 Okay, everybody, we're gonna get started. We have Quorum. Welcome to our first in-person meeting. This is super exciting. I feel like we need to do a little dance. Oh, volume higher up. Jonas, you can't hear me? Can you hear me now? Yes, a little. More. Higher. Okay, higher. Can you hear me? One of these speakers, not yours. Well, I think it's the mic. We're trying to go with all the speakers. The microphones. So Jonas said he can't hear me. Oh, you can hear me now? Yeah, I can't hear you. Okay. I wonder about where's that mic going. So now that I'm, so. Totally got out of my room. I just wanted to say I'm so excited to see everybody. I was gonna take time to have everybody introduce themselves because we haven't been in-person. This is the first time that we're in-person. And then after that, I'll do the brief introduction of what we're gonna be talking about and welcome our community members and our board members and Zoom and our community members and Zoom. So let's get started and we'll start in that corner. Just, you know, your brief introduction, whatever you feel like saying. Sure. Hi, everyone. Daniel Peeney from Calis. Excited to be back in this building. It's been a while. Urs Listanley from Middlesex. Maggie Weiss from Calis. Diane Nichols-Fleming, Berlin. Lindy Johnson from East Montpelier. Mimikari Bradley from Calis. And I'm Floor from East Montpelier. I'm Jen, Laura Arsena, and I'm super excited. I'm Kaylin LeClaire from Worcester. Natasha Eckert-Banning from Worcester. Bye. Seeing everybody here reminds me that through the pandemic we have built this amazing infrastructure that I think will last for years to come. There's a little back sound like. Do you need the board members that are virtual? Maybe is that, yeah. Board members that are virtual, could you mute? Is everybody muted? I see some of them like going really close to the screen. So I do hope they can hear us. But yeah. So Chris, could you introduce yourself too? And Jonas, Jonas and Chris, could you introduce yourself? Urs Listanley from Middlesex. And I'm sorry I'm not with you today in the flesh. But I'm glad to hear all the chatter. It was long to hear. Jonas, you know, Van Fleet from Worcester all second what Chris said about the chatter before the meeting. Also, sorry I couldn't be here. Thank you both. So we don't know what the next challenge will be, but we surely know that we'll be ready for it just by seeing all of you here today. The purpose of today's community meeting is to intentionally engage, again, with our community and have it be a meaningful consultation about our ESSER funds. We want to continue to collaborate with you. And we're going to have a brief presentation of what is the status of our ESSER 1, ESSER 2, and ESSER 3 and how we're going to allocate this money and how we've been using this money up to now. Just a reminder that this is a living plan and we're inquired by statute to review it every six months. So by living plan, I mean that what we have put in might transform over the months, right? And we can continue to infuse new ideas and make sure that the spending that we're doing will have long lasting outcomes for our district. And with that, I'm going to go to Jim. So we're going to put the presentation up for everybody in just a minute. And I think I want to say that this is our first hybrid meeting and there's some things we've planned for in terms of technology. And there's some things that we cannot anticipate. So we're going to do our best to get through this together with a little bit of grace. And we'll ask for feedback at the end as well in terms of what has worked and what hasn't worked. So again, Thor has introduced the beginning of the plan and let us know that it is a requirement that we engage in this process every six months. So we did embark on some meaningful consultation back in the fall. And this is our home to get some more feedback. So we want to take the next slide. So our mission statement, as you can see here, everybody's really familiar with it, but we wanted you to take a minute to read it again and get inspired. And for those that don't have a computer or can't see the monitor, is Washington Central Unified Union School District assist to make nurture and inspire in all students the passion and creativity and the power to contribute to their global communities? Next slide. So we said this a little bit before and we'll say it again. There are lots of purposes to this community forum. I know the board's been working really hard to engage the community and we hope to have more and more robust participation going forward. We want to inform the public about this plan. We want to continue the consultation meaningfully for people that have input into the plan. We want to make sure that we're better understanding what the needs and desires of all stakeholder groups are related to this plan. Help us identify what are the most important aspects of the plan, things that we may or may not have been thinking about from our vantage points and we want to provide transparency. So in addition to understanding programmatically what's going on with our professor, we want to make sure that financially we're being transparent as well. Next slide. So one of the things that we know for sure is that in the world of education we use a lot of acronyms and that can be alienating and we don't want to alienate anybody. We want to be inclusive in our practices and in our language. So we've created this slide to break down some of the acronyms that you may have seen or encountered or you might hear tonight. And in organizing this slide, we did it sort of in chronological order to the best of our ability to also multitask and have this serve as a history of the funds as a snapshot. So the CARES Act there was passed in March of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. And the first inclusion of funds that was included in the CARE Act, we call that S of the funds. It stands for the elementary secondary school emergency relief funds. You will hear that there was, again, more relief and supplemental funds. That was the C-R-R-S-A. I don't even know what we call that because I don't ever use that acronym but it appears in some of the literature. And that was the act that enabled us to get what we call SR2 funds, the second inclusion of SR funds. And then last March, the American Rescue Plan Act was passed. And that gave the third and largest infusion of funds that we call that the ARP-SR funds. There was a period of time that those were called SR3 funds but now they're really referred to as ARP-SR. And it's in that particular act when we need to be super transparent and clear and engage the community in meaningful consultation and to be reviewing the plan. So again, that's why we're here. We did some preliminary work. We're gonna talk about that with you in just a couple of minutes. Throughout this presentation, you might hear us say something about SEL, that is social and emotional learning. That's one of the pillars of the recovery or moving forward plan. And then also you'll see there was a strategy in there related to the Spark Center. The Spark Center is a support that we're operating in the middle school. And you can see right there that Spark stands for seek positive answers, reset, keep going. So I think that is it for that slide. And Suzanne's gonna share with us a little bit of the history of the allocations. Sit here. And I think you probably have to view the camera, right? Yeah, I hope. This slide is a summary of each of the district ESSER awards and the expenditures, including some information about the current RF ESSER fund allocation. The CARES Act that Jen mentioned was signed into law on March 27th, 2020 and included the first round of ESSER funds. The district utilized full allocation of $243,331. For remote instruction, additional nurse time and the COVID-19 coordinator with a small allotment going to independent schools. The CERSA Act for ESSER II became law on December 27th, 2020 and provided educational entities with the ESSER II funds. Washington Central utilized the full allocation of $1,108,477 for remote instruction, staffing needed for additional improvements to instruction and support services necessitated by the COVID-19 response. As the plan for moving forward was being crafted at Washington Central, the ARP Act was signed into law on March 11th of 2021 and provided the third infusion of ESSER funds for the school districts. Initial grant awards were received based upon the submission of the recovery plans that were begun under the ESSER II plan. Our ESSER fund allocations are budgeted to be spent in FY 22 through FY 24. So we have until September 30th of 2024 to spend the funds. An initial budget request for $1,856,138 was submitted last week, March 28th. And actually we got an email yesterday saying it was approved. So yay, we're excited. It contains strategies to fund expanded instructional services, guidance services, nursing services, including the COVID-19 coordinator. The district will use any new stakeholder feedback to advise the allocation of the remaining funds