 They don't give me the power. So calling the meeting to order at 6.01 p.m. Are there any adjustments that need to be made to the agenda? I have one. You have one, Owen, okay. Yeah, I'd like to, and I've already checked with the superintendent, I'd like to add a request for memorializing Sandy Berry to the principal's report. Okay. Thank you. Is that a good place for it? I think that sounds like a great place for it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Any other additions to the agenda or anything we should move around? Okay. Right. Right. Rodney, sorry, I just saw you unmute. Yeah, sorry. On the agenda, do we have a few minutes so we can talk about the athletic fields policy? I think. Athletic fields. Yeah, we can. Yeah, we could add that to 8.5. Yeah, I don't think it needs, I just don't know what the policy is. Somebody asked and I'm like, I don't know. That's just the information. So we'll add that to 8.5, I'm hearing. And is Tammy on? I'm not seeing. So I don't know if Lisa is taking minutes tonight. Do you want, where are we going? Let me say that. Great, thank you, Tammy. I thought you probably were. Thanks, Tammy. All right. Lisa, just so you're aware, Mindy Beth Pike is here with the Rudd principles. Yeah, please. I'm gonna report, I bet she's sitting there waiting for her. Okay, so I didn't catch all of what you said. Oh, and Mindy Beth Pike is present. With the Rudd principles, I know you usually like to have people that aren't showing to introduce quick. Okay, thank you. Okay, great. All right, first we begin with public comment. If someone who is a member of the public would like to share, please unmute or if you're visible, you could raise your hand. If you've called in, you can use star six to unmute. Okay. I'm not seeing any public comment at this time. All right. There's another opportunity. All right, so next we move to our agendas or not our minutes. We have minutes of September 15th and then our special minutes from the retreat. So those all constitute a consent agenda if people want to make a motion and refer to them as a single item. I would entertain a motion to pass those minutes. I'll make a motion that we pass the minutes from the regular meeting on September 15th, the retreat on September 18th and the special meeting on September 18th. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay, I can't see everybody. So just jump in if you have questions or any comments about those minutes. All right, all in favor of passing the consent agenda, minutes from September 15th as well as the minutes from the 18th, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, so the minutes are approved. Now we have a moment for board comments. I think similar to Owen, he mentioned memorializing Sandy Berry. Those of you on the Royalton side of things, you might not be aware, but a long time Wickham High School teacher, Sandy Berry passed away two weeks ago. There was a lot of love and support reflected on her from her former students on social media that I thought was really a lovely tribute to a human being who dedicated a lot of her life to our school. So I just wanted to note that. Not sure if there's any other board comment. Okay. So that brings us to reports to the board and we'll begin with the superintendent's report. You guys have my report in hand. I'll add that you'll find out more on Monday. And if you have questions, there is an executive session on personnel later, but we were able to reach a tentative agreement with the teachers today. I've been in mediation all day. And like I said, I can talk to you a little bit about that agreement and executive session. They need to still ratify it, but that's really great news. And I know that your membership will present it to the full board on Monday to talk to you about the specifics of that. So that's great news. And I'll also add that we're on the thick of the budget season. I'm pleased to announce that we passed our final budget for 2021 on Saturday in F Buds. So we were able to get that final budget across the finish line. So that was great news too on Saturday. And we're in the thick of budgeting right now for the upcoming 21-22 school year. We'll talk to you about that tonight. This is our first draft for discussion only around what we're thinking about for the student support budget. Many of you received, well, you all received information from me that Mary Ellen Simmons will be leaving us at the end of the month. I'll talk to you more specifically what the plan about that is on Monday, but there's no plan in place right now to replace her this year. That Charlie and Amy will pick up some of those responsibilities here in the central office. We'll continue to use that as a cost savings measure as we look to offset the current deficit. And I feel comfortable that we can do that based on the fact that we had used over our SUIN service time at the start of the year anyways, and that Amy will continue to carry the torch forward with literacy. And we're currently right now mapping out what our strategic plan will be to address math as we move forward into next year, but that's gonna be a large strategy. And the upcoming grant is how do we increase math intervention, professional development, math as we launched into literacy we're two years into that now it's time to launch into math as well. So you'll continue to hear more about that work ahead for WRBSU and I'll highlight that the principals are gonna receive a professional development from Makila Martin who I used to consult with starting on Thursday where they're gonna pull in student support team folks from across the SU into that training next. And then that training will go out to interventionists in the spring, including special educators. And then we will look into watching this idea of training the trainers approach so that we continue this momentum PD as we move forward. You know, I've learned throughout my time that the principals are really the catalyst to creating this comprehensive system of supports if the principals understand MTSS, believe in MTSS can really demonstrate and model what it means to analyze data to be responsive to intervention to see themselves as social emotional interventionists themselves and have those tools so that you can help coach folks when they're struggling as educators that's where MTSS really takes hold. The principal is the change agent in regards to that. So that's why we're starting with training the principals first in this regards around what that comprehensive system is and what it isn't. Because I think at times there's misconceptions around it. So she's doing that workforce pro bono. I'm using about every pro bono I got this current year and they're probably gonna run out soon. I think my friends don't wanna answer the phone anymore when I call them. But I thought it was really important that we start that work. So that work is gonna start with the administration on Thursday. And we launched into full days of course this week at the elementary. That was not a significant change as it was for you know in high school to go four days a week. I haven't heard anything negative as of yet. The principals weren't blowing up my phone today and I checked on both of them yesterday. I gotta say teachers have been unbelievably flexible. They continue to step up to the plate. Your teachers are rock stars. I can't thank them enough. And you know, we're doing this right. You know, the good news is all the data shows these work in the protocols and procedures were following in school's work in regards to spread. You know, the contact tracers are not finding widespread current within schools. They're finding that it's happening outside of schools. And so that's the good news. We're continuing to monitor that data and all folks thinking that we're not. We are. I'm in constant contact with Shane who's in contact with the nurses across the SU and continue to monitor that. There's gonna be some information. I know there's a lot of folks wondering what we're gonna do in regards to the holiday season. I'm gonna put some information out about what I'm thinking about that. And I'll share that with the SU board also next week to get feedback from the SU board like I have throughout when we've made decisions. And I also continue to work hard on Virtual Learning Academy to try to improve instruction there. A lot of information's been going out to those families. A survey went out today to find out what's working and what isn't. So we can continue to improve. We have a Virtual Learning Academy information all night and kind of, you know, forum to gather feedback from folks and to address concerns based on what we get back from the survey. And I also have Lindy Stets in here tonight if folks have any questions about the Virtual Learning Academy. The good news is we get our final hire in place for that last week at specializing in math. I think that's gonna help. And it's a retired teacher from Bethel who does great work and she's coming in to service our elementary students in the DLA of math and several grades to make certain that that caseloads were appropriate for our teachers. So I finally feel like we're appropriately staffed across the DLA, which was more challenging than I would have thought since we started back in August. Do you have any other questions? I'll entertain them. Anyone have questions for Jamie? This is Chris. I guess, is that, has that most recent hire, have they started? I know like, I think our kids teacher mentioned somebody starting soon, but... Yeah, I'm going to talk about that. Yeah. So Chris, she really wanted to make sure her name's Deb Scott and she really wanted to make sure she was comfortable with the technology. She didn't want to just leap in. So she's been doing a lot of shadow days where she's sitting in and watching what's working, what's not and then working with people to get the technical support. So it can be a much smoother transition, you know, hindsight 2020, just even the feedback since we last met about making sure people had the right technology training to make this successful. So you'll see her again, tomorrow sitting in and even starting to take over some of the instruction. And then we actually had a four or five virtual Academy team meeting this afternoon to talk about the communication that's going out to families, including small group work blocks to make sure kids are getting assistance during that independent work time. So it's not parents scrambling, trying to help find assignments and things like that. And then that way they can ask questions and it's more effective. So she will take over fifth grade math starting Monday but she really voiced that she wanted to be able to shadow and learn and get everything set up correctly before jumping right in. Okay. Is she just doing fifth grade math or is she doing? She's also doing second and third grade math. This will allow us to continue with small group book clubs and or small group guided reading for teachers based on the numbers and really keep instruction just like it would be if we were in person in terms of numbers and things like that. The other thing that I've done is assigned Amy Toth who is our literacy coach across the SU to the VLA as well to make certain that she's continuing to keep up with coaching of teachers in that mode and not just in person. What's been the comments from the parents that have kids in that virtual account? It's been a wide array. And the survey went out today to families. So I'm excited to look at that feedback. I've worked with several different families so I know individual concerns and I know also successes and things that have really worked. We've received great feedback from our first grade instructor. So and from parents about that, we've also received too much computer time, screen time. So it's all over the map right now. But again, I have not heard from every family specifically. So I'm hopeful that this will give me some more information to build on and continue to tweet to make sure we're getting that. I think part of it Bob's tough. Some people want to do homeschool but with our materials, right? And then there's other people that want school to look a lot like it does day to day. And so I think that's part of what Lindy's been challenged with. Like I hear some people that they'll come to me and say, you guys are making it look too much like school. And then I have people that say, I want it to really look like school. You know what I mean? Like I want my kids busy eight to three. And so I think it's trying to find that like happy sweet spot where folks can push themselves if they want it to look more like regular school. But we also provide options where it can be more self-guided if it needs to be. You know, it's more personalized. And I think based on the feedback we get from the survey that's what I'm going to be looking for the DLA teachers to do is to take that feedback and say, how do you differentiate to meet both those, you know, options for what folks want? Because the feedback is very, very, and based on what I hear around what some people are happy with and what some people are not. What's your gut tell you, Lindy? My gut tells me we could always do it better is the honest answer. I think there's amazing successes and people have really put a lot of time and thought into this. But there's areas we still need to improve on. I'm hearing a lot of like screen fatigue is the word I would use and the teachers who are on all day are really trying to keep the pace up just like we're in person and that's not necessarily as successful because it's draining and they're not giving the right feedback and things like that. So I'm also seeing great small groups and really enjoying watching kids build relationships across buildings, which is something that at the beginning it was like eight different schools and one melting pot and the heat wasn't turned on yet and we were just trying to make it work. And now you're really seeing it start to come together and kids build relationships and asking to be able to be partnered up with different kids or in different kids reading groups that they wouldn't normally get to meet. Andrew and Chris have kids in that virtual learning. How do you feel? Well, I've certainly seen some improvements. They've definitely been working on things and