 opening the popular school board director's meeting on March 18th, 2020. Those who were meeting under unusual circumstances. I heard Jerry has to announce. Oh, Jerry, could you please announce that you're here? I meet yourself, Jerry, and just tell everybody you're here. Meeting. Is she there? There she is. Jerry, I meet yourself. Go down to the bottom, and put your cursor down to the bottom of your screen. That's it. Oh, I thought you were going to be in Zoom. Okay. There you go. Thanks for that. This is Jerry. You can just put a chair right there. Yeah, between. Thanks, Jerry. I'll wear that one. All right, Jerry just announced she was here. Okay. So I've been meeting under unusual circumstances. Again, it's probably the last in-person meeting we'll have until schools are deemed safe to return to, which is right now scheduled for April 6th, although I probably won't be surprising anyone by saying if it gets extended beyond that, it's probably not going to be something that's unlikely. And again, I want to reiterate the thanks to all the efforts we've been putting under the last several days from living in the administration on down to our teachers, to our employees, to our custodians, to the students, to the parents, the community as a whole. It's been an extraordinary, extraordinary few days. And we've done, I think, a fantastic job of communicating and putting in place the systems we need, which is a work in progress. You know, there's still a lot of work to do, a lot of figuring out to do, but the response of this district has been fantastic, and the response of this community has been fantastic, and I really just want to acknowledge the great work everyone has put in, and also acknowledge that there's a lot to be done, and this is going to be potentially very long road, and so we really need to keep our chins up. And, you know, roll with it, and be prepared, and keep working hard, and keep thinking creatively, and keep making sure that we put safety first, and our health first, and our kids first. So thank you to everyone. The first order is public comment, and we have a setup. We can do the Google Doc first. The Google Doc that people put in questions beforehand. So, do you want to protocol? We didn't talk about this. So it is public comment. Do you want to just kind of put them out there, or do you want me to answer them if I can quickly? I think because it's unusual, why don't we just go through and answer them? Okay. If we can. Yeah. If we can. So this is from Amy, I'm sorry, if I mess up your last name, Jen Drom, G-E-N-D-R-O-N. I think it's Kendra. Jen Drom. Jen Drom, thank you. Amy says, thank you for all you have done. It is a huge task with minimal guidance. I have not seen a response from the district about child care support for essential health care workers, and I understand from the governor's address that this is a responsibility of schools. I understand why it may not be all figured out at this time, but is it something that is being worked on? And I apologize if it's in Libby's letters from today, which was Tuesday. They're not downloading on my devices, so I haven't been able to read them. So first, Amy, make sure you go to our website, because all the letters are on the website that you can access as well. And I encourage anybody to check out that website. They're updated daily with any information that needs to be had that the district has sent out. So please go to the website. If you also follow us, I know I had everybody's on social media, but if you follow us on social media on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, all of that information is posted as soon as it goes out. The address that my wonderful assistant right now is writing into the Google Doc for me is our website, www.mrpsbt.org, slash COVID-19 slash dash communication. But if you just go to our main webpage, you'll find it pretty easily. And then our hashtag on most social media is at mrpsbt. We're going to talk about child care support for essential health care workers during the board meeting, so I think that question will be answered in a bit. But yes, we are working on it. Two is from Larry Seligman. Salah Kintzalman. Thank you. You're welcome. How do we ensure that we are receiving emails? In specific, an email went out to MHS students and parents this afternoon, yet I didn't receive it. Rather than troubleshooting each user, I would suggest that schools post all such email to a central location, Facebook or website. We all want to stay informed, not burden the administrators. We appreciate that. But we do need a process to ensure that people don't fall through the cracks. You don't receive an email. You don't know, you missed it because you didn't receive it. Thanks again to all working so hard to get us through what will be a difficult couple of months. So again, go to our website often and then contact information for principals is on the same page there. The other thing I wanted to say is public use power school, the way we communicate and send things out is through power school, which is our student information system. That is probably the most popular student information system in the nation. And they all use the same communication. And so power school was completely overloaded when this started. We were all sending out communication at the same time, which completely slowed down the user. And since then, we have a tech guy named Matt Moody, who's new to the position and yet doing amazing with a very tight turnaround on how to learn this. And from my understanding, and I'm not Matt, and he would probably correct me on some of these points, is that power school is pulling from different fields. So Matt has had 47 requests that they weren't getting email so far. He's been keeping track of those. Five of those were because parents just had old email addresses in the system. And so we fixed that really quickly. And others were, we didn't know, sometimes you get an email one day and the next day you want it. So we think it's pulling from weird fields sometimes because it's overwhelmed, but we're not sure. Power school is working on it. We have multiple help desk tickets into them. But you would get constant information if you check the COVID-19 website page every time. So those are the two questions in the public and that were given to us beforehand. Great. And do we have any in the Zoom room? Anna, do we have any in the Zoom room? For Adrienne, is Adrienne on this? Hey, no, not at this time. Anna says. I believe she and Adrienne are talking. This is like tech savvy people. We're all going to be tech savvy by the time this is over. Amen. Consent agenda. Do I have a motion from afar to approve the consent agenda? I had corrections to the minutes. I'm not sure how to... There were just two. We can pull the minutes and talk about it. Do I need to make a motion to approve the consent agenda? Adrienne will pull the motion because she's the only one really using words. I move that we approve the consent agenda without the minutes. Second. All those in favor, we don't have two roll calls because we're a person, right? Right, only Jerry had to say that she was here. And she did. All those in favor? Any opposed? Jerry says. Jerry's agree. So, Jo, we can talk about the minutes. Okay. It was just two little things on the emergency meeting. It just says Wednesday, March 13th, and it was Friday, March 13th. And then Hope Petrara was here. She's absent on here, but I remember she was here. Yeah, she was here. That was it. Yeah, Anna can fix those two things. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes with those two corrections? I move to approve the minutes with those two corrections. Do I have a second? I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. So, important discussion. I was seeing our policy monitoring reports. We should fraud you pretty quickly, and then I think we should move forward. Yeah, there's more on there. Some of those were on from the last board meeting and we just never discussed them or through them. Yeah, so that's why they're on there. I think it's this time around, too. Do you have any questions about the policy monitoring reports? No. Motion to approve? So moved. All those in favor? Aye. Oh, second. I'll second. Okay, second from our... All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great. Thank you. Oven 19? Oven 19. So before I forget, just two pieces that this obviously may change over time, but for right now, mainly for Andrew Stein on our board, that we should be prepared for overspending from our funding balance in food service due to revenue loss. And we pay our employees out of their revenue and we are paying our food service employees. And then just potentially technology needs, and I'll talk about that in a second, but we did send some special education devices home, like communication devices, that are technically ours to send home. But in a moment where we needed to make a very definitive decision quickly without going through committees or vendors, I said send them home. There's a large possibility they will be broken at home and we'll be on the hook to pay for them, but we'll be on the hook to pay for them. So right now, those are where we're expecting overspending. So I just wanted the board to know that because one of your responsibilities is financial. And that's a great reminder. I've had this discussion with numerous community members in the past year about our fund balance. This is why we have a fund balance. So that next year, this community is going to be really economically in one way or another from all of this. And because we have this fund balance that we can dip into, we're not going to ship that. Hopefully that will help. Hopefully we won't have to ship that. That is not too much of it. And Grant Geisler has turned off his camera right now. He is on the call as well, but I know exactly what his face looks like right now, but he agrees with us. Speak for him because I can meet him there. So technology needs. Today, Mike Baker is a little inundated with technology requests. And I just want to explain why devices weren't sent home with all kids, even though in our upper grades we're pretty much one to one. Because our Chromebooks are hooked up, and I could be wrong, so Michael chime in when I'm wrong. But our Chromebooks are hooked up to our system, our internet, and in order for them to work on a different person's system, we would have to take them all, basically clean them out of our system and re-up. I don't know the technological terms for that. Somebody probably does, but we'd have to do that with each and every device. And so we surveyed face-to-face each kid in the middle and high school. Well, Mike, since he can sum it up, if you'd like, yes, why don't you sum it up in more technical terms than what I did, please? Okay. You were doing great. For me, with the wires. So first, I'd like to just say that our tech support guys have really come through and event here in a big way. Basically what we needed was, we needed a week's notice to be able to deploy almost 800 devices, and we didn't have a week's notice. It wasn't until Sunday night that we knew we were closing, so we just didn't have enough time. So what we did was we prioritized those students that we knew had zero device. And in working with the boys today and then talking with Libby, we have a plan moving forward to be able to have a lending system where families that now feel like they need a Chromebook or a Chrome device, we can have them sign out some of our existing devices. But we're going to work on that next week. We're down in terms of how many of our tech support folks are available to us. So we're really just doing the best we can. And we've had a lot of great conversations with families in the community about it. Yeah, so that's going to take at least a week to get going. So since we're in this maintenance phase where we're maintaining learning right now, we want to tell families that there is no synchronous learning happening. So if Aniket needs his device during the day for his work life and a kid can't get on it, if that's the device in the house, that's okay. That Aniket's lovely child can access that device later on. And do what she needs to do at a later time. And just my mantra for this whole thing is we're going to keep this as simple as possible and we are going to do the best we can. And that's the same message I would give to parents. Do the best you can. And we will be unleashing our devices from our system and then making them accessible to families moving forward after next week. And of course, we'll be in communication with you when we're ready for that to happen. Is there a plan for maintenance, support maintenance once the devices are out? Because we're going to do it again, we're going to do the best we can. So we do have on our COVID-19 webpage, you can find technology support, a link, Mike and his team. And I would reiterate that his team and work like gangbusters have made a blog, a curriculum instruction and technology blog. And anybody can subscribe to that in our family, Montpiler Rocksbury family. And so I suggest everybody does. For tech support and any tech support that's needed going forward, we're going to do the best. We can't go to homes, you know? So that would be, it would be virtual support. But we'll try. We'll try. And just a note, I mentioned in the emergency board meeting that when you do have a school device at home, then our GoGuardian and all our safety features still work on that. So it doesn't matter who the user is, it's still going to work. Can our tech people remote into devices? What do you mean by that? Like, for instance, I largely work remotely and I can, the folks in our rest room office can, they just send me a link and they're on my computer operating as if they were sitting there. Mike, can we do that? We can do it to a degree. So we can remote in and fix some common issues. What we're running into so far is mostly human error with logging on and connecting to home Wi-Fi. So it's not too terribly technical. I just want to do a shout out for Alex Clark today. He actually drove out to a family's home to help them with a Chromebook. And what we're finding is that we can handle a high percentage of the needs virtually. Great. So that's our technology update. I think it, I didn't plan all, I started to plan all kind of what the board needs to know right now. And I just had a mind like about that. So if you have questions that are questions or comments, I just thought that might be easier. The level of information that this community has right now is more information than many teachers and many education staff around the state have from their district. So that, you're to be commended. You're to be commended. Absolutely. Absolutely. Maybe it's about them communicating. Thanks, thanks. Oh, I said, Libby, you'll need to connect to Zoom only. But as I'm doing this, feel free to. I just want to, not just the level of the community, but the tone of the communication has been fantastic too. It's been very compassionate and I think really taken into account the level of stress and uncertainty. And the planning and the organization like that communication is coming from. Okay, I'm going to start my video too. Hi everyone. We have some community members in our Zoom room with Adrienne. Okay, so do we want to take some questions from the community if they have that in the Zoom room? I think just given the special circumstances, yeah, let's be, I think it's important to answer community concerns. Okay, all right. So, hi Adrienne. How are you? Yeah, I can only see you right now. I don't have you on the big board. Oh wait. Not working for me. Hi everyone. Yeah, thank you Adrienne and everyone who's making the Zoom room possible. Yeah, that's Adrienne Gill and Anna worked on that together. So, which was fantastic. All right, so all let's see here. We're muted now. Adrienne's got the control switch. So, Adrienne, if we just want to have people talk, can you hear me? Yeah, okay. If you have, oh I have Amanda's on there too. I'm looking at all my friends. If you want to ask a question in the community Zoom room, then please take this opportunity to go ahead. Unless Adrienne, you have a different direction for me. So, my thing is if you're looking at ORC, the Orca Media and Zoom, you're going to have to mute. Have to mute the ORC media because it's confusing with both happening at the same time. And so, right now we don't have any questions that are in the chat box. So, if you do have a question, you can type it in the chat box, which is on the right hand side of your Zoom menu. But as right now, I haven't received any unless someone wants to come off mute and ask the question. So, this is a terrible question. Can questions from the public come in the form of chat? Can you see them? So, we don't have to play with multiple audience? Yeah, I can see them in the chat. Okay. So, some things people probably know, but we'll just reiterate again. First off, one of our core pillars is collective