and any changes in spending going forward. And the balance of the funds right now is 623,937, that's not currently allocated. Next slide, please. So as the school districts began planning the use of the ESSER II funds, the AOE asked school districts to submit a post-pandemic recovery plan, which identified the following pillars for recovery planning. Social emotional learning, mental health and well-being, student engagement and truancy, academic achievement and success. Phase one of the plan was a comprehensive needs assessment completed in April of 21. Phase two of the plan was specific goal and strategy development completed in May of 21. Following the signing of the ARPAC in March of 21, the AOE identified a fourth area of focus for school districts to consider while they're doing their planning. That was safe and healthy operations. The recovery planning for ARP ESSER spending resulted in the development of the Washington Central Unified Student School District plan for moving forward. The plan for moving forward or otherwise known as the recovery plan is a living document that we are required to review and update every six months. Once the AOE received detailed guidance from the US Department of Ed on ARP ESSER, at the end of January 22, school districts were also asked to develop a public plan for ARP ESSER spending. This plan is to clearly identify informative resources and opportunities for engagements available to the public. The intent of the public plan is to make the public aware of the available funding and provide a clear path for community input. This slide, we just wanted to show you that all the materials related to the ESSER grants and the spending plans, including the new public plan for ARP ESSER spending can be found on the Washington Central website by following the ESSER funds link that's on our homepage. And it will bring you to a page that looks like this. Take Jen's link to show you. Was it not on this one? You got it. You got it. Sorry. No, no. I was just gonna hover over the link just to show them. Oh, you need to click it. Just hover. Yeah, just hover. You're right there. I'll put the top. No, that's the plan for moving forward. It's on our website. If you go to the homepage, the words ESSER funds are right in the top left corner and it's really clear how to get there. It has all of this information that we've given to you just now, but we wanted to run through it publicly in our first-in-person meeting here, so. So there were the three plans for the three pillars for moving forward in recovery. And like I said, at an earlier meeting this evening, what we thought we were gonna do in May of 2021 and where we are right now, we're two radically different places. And so some of us are gonna talk you through what we said, what our source of data were, what we thought we'd do and where we were. So Kat's gonna pick it off with a social motion brush. I'm in the state, what's up, right? I wanna go to the next slide. Under this pillar, one of the, under this pillar, one of the things that we predominantly focused on was ensuring that we were thinking proactively about what was occurring for students. We increased the number of, or the FTEs for school nurses and school counselors. And really explore some social-emotional learning approaches. The sources of data that we looked at, I think thinking about what I heard you say earlier, Jen, like where are we when we started this plan and where are we at now? I think it's really important for us to take a look at the data point of student behavior data. That's the part that I think stands out for us, for me the most. Mark, if you go to the next slide, you'll see that the way that we used, the plan to use this money was about the staffing, but it was also to make sure that we're really thinking about the framework for how we deliver social-emotional learning curriculum. These are all really proactive and preventative strategies, and that is a wonderful thing. The reality that we're fighting this year is that the behavior data is showing us that students are struggling, students are struggling in a variety of ways. One of the things that I think is important one of the things that keeps your coming to mind for me is when you, and I think about the young ones, the little, at the kindergarten level, you can see oftentimes pretty easily the kids who've had those learning experiences, those shared experiences with kids because they've been in preschool or daycare, or they have siblings to practice on. And you can see the kids who haven't had those experiences and that's not a terrible thing. It tells you where each kid is starting and what you need to do to get them there, but that's a good two-year difference in a lot of cases. And we're seeing that two-year difference at every grade level. And I think if you anecdotally were to look at our student behavior data, you'll see that kids are lacking a tolerance for normal frustration. They do, like us adults, they don't know what it's like to be a person with each other, and they're struggling to get their needs met in ways that you wanna hug up and love. Those are not the behaviors that they're always doing. And they don't match their chronological age. The developmental age that they are at right now does not match what we see with our eyes. And that is a lot to tackle. I think looking forward past the next year, we need to start thinking strategically as a district about what are the skill sets and knowledge that our educators need to have in order to move our students forward by that two-year. There you are. All right, I'll walk us through pillar two of student engagement and truancy, five. And if we could recall last year, well, remember that we're in a little bit of a different place than other districts were and that our BK through eight were in school full-time and then our high schoolers were alternating. So we're in a little bit of a different space than other districts were. And we wanted to really focus on how we would increase student participation, engagement, and address truancy. Thank you. So the sources of data that were used in considering this plan were student attendance, truancy, participation in elementary athletics, and then also 832. And then just more generally, how are students participating in showing up for co-curriculars. On the left side of the screen, you can see what the team had planned. A lot of thinking about how we can reintegrate the students into these different programs and increase participation and attendance and address truancy. I'll let you read through those. And then on the right side of the screen, similar to what Kat was saying, it was a little different than what we had anticipated because we did not look forward to the two variants of Delta that impacted our ability to really see this through in the way that we had anticipated. The good news being that we have a template and ideas for what we can do in order to increase student engagement. And we weren't able to see those pieces to fruition because COVID stuck with us long ago. So then we really focused on last spring and thinking about what was academic achievement and student success. Similar to what you heard from Kat and from Kara, we had some great hopes last spring for moving into this school year. Some of those came to fruition and others didn't. They're just some of the sources of data. For those of you who have served on the board for years now, do you know that we look at a lot of different sources of data when we talk about academic achievement and student success, we have a lot of sources of data on our local comprehensive assessment plan. We have benchmark assessments in literacy and in math, we have diagnostic assessments at different grade levels. And we also take a look at students on different plans and IEPs, those on 504 plans. Another source of data that we looked at when setting goals last spring was just what opportunities that our high schoolers have to participate in different flexible pathways. Let's slide. So what we had hoped to happen last May was to hire additional instructional coaches to help foster teacher growth. And we currently have some coaches in our district and our hope was to hire more and have them be more available in all of our buildings. What happened, you'll see on the right side, there were staffing shortages everywhere. There continued to be staffing shortages everywhere and we weren't able to hire instructional coaches. As we had hoped, or we may even have had to step around to, we're going to be instructional coaches and we needed them to cover areas. We also looked at our master schedules and hoped to increase our intervention services. At the elementary level, we developed kind of what we felt were best practices around interventions and services and what that would look like. We also wanted to create more opportunities for our teachers to use data to kind of examine that and think about what that means for their students and how to set goals and looking at the data. And really what ended up happening there is that a lot of those opportunities were able to