listening to feedback and stuff. So I think that's, I would agree. I think there's still some ways to go, but I think they are doing a good job of listening and adopting things. And I'm looking forward to seeing what things look like now that they have another staff member to play with. So yeah. Yeah, I'll be interested to see how it is with the extra teacher on and being able to help free up at least from the four or five perspective free up the current teacher for all the kids. So I mean, there's still things that could be better. I think one thing, it's still mainly focuses on reading and social studies and math are the main topics. Even if we could still work in some of the other things like we've, I think Andrew and I both mentioned, I know Kate Lucia is maybe doing some stuff with kids, but even, I know last year when everybody was remote, I know for PE, it was sort of like, they would get like a little choice board thing where it was free today, go outside and run laps or do this many jumping jacks or see how much of this you can do or that you can do. I mean, I think, even if it's stuff like that, even if it's not necessarily face to face with a teacher, but maybe if it's coming from a teacher and just giving them some more things to do that aren't on the screen where they can step away. I mean, like the breaks are good that they have between the classes to have some downtime to either work on an assignment or something, but then there's some other time that I think could be made use of too. So if there's things like that that can help enrich the day a little bit more, I think that would be good. Lydia, is there any art being done over virtual learning? There is an art teacher who is like half a day virtual. So she's been working with six, seven and eight virtually. My thought is not as many, especially now that elementary schools are back to full day that ties up some of our essentials teachers. And one thought that Andrew and I had talked about at one point was building like a hub, kind of like what Chris is talking about where they would be able to at least access different activities and then be off the screen and go independent. And then that teacher, if we could get each, I'm gonna throw this out to our elementary principals meeting on Thursday. If each essentials teacher in the SU put together a unit, say of things that they're already doing that worked well, that are really clear directions and we could build that so every kid has access to it and it's not necessarily a Google Meet with a teacher, but it's an opportunity for some of those other things that are really important to kids like music class, like art class, like PE. I will say the regular teachers are also, they do build in drawing into like they'll do reading and then draw something about what they read. And so they do mix in art into the regular instruction kind of something. Is there an elementary art teacher? For Virtual Learning Academy, there is not. Is there one in the regular class? You mean in person? Yes. That person doesn't do any art with the kids. Virtual learning kids? They have a full schedule. So currently that's the problem. All of our in-person instructors have full schedule. I was wondering how, is it, are you feeling like with the virtual learning that all the students are engaging or are there some silent ones that you're trying to stimulate and how are you doing that? So you probably just described my week in a nutshell, Lisa. We've really worked with building level connections. So that's been the spot. Some kids, I know the name or have relationships with but some people it's sometimes a cold call when you're like, some families are like, who is Lindy? And why are they calling my house right now? Cause they haven't engaged. So I've been working with building level supports from MTSS coordinators to Owen and Andra to just different people to connect with those families. And we've had a lot of team meetings about what's working, what's not working, how do we get your student engaged? I would say I saw a flurry of middle school activity for some kids who were showing up but not necessarily hitting the submit button. So teachers weren't able to provide feedback and the old send the Friday email. So we see a difference on Monday, made a world of difference for those handful of kids. So it just depends on the kid is the simple answer but I've spent a lot of time coordinating with a wide range of special educators, building level principals, you know, 504 coordinators about what worked in the spring to make sure these kids were connected and engaged to, okay, we need to pull the families in, this has been long enough and we're concerned. You know, we need to account for every kid and make sure that they're doing well. Thank you. You're welcome. We say, you know, at the end, what we're doing is if it's really not working, then we're recommending that families look to go back in person unless there's an underlying health issue or why they're not in person. Oh, and go for it. I wanna praise Lindy because we all do hard work but what she's doing is amazing and she's always accessible. She's super responsive. She's funny, by the way and she works really hard at what she's doing and you may not know this, but it's October which is National Principles Month. Thank you for the fruit basket, by the way. And I think honoring Lindy in this moment is a good thing. I mean, she's amazing. This is like representative of the pandemic of people stepping up and really, really great job, Lindy, congratulations. Thank you for the kind words. And there's a rock star virtual Academy teacher on she flashed for a second but Tracy Gardner has been leading our first grade and I just really wanna give her a round of applause because she's done an awesome job. And if there's someone else here that I'm missing that I can't see because you're on a phone number. I apologize, but Tracy has been doing an awesome job as have they all. You know, maybe that should be part of our agenda every month is just recognizing, you know the big, the tremendous effort that people are. I mean, obviously everybody's been doing amazing work but I think it's nice to recognize, get special recognition. I think we're all needing that I can tell you that Jamie does that with the administrators. That's how he starts our meetings. That's great. Yeah. Okay, thank you all for that. I'm wondering if anyone else has other questions for Jamie. Well, that probably was Jamie and the VLA but I could be wrong. Okay, or virtual learning Academy we pivoted. Okay. So that brings us to our more traditional principles report which you should have received in a packet from Christie. Can I start on that? As far as I'm concerned. Building on the principles of the month thing or the principle month. And, you know, I love my job. I really do. And I've really enjoyed helping set up the safe way of being outside and really exploring that. We may have ruined school for some kids, by the way but and also it will get cold and they'll love the building. But I also want to highlight Andra and Reed as my colleagues. And I'm not just blowing air here. They're awesome. And I don't need anybody to say anything nice about me. I know it's hard. But they're really and Andra's doing two schools making them one school and managing teenagers in a pandemic with phones in their possession. God bless you Reed. Or if you need a mental health line, I got one for you. But just to set up our presentation here you did get our report and we organize it the way that it's supposed to be with like the three big goals. And, you know, in layman's language, it's like, you know, social emotional making sure that MTSS is a centerpiece of what we do in the tiered systems of support connecting with the community. And that includes family, students and larger community. And what's the other one, the literacy one? There's a basic learning literacy. Basic learning, yes. And we've outlined what we've done and some of it's carry over because, you know, we're working on some stuff but there's some really cool stuff in there. And I know you're busy and you read a lot of stuff but there's some good stuff happening and we should be pretty proud of it. You're going to see some gems really grow. Now we're going to pivot to turning I don't want to take all of Andra and Reed's and we brought Mindy Beth with us on purpose. But Andra, do you want to start with the elementary? Should we go up chronologically? So specifically to the principal's report or do you want to transition to the data? Is that what you're saying? I was thinking, yeah, unless you and Reed want to add something, go to our data because that's our focus on this meeting. Yeah, so I- The data's on the agenda lower down after- Yeah, it's on the agenda. Oh, okay. So let's just talk about the elementary schools, I guess. I think the big highlight is we wrapped up the assessments. Then the other big highlight is that we transitioned to more of a regular full day, which we were going all day. It just looks like specials are happening and not just afternoon enrichment block. So I think right now the data, data, potato, potato crunch is where we're at. And now looking at any of the slide that we had and trying to assess who needs some tier two supports and how we're gonna wrap around our kids to move them forward between now and the next testing phase in December. So we'll talk a little more about that. For me, as far as elementary, everyone still seems happy, everyone still seems good. Teachers are working double time and I'm really appreciating all their efforts. And that's my takeaway for what's going on right now in elementary. And at the middle level, we were at four days. We started that on Monday, yesterday. And we had to check, if you will, twice as many people we had to do health screening for. We had to feed twice as many. It was all came together. Again, pandemic magic. We see a lot of horrible things happening in the pandemic including 200,000 deaths. But there's some real magic that people like teachers know what to do. And I also point out like on the Bethel campus, Sandy Tracy, who's on our MTSS team has really carried the flag for keeping people safe in the parking lot in the morning with temp checks and everything. And she deserves some praise too. Middle school's in four days. I'll let you know, this is, we only had day two. So maybe next board meeting we'll have more information for you. But two days, we'll take the honeymoon. Great. To kind of follow up on that, high school's been back. So all our classes have met that they're full size. We're using the two gyms in the library for our larger classes so that students can be six feet apart. I think universally we would say it's been very impressive how our adolescents have stepped up to wearing masks and physical distancing. I know administrators were worried about this all summer and how are we gonna enforce this? And, you know, kids who wanna see their friends in hot gap, they haven't seen them in a long time. And that's been a little bit of a thing that we're working against. But otherwise, they're really doing a good job. And we've come back four days and I feel good about it. I'm confident we can do it safely. So with that said, there are a lot of exciting new initiatives at the high school. One of them being work on an alternative program for the high school for next year, which you'll see evidence of as we talk through the student support budget coming up in just a little bit. And the other is some work we've been doing with personalized pathways. So we've started to work with a couple of individual students creating some really unique programming for them that really gets out of sight of the box of how we used to do things. And so we're piloting that and hoping to grow that. Again, you'll see some evidence of our plans when we look at the student support plan for next year. Finally, one thing that you're going to want to know about, although I don't have a lot of details to tell you, is that our HVAC units, 16 of these big eight foot long floor units that bring outside air in and mix it with inside air and filter it for viruses, they are, we believe they'll arrive the first week of November. We don't have a hard date. They're not on a truck yet. So we are trying to plan for that and continue to learn more about what that entails. The first piece of that is that we need to have electrical work in so that all of those classroom units will hook into our master computer so we can program the temperature and airflow in any of those rooms remotely via computer software, which is pretty cool. But that work should start with the electrician tomorrow. He wanted a initial down payment for some of the equipment he'd need, but we talked him in to get him started so that the electrical piece wouldn't slow this project down. What we've learned is that you can't shut the heat off or the water off for one unit without shutting the heat off for the entire wing of the building. So we are confronted with the challenge of not having any heat in the elementary wing for approximately five days. The five days we think it will take to do this. And then we will have the same situation in the high school wing, which on different heating zone, but we'll lose heat in the high school for about a week in order to install seven units. We meet with the vendor tomorrow morning, where we're gonna hash through some of these details. I think the criteria are we wanna make sure families have at least two weeks notice in advance of this happening, so they can plan around it, which puts us pretty close to the arrival time and tomorrow's meeting with the vendor. I think the other thing is we're looking at, can they use Thanksgiving week? And we've pushed this back a little bit if they do show up as scheduled on November 4th, or do we wanna be remote the first week in December? So we're gonna look at what the options are as far as their staffing for making this happen and what dates are available for doing this work. And once we know, we'll get that word out to families and all of you. The reminder, this is all covered by the grant. Yeah. Yes, this is what, like $180,000 of unit events. About a week ago, we got a close to $7,000 hospital grade HEPA filter that's now working in the nurse's office. It's a little bit loud for