responsibility and collaborative practices. And I have ample evidence that we are doing awesome with that right now. From our team. So, I just want to put that out there from anybody in our district. Now, one person did not play their role in this effort. So, that's awesome. So, right now, like I said before, we have planned for a maintenance of learning for the next two weeks. So far. Again, a second. You should have that in your hands at this point or you can connect to our website, which has the updates and all that kind of stuff on the blog. We, our teachers will move into continuity of learning. I assume we are going to be in this for longer than what the governor has put on right now. That's an assumption. I don't know anything other than what you all know from the news reports, but that's what we're planning for. So, our teachers will be working together virtually, of course, over the next week and a half of how do we make that shift? And again, we're going to do the best we can. It is not going to be like normal school. So, there should be very little expectation that there will be. It will be legitimate school, but we're going to try our hardest with that. Our special education services, we're still getting guidance from the state. Yesterday, we got some guidance and it was contradictory in the guidance. So, our law team, which the educational lawyers in the state, the main firms have pulled together. I'm just imagining them in a war room, sitting around a table that has distance around each other, just arguing these points out. They're probably going to have a field day, all you lawyers know, arguing law. But we have a mechanism that we can send any question to this team. Vispits taking care of the price tag and they get it to us by the end of the day. So, they're working with lead special educators or special directors in the state, including Mary Lundin, who is our director of special education, to get these questions answered. We simply don't know yet. This is above the state. It's at the federal level and we need to get guidance. More guidance on what we have right now. So, parents who have students with special needs, we're working on it. And as soon as we have better guidance, we will continue. Special educators and case managers have been contacting families or will contact families and make plans collaboratively with families to the best of our ability. So, we're going to try to do this virtually and some of our goals and objectives in our IEPs are very hard to do virtually. So, we're going to do what we can to support that and wait for the feds to give us some more guidance on that. Our food service will be up and running tomorrow. Jim Birmingham and myself will be doing the food service. Jim will be cooking. No worries there. No worries that I will be cooking. I will be bagging lunches. And what families will do here in Montpelier is they will walk, drive, bike whatever they want to down the parking lot past the front door in the flagpole. So, where the loading dock is and I will be there at the door of the loading dock with bags. Please don't get out of your car. I will just hand them to you and give you a really great smile. And you can be on your way for that. Any child in the state of Vermont right now can get free food. We do have a mechanism in place to ask families if not in an anonymous way to ask families if they need this service. It is not a bad thing if you need this service. That's what we're here for. So, but and we're just asking yes or no just for planning purposes. So, Jim knows what he's prepping during the week and we know what kind of support Jim's going to need during the week. So, we can get people here if we need to and Jim can get the food prepared so we have enough. How will they know how will they tell you? Good question. So, we put one out for Thursday and Friday. It's on our website. And then every Sunday at 5 p.m. the district will send out a reminder and a new survey for that. So, if you just just click on that. If you're not using the food service you don't need to worry about this. But if you are or you might be then please try to fill that out. We will make it extra obviously. We did have a question from a family that asked if they have a babysitter who's taking care of their kids because of job responsibilities and because it's a babysitter if that babysitter can get food as well. Yes. Yes. Tell us how many bags you need and we will get you the food you need. So, other questions was what about weather and things like that if weather gets bad. That's honestly not a bridge that we've crossed yet nor have we planned for that yet but we'll think about that as well. Thankfully, figures crossed. We're kind of out of snow weather. At least with bad snow weather. I just jinxed myself right there didn't I announce this. So, hopefully we'll be able to do that but if it's raining or anything I'll come out with my umbrella. Right now the way we're staffing it is with district administration. So, we've made a schedule where it's myself and another administrator and another principal who will be doing or Andrew or Grant will be doing that handing of the bags. So, food and we'll be driving out to Roxbury with the van or one of our cars with meals in it so people can come to Roxbury Village School to pick it up. We've also had offers from Tina Young, the amazing Tina Young and Missy at Roxbury to drive to families of Mebe out in Roxbury. If you want to be spelled is that something that board members could step in and do that to give you guys a break? Yeah, what are our options for the leading role? Yeah. We have, honestly right now I think it's important for the administration to do it because I think people need to see us and people need to see us smiling and people need to, you know, and quite honestly we need to stay busy. Like the staff left at noon today and it was silent in here and it was the first time that I was like, this sucks. I mean I've been so busy but I've forgiven my language but it was just depressing. This place should be filled with happy kids and teachers. So we need something to do right now that's to put our mind and make sure that we're taking care of our kids. So that, I think right now it's important for us to do it but if we need, if I think as this goes on our expectation is the need for food will get larger and so when that happens then we will mobilize the vast amount of community members who have offered to support us in that. I know Cody Chevrolet has offered cars and drivers and all that kind of stuff. So we have people reaching out to us also. How's the supply chain looking for? For food it's not bad. All the restaurants shut down. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Right. So Jim Birmingham should be commended as well. He has done everything and I sat with him yesterday to say okay what's the final plan and he said this is amazing and I think the food directors of the state have pulled together to share and I asked him that question when we get our food deliveries by Reinhardt. We have plenty of food right now because we expected a full week this week and so we have that food is accessible to us now and he called Reinhardt and said they gave us no indication that this food's well it's a good dwindle through them. So that could change but right now he's pretty confident that we can get what we need. If it goes on for a tremendously amount of long time and people need more and more food then it might not be our chef's best work right? He's a necky chef he's very good at his job and he's I would imagine the food's gonna be pretty good. I mean this food is pretty good but by the end of this time it might be some better sandwiches but we don't know. We don't know at this point so we're feeling pretty confident making sure that our families get food. Again I just want to reiterate that even if you don't usually access this if you need the food get the food. That shouldn't be a worry of people's plate right now. We also prioritize this week mental health services for students to ensure that kids who are in need of mental health support can get it albeit it's not going to be as great as it once was I'm sorry Ryan so mental health support will be available through our social emotional learning team. They were mobilized by Mary Bechtel over the weekend. They worked all weekend to ensure that they had a system in place that students can access. So it was great and so that was part of that letter also on our website of how you can access mental health services and