happen in all of our buildings all year just because of lack of substitutes and a lot of staffing shortages. I won't say it didn't happen anywhere and I won't say it didn't happen at all because we certainly did look at student data. We did provide intervention services. We were able to make some really nice gains in this area but I think it's safe to say not as many as we had hoped. Another area that we wanted to look at is just really examining our belief systems around implicit bias, especially related to historically marginalized students. I would say again, work started in that area and there is some momentum in that there's definitely given what I've shared with you before. There's a lot more to do, a lot more work that needs to be done. And then really just thinking about a vision for professional learning in this district. As you know, in May, Jen was our curriculum director and Jen stopped being our curriculum director and so that's a lot of that work. Ellen Dorsey has taken a huge chunk of that work and has really kept us going this year around professional learning but there was a lot that we had hoped to accomplish. We just want able to and we're hoping to get back to that next year. So we wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity to answer any questions that you have. We've put down a few of them, what questions do you have? Do you have the information that you need or do you want more information in general? What are your thoughts about this plan and perceptions, any ideas going forward? And I wanted to say that link there that's underlined at the top is the public plan for our spending. That is the plan that we submitted and that has been approved. And it's also a little jargonian formatting. So we were hoping that this presentation would help in terms of making it accessible to the board and the public at large. It does say sort of what we've just said in a chart template there, that's just a snip from the template itself. We used the recommended template from the agency. We wanna ask, we wanna answer your questions and then we also, if you'll go to the next slide Mark, sort of in tandem a little back and forth. We do have a feedback form. It's right on that site again that Suzanne pointed out. I engaged in a meaningful consultation in the fall and had office hours and other opportunities for the public and some people came and I took copious notes and I realized from that experience that it's much better to have all of the information in one place. So this time around I've asked people to just go in there and fill out that feedback form. So then it's just a typical loop of form. It's all right there. So that everybody, you know, when we share it again, it's transparent and we can all see it. So I'll also talk about next steps a little bit and then we'll open it up to questions. So again, you all, we had an equality committee meeting before this week. We talked about the importance of looking at, continuing to look at our data, especially some of the statewide sources of data as they become available, which hopefully will be in the next couple of weeks. We're going to continue to analyze our data. We're going to look back at the sources of data that we had last year around the comprehensive needs assessment and what still is making sense to look at. We'll be planning, doing some more planning and amending throughout the tenure of this RFS suspended plan. Again, we're required to do some review every six months. We will update you and the public and we need to spend the funds by September of 2024. So Mark, if you want to go back to the questions slide, I think we would just invite any questions, any comments about the plan itself. And then I just encourage you and members of the public as well to fill out that form if you have some ideas. So why don't we open it to members of the public first and then have the board ask questions. So I don't know if they can hear me in, if you're online, please raise your hand. I've been following the messages and stuff. So I don't see any hands online from community members. Community members here, the one community member here, you have questions. Do you have questions? Can you hear me now? Yes. Do you have a question? So you're on the spot. Sorry to put you on the spot, but you're the only one present. Ginny is there, but her hand is not up. And there's a couple of other people, but. I'm here too, I just don't have any questions. Thank you, David. Yes, go ahead. Where they say, I don't want to come again, but here's what I think. So I've received quite a few emails over the, really over the past six months, I've been talking about, I've been, it's hard to remember the times of the last year, when you considered, did you want to use some money for advancing arts, increasing arts, or instruction across the schools? Still hearing about that project and this idea because they partner as well as the public idea that we work as a district to increase our students' opportunities to some in a way that is integrative. So it is supporting rigorous academic questions, ways to connect with your health or whether it's, but we haven't had a district. Well, a lot of people will understand the grant of the district and chunk of money that could be to address all the pillar that we've got to be losing $500. Thank you. For members, since we don't, I don't see any hands in the, yes. Oh, Jenny is raising her hand. Oh, Jenny. Okay. She's waving her hand. Oh, now I see, oh, and Chris has his hand up. Jenny, do you want to unmute yourself and ask a question? Yeah, very strange environment. And if I were a non, I mean, I've spent 18 years on a school board and I sort of know the scene, but if I were just an ordinary person in the world, I would not know what to do with a forum like this. I would not know where I fit in, who you're talking to, who could I talk to and what would I say? It's a completely baffling world to normal people. You guys need a translator. You need somebody who can take what you, the way you're thinking, because I've been there, I know how you think in school board stuff and make it understandable to ordinary people because what I saw tonight was incomprehensible to anybody who's not deeply in the world of school board stuff. You need a translator, because this was not that. This did not do that for ordinary people. Thanks, Jenny. Ronda, Ronda, do you want to unmute? Hi, welcome. You're muted. And I can try to take my hand down too. Okay. Yeah, thank you for that comment. I am Ronda Prensky. I have three, we're a blended family. I have three children, one in 10th grade, one in eighth grade and a sixth grader at East Montpelier. So I came to this forum and I have no idea what's going on. I'm interested in learning and understanding and being a part of the community. We were at Orchard Valley. We came during COVID. I'm trying to engage as I'm able to. But I thank the previous person's comment because I have no idea what any of this represents. I have never seen this plan or maybe I missed the link, but there's just a lot of emails coming in and trying to keep up with everybody and everything. So I felt kind of dumb for saying, I don't know what this is all about, but thank you for liberating me from that. Thank you, Ronda. Is that it? Yeah, that's it. Thank you for, thank you. I mean, I appreciate all everybody's time and hard work, but I just don't understand to what end it all is. So that's it. Thanks. Thanks, Ronda. I'm gonna go to Chris since he is online too. Chris. Hi, thanks, Laura. So I have a generalized question to the presenters and it sounded like a lot of the goals that were hoped for last year didn't come to pass due to staffing shortages. And so my question is whether it looks like that landscape is changing so that we will not have staffing shortages. And if it doesn't look like we're having a changing landscape and that staff members will be available, is there a plan B to address our problems without additional staff? Thank you. Sorry, you all help out if you want. One thing that we have anticipated across the state really is that hiring is gonna be hard this year. There are lots of vacancies for lots of positions. And one thing I think that we just did that hopefully puts us in a good position is that we put some stuff on the back burner and we expedited to get in teacher contracts out. So we just handed them out on Friday and Monday of this week. Teachers have 30 days. We did that. We heard some of our neighboring districts got beat us contractually. We had till the 15th of April, but we really wanted to get that clock ticking. We're asking folks if we know of some resignations, you'll take action on that later tonight, some of them. We're working hard to post. We're trying to streamline some of our practices. We have someone at U32 who's been lovely stepping up to help us process some of the central office work so that we can get stuff posted a little bit more quickly. And part of the strain I would say is also the fact that we really had little to no substitutes in our votings too. So that some of that work that we had hoped to do, we couldn't do because we couldn't release teachers to do the work. We just didn't have subs. And hopefully as we are moving along in this pandemic, people will feel more comfortable coming to work in our votings. I don't, if you guys, would you add anything to that? I would add the steam, principal Mary U32. I would add that one of our other big issues is we were very hopeful in our planning that we could do all kinds of community stuff that Delta and Omicron completely wiped out. And so it wasn't just staffing issues, but we had been very ambitious around redoing community events because we realized that that was the big missing piece that we think as we spoke to. So the question's already is, the reason this doesn't make a lot of sense is because we didn't get to do much of it. And so I think that that's another big factor that it wasn't just staffing that Delta was probably the bigger problem for us in this whole piece. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen, Jen. Join us. Can you hear me? Yes. So I heard the two comments from Rhonda and I forget who made the first comment. Forgive me for forgetting your name. But if we were to try to distill this presentation and what we're talking about into an elevator pitch, would it be accurate to say that we have a big bunch of federal money? Here's what we're thinking about doing with it. What else would you like us to be thinking about? Is that a pretty accurate summation or is there anything else to add? Money that we need to use. Got it. So I hope that helps. It's hard to talk about, education is very professionalized, right? And the language of the education profession can be dense and impenetrable. I totally get that. And I also get that it's the role of a school board to try to meet educators where they are and to try and understand that language. And those processes and those priorities that we're talking about, so that's just to say that that's well received by me. I hear that. But I'd also say that there's a lot of detail and there's a lot of stuff to talk about. And it can be really, really hard to know what to, what to cut out, right? In the interest of concision and simplifying stuff. Thank you, Jonas. Oh, now you have your hand up. Yes. So I'm also kind of adding in question to Jonas's statement, is it also true that the funds need to be used for specific types of interventions? And maybe that's something you could speak to. Can it be used for absolutely anything from buildings improvement to classroom instruction or are there restrictions according to what the feds put in place in the law? Because I think that's an important piece. Yeah, and there are those broad categories, right? So those were the ones that we spoke to, the social-emotional learning, engagement and truancy, academic achievement and success, and safe and healthy operations. There are some districts that have been utilizing the funds for some construction projects, for example. We've been pretty, we've been prudent and we've had some good foresight in terms of a commitment to taking care of these buildings. And so some of that work, we did some ventilation work early on, but we're not facing the same construction issues that some school systems are, but that is another allowable use. But yeah, so under those broad categories, there's lots of discretion, but they do need to be matched to those categories. And is there also something in that language around a long-term impact of how the funds are used now or is it designed to be, you know, just for the time periods that the funding is provided? I think that's another piece that the public might not understand. Yeah, thank you. I'm gonna try to answer that, you guys, help me too. So the S or funds are finite. They, you know, it's a big infusion of money and we have to spend it by 2024. It's why we've been thinking about what are the things that we can boost right away and meet some immediate needs? How can we also do some work that's more proactive? So thinking about, for example, one of the ideas we had with boosting school counseling services was that so that school counselors could be in the general classroom more and we could do some SCL work sort of side-by-side with classroom teachers. It's happened in some cases and it hasn't happened as well as we had hoped the first year in other cases. And we've also tried to be really transparent about the fact when we were budgeting, for example, to tell you all, as board members in the public, this is S or money. These funds go away, right? So that if there are investments or strategies that we think we want to continue to invest in beyond the life of the S or funds, that's some local decision-making that we're gonna have to engage in. And that, you know, that's a finite resource so we need to look at the overall picture. What would you all, yeah, Suzanne? I would just add that there has to be a clear connection to COVID-19 response as well. So when we look at possible building projects, we do have a couple of air handling unit or ERU projects that we could potentially put into the plan. It is currently not in there. But those types of building projects could be related to COVID-19. An update to the cafeteria floor maybe isn't something like that. We have to conduct everything in the plan to a COVID-19 response. Diane? So a couple of questions that I have. One is around the outcomes that were noted that created this planning. So that was outcomes from 20. Was that the spring of 2020 outcomes coming into 20, the fall of 20? I'm just trying to, you know, how you made the recovery plan, the data that was collected, what was? 2019. Was it? No, it was a mix of data, right? So some of those, some of like the SVAX scores we didn't have from, you know, that was 2019, but there were other sources of data, benchmark assessment system, iReady, math, diagnostic, number of nursing visits, or kids. At what point though, when was that captured? So that was? Last year. Yeah, so the reason I'm asking that is, I know that the plans weren't able to be implemented for a variety of reasons. Has the data been compared to see, you know, I think many of us would speculate, because it was a harder year than last year, that they took a hit again. But to me, it would be interesting to see those two data points as well. And then building on what Chris is saying about a plan B, so to speak, at what point do we as a system re-evaluate whether or not the plans we had put in place because we can't physically do them make the most sense? Or is it something that's different that has to do with farm to table to all of the sustainable work that could be done, being done as well as just even project-based learning? So at what point do we kind of shift or explore that? And then what is the amount of money we're talking about that you're still wanting ideas around? And how do we take ideas from this and put it into work? Because is there a lot of money? Yeah, that was in the backets. 100,000 that has an end. Some of the commitments we've made right now are through the next full year and the following. And that may or may not be something that we're deciding each year we need to continue to do. So that's what it is now, but that's not what it has to be. And I think through that feedback form, when I am talking about those next steps, looking at our data, what do we need? What can we actually do? Like are there people out there, those next steps and the feedback, those are the things we need to be thinking about. There are contractual obligations that we already have now, right? Like we went out, we offered those contracts, we're not gonna un-offer them, right? That's even a word. We can't rescind that offer, that's better English. But we have obligated, we've made some obligations, but not everything yet. So there is still some, there's some sense of possibility for what we might need. What would you all add on the next slide? I think thinking about if one, as an educational institution or as a academic, it really needs to, we need to be thinking about what makes our students available. Is it the 18th as a question? And then- Another question, Kari? Yeah, related to that, I've been thinking about that disparity that Kat was describing, two years of social-emotional development. What a huge challenge that must be for the schools in terms of behaviors and instruction. But it's also a community challenge. And I wonder while you're thinking about planning for how the schools respond, is there a way that the community can help? Is there something we can ask of families and organizations and just the broader community to help these young folks get more development? I don't know if you thought about that at all. I think that was in part the whole hope for that second, the student engagement truancy piece, right? Again, we were fortunate last year. Our kids, pre-1983, were in school every day. And we had a remote option that was robust. And our high schoolers alternated weeks. There were lots of schools in the state that did not happen. Kids were not physically present as much. So we didn't have some of those same