the small space, but you can almost feel the improvement in the air quality there, which adds a real feeling of security for folks who are coming in there with sick people in and out of that office. So things are moving along. Reed, are they gonna install any valves with those unit vents so that in the future, when any work needs to be done, it won't cause the shutdown of a whole wing. I'm guessing that, you know, for the piping and stuff that it's likely because there's not shut off valves at the individual units, you know, unless the piping system is such that it's, I'm just teaching my students about this in class last week, what we call a series loop, where the piping goes directly from one unit to the next. And so when you shut off the water to one, you gotta shut it off to all. But I'm guessing that it's probably just that there aren't isolation valves installed. And those are, those parts are a couple bucks a piece. And if they're doing the install, you know, I don't think it should add much extra labor if they can do that. But, you know, but you would wanna ask them about that and not like surprise them with it on the day of, but, you know. We will negotiate valves. Yeah, that would be something to check on, because yeah, I mean, that's the one thing you don't want, you know, as we see right here, is an interruption to your day and especially to the whole wing of a building, you know. Yeah, when these jobs go in, you know, on the front end, so like years ago, you know, it may have seemed like a good way to save some money and not put in those valves, but now we're learning why they need to be there. I don't know if that's what happened or not, but, you know, that's the usual thing. Right, yep, I'll bring that up tomorrow. One other thing, it's a little bit facilities related. Andrew's not as excited as I am about this, but yesterday with our COVID grant money, we received the hot boxes for serving what had been cold lunches are now arriving in student classrooms as hot lunches that are humidity controlled, so they won't dry out. So I had some delicious USDA commodity beef meatloaf homemade by our Lion Cook in South Loyalty today with some buttered peas and brown rice, delicious. I'm glad those finally arrived. Just to be clear, I'm really excited about the boxes. I was not helping with moving boxes. That was my, I drew the line. They're big enough so you could use it as a sauna. Is that our overview of our report? And should we take questions at this? Lunch is important. Mm-hmm, yeah. All right, well, thank you all for the work that you're doing, I appreciate it. I'd like to ask Rita a question. Yeah, good. Okay, are you running an eight period day with your kids now? We have eight classes, but they alternate A, B, A, B. So we have, they go through eight classes over Monday, Tuesday, and then the same eight classes in the same order Thursday, Friday. With the desire to limit student exposure to one another, especially in the hallways, what we're down to is there are only three passing periods in our day right now where kids move around the building versus if we had, if we went with the schedule we had voted on last year, there would be at least six transitions within the school day. So that would be more time out of class because we've lengthened passing periods so students can be six feet apart, go into the bathroom one or two at a time, maintain all those kind of safety protocols. But once this is all cleared up, we're gonna go to our modified schedule that'll have more classes every day. Any other questions? All right, if that's all for the principal's report, we'll move forward to, I think we already did virtual learning, so that will bring us to the business manager's report. I sent you all my report. I believe it was Friday, it kind of blurred together at this point. So I'm just gonna touch on a few of the highlights, otherwise I'll take any questions that you have. But as Reid was just explaining, we got the additional approvals for several of our buildings under the efficiency Vermont grant and I gave the totals on page two of my report of the breakdown throughout the SU. So I just wanna congratulate all the facilities teams and the administrators who worked with the contractors to get the scopes of work submitted to efficiency Vermont and stuck with that to receive some of that grant funding. So that was a great team effort. The other big thing, when we get together, Jamie had emailed out about food service. So you all are aware that USDA extended the summer food service program. So that's good news for our families and our communities that children will continue to eat for free throughout the rest of the school year. And then on the full board agenda for Monday night, we are gonna discuss the announced versus allowable tuition and what we are going to do as an SU and also I'll discuss with the policy committee how we are going to handle paying tuition or not paying tuition when we don't have residency verification. So as far as Reid's concern, that could potentially be tuition receivables for you as you don't actually tuition your kiddo without but it does impact the rest of our member districts. Board stipends, if you sent me your W4s will be paid out October 30th if you haven't gotten them to me, please get them to me ASAP. So we can get it into payroll and they can get you set up as an employee. And then lastly, we are approached by two additional solar companies, Green Lantern and Strapford Energy. They would like the opportunity to review your electric bills and also provide a proposal similar to what Encore Renewable did. And Ray has agreed to partner with me to get that information together to present to you as I am not a solar expert in any way, shape, or form and need the guidance of someone who knows more about it than I do. So stay tuned in the future for that as well. Andy, did I miss anything? No. So if you have any questions. Thank you, Tara. Does anyone have questions for Tara at this time? I guess real quick, what could you explain? I know you're going to talk about more on Monday but just in terms of the words, what's the difference between announced and allowable tuition? So Chris, back in January, you had to set your announced tuition rate for the current school year and then the agency of education compiles all of that information and along with all of our expenditure reports and by December 15th, they are supposed to by statute release the allowable tuition rate. And if we overcharged per calculation or formula that's 3% and it has a bunch of other factors in it then we have to pay it back or if we undercharged we can do additional billing. And we have to decide as a supervisory union are we going to do it or are we not and we have to do it for everybody or we can't do it at all. Okay, thanks. You're welcome. Guessing that might be a harder salad some of the other towns of their districts or SUM. That's correct. There has been some very substantial bills in other member districts as a result of when the agency releases which the last two years have been later and later. Last year we got them in the end of July early August for the two prior fiscal years ago. So yeah, it's a lot of money for some of our member districts. On the tuition front the alternative school tuition rate seemed like they jumped pretty significantly. Have you looked at what that's gonna do to the SPED budget for whatever alternate placements we have currently? In our initial review based on some of the kiddos who have gone to a different alternative placement or have come back into our supervisory union we think we will be okay but we will continue to monitor that as our additional tuition bills come in. A lot of our schools are late in issuing tuition bills based on COVID and figuring out who's here and who's where. So they're not, we don't have all of them in yet where normally we would have the majority of first semester tuition by now. So based on what we think we've got for kiddos in their placements that are staying in their placements that aren't going to home schooling. When I talked to Tracy and Don we should be okay. And then so Andrew why we're interested in building our own program at the high school level because as you guys know, you pick up a huge chunk of special ed costs. And so even when we have students who choose not to come to Rudd let's say they choose to go to Theford Academy and the IEP team decides that they need an alternative placements. We are still the LEA. And so that means that cost is then filled back to us. And so that IEP team that my goal would be that they make that decision you hear more about this Monday night that if they say this student needs a specialized program or pathway that we'd say that's fine then that specialized program and pathway can be at Rudd High School. And whatever program that is and it doesn't need to be in a separate program. You see what I'm saying? Because the LEA you can make that decision about placement. Yeah, I just wanted to that all makes sense to me. I just wanted to chime in and I'm sure this is already happening a couple of years ago. We asked for information about students who were in alternative placements who were not on IEPs and whether that's periodically being evaluated whether their alternative placements are the best placements for them. Just the idea of bringing them back to our community when we can. That was in Bob's report in August and I'm sure he'll have it in his report again. Okay, yeah. I just, I know that that's something we're working on. Thank you. Is your all? An alternative school can include regulatory education. Yep, absolutely. Yeah, I don't think folks are at Bob asked if we were going to build alternative programming would that be for all students? And I said absolutely. Yeah, I guess we might be talking about this when we get to the student support budget but the alternate program, if you have somebody from one of the other sending towns that goes to another school then recommends an alternative placement that then comes back here. How does that work for the funding? Like, do we just get a regular tuition or do we get an alternate placement tuition? Like, how does, how about that? I asked one to answer that because he's built those programs within his prior district. So I would ask that question Monday night, Andrew because that budget, you're gonna get the first glimpse of the SU budget Monday night and that will have special end in it and he can answer all those questions. Okay. Yeah, I guess just like are we, I guess when we get to the student support and talk about the alternate placement thing it'd just be good to know whether that is part of like, we have special education parts of it. Is that part of our budget or is it part of the SU budget and how are we- All special ends SU budget. And so nothing in here that you see tonight is special and related. Okay. This is all your- Good, budget. That's what I wanted to hear. The final thing for Tara is just that these, this report didn't make it into the folder with the rest of the reports to the board. So you should put Kristi on the email when you send your report just for future months. I send it to Kristi separately because some of my reports that I give to her are not public information. Okay. She received it under a separate email but I'll ask her to make sure that she gets it posted. Okay, good. All right, thank you. That brings us to the finance committee. Yeah, so we met on Thursday. We usually do the first Thursday of every month but we delayed it a couple of weeks this time. We reviewed the plowing contracts and talked about cash flow and looked over the student support budget which I think we'll be going over in a little bit but it was good meeting. I guess we can talk more about those things when they come up in the agenda. Thank you. Andrew, I'd like to add something to that. There was quite a lot of discussion about paying off some of the tax anticipation note. And I think we all agreed that we should try to do that. Right, it sounded like we were maybe hold like rather than paying off the can as much as we could we were holding on to more cash than maybe we should. So I think that's something that comes up to the various treasurers. So I think Tara was gonna talk with them about doing that kind of thing. Yes, once we got the October reconciliation done so I knew what you have available for cash on hand I will have a discussion with Pam to decide what we can, if any, pay off on your tax anticipation note. Thank you. And that brings us to the policy committee. Feels like we haven't met in a long time but we have these three drafts. I believe we've read once so far, is that correct? This is our second meeting. So the idea is that these will go to get adopted by the full board and then my goal would be that you just adopt them like at that point it's a rubber stamp for the local boards, the following one, because you've all had a chance to get adopted. So it's just really important to make sure that you've reviewed them and when we go to the full board meeting that we haven't seen anything that those of us who are voting members of the full board could raise as concerning or I guess I worded that incorrectly, I'm sorry. If you see something that's concerning or you think needs to be changed, it's really important for you to let me know or come to the full board meeting and share that information. So again, these are a second draft at this point. And I think we were pretty okay with them last time. The policy committee was, yeah. You guys said, yep, you were good. I don't have a copy of those somehow or another. I think they're hyperlinks, but maybe it just didn't flip them. I can go into your room. If they're on a link, they are on a link, okay. Here, I don't know if you mean it. Yeah, and we won't be voting on them until Monday, so. I added it to 8.5. You have time to review them. Any questions about policies? That brings us next to our academic data report. Hi there. So you got the data report earlier. I don't know if you want to project it at all or you want me just to talk. I'd like it projected. Okay. Lisa, are you going to do that or did you want me to? I think Secret Ray behind the scenes does it. Secret Ray behind the scenes is doing it. Okay. So the top portion of the report is comparing, it's a little