that to me is just like the food. Our kids right now don't know what's going on it's an anxious time we as an adults are anxious regardless of how much spin we're trying to put on this that this is fun okay. If your child doesn't usually access mental health services it's okay if they need it now call one of us because they are good at what they do. They love your kid and they want to help. So parents we're not expecting you to do everything right here. We have services available it will be virtual but we're going to make that work so that's in place for our kids. That's when my priority over this three this week is to ensure those the learning the food mental health services and as much as we could for special education services we're in place. We pivoted today to child care so let's talk about that a little bit. We have some as I talked at the emergency board meeting on Friday we have some limitations with what the governor is asking us to do and before I even start I don't want the I don't want anybody to get the idea that I'm belittling this need in any way shape or form because I'm not. So just know that I'm losing sleep over this of how we can support. We have some limitations though we don't have a cleaning enough cleaning supplies to clean our buildings for the long term if our buildings were open and we had to clean then we wouldn't have the supplies potentially when we have to reopen for everybody. That's a major concern of mine and we need to keep our buildings clean if we have people in it. Right now we're able to board members probably saw a little yellow tags on doorknobs and they may have only gotten up to the upstairs done but we've got door the custodial crew is still here right now working very hard to clean every surface in their buildings and so they're putting little tags that say clean on the door so we know and like they're so they're not opening like we're not opening those doors anymore right. So that's where we are at the at the clean stage all building access has been shut off to all everybody who's not we have a granted access too so it's pretty limited. We have some our lawyers are looking into guidance around can we force people to work and it's unclear at this point and ethically I have a very hard time doing that. I just have to put that out there. Our instructional assistant staff many have compromised immune systems many are older some are ready to go some are willing and ready to go but even if we wouldn't have enough people to do what the governor is asking us to do because if we have that many people in our space then we also have to have a full custodial crew we have to have a full food service crew morning to night because we're talking about breakfast lunch and dinner and we're a small district we simply don't have that capacity and then when you put on cleaning supplies it adds an additional challenge. However it's not that I'm giving up on this so I had a conversation with Adrian Gill and Amanda Garces this morning they're in the zoom room right now and both women have said how can we help Adrian is the leader of MRPS Pi the parents group here and Amanda is just superstar extraordinaire of getting people to do what she needs them to do so we talked this morning and I'm wondering and hoping that we can use at MRPS our vast outreach capabilities our communication our organizing abilities our background check abilities and all of our systematic abilities to organize this amazing community into volunteering to adopt a child who needs child care help having said that I am completely and utterly aware of what ask that is I myself have a mom at home who's 74 years old with no swing and I don't necessarily think I could take a health care workers child into my home so I understand that so this is an enormous ask there are people who have said that they'd love to help this is the area that this community right now needs the communities help on so I'm I'm what our proposal is is that through community outreach and emails Amanda already has a whole long list of people who want to volunteer to start that mobilize that effort it's going to take us a couple days to do that but mobilize that effort and connect families of those who are volunteering to post a child and those who need somebody to host their child and take care of them I don't know how articulate I am right there but that right now is the need of our community it's the limitations of our buildings and our district and I think this community can step up to that point I think this community is awesome and is ready to support each other so board I don't know if you want to weigh in on that or ask questions about it but please go ahead and do so do you have a sense of the need of the number of kids that's our first action step so right now we have heard from three different health care type industry people one system did survey their staff which was really helpful and they have they have 19 kids so about our kids okay rocks where kids in their system so right now we have 19 that's the number we have right now but that is just one one place and a couple questions one do we know even if we get those numbers do we know how many actually need care for instance if they just know there's 19 kids in the system they might be with a partner who's working at home or you know doesn't work who can provide child care and then the second question is even if we get the community to step up could the governor make us do it anyways or try to will that be a satisfactory solution for the from what I read in the directive right now we haven't gotten guidance on this we've got the directive that's it that's all we've gotten and so but when I read the directive it does say this will look different in different communities based on what the capabilities of the community are so it does say that it also does says that school districts will make will will make that contribution in the ways that they can't like there there is slightly way in what the governor is asking the the school district around the state have our legal team even looking into if this is even an ask that can be made um so we're still checking on that and this could change this could change for 15 minutes so I think that I think that this for me personally if I think about the need to spread people right now the need to keep group size low this to me is the best response to keeping everybody safe instead of bringing large groups of children and staff into a building personally because we can still if if you took one that would be like three kids in your house right that instead of you know 60 here so so it's a it's a I don't know if this is going to pass muster I think if we I think if we fill the need it will pass the muster okay does that make sense that totally makes that was my question I mean if we step up to the play yeah is the is the governor looking for creative solutions or did he put forward a directive and he wants the school districts to do this and if you can find another way so right right there is one what was in the directive that actually Amanda pointing me to earlier is that it does say of both parents or if it's a single parent without any other child care options would be what qualified for this so one thing Amanda and Adriana I did this today was think about okay what's who's the level one right who's the urgent and who's the level two right so when I'm thinking about the level one it's both parents are in the industry or the single parent is in this industry with no other health care options and that's bulleted pretty clearly in the governor's directive but then there's this level two that I feel ethically obligated to offer to people who work for an hourly low wage who simply it's either I lose my job or we find help for these families right so I added another layer to that too the people who don't have the financial needs or support system and you work hourly jobs low wage hourly jobs that they need those jobs to feed the kids and keep their apartment or house so I'm looking at that as well so I've put together some action steps potential action steps one would be find out how many families in our community need support with child care because they follow these levels one or two categories we can do that through our communication reach the emails that I sent out from the district when they all work reaches 3,500 families just over 3,500 email addresses I should say and that's a lot of email addresses I know for a fact that friends of popular Facebook are really good around sharing