issues where we lost track of kids for months at a time, for example, like happening in other places. That didn't happen here. What we lost was the ability for our community to come into our schools, right? It was just parent-teacher conferences this spring was that was the first opportunity that parents had to walk into our schools in a long time. So we had envisioned this whole idea of re-engaging the community, helping them strengthen their connections to the schools, eliminating barriers of transportation, thinking about feeding them, figuring out what does the community want, how do we tap into their strengths and keep our schools sort of like all of the community connections work that we envisioned in like 2000, right? When we were first getting that grant, none of that has come to fruition right now. We're just open and devoted. So there is a sense of possibility and hope, I think, but it was absolutely on the fact that we're in our time. I think the other thing that we lost until very, very close in the past, right? And in masks, and until very, very recently, they really hadn't flexed and interacted with each other. And the definition of community in our schools changed drastically. Just in the last few weeks, right where we were trying to get back to what is that sense of community? What does it look like to not be targeted to be with older and younger peers and how do you engage with others in all of that? So I think that just the in-school community looked very different. Well, I thought I would speak to the student engagement and truancy column because that's how you can use the money in a way that might be creative. And when you're talking about farms of school or you're talking about outdoor education, it may not be hiring a special employee. Like that's expensive. That takes a lot of your money. But the professional development to incorporate it in and be able to keep data that students in these programs, I mean, in those little elementaries, it should be school-wide, but how it does change. You could have data on the truancy. So I just think that's an area for the engagement that somehow pointing some of that money for either professional development for staff members who are currently here across classroom and the arts and how it all works might be an area where that money could be used. But like you said, it is finite. So you start something if we can start it from within and just use that money for the professional development. It's not then going to come down in a couple of years of oh, we have this huge budget increase because we don't have that federal money anymore. That's one of the things I think it's important to keep in mind, but when it has to be something to do with COVID response than the engagement and getting kids to school. Because a lot of kids liked learning at home and they don't have a lot of tolerance for being in the classroom. So if they sneeze a couple of times, they get to go home and we have to build them back to wanting to be there and to be engaged. I think that's an important point, but that column right there just speaks to me for figuring out ways to use that money. And I think Linda, you bring up a really good point because that was really, you know when you get into big brand, you don't want to like all the time all these people in three years down in the road you're going to have this giant budget but really looking at what can you do in terms of professional development and the capacity of the faculty that we have to meet needs. And then, and I'll just tell you from my perspective from being in the building, like April, they were like, yes, next year's going to be so great or so safe for next year. Yay! And then, and then this school year came and we all went, so that was kind of, I think part of it is that, you know, the whole sub thing that happens is usually in the elementary schools now people won't want to, because often times the older people they're only suddenly one school so our sub pool is right. A lot of the trainers and the people that we use are also people who have part-time jobs and other schools, so finding people and finding their own ability and then getting a subset and getting a piece of time to get that to be navigated and come to terms with the fact that we were not having a fun in the center year. But that was really definitely one of our thoughts when we were looking at grant funding in particular when we finite ones. You want to invest in increasing capacity of what we have so that you're not setting yourself up because you hire so many people in here who's looking at like, well, 10 or 40, 10 or 40, 10 or 40, so increasing capacity. This has just been, and it sounds like making excuses, but it's just a bit of a year of perpetual curve balls and it's sort of a year to look at this and be like, oh, we're very young and on to us. I'm just, I really appreciate the last few comments. And I didn't, you know, I believe for looking at community engagement partnerships around our school or around the full acknowledgement of the exhaustion level of the faculty and the administrators and not to say do another thing now. But yes, like you have said to invest in the future of it in a way that is also rebuilds the parent school connection that I don't know about you. I'm really hearing about a huge alienation, not intentional, but that has happened. I graduated senior, but don't forget about the lack of community within the high school classes. It's stark and exciting to create. Thank you, Erica. Randa, you have your hand up. Do you have another comment? I do. Thank you. First of all, is there a way, and maybe I missed it, to get that link to this whole plan sense? Did it come like in an email or something other than just finding it on the website? If something, is there a way to have it sent to the community with the feedback form to click on the feedback form, et cetera? Is that possible? Yes. Yeah, we can put the feedback form on front porch forum and send it to you. Okay, great. And the plan to review. And my, the only comment I have, and I hesitate to say anything because this is not my area. It's expertise and I don't have it. I don't know how to do it, but I would, and I know how exhausted everybody is, but I would just encourage, what I see staring at me in the face is the middle column of the education recovery pillar. And all of those four items are all interconnected. And I just, rather than separate them, I just, they're all connected. They all are interconnected. And just to have a more holistic approach, maybe, I don't know, it's just what I see. I think each one impacts the other. So maybe that's part of it. I don't know, but that's just what I'm looking at. Thank you. Thank you, Rhonda. Any other board comments, Daniel? Yeah, I was just curious a couple of times the sort of six month revision process was mentioned. And I was curious, what's the plan for that? Who was engaged? And will the board of the community be hearing about that revision? Are faculty involved in that process, or is it a central office thing exclusively? So what has been this time around has been an opportunity for the staff to come and offer feedback. I offered office hours. That's how I did it, via Zoom. And then this is the public board right now. That's how we've done it. And I would welcome your feedback, because we have to do it again and again. So I would hope that we'll sort of debrief what went well about this process, what would we change for next time, and it'll be better next time. I missed one. Thanks. So there's no other comments? We're getting closer. I just wanted to put in a plug for Farm to Table. We did that at the school where I taught. I was a STEAM teacher. And we were able to build it into the NGSS standards that I was already teaching. And we also built it into the ELA curriculum and other things like that. And our students loved it. They looked forward to it every month to be able to be having those hands-on lessons happening in the classroom. And we incorporated it into food tastings in the cafeteria. And it opened up a world for some of our students to try food that they'd never tried before and to just visit a farm and just be engaged with community in a way that they hadn't before. And again, like I said, we were able to tie it directly into the NGSS. And I just built it into my curriculum as a STEAM teacher. So I think that if I think it's something that we should really look into and think about, because I think it's a great opportunity for our students. She's better go first. I've said a bunch of stuff. Yeah, I was going to just kind of chime in and second that as well. One of the things that's been positive of this pandemic, I think, is that school meals have been free for everyone. And so I'd love to see that continued in that sense. But also healthier meals and local meals, I think maybe that's the way school, community garden, that sort of thing where we could just build it into our culture. So you won't have so many, as I was saying, mental health benefits, physical health benefits. And you look at that as those hierarchy