lengthier, but it's looking at the three different program areas. It's comparing the data from fall of last year to the fall of this year. And the real difference with it is that the reporting from this fall doesn't include any virtual academy students because not all of them finished it in time to run this report. So the data teams decided to just look at in-person student data. And hopefully next time when we figure out all the kinks of virtual academy, that will be able to be included into the report. But if you scroll down to the second chart that's on here, it's a little bit more of a condensed version. Keep scrolling Ray. Keep scrolling. Yeah. You're not there yet. Keep going. There you are. This one right here. Yep. So most of the students were able to maintain their reading levels since the fall of last year and during our closure. Where we see some dips is with math starting around fourth, fifth grade and up into the middle school. And then the high school really did a decent job maintaining their math and their growth was 10% for their literacy. So if we're looking at all this combined and thinking about some conclusions from it, everybody's really maintained their literacy. The high school data shows that really great increase in the reading proficiency. The more concerning piece of data is the 81% of middle school students who are not proficient in math, which like I said before, really kind of starts to dip in the upper elementary school. So a couple of things that we're planning on doing and things that we're thinking about is one, we've created data teams. So the data teams comprised of teachers, special educators, interventionists and administrators and each program, we're gonna meet a couple of times a year together to talk about some things that we need to do together to make the administration of testing really successful. But most of the time we'll be working in those elementary middle and high school groups. So this time we reviewed the star 360 data for math and literacy and we reviewed our one-on-one reading assessment that we do in the elementary school. And we tried to narrow down a specific skill in math and reading for each grade level or group of grades. And we presented that to the teachers today in the middle school and the elementary school and the school next week. And the idea is that the faculty can look at that standard or proficiency and say, okay, what instructional practices can I put in place in my classroom to boost this skill area for all students? So that's one thing that we're working on. Some great work came out of today from the staff. There's some really great plans in place for how to improve those areas of literacy and math. Even though everybody sort of maintained, we still have around the same number of students who are getting targeted intervention services. So it's about 75 students on our caseload right now, both campuses K-8. We've got four and a half interventionists this year, plus three and a half in both elementary and one full-time literacy support in the middle school. And some things that those interventionists are doing is pulling kids out individually or pulling kids out in small groups. And then sometimes we also try to push into the classroom to give support or to participate in some sort of co-teaching model. Most of the kids' literacy needs are supported by our LLI program from Fontis and Penel. But other students do receive more targeted instruction, particularly with phonics. So we might use Wilson Language Program or Orton-Gillingham Program. Because there's such a high need of literacy kids on our caseload, it's not leaving as much wiggle room for math support this year. We had four and a half interventionists in the elementary last year. And it seemed like we were able to more manage pushing in and co-teaching into the math classrooms. Let's see, so for math, Bethel's still using Envision, but we're piloting the newest, latest, greatest version of it. And South Royalton is piloting an iReady math program. So we're hoping that with the consistency of math programs, K5, that it will improve math scores because we're using this more consistent approach. In the high school, I had said that literacy had increased and math maintained. However, there's still 60% of the student population who's low in math. So we'd like to give some consideration to putting some academic support structures in place in the high school in the future. And again, math's really a concern. Almost 50% of the kids are not proficient in math. So a couple of things we would like to consider is moving towards a full-time math interventionist, 5.8, because right now it's just a half-time person. And it's a pretty big caseload for her to manage. And we're also thinking that the creation of a pre-K12 math team to align curriculum, programming, and instruction could afford a really good consistent approach for our K12 program and hopefully improve student proficiency in math. Any questions? I just want to say that it's a lot. And I remember from our last meeting, I think it was Lisa McQuarrie who asked for us to stop me with so much of the jargon and abbreviation. So I tried to go through this and remove that and spell things out and put links in case it was something that you say someone says, or in Gillingham, and you're like, what is that? So there might be places for you to dig deeper into this report if you want to know more. Thank you for doing that. Lisa, a question. Great, go for it. What do you think about the math? Bob's question was what I think about the math program. So I think we didn't have a consistent approach at Royalton, Bob had been using the same, say, what are you guys using in vision? Yeah, so we spent all last year looking at our math programs with a team from both elementary schools and looking at a bunch of different math programs but in visited schools. And we knew that we needed to get in one direction. Our team was divided at the end when we started talking about which math program to go with. And so in consultation with Jamie, we talked about piloting both these programs for this year, looking at the data and seeing how it's really working. And then maybe with implications for the full greater district to move towards one, one math program so that we could just get more bang for our buck too when we're moving into professional development. Right now we have two different programs, one on South Royalton, one on South Royalton. Which I would say it's an improvement because even on the South Royalton campus, there was multiple programs being used across grades. It was three. I think that's just an approach to that. Yeah, and I will say- Measure that data and ensure that, we're selecting a program that makes the most sense since they're coming to a unified middle school. If I would say any consistency is better than not. I love the idea of a K through 12 approach, because math is so linear and it's really important that we have measured milestones throughout the grades. I think an area that I would say that I'm concerned about in general is whether or not we're doing a good job of routine building and ensuring that our foundational skills for a new case. Now I would just, I think that that's something that we could put a heavy emphasis on universally. Number of cents, place of value and just making sure that folks have a good skill set at that K12 level on those areas. Because I think what we're finding is, as you look at why students struggling in middle school, typically it's that there's those gaps started in K12. That's what we got to address. Those students struggle in middle school, I guarantee you're still struggling with the idea that groups of, they're still struggling and double digit regrouping the foundational skill from K123. And then you get into fractional reasoning in four. Are we looking at a program that builds on itself? That's what they have. Both of those schools now have a program that builds on itself. Okay. And if you look at the report, I actually put links to both programs in there. So if you wanted to dive deeper into like the scope and sequence of the programs and the benefits of both of them, you could get more information there. I think the idea too is, as we train our teachers up more, I would like to say the program is a tool. Right. And that our teachers have enough skill set to know what units to pull from the tool, to supplement what they're doing. But that they feel confident enough in math that they know how to teach out of their reasonings in the milestones throughout the reasonings in grade one. I think that a lot of elementary teachers at times have math go via, right? And so, that's one of those things that we just get to beef up their confidence. And so that's why I said math has to be our next launching point of focus. I'm concerned. I don't know what kind of math program you use. I don't know what it entails, but having looked at a lot of math programs, are we dealing with a math program that has lessons for, let's say, 170 days of math lessons? The teachers are every day teaching a math lesson that's been prepared for them by a program. I agree with Jamie on this. I think that teachers, I believe in academic freedom. And I think that teachers, a math teacher, or an elementary school teacher has skills and should be able to understand what that student needs to know at certain levels rather than a program that's set up with a lesson every single day that that teacher teaches and supposedly builds on itself. And my problem with that is we have teachers coming in and out of our schools, kids coming in and out of our schools that who knows what they've had for a math program. So I'm really interested in this and I'm curious as to know what we're trying to do. I'm not sure if you want me to respond to that or not, but I will say- We'll let you check. As we were looking, I think, from both campuses, given the pandemic, they were really interested in a math program that would work well with going online. And I do think that a lot of our teachers absolutely have the skill set to do some of this backfilling like you're talking about and meeting kids right where they're at. And it was part of our conversation today at our staff meeting is a lot of kids, they're learning kinda stopped in March just because they weren't in school. And so they don't have those foundational skills to just jump right into maybe third grade math because they missed a whole bunch of second grade math. So that was part of our conversation about, I know I'm supposed to be doing this, but I had to pause the lesson because I feel like there's gaps. And so we have to backfill. So it's not, I think, as straightforward as a 178 pages and you teach this lesson, this day and this lesson, this day and this lesson to say, they have built in assessments and there's opportunities for, if a kid has some gaps, these are options for you to do some remediation with kiddos. There's also extension activities. And what we all know about all programs is there's no perfect program. So I think what Jamie's saying is really important that building up teacher skills sets about knowledge and literacy and math is really where it's at longterm. But I think short term, given a pandemic and given that we have to do so much online, I think this is kind of alleviating some of the prep work they have to do to deliver math lessons given if we have to go online. You know, I think Bob, one of the next steps to do, much like we kind of have an outline of what a literacy block should look like, my goal would be in the curriculum role that we have an outline of what a math block's gonna look like what a science block's gonna look like. So the vote, you know, you teach within the structures of the instructional block, right? Look, you have core components that you do and that you implement and then you can use that as a tool to supplement what you do. And so that's what we need to get to. Well, I don't wanna go into too much detail but my experience with varying math programs, for instance, I looked at a math program that had a lesson for kids, sixth grade math program that had a lesson for kids every single day. And in that lesson, in those lessons, there were four days, four lessons of multiplication papers. I don't want that kind of program for our kids. So I agree. I feel really confident that the teachers really had a lot of ownership in picking the programs that they're piloting right now. And so I feel really confident that these programs that we're using are a step in the right direction, but not the end, I'll be all. Pretty solid. Yeah, we're all using the same teacher language, which is important. You know, I think before kids were spending half the time trying to learn the program and not the content. So at least now we have a common instructional language and approach, step one. So this is Chris. I guess I got a couple of questions. I guess, first of all, I guess, is there any program that's being used in the VLA or what's the math approach that they're taking? Because- I read it's the same approach that the South Wales and elementary campus is using. I actually go in there real quickly. I think that might be transitioning because Deb Matthews. Deb Scott does have training in iReady. And so I don't know if she's gonna stick with that or move into, she has a training in vision rather. So she might be transitioning to envision just because she has background in that. She also though has her master's and went to the Vermont Math Institute for Teachers. So she has the background. And she does actually need a program, but. It's why we hired Deb. Is that like we needed a math teacher. And yeah, I think one of the things you'll see us do is pilot this idea of trying to really find out what folks' expertise is. And if they start to continue to allow teachers to experiment with that around whether or not they wanna be teaming and specializing. And Bethel does some of that already, I believe. And I know this is just one data point and stuff, but how do we feel about the scores and where we're at? I mean, I don't know, I mean, to me, 19% efficiency or proficiency in five through eight is pretty scary, where it's coming from the background that I have, I might be a little opinionated on it, but I would definitely, I think, what are the goals? I mean, where