things when they want to and so that's another place that gets to more people right and if we had help of like hey share this then that gets to more people so I think we can use children community or advantage right now to reach as many families as we can to get that information we would determine the list of volunteers who are willing to adopt a child for the duration to provide the needed child care Amanda has already talked about what that might look like through her vast volunteer system that she's putting together we would ensure that families volunteering to child care do not fall into the high category risk the or the high risk category for COVID-19 because we don't want to put anybody else in danger we can do a 24 hour background check any individual willing to volunteer who already hasn't done that in our system we do have over 200 people who have already done that in our system and we can do just the the first background check that doesn't involve fingerprinting or anything like that and it just involves driver's license and that will give us basically sexual predator and criminal background Vermont criminal background check so we can do that to help ensure a safety piece and component we can connect families in need to families volunteering with our organizational efforts and we can continue to reach out as this goes on to see who where the need is here by the way the section of the demographic of our community that is an hourly worker or isn't doesn't fall under the the health care worker group that you mentioned before those families should reach out to the Department of Labor because unemployment unemployment insurance benefits that program has been greatly expanded and there's talk of expanding it further so for those families who aren't health care workers who find themselves temporary or unemployed please do reach out to the Department of Labor because you know these are extraordinary times and there are extraordinary provisions being put in place by the state yeah and you just reminded me Andrew that I was on the phone a couple of times with Anne Watson today the mayor of Montpelier of course and they're meeting I think right now actually an emergency meeting as well and the city is also thinking about this and Anne and I were putting our heads together around how we can use other services in the city particularly to ensure ensure children get the care that they need I have some questions about the child care that I haven't been asked yet where would the where would the child care be held? Are we talking about when you're talking about families adopting kids during this time are we talking say we have a healthcare worker named Rob and Rob is a single parent and Rob's daughter gets adopted by Adrienne Gill and her family Adrienne I'm just using you as an example here would Rob's daughter then stay with Adrienne Gill for a couple of weeks is that the plan or what? just when they need to do the day yeah just during the day yeah I'm not parking overnight or anything like that but and I don't think that's what the directive asks and it certainly would further complicate the issue for schools that seems that actually needs to be thinking about people who are on second third shifts though yeah yeah just nothing about this isn't it well I just hadn't I literally hadn't thought about it until now and then I thought oh some kids are alone at night or wouldn't be potentially yes which is another reason why the school why school is not a practice yeah yeah although you have to think that if well yeah now if it's a someone who's used to a night shift later in somebody used to a night shift given the nature of this virus if they were having you know a parent a grandparent watch they may yeah want a different solution yeah that was what I was thinking primarily obviously someone's theoretically something that's staying completely yeah since it's often a person using a risk group yeah and there may be people right now where the medical field who are not working night shifts who may end up working night shifts could you have more questions I have one other question I realize just about all the other ones have been answered have we been talking to students about the importance of social distancing during this time because obviously if one student goes to meet someone another student to you know things to do we were talking about it when we had them we don't have many more I can tell you from observing on the streets they are not currently adhering just driving around today so I don't know what we as a community can do because it's really hard I was actually just talking to LaBabe I worked for our Vermont which is a youth organization and any time that we had youth in place together it was virtually impossible to keep them apart so it's really going to take some extremely intentional and caring grown-up effort to help people understand because little aren't designed to stay apart with them I have a thought what if families this is just a proposal one of the share of this what if families what if certain families their kids were really struggling in isolation if like one or two families had closed circuit interactions with each other for they weren't interacting with others directly I mean I have that set up in my house so our best friends we had a we had a family family meeting where we had Gugel of Google hangout last night and we just said this is what the four of us are promising to each other so that our kids can interact with each other I think I think families are doing that organically I think there's a lot of that happening but it is harder for teenagers teenagers are not that's not a model that works I think as well for teenagers as it does for younger kids yeah and it's hard this is not this is not actually easy it hasn't been easy yet but we are so not out of the woods about how to best support our kids right now Libby I would just say I think you're the proposal that you guys have talked about is really elegant and and a much more rational and humane way to deal with the thing we're trying to deal with this need for childcare rather than bringing everybody into a building where a week ago we knew we didn't have enough cleaning supplies I mean that for me makes it kind of a non-starter right out of the gate and we do have a lot of tweens and teenagers who are home and have time who may also be able to help with other kids coming into their home so oh absolutely I think I think I think it's the best like you said do the best we can for the kids with what we've got and that makes sense to me and the rest of this piece of it means that in the event that the legal team were to say actual day schools can't or shouldn't be part of it if that that responsibility lifts the grassroots team and you continue doing things I don't I don't imagine that we would probably say like hands off not our problem but in the event that you know mandate changes it'll be nice if people are more or less holding it themselves Ryan do you have any sense about I don't mean to put you on the spot or say speak for all Roxbury but do you have any sense of how many people might fall into this category of Roxbury and so I'd agree with kind of Paul Mara's comment that I like the systematic approach that what you're proposing to us and essentially it's happening informally right now right but the background checks the the placement that folks who wouldn't necessarily interact with each other it's great as this is happening right now right when you were discussing you had reached out from one of the healthcare providers who was CAMC giver for the local hospitals but it would probably be worthwhile to have those institutions themselves survey their staff that's what once one did they surveyed their staff yeah right rather than us hey who is that whatever asked them specifically who meets this criteria who is it that needs the help and that you're gonna have the level one and the level two will be triggered to track down but like really push them to help identify those employees and the families that are gonna be in the most need but again I think this is happening right now informally at Rocksbury healthcare families I haven't heard if they get there's a lot of conversations right now how is it how is this going yeah I don't think anybody's gonna be totally stranded right now but again can't say for sure because there's a lot of unknowns and schedules are constantly changing not just for the kids it's I know we're all we're all in the stage of how do we do this right