needs and if kids are not being nourished with healthy food, then they're happy. I had two things. First, with the social and emotional learning curriculum, I'm assuming there's a curriculum that's being used. I would think there's some kind of parent support trainings that might be incorporated that come along with whatever you're using as a resource at the district level to implement the additional supports through the social workers and school counselors. So that seems like a natural, easy potential if there's, I don't know what program you're using, but I would assume there's something that's built into that. And the other piece is having been a longtime coordinator of the Forer-Wins program, which is an outdoor science ed program, we depend on parent and community volunteers. And as in the 20-plus years I've been parenting in this district, we've just gone through incredible demographic and economic changes and we don't have the same number of people available to volunteer in our schools that we used to. So when we talk about community gardens and these activities that rely on community supports, the reality is that we just don't have that number of people anymore and it falls on a very small group. And I think that's something that we need to look at certainly from an equity standpoint as well, that there are schools that get these things and schools that don't. And it's important that it's available across the board. And if we're going to do those kinds of things, we can't be exclusively relying on community members to be participating. And that puts an added burden on our teachers and school educators who are already burdened. So there has to be a really creative plan about how to address that. And the state of some of our school community gardens, for example, reflects that or the loss of Forer-Wins in some of our schools. So that's my perspective from experience. But I'm so I feel a little bit almost jaded because I absolutely agree with those things. But I think it probably means more community partnerships with existing farms, not so much relying on a school farm. And if there are functional and successful models at the state level that we can be looking to, it's not like we need to recreate the wheel. But again, it's a matter of where do your administrators and your classroom teachers have the time to do the envisioning when they're already in crisis mode, essentially, trying to meet the needs of kids who don't have the resilience right now to be working on the basic academics to be moving grade level to grade level. It's just not easy. Daniel? What you said may sort of correct it, what I was about to say. But I'm wondering if I think a lot of your points are valid. I wonder if there's a way to engage community members, sort of the professional community members with the RFP process or something like that, to solicit project ideas from organizations like Erica's Group and others like them to sort of bring a level of expertise that's above amateur and above sort of the overextended community volunteer, but still bringing sort of external support to some curricular objectives behind it out here. I don't know. Yeah, that's quick. But I think we've heard a lot of really good ideas. And I also know that even though we keep saying that the funds and finite, what we want is long-term outcomes, long-term, outlasting outcomes. So whatever we're investing should be that. Two things that I didn't hear. I agree with everything that was said. Two things that I didn't hear. I know that the shortage of staff is here to stay. The state, right? It's not just education that is missing people. So there's any ways that we could be creative. One thing that was pointed out to me in this trip was that there's other states that have been doing a more, can you hear me now? Erica, sorry, that have been doing it for students that are just graduating from being teachers, so an incentive to bring them to work with us. And I know that we've been looking at even new students, but student loan is another thing that, so with that maximum of $5,000, for example, something that could make us more attractive into, because without the staff we can't complete, without the subs and without the staff we can't really get to where we wanna get. That's one thing. And then the other one, I like what you're saying, Erica and everybody, I agree with Maggie, having participated for wins. The garden falls always in one teacher. It's just, it's really hard, but I think if we could still make changes in our cafeteria food, right? Like make long-lasting impacts and try to have a more holistic way to do it across the district, that also requires time. And I know that everybody is trying to do that, but that is not a reason to not do it either. So maybe you don't need to go super intensive, but just boost that up a little. And then the last thing, I'm more worried about maybe having a community partnership with our at-risk youth in our surroundings. So maybe that community partnership could be with something to engage our middle school, to high school, something that is just an idea. I know that there's other people out there, but our kids, not necessarily just in U32, but our kids from U32 to Berry to Montpellier, they all influence each other. And there's a lot of our at-risk youth right now with the pandemic. So that's all I have to say on that. And then with that, I think we should move into our business part if that's okay with everybody. So basically all these ideas we should put into that feedback forum is what you're saying, so that can be captured. So all of the great rumblings and everything should go in there so that that exists. Yeah, including board members, like because otherwise then we'll have, make sure that everybody's except, beside your notes or my notes or Lisa's notes that everything goes into. So thank you, Diane, yeah. And thank you, you guys for being here and we thank you for all you do. So let's move into our business part and I also don't wanna pull you up. I know you guys been working all day, so don't feel like you have to stay for the business part, but you are welcome to stay. It's nice to see you. It's so nice to see you. I wanted to hug you everybody, but I behave myself. Thank you for the hug. Okay, well, let's get started and Lindy will catch up and I'll let Chris, welcome to our meeting. We need to approve this bid. So we're gonna move in 3.1, a bundle project bid award. Everybody had a chance to read. What came in the packet? Are there any questions? I'm gonna let Chris, do you wanna say something about it or just explain quickly that we put it up to 10 people and just one, Lindy, go ahead. Yeah, can you hear me okay, Floor? Yes, we can hear you perfect. I wish I had your. So we invited 10 vendors to bid on the combined projects listed in the memo. The sole base bid on this project provided by Farrington Construction, including the additional 10% contingency would be 600,941, I'm sorry, 600,949 dollars. This exceeds the original project estimate by a 174,259 dollars. After consultation with the project manager and engineers from Black River Design, we recommend the board authorize the allocation of 174,259 additional capital reserve funds to the completion of this combined project. We also recommend the board approve awarding the 2022 combined project contract of Farrington Construction Company in an amount not to exceed 600,949 dollars. Thank you, Chris. So, yeah. Can I do them both together? Let's do them separately. It's painful, but I will move that the board authorize the allocation of 174,259 dollars additional capital reserve funds to the completion of the 2022 combined projects. Thank you, Carrie. Second. Thank you, Daniel. Any discussion? Diane? Do, I was just glancing, I apologize for not reading it more thoroughly, but do we know, I mean, is it just the typical additional construction costs that have costed to go up that high? And just wanting to make sure that the fact that it is coming in that high when we only had one bid, is there any consequence for us accepting only one bid? Chris? Sorry, I didn't hear all that. So, what, can I, can you hear me? Or can you hear me better? Can you hear you fine? Okay, so what Diane is asking is that, is this all just due to increase in construction costs? Yeah. The 174,000 additional funds, that was the first question. Do you wanna answer that part? Could we talk about it? I think the batteries. Yeah, so, yeah, this is one that, Black River Design had was worried that this one could be more because of the material costs. It's just so unpredictable. And the fact that we only had one bidder out of 10, we really don't have anything to compare it to, but everybody's, these companies are short staff, and have so many projects going on this summer. And with the rise in cost of materials, that is what we think is driving that extra cost. Yeah, and Diane, the second part of your question is why not wait? Is that what you're trying to say? Oh, no, can I, our mic is dead. I think that's part of it. Can you hear me better now? No. It's hard to hear you, sorry. No, no worries. How about now? That's good. I don't hear, I don't hear. So the other question was, is there a consequence of accepting only one bid, especially when it's up higher? No, we have applied for a waiver already, so we are planning on that. Well, we have, we will have to apply for a waiver as soon as we approve it. Well, as soon as we approve it. I have laid the seeds in conversation with Cassandra Ryan and the AOE to let her know that as soon as you approve this, I'll be requesting a waiver. And whatever feedback was, we're getting a lot of waiver requests. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing I could say, Diane is like, this is my world, the construction world right now, and there's, you won't say much by waiting, and you can't keep anything, every week the prices are up and down right now, you can't keep. So most likely the most valuable thing is getting a commitment from our contractor. Exactly, and the contractors are not providing your material as soon as possible. So while we have them. So I feel like we're going to work very hard to get Farrington to come out and do the whole group and then we started with an initial group of I think seven, and then we reached out to two more, and then we reached out to, you know, finally someone interested in the project. So, yeah. Yeah. I break while I'm trying someone. Part of the reason that they were even interested in it was because they had another big project that they can't get materials for. Otherwise, we probably would have had no bids on this, unfortunately. So all those in favor, Chris. Oh, sorry, Chris, go ahead. Hi, Chris, how are you? So when people, when contractors don't bid, do they ever give you a reason why they don't bid? Yeah, most of the reasons that we heard this year was because they were too busy. They had too much work and not enough help. And these are all, you know, very reputable contractors. And we did talk about this, you know, early on that we might run into this. We've, you know, we had one bidder on the air handler unit. So we were like, whoa, boy, we got lucky there. We had two on the dugouts, you know. The stormwater project was the best one, right? I think we ended up with five or maybe six, but the disparity and the numbers there was, you know, anywhere from a half a million down to 200,000, you know. Does that tell us that we should start making requests for putting bids out like in the fall for a project that's gonna come up next summer? Yeah, the earlier we can get this process started, the better, especially right now with, it's not just the availability of the contractors, but the materials are, you know, some of them are saying, you know, we don't know if we're gonna get them, right? So the roof, the roof was the U32 roof project was the real, the one that had us worried the most because we had heard that the materials were, you know, six months plus out. That's why we really wanted to push that one through as fast as we could, knowing that. But we haven't really run into that with any of these other projects to this point to where we're not gonna be able to do that. So Chris, is there anything that you were in terms of our process, the way we approach these, these capital projects that we need to tweak in order to be prepared to go out to bid earlier, like in the fall? Yeah, Suzanne and Bill and I have been exactly working on that, Chris, just trying to back the process up so we can start it earlier as part of our capital plan. So we don't get back into the corner with, you know, having only just one available contractor, you know, you would always want, you know, three, four, five, six, 10. I mean, just so you can compare, you know, the numbers and it keeps everybody honest. Okay, thanks, thanks for your answers. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Thanks. Thank you, Chris. I saw another hand up. Ursula, did you had a question? Yes, I was curious, Chris, if they're in the bid opening, did Black River Design see any red flags on the bid that might drive it fast up later? I see that you can't hear her. Were there any red flags, were there any red flags raised by Black River when you guys had, would you guys open the bid by you or Bill? Would this particular with Farrington? Yeah. No, no, no, they really thought that this one was gonna be, was gonna be higher than what we anticipated just because of the cost of the materials. It's so unpredictable right now. And then, you know, if we push it out a year, we're talking about, it could be the same, maybe it would go down a little, it could be way worse. There's just really no way of knowing the way the market is right now. And the other thing to make it clear is that there are so many combined projects in this one. So it was not like, if you have, if it was one project, we could like, it's a little bit of U-32, not a lot of U-32, a little bit of Romney. So it's not one of those that we can like, oh, let's just take this out. It just doesn't make any sense. Ready to vote? All those in favor, move with the motion. Moved by Cary, second by Daniel, you say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Hearing no, motion, none, motion to second part. Second part. Now I'll move that the board approve awarding the 2022 Washington Central Combined Project contract to Farrington Construction Company, Inc. in an amount not to exceed $600,949. Okay. Cary moves. Second. Of course, last seconds. Any questions? None. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. Let's move to the next. Chris, do you want to do a brief description and then we'll move it on. Yeah, yeah, well, our safety and security program assessment. So based upon review and discussion with the leadership team, it is recommended that the district proceed with the school safety and security program assessment with Margolis Healy. The recommended board action would be the board authorize the superintendent to enter into an agreement with Margolis Healy and associates not to exceed $32,064 to complete a safety and security program assessment for the Washington Central Unified Union School District. Thank you. We have a motion and then we'll discuss. I'll make that motion that we award or award a bit of $32,064 to Margolis Healy and associates for the safety and security assessment for the school district. Thank you, Chris. Second? Second. Thank you, Ursula. Any discussion? I really appreciated this. I thought it was so smart to do this. I didn't really think this kind of consultant existed but one question I had to understand the last sentence on page 15 of the deliverables that says, given the sensitive nature of our findings, we often recommend that deliverables be presented through equal representatives, not really understanding what that means. Like you presented to the attorneys and then they give it to us and then to invoke protection of legal privilege and why, what benefit is that? I could take a guess. They're talking about the security of our schools and how to implement it when they devise these plans. You do not want to talk about that in an open forum for everybody here from the community. Right, you'd be letting everybody know how to get into the school. We're aware of where all the cameras are and all those kinds of things. Chris, do you want to speak to that? I would think it might be privilege information such as trade secrets, things like that that they use in calculating, in analyzing the program. Something like that. A third reason might be that there is false flaws in our program that might be liabilities for us. If something comes to pass, that's probably right. Yeah, yeah. But I would say that that wouldn't protect us to be blunt. If there was a report out there and we didn't follow it and didn't have good reason for not, that it went to the lawyers wouldn't, I don't think protect us. But it's not bad to have. I could have said it, yeah. Another question? Well, it's a point of clarification because Chris's motion did not match the motion in here. So I just want to make sure that we're, because he authorized them getting the grant, the bid, and what the motion is, is to authorize the superintendent to enter an agreement with them, not to exceed that amount. So I just want to make sure we're doing the proper motion. I will rephrase it to say that we moved, I moved that the board authorized superintendent to enter an agreement with Margolis Healy and Associates not to exceed $32,064 to complete a safety and security program assessment for the school district. And with, if that was Diane, thank you to Diane. Okay, so you're okay with that, Rosa? Yes. Yes. Okay. No more questions? I just don't want us to give a name. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. Now let's move to 4.1 personnel. I bring new teachers, Lindy. I make a motion to approve the new teacher nomination for our morally curable as the CalIS-K1 teacher in the 22-23 school year. Thank you, Lindy. Second? Second. Thank you. Discussion? She's great. I've worked with her. Okay. That's great to hear. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Next. Resignations? Can I do it as a group? Yeah. They're all the same. I mean, they're different people, but I'll read each name. Yeah. I make a motion to accept the resignations. I assume you're at the end of the year. The resignations at the end of the school year Charlotte Paton. Brennan Lynch. Christine Hertz-Hausman. Andrea Dobson. Thank you, Lindy. A second? Second. I have a question. Discussion? Most of these are full-time, but with Christine, does she have another part of her job? No, she's not quite fine. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that we weren't completely wiping it out. Yeah. Any other questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. And now, long-term. I make a motion to approve the long-term substitute for the 21-22 school year of Susan Price at U-32. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. All right. And now, we wanted to do a little update. Yeah, I think it would be a disease. Yes, and you know what? I just realized that I misspoke when you just asked me for the end of the year. There is an exception, and that is Charlotte Paton. And that is a little bit, she is leaving at the end of the year due to a family meal. So that is one of the vacancies that we currently have for the rest of this year is a long-term step for world language. Oh, sorry. I forgot about that. Everybody else is at the end of the year. So that is one of our vacancies. We also are trying to fill, we have a teacher who is elementary health and PE. We've figured out the PE part of that position, but not that health yet. We're trying to figure that out for the family leave. And we have still some of our care educators one-on-ones and early essential education, which is our early childhood special education. Cara educators, we have still not filled. And we've got those two behavior support positions that we have had trouble filling. And that you heard our friends of us talk today, that is a strain on the system for sure. And we're continuing to recruit and refresh, and it is April 6th today, so. Like earlier tonight, you said that the contracts went out. What's the timeframe for a response? So they have 30 days from the date that those contracts were dated. Where's that? Do we still have a vacancy for a U32 social worker? Yes. Okay. I'm sorry. It's just in that social, emotional. Yeah, that is still open. We do have somebody who is helping out as a contracted service for a very finite body of work right now to help us try to fill that gap a little bit, but the position itself is still open. I was curious, are there strategies identified for improving the substitute teacher situation in the future? Well, I mean, our hope again is that when as people are, as our schools are opening, as we sort of shift to endemic, that people who, we used to have people who were willing to sub in more than one building, and right now they've really narrowed their focus and they're only willing to sub in one, so we have less flexibility. We've looked at payment. I don't know if we would look at compensation again, right? Periodically, Carla, typically in human resources, looks around districts to make sure that we're offering something comparable to other districts to make it enticing for people to come. We have to pay attention to that too, given the pay rates for other employees in this district, right? So we've balanced those things, but that's it right now. I'm open to ideas, I love them, but. Jen, I think as our buildings are open more, because our kindergarten parents have never been in our schools. Yeah. You know, our first grade parents have never been in our schools. And pre-K. Pre-K, yeah. So as they are in the past, we've had substitutes who were community members, whose kids were in our schools, they went in there, they said, oh, I think I can do this. And they were on our lists. And maybe as COVID is waning, hopefully, that'll happen again. And the numbers, people will be more willing to substitute, hopefully. Well, the need will hopefully also calm down. Well, true. We won't have people out for weeks on end because of family members and then themselves. Maggie? Callis, part-time SLP jobs, speech-language pathologist job, was that filled? Was I haven't, okay. That's for next year. Yeah, right, yeah. So no, we still, so we've been posting and advertising speech-language pathologists. We have a couple of classroom teacher vacancies for next year, the East Long Island ones, those are in progress. Driver's Ed is in progress. Help me remember Susanna Mard, we just reviewed them. The ones that we are aware of, they are in progress. They're posted and we're working on them. Folks are working hard to get committees together. I should have more nominations for you for April 27th. We actually, for the first time, well, I don't know for the first time for me, just to try to also be as efficient as possible. Carla and I have a weekly meeting where we review everything and then I have just set aside two hours in my calendar at the same time every week, just to hold for interviews, which is the superintendent does the interview and offer so that the principals all know every Thursday between 1.30 and 3.30, right, so I get them scheduled. So I have two tomorrow, for example, and those will hopefully come to you on the 27th. No, that's all we had for today, so we can adjourn. I just want to say, I thought the hybrid went pretty well, good job, Mark. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure it wasn't perfect, but yeah. Did you want the feedback tonight on that? I mean, you know, because the one thing I would say is that mic is not adequate. I don't know what to do and how to do it, but if only you can be heard, it's very inefficient. Yeah, those little mics should be working. Well, but these are gonna help here. Yeah, they're supposed to know these aren't his. No, I know, these aren't gonna, it's that big one. Oh, for how? For, no, for it, for them to hear us. So if you're- The big one there is it's for the remote people. Right. We weren't able to get the little ones that are sitting in a table to work very well. Every time we tried to turn it off, we got crazy feedback. Yeah, oh, that's the feedback, yeah. So I don't know why that is, obviously something has to be done a little bit different. Yeah. Right, but so that's one thing, that that one mic isn't capturing it. And then the other thing I was thinking, there weren't that many people in the audience, so to speak, but if that table could be turned, so that if somebody's at that computer addressing, they're only addressing us and virtual, but people in the audience, they had the back. So I don't know if it's possible to turn that so that it's more angled, so it's a visual to all. Yeah, that was, yeah, maybe we put them somewhere here. Maybe you put them here, yeah. We're off to one side. Yeah, one side, they can just come and say off to the one side of the table. And I think something that's gonna come naturally as we all start doing this, and we're not just at home in front of our computer where our microphone picks us up is we will all start projecting our voice. I was yours, I have to practice. Yes. That's okay. Yeah, I have to work on my teacher voice. The other thing I forgot to mention is that everybody got their new, their new book. So you say, keep it, we're gonna use it for a retreat. So, and that sort of puts everybody, some of you got it in the mail already as a welcome. There's webinars starting this week and please ask us questions. But it's every, you know, there's a webinar pretty much every week. So at least four. Do we keep these? Or do you? We're gonna collect them for the challenge. Yeah, so bring them to every meeting. Yeah, and then you got this and this open for feedback but I think, you know, it would carry a little more clear than the last time. So this is your meetings schedule, so keep that too. And then any other feedback that you have about the meeting later when you get home, you know, feel free to email us in. Thank you. I was just thinking about the jobs. And I've been on school spring a few times for some of our positions. And there are, by the new time, there's two to three pages of new positions every day. It's just, there's over a thousand on school spring. Yeah, it is unbelievable. Now some of those are private schools but there's over a thousand. And that's very early in the year for there to be that many in Vermont. Yeah, I'm not, don't even get past that. I want to see available applicants. There are not enough to fill all of those positions. No, there's not. I just accepted a school job and I had many offers and I accepted like three weeks ago now, you know? So, I mean, we were so proactive with our superintendent's search, which is great because they really, it's definitely an employee's market right now. And there just aren't, we're not graduating enough people and enough people staying here who have the training. There's no places to live either. No, yeah, not to. You can't build anything. You can't build anything. Can I have a motion to adjourn? I have a motion to adjourn in a second. I miss school, but let's say you got that too.