should we be? And I guess, I think you all are implementing the plan to get there, but do we feel like we have everything we need to make our way there? Somebody else talking? Well, I just jumped in. I mean, the goal would be 80 to 85% meeting the benchmark. That's what all the research says. Do you know that you're really implementing at full steam ahead universally if you're at 80 to 85%? And so that would be the goal. And I'll let the principal talk while we're there. No, I mean, when you look at math, Chris, there hasn't been a lot of energy spent in math. They're all in a map across the SUM map. So... And I don't think it's just an SU thing too, though, either, I mean, I think it's the whole state. So I have an opinion about this too, and I'll tell you a couple of things. If we did a poll of where you would land, if we were like, so what's Chris gonna see right away? This is what you would see right away. And I don't think anybody else wouldn't see it, Chris, because it's such a dramatic number. So I wanna talk about it a little bit. We had a faculty meeting today, like we do every faculty meeting, and we updated them that we were gonna present tonight, and this was gonna be presented. One of the math teachers had to leave in tears. And she blames herself, right? And that's what teachers do. And that's not what any of us want, and she'll be fine, and she'll put herself back together. And it's not her fault. And I joked, and I was like, it's the fifth grade teacher's fault. It's a joke. But the point that I had towards with that is vertical understanding. We need to have a pre-K through 12 common language and common approach. And I think Bob was saying this. It doesn't mean you need to lock step all the way along. You need to like, oh, it's Tuesday, October 20th, we're doing this project because that's the day it is. And also, Mindy Beth, who's really like stepped immediately into her role as the academic multi-tiered systems of support leader, has met with me, has met with Andrew, Reed, Cass, our math interventionist. And right away, we're looking at like, what's going on here? And it's not an anomaly because it was 73% last year. Same grade group. That's a major problem. And I think Jamie's saying the point that I wanna make is we haven't focused on math and it's gonna bite us. And it's important these kids have math skills because that informs science and art and music and that they love math. And I am gonna stand here and I'm gonna try to say, we have 81% that are not being proficient and Jamie's saying this should be 85. We need to turn that around. And I believe that's 180 degrees, it's a math joke. But it's no joke. And I think Mindy Beth said it earlier of like, we would like to expand that math literacy person to a full-time position or two half times, whatever it is. And I don't think it has to be middle school. I think it has to be pre-K12 mindset. There's no excuse. I will stand here as the leader, the instructional leader of the middle school. I'm not gonna blame the fifth grade. And I'm not gonna blame the teachers. I am the leader. This needs to change. I make my commitment tonight. Mindy Beth fixes. Anyway, it is serious to us. Yeah, and I think that I don't, I feel sorry for the teacher that left in tears and in no way do I hold anybody responsible. But yeah, I think we need to, like you said, find the way forward to on this. So that's my concern. Next year, I wanna bring good news on this. I was just gonna weigh in and say that I think we are working together in a way we haven't before. And it's just gonna take some time to change that culture and also show that we value these. I mean, I just wanna be really real about what a middle schooler taking an online test looks like. It's not their favorite thing to do. They don't think it's really cool. So to shift the culture about what we value is just gonna take a second to. The other thing I've seen this fall and it is exciting time and I'm gonna lay some of that in Jamie that he's really charged us all up. All the principals are charged up. And I know Reed, Andrew and I are that we really believe we wanna be an exceptional school that's a niche school that people want their kids in. We want the problem of not having enough room. So the work we're doing this fall at the middle school I could speak of, the outdoor stuff, this will separate us from everybody. And if you wanna see kids loving school which will turn them into good mathematicians when we present it in a way that's right and that we can also make sure they're getting what we're measuring. We're looking at all of this. So we're tearing this apart. We're approaching this as a problem to be solved just like math. How often do we do STARS 360 testing? Is it a once a year thing or is it? It's scheduled for three but you could do it 175. We're not gonna do that. Wait to weigh in for another second too and say that when we look at data and we look at literacy, we have two assessments. We have a computerized independent assessment and we have another assessment where the teacher is sitting with a student having a conversation about something that they're reading and you're getting very different information from those two things. When it comes to math, we only have this computerized assessment. And I think that moving if we were to move in the direction of having a math team having a second assessment to back that up is gonna give us more information about the students so that we can better help them. And I know that I've asked the middle school interventionist to start looking into some paper pencil assessments that the kids do where we do literacy and we compare that teacher reading with the student to their STARS 360. Oftentimes we do see that they match and that makes us feel really good about ourselves because we know that the kids were confident when they took both of those tests and there's nothing for us to compare math to. So I think that having maybe some other assessment three times a year would really help give a well-rounded diagnostic assessment of all of our students. Hi, this is Tammy, I'm just a public person or comment question on that. So the middle schoolers and the high schoolers that are taking these assessments, it might be written in your documentation but the environment that they're taking and then considering we just transitioned from two days to four plays a major role. So when I hear my middle schooler say somebody was yelling out the window from lunch while I was having my outdoor test is a distraction. And so I don't want to put everything in that bucket and say that that might have contributed but I don't think it positively contributed if that's the case. And so I have to recognize that transition that we just incurred and some of these students might have been taking this test at home from what you've described for computer simulation. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. There's a lot to it but the thing that really does bother me, we know this about the math and we can also, we know a lot but we also need a good plan forward and we haven't had time and inclination to do that. I feel like having Mindy Beth leading us with this is really already been so helpful. I think we've been in school 29 days and having her leading us on this and having Jamie setting really clear goals and like these are big goals. This is, and there's no chump change on the table here. We're gonna work hard and we all work hard but we're excited about it too. We feel really good about it. I'm embarrassed for us tonight and I wanna take that on because I haven't suffered enough this week and it's Tuesday. Do we do much to try and connect students who are struggling with community resources like tutors and things like that who might be able to help them outside of things that we can do kind of through the budget. More interventionist would be nice but it might be good to leverage some community members who might be able to help. I think we can bring a plan back to you with more detail. We know what to do but I'm not saying what you're saying is wrong already but we'll draw on like the UVM experts and Castleton experts and we're gonna get this but thank you. That's a good suggestion. Definitely mentors and math mentors specifically or starting kids to careers that have math embedded in them. So Chris, you're gonna have about 18 kids at your house starting next Monday. Andrew, I mean, I find that, you know I've had luck in the past by utilizing after school programming to bring tutors in because you have the students there and I think there's ways for us to leverage more intervention and so through one planet in general across PSU. And so that's something that I'm interested in talking to Bill and Kerry about the principles because I've had issues in the past where I've set up students and when they don't show up because they're relying on family vehicle crap on stuff that I've burnt people out they've gotten frustrated like I'm here to help but if they're coming actually to the school to support the student I've had much better success because these things there. I think that's one way for us to navigate that. And you know, one of the things I think we need to do is make certain that we have a focused approach to what that intervention looks like. There's a lot of reading interventions out there. There's not a lot of math interventions so one of the things we need to do here between now and next year when we look to implement more math intervention is how we come an approach to how we provide it. Just be this. On that data side of things, I'd be... Sorry, what Jamie? It can't just be more rote practice. Do you know what I mean? Like it really needs to be based on some milestones and sequential, the linear approach to math instruction. And so, I think we need to... There's some diagnostic work that I know that training that's done through the high-right collaborative. And I'd be interested as we tap folks to be math interventionists, even if they do reading too, that we put them through that because there is a sequential approach around the diagnostic to see where the gap is. And then make certain we start to focus right there where the breakdown is. And you don't move forward until you fill that gap. Because it's about eventually over time as you fill gaps, catching the kid up, not just trying to keep them up. Intervention should not be practice of what they're learning in universal instruction. On the data report side of things, I mean, it's good to see who's... What percentage of our kids are proficient and not proficient. Is it possible to come up with a report that would use just students that have been in the system for multiple reports so that we can see how our instruction is doing? Because especially with kids dropping out because we're not including the virtual Academy data, and if you have kids moving in and out of the district, that can make it harder to interpret the data. If we were just looking at kids who took the test and then took it again so we can see how those kids are doing. And I don't know if it could be, it'd be kind of nice to have it more than just proficient, not proficient, like, are we seeing improvement with the kids that we're teaching or are we seeing what percentage of kids are going up and how many kids are stagnating or going down or whatever it is. If you're in a district, we can show you scale scores by cohort grades. This report was put together by Miriam because there's certain districts I can't show that because they're so small, the students are identifiable. So I think with you, we can use the STAR 360 reports to show you scale growth for each grade level and cohort. And to me, the scale score is way more important than the number of proficient. So I'd like to add to that, JV. So when we're talking about our two schools, we have many more reports that are broken down to be grade level specific. And we even have reports that are very student-specific. I can take a child in fifth grade and I can look back five years and see their growth or their regression on that particular student. And something else that we're gonna do this year as part of our CIP work is we're gonna focus in on three and reduce lunch kids and look at what their growth is because of our equity goal. So I think there's multiple ways to tackle data. And yes, it can go from this big picture that you've seen that you saw tonight right down to those individual classrooms and those individuals students. So that work is definitely happening. Yeah, that's good. I think in general, it'd be good to see a report that kind of like this is a good... How are we doing? But it doesn't really give you like a great view of how if we're getting the individual kids. So if we could get a report that kind of captures that a little bit, I'd like that for the future. I think one of the things I'm appreciating about this report right now is that it's been, I think a few years since we went and looked at the data wall and we got sort of a whole picture of where our students were at. So even though this is really big picture and it doesn't show us, it only shows the two year comparison, I do appreciate that we have every grade level, even though the virtual kids aren't in there right now, I understand why. So I do appreciate that we have this report and that we have data to talk about. So thank you for that. Any other questions while we have this data to look at? And we have Mindy Beth here and Andra, Owen and Reed. I'd like to, as anyone of the principals, have you gone to like your sixth grade teacher and said, how are your math kids doing? What are the shortcomings? What don't they know? But do they know? Have you ever just done that? I don't, I'm not gonna talk to the fifth grade teachers. I think you're, I can generalize that though, Bob. Sure, we have talked, we talk about math with them, but I think it's another great idea. We don't have a systemic approach and we have to. And that's the piece that we're gonna create. And that, those questions will be in there. I think it's qualitative and quantitative information we want. And I think as much as it's important for us to talk with the math teachers, I think it's important for the math teachers to talk vertically with each other. And so I feel like as elementary teachers, we've just started talking across