the family might be totally set right now but about priority you and tomorrow they could be a totally different ball game again so yeah yeah you're absolutely right you're absolutely right it could be a totally different ball game in 10 minutes so what's the sorry go ahead was the directive also for ages six and up or eight and up or something it had six through eight three six through eight five six years old years old or eight or eight three yes okay and then the presumption being that five or under would be managed by that childcare yeah so our regional director Becca Wang who came to talk to you all a couple of board meetings ago she is working to figure out preschool she can't do it for like every preschool aged kid in every town in our region you know but she's she's working through and waiting through requirements waivers what do we you know who could who where the spaces how many spaces she's trying to do that work right now she's on it but that is not technically the school district's responsibility but we're still trying to do what we can to support it and Becca is our person to do that for us yeah so we have some chat here I'll just just going back with food pickup time at MHS tomorrow is 11 to 12 and it is on our website all the food pickup time is on our website which oh and it's and it's got good and it's good she's got the link right below that comment um we'll also be those who may be fall outside of healthcare yes our level one has the bullet points that's Amanda so we have the bullet points of everybody who qualifies based on the directive and I want to make sure that you know it's the food service people and the custodians and the people who are doing the behind the scenes work recognize that we'll do everything we can for you as well and I didn't have gross through somebody said the list included grocery in place and I actually not sure if it had another but I added it not to ours whether it is or not we added that on and then it's and I'm not asked early what will happen with leftover food I assume those meals not picked up or distributed we have a gym for me him already has a relationship with our food bank food banks and so he delivers any leftover food to food banks he does that now will continue to do that so it will still be in a place where people in need can get anything else around this next directive the last thing I will say with this this one is that school I was on the I hang out with school districts with our region today all of us are trying to figure this out right now and all of us are thinking about it differently every community is different every need is different Barry is a different need potentially than we do because many healthcare workers live in Barry and so so schools there's districts are trying to figure out this differently and so we're just again we're all doing the best we can but the fact that U32 is doing something that we're not yeah we're different districts and we have different needs and we have different opportunities within our district or what we can do so it's going to look different by community if this goes on for a longer than anticipated and if the our cleaning supply situation improves is that a consideration that at that point we may think about something else there is nothing definitive right now so we can keep talking to our suppliers around the cleaning supplies absolutely my hunch is we haven't gotten this yet from them but it's happened in other states we have evidence that it's happening in Connecticut and other places that they're prioritizing cleaning supplies to hospitals and and that field and nursing homes and things like that which is what we want them to do you know and so if there was a mass hoarding and then people bought more and everybody up there getting as soon as this came on right and so everybody ordered more and then even school districts like some of my colleagues were like well we ordered for the year so we should be good but then they were thinking about there like but we're using way more right now than we ever did before we may not have enough for the year you know so suppliers catch up now mind you shipping is halting trucking is halting you know like things that go beyond just this large warehouse are starting to halt so my my major fear is that they we we put kids and people into our buildings clear the building clean have to clean right and then they say and now we open schools and we have a limited supply we can't re-up it and then I have to close for that right so there's so many unknowns here but yes as with any of this if we get different information or different supplies or then we we will put it on a deck somebody could I just read a couple more here please do can food be placed near the vehicle instead of handing directly into the vehicle absolutely if a family would rather we do that or rather well the principal's do that absolutely any advice for how to get teenagers to remain social with their friends how about that question I have the same answers that you probably do so I've seen Netflix has like viewing parties going on I know my sixth grader was on FaceTime with his friends all of a sudden he is re-ready to FaceTime and I'm not really sure where that thought came into his head but that's what he was doing I know they're all trying to socialize online and I think that's what we have to do make some videos do some funny things become a U2 SAR also check in with youth serving organizations like I'm not sure exactly what Washington County Youth Services Bureau or the Basement Teen Center et cetera are kind of imagining it in a moment but I know for instance outright is moving all of its youth supporting services online that people can access so that's like support groups that may be happening that are youth intended for them to interact might be actually facilitated and supported as far as doing some googling yeah yeah, Mara's the expert with the team field the team field and then the last message right before I promise pie's up next, Adriana I haven't forgotten about you I know I'm talking a lot but lots been going on the last thing I want to say is that just like educators and schools are doing the best you can parents you're doing the best you can if you're not having your kids it's not going to be like regular school and that's okay it's okay if you don't know what to do we are here to support you in that but right now make sure your kid is loved make sure you smile at them you laugh at them you give them accurate information and you kind of learn fears that's what we need you to do right now the learning will take care of itself we will make sure that happens but right now the more important thing is to make sure your kids loved happy, healthy and don't worry about the rest we'll figure the rest out that's the important thing right now I think for all of us and with that Adrienne do you have board action at hourly employees on the agenda who took care of that on Friday yeah I just wanted to make sure I'm sorry we need action there okay perfect all right Adrienne you're up Adrienne Hill do you want to do do you want to do the MRPS you got to unmute yourself you know she's right there I'm not sure thanks Adrienne Adrienne Hill do you want to do the MRPS what's the way Adrienne can you hear her you got to unmute yourself you're muted Adrienne I am unmuting Jolinda and Theresa she's right there I'm not sure thanks Adrienne thanks I think they're just gonna be because of you Adrienne Hill do you want to do the MRPS what's the way Adrienne can you hear her you got to unmute yourself I'm sorry, I realize you can't see what's happening. Can anybody hear me? Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. Thing on mute. Keep your speakers up. I'm going to pass it over to Jolinda and Teresa to do the presentation. I'm going to unmute Jolinda. Are you going to unmute me or Jolinda? Maybe just call me. Jolinda talking? Okay. This is very strange. I'm going to... Can everyone hear me? You have to shake your head, yes, because I can't hear you. Okay. I guess I'm going to kind of officially read the... announcement. I guess we could call the press release information. First, we wanted to thank you. Thank the school board administration, faculty, and staff for all your hard work, commitment, and compassion, and for the common foreclosure. Being demonstrated at such an unusually stressful and critical time. So thanks. I'm going to try to be real quick so that we can cut right to questions. The overview very briefly. We call ourselves MRPS PI, Partners in Education. We're very grateful for the opportunity to speak with the MRPS Board of Commissioners and Administration and offer our support during this unprecedented time of community need. The following is not a formal plan of action, but rather an outline of identified needs and ways MRPS PI can be helpful to the Board and Administration, and we believe taking a systems approach to the COVID-19 outbreak is in order. What follows in limited detail are, one, identified types of needs, likely overlapping with the needs that the school district, city, and other groups have identified. Two, examples of how we can mobilize our students and our students to identify. Two, examples of how we can mobilize our community network, especially parents, guardians, and youth aged 14 and 21. And three, possible strategies to help meet short and long term needs in the community. Very quickly, I'm just going to kind of breeze through this. Just in case you don't know of Partners in Education, we're the 501c3 organization that basically encompasses all the parents group activities of all four schools. Our mission is to support the school through fundraising, administrative structure, communication, and advocacy, to create equity among all of the students and support the programs of the school, and support the school board and administration. There's a list of the PI board on the document, if I won't go through. So in terms of identified community needs, you guys have talked a lot about them. We sort of just bulleted some lists to be considered. Child care was at the top. You've talked extensively about that. Meal prep and distribution, you've talked a lot about that too. We want to, in general, stay available to help with all of these. I'm going to talk about our ability to mobilize volunteers in just a second. So under needs, I had child care, meal prep and distribution, financial assistance, emotional and social support, curriculum support, communication support. And I think Amanda's going to speak separately, but we had also talked about the Mutual Aid Website grassroots community organizing for general help, basically matching volunteers where there's community needs. But I believe I'm on this one to speak separately. In order to be effective, the MRPS PI would propose creation of a representative and equitable task force if it were to further assist the district's work. I think it probably makes sense to skip the full description of what we envisioned as a task force. A couple of highlights were just the idea of spreading the work out and utilizing how many people we are able to touch. Libby mentioned that before about getting the word out through Facebook and whatnot. If you added up all of the people that the parents groups kind of reach out to and involve its hundreds and hundreds of community members, mostly parents, but also community members who no longer have kids in those groups as well. The PI board offers to play an active role in creating and managing any such task force and could lead any coordination and convening of the volunteers and services. And just to close and say, obviously, we feel that we're all in this together. As Libby has stated, our community is filled with caring, talented, engaged individuals who really want to help ease the burden that this is bringing on us. And so PI is ready to partner with all the incredible assets in our communities and just feel like we want to be part of, just to help in any way that we can. So thanks for the opportunity to participate in the meeting tonight. And we would look forward to hearing, you know, how you envision addressing some of the needs you've already discussed and just how maybe brainstorming now we're talking further, how MRPSI can support any and all of this. Thank you. Thank you, Adrienne. Amanda, would you like, do you need, were you going to talk about something too? And this is Adrienne, I think that was it. So we will just turn it over for discussion at this point, unless Amanda wants to jump in and I'm not sure what the plan was. Sure. This is Amanda Garces. Can you hear me? Yeah. So yeah, so there's five people that have mobilized to organize a grassroots movement to support our community as well. So we'll call them Ophelia Mutual Aid and amazing organizers. There's six of us right now, three more parents of UES. Okay, so we'll do it. That has a needs form and a volunteer form. We have over 215 people that have signed up to volunteer. The needs have not really started coming in. Yeah, but we see an app, see what that's going to look like. We had a meeting this afternoon to add the conversation about childcare and we're going to start pushing that to volunteers to see who would be willing to take part of the adopted child. So I think that we're working with different sectors in the community from food banks to with Anne as well, the mayor of the town to support the effort. Also, another layer because many parents are UES parents would also be talking directly to Maria and creating other forms locally for the school which will connect with the MRCP by. And one of that idea is to have coordinators for each of the classrooms to kind of support the teachers and be able to just get the needs and then connect them to the hardware wider what is things that the district can now provide like other groceries outside of what you're offering for food. And so I just wanted to share that we're here. I want to say thank you to the district to leave it to Maria and to all the principals and the teachers and the janitors and everything that makes it work. And now we're here as a resource. Our plan has to be to kind of wait for the needs to come and for you guys to kind of settle. But yeah, we are here to support and we hope that, you know, as part of the district that you can push back needs because we do have a kind of wider net of the other organizations that are coming in to support. I'm just going to say who's also going to live in Montpelier that will be working statewide but in Montpelier as well in central Vermont to also have another layer of volunteers and support. So there's a lot happening and we are going to find a way to put it all in one place so that everybody knows how to access what. But at the end what we're going to do as a community is connection and being able to not one group think on there's many hands. And so that's all we want to offer the district that there's lots of us. Thank you. Thanks, Amanda. Thank you. So what I think next steps would be for me to connect again with Adrian and Amanda and everybody else who they deem that would a board member like to be on that as well or do you feel a board member should be or wants to be or doesn't want to be or what do you want to do? I think the board should be involved. I think so too. That makes sense. I'm happy to be our board representative. I knew you were going to say that. Thank you, Jill. Thank you. There are new needs that we haven't expected. Please be sure to let us know. It's the same thing. Surprising my papa. So I think the next action step with this would be for me I'll connect with Amanda, Adrian and Jill and Adrian and Amanda you can add anybody to that list as well simply because you know better than I right now. So I trust you ladies will help me out there and we'll get going. Libby, can you add me too? Yes. Absolutely. Just a couple updates because I'm like going back and forth from Zoom to Google Hangout. I just went on Google Hangout to see the chat and my admin is like correcting and giving me info so Andrew LaRosa says Tom Allen who's our custodial supervisor who has been nothing but amazing will be looking at long-term months ahead available for cleaning supplies next week. So those gentlemen are on it. I was told not to type. I think that's it. Thanks. Well, thank you so much, Roy. We don't need to say any more words we're doing. I don't think so because it's kind of community average. Yeah. Yeah, thank you very much. It's a huge help and thank you, Bridget and Jill, for volunteering to be part of that. Yes, absolutely. Thanks a lot. So we're going to go to the next item which is I think we do pretty quickly which is board business. We're going to be trying this electronically Schedule retreat and topics. Schedule retreat and topics. Does that really make sense right now? Yeah, I think we can table this for another meeting. I do want to talk briefly about how we want to conduct meetings going forward at least until we're at a point where we are feeling more confident that