this is the way math correct that's the way math works when the community looks at this and says you have four classes and the biggest one has eight and the lowest one has five I think they might be sitting in the same class with the other algebra two class they are, for sure yeah, because that's how you interpret that would be nice to know I move to adjourn I move to adjourn I move to adjourn I move to adjourn I move to adjourn I move to adjourn I move to adjourn I think I was going to talk about in terms of class size we should discuss with my motion first I second I try to be polite I'm trying to make sure that I can get a second I think it's too bad to cut off conversation about small classes at the high school when we spent a lot of years talking about those small classes it's not my hire pardon me it is on the agenda small classes at the high school MHS class size MHS class size it just doesn't have a swallow from it I don't think that's why it's on the agenda I think it's on the agenda because we're concerned about the size of the class we're concerned about the large class rather than the smaller I don't know why it was on the agenda I guess my thought the high school is growing there's a bubble coming through the time to have a discussion about small classes consolidating is one where the trend is going the other way but it is on the agenda why is it on the agenda not in terms of someone wanted to review what the class sizes were and that's and I think it's good to know coming in it seems like good information we get is more representative in the power school than what who's actually sitting in yes well this gets into administrative minutia but the board should keep in mind that our data manager who did run power school is no longer with us we had challenges at his leaving we have a brand new person running power school now the guy's team relied on the person who was previously in that position to run the scheduling and we have a new principal who is very much looking into some of these questions that you're asking so but I mean the average class size is 21.7 that's which is kind of a sweet spot sounds like I talked to some magic my sense is the class of our bar and like 18 to 42 is a sweet spot high school teachers I'm sure someone's lying totally depends on the class my sense is that the classes are big I presented to a class last week that was we're doing great that's because it's an elective oh is that one yeah so do we have a second from this position I seconded it a while back all is there you both thank you