campuses a lot more than we ever used to and it's great. And I think they're learning from each other and growing. But I think like sometimes we don't walk down the hall. We definitely don't walk down the hall right now because of COVID, but we aren't having enough conversations between the upper elementary teachers and the middle school teachers. And I'm quite certain we're definitely not having those conversations maybe middle school teachers to high school teachers. So I think that's the room where we're moving towards is improving those conversations. Well, I mean, I can and then whoever's next can jump in, but I expect my principles, that's part of why we're doing this MTSS training is that they need to know their data and they need to know whether or not students are growing and what cohorts are not growing. And then there's part of being an instructional leader is sitting down and digging into the data with the teachers and saying, what do we need to do different about universal instruction? I mean, I think that's the difference we've been, part of being an instructional leader is that. And it's those conversations. And so, I think that as we become better at the frameworks to have those conversations and the understanding of how do we prioritize our time to have those conversations, I think the better we'll get up. I don't know if that answers your question too. I think that they do it now, but I think as a system, we haven't necessarily said, you're the non-negotiable surrounding that. Well, I'm sure you read your math teachers at ninth grade level say to you, if you talk to them, that kids coming into ninth grade math don't have whatever skills that they need to hit ninth grade math. If that's happening, like I as a principal would go talk to the principal below me to find out what's going on. And I personally don't like program math. And I have another way of approaching it, but if that's what we got and that's what we're doing, we'd better figure out how to make the best of it. One of the nuances with the high school is that we're actually pulling kids from a bunch of different middle schools. So it's not just coordinating with what's happening in Bethel, but we probably need to disaggregate the data and look at what's coming to us from other middle schools that feed into us. And then look at a larger SU math program. And how is that playing out in the high school numbers? For lack of having that kind of information at the moment, our focus is gonna be on what can we do to support the kids we have with the skills where they're at right now. And Mindy Beth is meeting with Jamie myself and my ninth and 10th grade math teachers and English teachers tomorrow morning. And we're gonna talk about the sorts of intervention we can provide to students now this year to help get those numbers up. Thank you. So we're switching from four card based things to proficiency based. I imagine that might help. Yeah, Andrew, that's part of the goal, right? If we're all reporting out on common benchmarks and proficiencies across the SU at each grade level, then you gotta teach to those, right? And so that's part of the power around us becoming a truly proficiency based system is that we'll have clear benchmarks for each grade level. And how you get to that end could look different, right? There can be some differentiation there, building to building. But the idea is that all students are gonna know, understand and be able to do the same things grade level to grade level. And right now we're not reporting out that way. And therefore that doesn't necessarily reinforce teaching that way. And so I think it's really important that at the elementary that we're keep communicating out on what we want students to know, understand and do because then there's accountability to ensure that we're actually teaching that when you go to assess it. All right, thank you. I think that that provides us a segue to our 21-22 student support budget, which we touched on a little bit in the business manager's report. And this was something that was emailed to us, I think this afternoon. So if you're looking for it in your email, that's a good place to reference it. And the finance committee got this on Thursday, just so everyone knows. And so I'll just set the context and give you some big picture stuff. And then the principal can ask specific questions. You can ask specific questions of the principals. One of the things we're trying to do across the SU is part of why we restructure at the SU is to look at, how do we free up some title funds that we're paying for positions at the SU? And how can we use that money to then trickle back down into the local districts to offset some interventions and supports, okay? And so I wanna highlight some areas that we're looking to fund through the CFG, the federal grant, is the idea of adding a pathways coordinator that's down there at the, toward the bottom. It's the last section. You don't currently have a pathways coordinator. You have a community-based learning coordinator. And part of what we talked about is we're starting to pilot some pathways now. And you may say, well, what are pathways? Well, the idea is that this person would act as a facilitator of learning. They'd have students throughout the day, and that 60% of their job would be to service all students. And how do they service them? Well, it would be really leveraging a personalized learning plan to create passion projects that align up to proficiencies that then could be awarded for credits. It's to assist students who wanna take virtual courses and that they have a place to land and have a teacher to facilitate and support them with that work. It is, a student comes in and says, I really like large animals. That's my passion. And Mary Waterman sets them up with a farm, per se, for community-based learning. Well, we still need someone to say, that's great that you're working at the farm, but how are you gonna demonstrate proficiencies in biology and English language arts, right? Because you need credits in those two areas. So we gotta create a product that demonstrates a treatment of those proficiencies that links to your passion. And so that's what this person would be doing. So it gives another pathway that looks different. That's not the traditional factory model setting to go through high school. One of the ideas is we have students start to learn that they can learn based on personalized learning. My sense is that we will have students that start to say, oh, I didn't know I could learn that way. I didn't know I can earn proficiency that way. I believe you're gonna have juniors and seniors that currently right now say that they wanna learn through experiential learning and earn content area credit. And the only way for them to do that is through the tech center, deciding that maybe they didn't wanna go to the tech center. They didn't necessarily have a passion, but that was the only way they were gonna learn that way. The other point for this is gonna be for dropout prevention. Students who are totally disengaged, disenfranchised, school didn't work for them, and that they're looking at dropping out. And so 40% of this person's position would be to target those students to wrap around them and to help facilitate really outside the box plans that gets them through high school and supports them toward their path to graduation. Now, sometimes that takes five years, but that's okay. That's part of proficiency-based learning too. And so that's a new position. And so 60% that 45,000 will be funded locally. The other 40% would be funded through Title II, all right? So I just wanted to highlight that. MTSSA, Mary Beth Pipe, as you just saw, sorry, Pathways would be funded through Title IV, I apologize. MTSSA, you're looking at Mary Beth right now is completely local. Due to the role and the work that she does, we can get a big chunk of her salary, about 50,000 we have tentatively budgeted in Title II. So that's fine. Yeah, Mindy Beth, you're on the call. You'll still get a paycheck, don't worry. No, no, no, Mindy Beth, not Mary Beth. Oh, I thought I said Mindy Beth. No. Sorry. So that's part of how that will be funded, which offsets, of course, local revenue. And this is important because it's gonna decrease your per pupil spending, which aligns directly back to your tax rate. That's why we're trying to use these grant funds. Regular ed paras, I'm not at a point right now to talk to you about what exactly those positions are, but we are looking to do some reductions in regular education paras that currently support through regular ed. Nurse, you can see that that's down, that's just based on personnel decisions as far as whether or not health insurance is being taken. Guidance office, that is down. One of the things that we're looking at between the principal's office and admin, and these are all their budget line codes, by the way, within each one of those areas, it's not just their salary and benefits, it's also all their budget lines, okay, that are within the principal's office, is that we would go from five currently, right now, secretaries in supports across the two campuses of the schools down to four. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't need all the roles and responsibilities currently covered. What I've said to the principal's is, is that you have four FTE. We're also looking to make those four, their budgeted four, as you're around. I think it's important that schools stay open in the summer, especially as you guys love to collect tuition students. I don't think it's okay for your high school not to have someone there throughout the summer months. And so we've looked to align vacation time to ensure that your high school stays open in the summer months. Because, again, we're looking at how do we market ourselves and recruit students, and part of that is ensuring that we have our friendly face there to greet them and talk about the high quality programming we have. And so if you look, part of why that guidance is down, it's not removal of a guidance counselor or anything. I know a lot of folks thinking that, it's just putting all the secretarial staff up, actually up in the principal slash admin line, which you see is up. And there were some changes in health insurance coverage. And principals can jump in with everything else I missed and then you guys can ask any question you'd like. And this is a first glance at your feedback. This is not, this is not a final draft by any means. It's to get feedback from the board. This part of the budget will come back to you again in November along with the rest of your personnel that provide universal instruction for all students. So in November, you'll get this in addition to another huge chunk. Principal has done this in the evening. I just add that embedded in the pathways position is that that's someone who would support heavily support students in the alternative high school program, but there will be additional staffing needed to run that program. We believe we have the academic staff within our budget to have an English teacher for a period and a social studies teacher for a period to help support that. So where we might have proposed a budget cut to a position for a period or two last year, we probably won't do that this year. Looking at supporting the alternative program and there would be some special education staffing changes where resources within the SU might be reallocated in recognition that we're keeping more special ed students from alternative programs by keeping them in house. But because that's special ed money, it's not part of the RUD story here, but it's part of what's important. It's a good addition. So if a teacher is helping with the special education program, would some of their salary come from special education or would it? No, it can't because they're not special ed license. But Andrew, I think what Donald's gonna tell you is those students will actually be RUD students. Right. They're gonna be your students, even though they access the alternative high school. So there will be money that follows from the district they're transferring in from. So, as you say, for example, we send a couple of students up to Randolph to a program there at a cost of about $30,000 a year by, and that's special education money. We're not paying that out of our local budget. That's special education dollars. But if those special education dollars are being spent that way, then that's extra resources for an alternative program within our building in South Royalton. Of course, you guys get to build the highest trunk on those special ed costs. Right. I'd like to comment on that alternative school. I've had an experience where I ran an alternative school at part of my high school at Fairhaven. And we serve all kids, special ed and regular education kids. But every kid that went to that alternative school had a personal learning plan. And they might be there for a half day. It might be there for a whole day. They might be in a class at the high school for one part of the day. And they would be in the alternative school for another part of the day. I ran it with one teacher, a special education teacher and a parent. And we serviced about 20 kids. And it was a real successful program. It took care of those kids that are regular education kids that did not like school, school was not for them, but they could go, they could take a half day of classes and then go to work in the afternoon. It was a blessing for so many kids. So I think it's a really good idea. I think it will solve a lot of difficult problems because I noticed that right away. And also you'll find that these kids will get a really good education and like it. So I think it's a good thing. And a lot of special ed kids, what they need is personal attention and help getting their classes done. And I think it can be done in alternative school. And then you have regular education because they want to drop out of school or don't want to go to school. But what you'll find is that they will enjoy going, knowing that part of the day they're going to be able to go do something for them. So I think Jamie's got a great idea and he might not put it together the same way I did, but I think it's a good plan. Yeah, I agree. So thank you. And I look forward to hearing more about this. Any other questions