it's safe to socially gather. We can talk about online, but I'm assuming we would just do some sort of either Zoom or Hangouts. Yeah, that hangout works well and I think the lawyers and the legislature actually is looking into waiving some overbeating law restrictions and requirements right now. I feel like that will probably go through. I would hope. Yeah, so we'll be receiving updated legal guidance on how to continue in the world we now know as a board soon. And I think obviously it's going to be well, it may not be, but it will certainly be different for the public to view that. So we should give thought to how we want to broadcast it. It might just be that we've got Brady Bunch-style board meetings on people's screens if they want to choose them, but I know especially, yeah. I'm surprised how many people watch our board meetings when things are quiet, and I'm sure that there is much fighting interest in these meetings now, so I want to make sure the public can do that. I might have some creative solution to that too. They might have some ideas. Are there other persons in the studio or something? Can't you set up Zoom so that only certain people have video and the ability to talk and then other people can only watch? I think we can work fast with the tech piece. And you know who we have on our board is Jerry Huck. He works with this all the time. That's right. I'm going to be tagging Jerry Huck and saying, you're it. Definitely. Now, the Zooms I use usually if it's more than a certain number, it'll pick up on who's talking and you won't get, yeah. But I think it can actually be set up so that some, if you get one kind of link, you don't even have a video option. You're just an observer. If you get a different kind of link, you're able to participate. Should we add to our future parking lot just the board vacancy? Should we add that to the sort of get to this for me? Yes, get to that. Although, to be honest with you, I don't want to put that too long because I do feel, you know, this is a pretty critical time for the board to be engaged and, you know, there's a voice missing. So I have done a little bit of research. Straight it when it's hot, Jim. You know, we're home right now. Yeah. Yeah, so I do, I've gotten, at least one person has expressed some interest, but I actually forget what our timetable was for that. It was going to be the 17th. It was going to be the 17th. 17th, that's April, I believe. Can we stick to that? Let's try to stick to that and I just want to encourage the public. Yeah, there is no more important time than now to serve. We still have to give clarity on the answer but our appointment would be till November when there is an election. Very important one. And or till the next town meeting day. But regardless, the term would be appointed until one of those two dates and then there would be the option to either run for the remainder of the term or to decide that you don't want to. If someone is interested, did they contact you? Yes, so please just contact me or you can contact Libby or me. So contact Libby or me. But we'll see how we're doing at the next meeting. If we have some good interest, we can make a decision on the 17th and if we feel we need to extend another meeting. Did the Zoom crew get that, by the way? All of those engaged parents? Yes. Are you sure they hear this? Yes. Libby, the discussion of the board vacancy just reminded me of our principal searches and I realized they weren't a priority for the last couple of weeks but I just wondered, looking forward, if there's any way that those can proceed at this point or are proceeding? Yeah, well they're going to have to. So we, that's on my, I have a list in our conference room over there on the wall that says when you can breathe again. Yeah. That's one of the things that's on there and so I almost likely started thinking about that again and put what I had to go to with Anna on how we can do that virtually. The interviews, I don't see a problem doing virtually with our interview team so right now where we are as we and our candidates we're supposed to interview on Tuesday from Main Street Middle School and that just could not happen. No, yeah, Tuesday. Could not happen so we have them on hold right now and we could do those virtually with our team I think and then for the important part is staff meet and greet. I know the kids are really important too but I think it would be really hard so I think right now staff meet and greet and parent meet and greet virtually somehow through Zoom or... Yeah, I think... We'll figure it out. Yeah, I think we're just going to have to accept that we'll do the best we can of those and it will be not... we can't like you so much. Yeah, another that I had was for people to send questions that I just sent in a public way and asked and we could tape record that and then it's just going to slow process. Yeah. And then people could provide feedback that way like I thought about a couple days. We have two finalists for Roxbury which again we had to push back actually we pushed it back before this all happened but because we wanted it to match the Main Street timeline because some of the candidates are similar so we pushed that back so our candidates are very involved in their own schools response to COVID-19 right now and so they were very understanding as well. So that will figure out they're at a little different stage but we'll figure that out the same way and then with the Director of Special... Director of Student Services we did get the interviews in for that and we have two finalists currently that we had set to come see us this past Wednesday for leadership to meet that just didn't happen. So we'll probably do that virtually as well. I think in the next week or two for administrators things will get down out of this and seeing mode that we're in right now and so we'll be able to once we take a little mental break we'll be able to think through some of these other challenges that are ahead but I can't see any reason why we can't figure this out virtually it just might take longer. Yes. I think that's it except for the Executive Session I propose that we just keep Executive Session here because the Executive Session room is cosier and cosy is not already in the bar right now. So I hope people are all for work and to... Go ahead Anna. Please, there's two more questions from the parent group in the Zoom chat. Can you just ask them because I'm not seeing them. Yes, Roxanne Garland would like to make a statement so it would be good if you could rejoin the Zoom so that she can be unmuted to make that. Yeah, I have a Zoom open. Okay. And then I'll read you first before Roxanne I'll read you a question from Amy Gendron Gendron, G-E-N-D-R-O-N She would like to submit a concern she is concerned about the child care model that they proposed for those who have multiple children. It's Ray in her example. That is a lot for families to take in their own home daily. Yep. Thank you for that complication. I'm not saying that sarcastically I'm saying that because we had a lot about that complication so thank you for putting that into our brains for us to consider. Any of the other ones, Anna? Just from Roxanne in the Zoom I just told her to unmute and make her statement. Okay. I can't hear you that way. All right. So my question was just something to be thinking about long term whether that means that communication goes up term. This is common sense stuff but maybe something we're not thinking about right now but as time goes on right now holding our students their children pretty close to us and I'm a lack of time. I'm a local business owner and I know a lot of the other local business owners so I always tell my children if there's ever an emergency to visit your local business owner because they'll take care of you. We're going to have a lot of children going out into the public without that kind of supervision and you know things aren't the way that they used to be with the ability to have our device with us and what not but just making sure that our children are smart and that we're protecting them when they go out without our supervision. I just think it's something we're going to want to consider in the longer term if we're going to be out of school at the right time but maybe we're not as much of a risk to get to understand where I'm coming from. Thank you for that. That's all. Just something to consider. I'm going to go back on mute. It's a good message for the community. Okay. Okay, so I need a motion to go into executive session.