about the student support budget? I have a question and I asked Reed at the finance committee meeting and Reed, did you have any comments to make about the interventionists? I was going to defer to Omwin and Andra who were prepped that that question may come out tonight. So if they want to talk about how the interventions are being used, 3K8, that I think I'll answer your question. I want to know how they're supervised. I want to know what their day looks like and I want to know what they do. You're going to start, Andra? You're muted. They're muted, Andra. You're muted again. What the heck are you doing? You're giving Andra a big shot. I can buy a load. They're supervised by the principals. Yeah, I can do it, Jamie, if you want. I implemented this year because I had the same question. This is that we're doing two-week time studies on everyone because that was mostly to ensure, you know, what percentage of our interventionists was spent providing explicit intervention throughout their day. And what do I mean by that? I think it's really important that we monitor does our schedule support interventionist providing intervention throughout the day or their chunks of time where the schedule doesn't allow for. And that's sometimes where interventionist you don't get your full 1.0. It's because the schedule doesn't allow for a full 1.0. And so every interventionist throughout the principal has had to turn interventionist schedules to you so that we can start to analyze those together. And to also just kind of highlight, you know, is our schedule and supporting high-quality interventions throughout the day. And then two, I'm collecting bi-weekly time studies right now. Part of that is required by the grant, but part of it too is to analyze not more so what FTE is doing. Also in addition, I think, because the schedule support, you know, I think there's times we have interventionist that aren't providing explicit intervention because everyone's at essentials at that time. You know what I mean? And so you got to line up the schedule throughout the grades to ensure that you can keep people providing intervention throughout the entire day. The other thing that I'm after in regards to collecting that data. A few other things they do. They can give a kid an assessment one-on-one. So they test them in a, they control the setting and they can test them in a way that they can watch them and also know that they're getting, like the question doesn't give them the answer, but. And they coordinate completely with the teachers. So part of it also has become like evangelizing and that would be, so they will teach teachers some of the best intervention methods. They are supervised. I supervise the two middle school ones and Andra would be the supervisor for all the rest because they're all, the remainder ones are in the elementary on both campuses. Right now we are proposing, I think a total of five interventionists and two of those are halftime and only half of that will be, we're proposing as math. But I think I saw in there, there's a second half of that for high school math. Reed? Is that true? Not right now. It says budget assumptions underneath the document that we were just reviewing. And it says, Reed, Ray, can you put that up again one more time? The, I don't have it. No. All right. So anyway, it was, there it is. So if you look down at the bottom there, it says budget assumptions, 50% math intervention for high school to be added with grant funding. So we, Reed will be supervising that person if that comes to me. What's the matter, Andra? You can't join us. I think it's a sign from, you know, Google got in trouble today, by the way. Can you unmute? She can't for some reason. Bob, do you want more than that? Or I mean, Well, I don't understand. Do you have a resource room for all students in your school? Okay. Okay. That's helpful. Do you? Do you have one? We have a classroom. It's a classroom that's being used as a center for the focus is literacy. Yeah. But it is also math. Of course. Of course. Actually we have a different setting for the math group that we set up just because we brought the kids inside. And we only are doing that direct math intervention at the middle school. I can speak about, Well, let me ask this question. Let me ask this question. If you have a student that needs extra help, can they go to a resource room and get it? That's not how we do it. We schedule it. That explicit instruction. Yeah. I think my goal is, is that we move to any interventions four days a week, minimum of 30 minutes, research base, and that it's focused on whatever the gap is. And it work effective. And part of what I'm looking to start measuring is, is where to growth for the students who receive intervention. If students are living in intervention. That's a problem. That means it's not effective. Don't you need intervention for. Right. So that's a tier. What people call the time you should close the gap. And let's say I have a true learning disability. We know. It's only about 5% of your students, by the way, to have a true specific learning disability, three to five. The rest of them are just struggling to grasp universal instruction. So that's why I keep saying, like if we get our universal instruction stronger, you're going to see the need of intervention to go down. And you're going to find this 75, 75 students in reading, you might only have 30. Right now we have too many students in intervention. And part of that is, is that are we need to strengthen our universal. And that's not working hard. They are. But like you heard tonight, we didn't have comment approaches. You're only on the second second year, your literacy program. We have some students that are casualties of instruction. I agree. I agree with you, Jamie that we need to think in more of a way that students will graduate out of intervention. But it's a temporary spot. It's like a pit stop on a race track. And we do that right now at the elementary level with PBIS, that model of like a student that they're only in there for eight weeks. They're only getting that direct intensive support for eight weeks and they graduate. And it's monitored and checked. And it's really, as you were saying earlier, Bob, it's very personalized for that student, but based in the best instruction. I like Jamie's structure of four times a week, 30 minutes. And then you have to ask yourself the question of like, why is this kid still here? Either we're not doing it right, or this is the 3% kid. But we haven't implemented with fidelity necessarily, right? Like we say, they're going to get math twice a week. Right. And it may not be a common approach. Well, I close gaps that way. You got to implement with fidelity. And that's part of what we're trying to work on. It's part of why I'm, you know, looking at schedules. It's part of why we're doing the MTSS work. At the SU level, we don't have an agreed upon approach right now, what defines intervention. I like it. And so we need to define that. And it really should be explicit. It should be research-based. And it should be focused on gap filling on that student. And not just generalized or just extra help or support. Because we don't want the student to have to need extra help and support forever. We're spending a lot of money on interventionals. You know, and I guess I want to see results. And I, I, I want to do this. I want to see the students get the support they need in improving in the support that they're getting. I don't know. I mean, I, if I were a principal, I'd want to know what they were doing every single minute. And then if I had a student needed some help, I'd be getting them there. Well, we have, we have their schedules. Okay. So you're satisfied as a principal that you're, that you're interventionals are doing a busy all day long. And they're providing support for those students that need it. And you're seeing an improvement because of it. Well, I think you can go right back to earlier when I said I'm not happy. So what are you going to do to improve it? Yeah. And we were talking about that earlier. And I think part of it is, is we did not have a model that Jamie explains of four times a week, 30 minutes. We don't have a systemic approach. We have people working really hard. I don't want people just working hard. I want people working hard with results. We're spending $285, $87,000 to get that. And I, I guess I'm in favor of it. If we're, if we're getting results. Those are for the interview. I don't have the document in front of me. I think what's exciting for me about what I'm hearing related to intervention. I mean, I agree with you, Bob, that there needs to be oversight and accountability. But having a cohesive program. And having one principle looking at both elementary schools and making sure that students are getting what they need with fidelity. And that we're implementing a consistent structured approach as well as universal supports and all our classrooms. And making sure our teachers have the training to work with the interventionists. Is exciting for me because I don't think we've had that particularly in the area of math. I mean, we've been being told. And to some degree, I believe it's true that when students become more literate and when their literacy skills become stronger than they become better math students. And I know that that's true because when you read better, many other doors open up to you. But I think that this data shows us we really do need to focus more on math. And so I'm glad to hear that we're doing that and that our principals are taking those goals seriously. And, you know, rounding numbers. Let's say we have a $12 million budget. I think 2% of that is 260,000, right? Or whatever. I might have that part wrong. So there's none of it's frivolous to me by any stretch, but 2% of our budget is right now. And that's a rough number for intervention. And I agree. Every penny should be spent right. I also agree with Jamie on like it's first instruction that matters. We have to do better in first instruction. And do you want to just talk about your approach to intervention? I said that, you know, one of the things I'm after is a common approach across the issue that intervention needs to happen four times a week, 30 minutes a day. And it needs to be research-based. Are we getting closer to that now that we're back full days? Yeah, absolutely. I will say that we started the school year using our interventionists as buddy teachers. So we definitely weren't launching into intervention. We went slow, but we did put our interventionists in those classes that had the highest need so that there could be that double... That's pretty cool of it just to be clear. That's exactly why. But yeah, I would say we have the new schedules for interventionists. And based on this new data from the Star Testing and the Founders of Penel, we reassess who needs push-in, small group, who needs pull-out. I mean, it's some of its case specific depending on the kiddo, right? Some kids need really a more one-on-one approach just because of attention or how deficit they are. So really what their schedules look like is they're all over the place depending on the interventionists. And we reassess it multiple times throughout the year. And yeah, I think we are moving towards trying to just do that really heavy, quick, six-week intervention to move a kid. And I think we'll be able to report out more gains in December based on what we're doing right now. Okay. Is everyone okay with moving forward to the VisBit Safety Audits? All right. Thank you for bringing us that student support budget. Thank you. Okay. D, that was just a draft for early discussion, correct? That's correct. Yep. Nope. I mean, I would, it sounds like to me that there's nothing in there right now that you want necessarily change before next month. That's not what I'm hearing. I think it was a good conversation about priorities. And it seems like there's a lot of common ground in terms of being focused on student needs and student success. So I put the VisBit Audit on here because they have been requested. This is before my time. And so the principals and I kind of talked to some today about maybe what audit necessarily you guys were interested in discussing. It could have been the overall audit from last fall. This was regarding when VisBit came out and did your building and your playground inspections. And then we were supposed to work to address the high priority items. And then we had the secondary security audit. That showed your weaknesses and the security of the schools if there were any. So I mean, what I would like to the front, the, I talked to Owen today, the facility committee has not gone up and really get running. I think this is a good launch point. And so I was thinking that that committee could take these out and dig into them. The other thing that we have is Lyle Smith has been doing some work for me at Rochester. And I'm going to be bringing him in and kind of like a consulting role for facilities and maintenance across the SU. So he's going to give us about two days a month. At a very reasonable rate. And he, he is currently the facilities director of all the elementary schools in the Champlain Valley supervisory union. That district CVU. So he has a great deal of experience. He also worked at VisBit. And he's looking to start to transition from full time to part time and do some, some consulting work. I don't think we need a full SU headed maintenance and facilities, but I think we need someone who's an expert on these types of things. And so what I said to the principals and said to Owen is it seems like this is a good launch point for him to come in. And just start to support us in this work and look at how do we build a strategic plan around preventative maintenance. That hopefully saves money. And I think we're going to be able to do that in the, in the near future in December will be your maintenance and facilities budget. And he's going to help us with that. Because none of us are pros and maintenance and facilities. But I think there's a lot of efficiencies that could be found. Potentially. If we're looking across the SU at bulk buying. And things of that nature. And so he's going to assist me with doing some of that work. And so I would look to, if you guys want, and I'm going to have to go through a few of those things. I'm going to get that. I'm going to get that committee dig into this. And then come back to you guys in December. When you're looking at that part of a budget with our more full report. Does that sound all right. Or how do you guys, how do you feel about that? And why I think that sounds. Well, a great way to proceed. Thank you. And Chris, you're on that committee with me, right. All right. You get your marching orders, Owen. I think Owen dropped for a minute, so he missed. Owen, you get your marching orders and I will give you Lyles contact and connect you so that he can join you to start digging into that. And like I said, he worked at Visbit, so these are not foreign reports to him. So my marching orders, I did drop out for a minute there. So you're going to give me Lyles contact and I'm going to set up a meeting? I think, yeah. You should get the finance, the facilities committee started on this. And who was the second person with Chris? There were two board members. It was Lisa. Lisa. Yeah, it was me. Okay. We're on it. Look at that memory right there. Yeah. Got some synapses. I'll tell you that's why you can't get away with anything. They think I forget, I don't. Okay. Next is the snowplow bid review, which I believe the finance committee looked at. Right. Bob, do you want to tell us what you found out from the town? I'll talk about my share. So I suggested that we go to the towns and ask them to plow out the school parking lots because to me, there's a lot of money involved in plowing. And in my past, the town has plowed the parking lot in South Royalton and they used to plow the parking lot in Bethel. So I've talked to the town manager at Bethel and I've talked to two select board members in Royalton. And I've also talked to the road foreman in Royalton. So there's a reluctance on the part of the road foreman to do the plow. I'm not sure how the select board feel. I think they partially understood that it's $1 coming out of the same people. So I would ask Jamie to write a letter to each board asking them to plow our parking lots. I'm not sure they're going to get a favorable response. I think we should somehow act on the plowing bid and I don't know how we do it. I think the select boards meet next week and I will tell you that I think that the road foreman are both going to say they don't want to do it. And I don't know if the select men will make them do it or not. So that's where I'm seeing it. It's kind of like up in the air. Well, thank you for asking. Yeah, when I was a select man, I told the road foreman is going to do it. But you know, it's $60,000 of taxpayer money. And the tax and the taxpayer, I mean, the towns have the equipment to do it with. The Royalton one would be a little more difficult, but I think we could work it out because of the entrance into the school as a divider down through the middle. And we might have to do something a little bit different. But Royalton has a tractor and a snowblower too. So they have the ability to do what needs to be done, whether they do it or not. I don't know. But I would suggest that Jamie write a letter to each board asking them to plow, asking if they would plow the parking lots. And at the same point, I think if you need to act on a bit that we act on a bit tonight and make it contingent on the select men not voting to plow, that's my suggestion. And you could do that. Did you, as a community, did you guys have a recommendation of who? Yes, we did. The finance committee looked at the bid. So I didn't know if the finance committee had a recommendation for the whole board. Andrew? We had selected which bid we preferred. So there were three bids, one of which was in the 90 thousands, which was significantly higher than the other two. So we kind of regard that initially. And there was Dylan McCullough and who was the other one? Jacob Mayer. Jacob Mayer. And those, I think Dylan was a couple hundred dollars cheaper. But Jacob Mayer provided a lot more detail about what would be covered in the bid and like exactly when the area would be plowed and what would be done. So, you know, I thought, I think we thought that we preferred that bid. The, and the only other significant difference between the bids is, is that Jacob had an earlier end date to his contract after which we would pay on a per plow basis. And I talked with him and he would be agreeable to a contract that extended out to May 15th. So we wouldn't be on the hook for any additional plowing in April. So the, I think the staff as well as the finance committee were in favor of wanting to go with the bid from Jacob Mayer. So I would entertain a motion that we accept that bid contingent upon the select board's refusal to have the town road crews plow. And then we can have discussion after the motions made. If we so choose, I'll make that motion. Okay, great. Thank you, Bob. And a second. This is Lisa. I'll second. All right. Thank you. There any discussion about the bid for snow plowing? Lisa, I'd like to, I'd like to abstain from this bid because Dylan McCullough plowed my driveway and he's my neighbor and I'm quite well. And so I would like to abstain from the photo. Okay. Thank you. Understood. All right. Any other discussion? Yes, we've used Dylan for the last couple of years, correct? Last year, yeah. Okay. All right. And you said that the maintenance crews or the staff supports this decision to make a transition. Okay. You know, one consideration that we talked about in the finance committee is that our building budgets are built around outsourcing this work. So we don't necessarily have the staff in-house to plow or shovel our sidewalks, which includes making sure all the fire exit doors and the backs of the buildings are also cleared out. So we typically rely on the heavy equipment that the contractor brings in to just do a big sweep, which makes it really easy for them. For us, we don't have a skid steer. We would have to go out and buy a pretty expensive snow blower in the first year and hire up whether those are temp workers or not to make sure that our sidewalks are plowed. And that's a significant part of the work on both buildings is all of the extra clearing that has to be done on the big sidewalks. Okay. Thank you. Any other discussion? Are we so are we confident that if we do have the towns with council be able to take care of your discussion? Oh, well, I mean, we'll have that money in the budget that we weren't spending on a contractor. So we shouldn't have any problem funding it, you know, it'll be a little more logistically challenging because we'll have to ramp up pretty quickly and get some new equipment to do that. You know, we're not we're not stockpiling salt right now, for example, to do our sidewalks. So we'd have to come up with a plan for how we're going to sell out our sidewalks and sand them and spread that and that sort of thing. And where we're going to store that much salt. We usually just take it from the town, Mr. McCracken. Oh, we still store it just saying that's my experience. But the bids do include the salt and sand for our parking lot and our walkways. Yeah. Okay. All right. Any further discussion of this these bids? Okay. All in favor of accepting Jacob Mayor's bid pending negative response from the town select boards related to plowing and caring for our school parking lots and driveways. Please say hi. Hi. Hi. Okay. Any nays? And we have one extension, but the motion carries. Thank you. I guess one last thing is what happens if one town says yes and one town says no. I think both towns just plow half the parking lot. All right. Yeah. I feel like if both towns don't agree, then we need to just honor this bid. Okay. I just wanted to make sure we were explicit. That's just my personal opinion, but I think we could make things really more complicated for our administrators and our school staff in a year when we don't need any additional complication, frankly. We could always look at doing things differently next year. Yep. Absolutely. That could be some good leverage if one agrees and one doesn't. All right. Thank you very much for that. Tabling back to the agenda here, we have our act to approve the snow plow bid new hires. This is standing agenda item. Okay. Great. Any additional public comment? All right. Hearing none, I'll move forward. And that brings us to an executive session related to personnel. Yes, all I need is the board. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Good night, everyone. Thanks for all your effort. Thank you. So we're entering executive session at 8.20. The recording has to stop. I think it has not. Is there a motion? We need to vote the private caller. I'll make a motion to enter. Here we go. Executive session. All right. Sorry, good. Hey, and we're entering. Yeah, you just have to say no action taken. Sorry. Right. No action taken. We leave executive session at 8.33. Rodney, do you want to explain the athletic fields question? Well, it's just a matter of policy. Somebody asked me what the policy is of like independent groups using the field. Basically, I know there's some people that use like softball leagues or whatever during the summer. They use the ball fields and there's some guys that play soccer and what's the policy on that? Are they allowed to use it? Are they not? There's a community use of facilities policy, Rodney, that says you fill out the form and then if it doesn't, a butt up against a school sanctioned, you know, school sanctioned event that the administration can approve it. And there's a minimal fee charge to cover cleanup costs and things of that. Nature. And so right now, I can't open my buildings due to COVID to anyone in the community. Other than you guys could have a worn meeting in the evening when students are in session. That's the only thing that I'm permitted to do as far as outsiders coming in. So if we think about basketball and things of that nature, for the fields right now, we've chosen to keep it to school, age student groups across the SU, and we haven't allowed adult leagues on since school reopened. That was COVID related. It has nothing to do with our school policy. So I don't know if this is about a group currently right now that was asking that, but I'd encourage them to talk to Heidi and to Shane, our COVID coordinator, and that anything in regards to decisions about limiting access are all COVID related right now. It's nothing to do with us not wanting folks to come in. But I do think my next communication, I need to get in front of it and let folks know I really can't permit any groups into the schools. At this point in time, due to actually that is Department of Health and AOE guidance. Like the only people that can go in that building is actually you on a worn meeting. And it has to be after school hours. Otherwise, they have to be school personnel. Yeah, basketball game for next week. What was that Rodney? I'm sorry. Yeah, I understand nobody going in the buildings and the outdoor fields, whatever. But if that's the policy, then basically they have to have talked to Heidi and she's will handle it. I'm pretty checking with me about this stuff and her and Shane and I can talk. You know, we were trying to be very cautious to start the year. And our numbers are creeping up all over right now. We just had a huge outbreak in Montpelier due to athletics. And so, you know, I feel really good that we stayed open and knock on wood. I haven't received a call yet. So, you know, my right now I'm focused on instruction five days a week. Not on athletics and I'm an athletic guy. But anything I can do to make certain our kids stay in right now, that's my focus. Yeah, that's fine. I just want to know what the policy was. That's all. So if somebody asks, I can answer it. But, you know, sometimes when people ask questions and I don't know the answer, it's like, oh, one way to find out. You know, that's great. So that's it. That's all I needed to know. Yeah, and it's good to know that it's COVID related because when I initially heard it, it sounded, it made me worry that people who were not asking were using the fields and that people who did ask weren't being allowed access. So I appreciate knowing that it's related to using those resources for our students and preserving them for our students in this really atypical year. Okay, that's all I answered my question. So I do think I need to get in front of it because I do think we're going to start having more folks ask about Men's League for basketball specifically. And so I'll try to get information out here in the next week about that. And we don't even know if we're even a local thing. That's statewide. We don't even know if kids will be able to play basketball this year. No, we don't. Right. Even if the numbers are increased, I think that's less and less likely. Yeah, it's kind of a fishbowl in the gym with basketball. Sorry. All right. Any future agenda items? I think budget is the main pressing item that's on my mind right now. Other items? I just want to let the board know that Jamie's efforts at the essential office, if nothing changes, he's already saved us $150,000 towards the 700,000 deficit that we have. And I would like our finance committee to honestly be aware, but I'd like to see us save at least another, I'd like to see us save $300,000 out of this year's budget. But even $200,000 or $150,000 is going to get us back to when we go to the taxpayers, they'll know that we've worked hard to try to cut back on the budget and we'll still get we'll get support for next year's budget. So I think Jamie's doing his job and I think we need to do ours. And I think the finance committee, I find it, I find it really a good committee, I think it's very strong and Tara's, Tara's got a lot of work to do to keep up with it. And but I think that we'll get, we'll get, we'll end up with a good surplus this year, I hope that that deficit. Thank you. I appreciate those efforts. It's a time for a motion to adjourn. I think it might be. Make a motion to adjourn. All right, all right, all in favor? All right, good night. I got a sick horse, I gotta go check. Oh, good luck. Thank you. How sick? Uh, like 103.5 temp is not good in coffin. They just, oh no, plan those to Cornell. So I'm a little worried. Okay. My big good luck. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Good night, guys. Night. Night, everybody.