 if all of you are ready. Basically, the Secretary of Education and I had a conversation this morning regarding him approving the three days that we had off between the 16th, 17th, and 18th of March, which I sent him a letter about four weeks ago and never got a response. So before I submitted the request for the snow days, and the one day for the emergency heating issue and tonbridge, I was gonna clear up the issue with the days in March when we got out early. If you recall, they announced on the 13th that we would be getting out on the 18th, and we decided to get out and not come back because I was getting a lot of pressure from all different sides and we just made the decision, it was basically better not to come back, but I have to formally go through a waiver process to ask for those three days be credited. Did he see that request? He didn't acknowledge that he did, but he did see the one this morning that I sent, which is a duplicate. And I put on the original date when we did request it, so he could see that. Okay. Well, I'm expecting, he said I'll get back to you shortly, that was early this morning. So I expect I'll see it. Yeah. But it may hurt our chances of getting the snow days. The other night, Don, and you weren't on the call, the board gave us the authority to be able to go from 177, which is part of the calendar to 175, which was the state minimum. Yeah. And there are three additional snow days that we have to request. We may not get both. I don't know whether we'll get the three snow days and we'll get the three days in March that we asked, but I'm going to try. I just thought I ought to clear this problem up first. Do you know what their rationale would be for denying that request? That we've asked for six versus three. You know, I don't know, I mean, I don't know how they think. I just, I didn't want to do them all in one fell swoop because I was just trying to get him to clean up the other issue, but they're reasonable people. They'll work with us, I think, I hope so, anyway. The secretary basically started his conference this morning with 60 super tenants, basically by saying that by all indication, I'm often a lot better shaped than a lot of other states as far as the trends go, health trends. And we seem to be in a good place compared to the other 59 states. There will be new guidance that during it for graduation and it'll probably be the last guidance for graduation. That'll be tomorrow. They're going to allow kids to get out of their car if there is a ceremony, but only one at a time to maybe go and pick something up. They want everybody to congregate as a family in a car together. They don't want people mulling around even though the guidance allows groups of 10, probably gonna go to groups of 25. That will be released tomorrow in the press conference that the governor has, that new guidance and it'll probably be the last guidance that's given on graduation. I asked the secretary specifically in the chat today about the summer programs. I wanted to know what he had, it was gonna say about him and he said, I'll be coming out with something tomorrow. So that will be at the governor's conference as well. But I did ask him directly because I think we all want to know. So the guidance tomorrow will be on graduations and summer programs and we'll have the definitive answer and he didn't think it was gonna change. The other question regarding budgeting, if you guys want to do a little research to look at House Bill 5959, which is the guidance on the sets of tax rate at pre-COVID levels, and that will increase taxes for 3 cents. And that's the most important, soonest kind of thing that they want us to look at for this year. They have put off and Carl, this is the answer to your question and last time we talked, you wanted to know how they were the latest wisdom on how they're gonna retire this big gap in the education. And what he said today was that they're putting off those hard decisions until they reconvene. And I did hear that they were gonna go out probably around the 15th of June, but they weren't gonna tackle those big decisions until probably after they reconvene later on. And they're kind of avoiding it right now. That's what I was told anyway. They did put an appeal, there's fact information as you recall. They weren't excited about the way the money was being given out and they wanted to kind of take a step backwards and ask some questions of the Fed, see if they could get some things changed. The Fed has responded and said, there will not be any changes. So expect to see the COVID or the CARES Act money probably around the 1st of July. It won't be available until then. And also no changes in the ESSER money, which is part of those pots as well of CARES Act money. So they tried to make some changes, but the Fed wasn't interested in making those changes. And I think the changes had to do with the chair that independent schools were gonna get as compared to public schools, I think anyway. State will be trying out a new system, trying to show best practices and sharing in best practices around the continuity of learning. It's called EDMOTO, EDMOTO, M-I-C-O next year. And that should be up and running pretty soon. They also have, there's gonna be an opportunity for kids to use VTVLC that's gonna be a little more flexible. And there's also gonna be some portal regarding grading. I will tell you that we've had some long discussions as about grading and about how we were gonna deal with that this at the end of the year. Mary Ellen, if you're on the phone, could you go do a star six and join in here? I think you might wanna talk about the grading. You may not have gotten more, I don't know. So we ought to be able to have some things to tell you about how we're gonna grade at the end of the year pretty soon. Ray, do you wanna help with that? Yeah, you can say. Sure, sure. So my involvement is the state reporting, which of course is not the most important part. But this was discussed, I believe, briefly in the meeting the other night and then at the admin team meeting yesterday. Sorry, my days are running together. Yeah, yesterday. Right, that at the elementary level, there will be narratives instead of grades in essence. And David Wells and I were on a call yesterday with the web of school, the company we use for grading and came away with a set of instructions about how the teachers would do that. At the middle school and high school level, if the teachers are using number grades, at the elementary level, it's standards-based, one through four. Meeting or exceeding expectations, things like that. At the high school level, it's a middle school and high school, it's a bit more complicated in terms of the White River Valley High School's on quarters, White River Valley Middle School's on trimesters, you know, where the students ended in terms of the grading versus where they're gonna be at the end of the year. And the phrase I keep hearing is do no harm. Right, so if you have a student who was doing really well up until the closure, wouldn't wanna penalize them, but vice versa, if you had a student who's flourished during the school closure, you would wanna make sure that that, the progress that they had made would be recorded in the grading. So that could still or will still involve a narrative, meaning a statement about the student's learning from the teacher. And that's something that at that level, they have used over time, comments and notes. And so the teacher should be familiar with how to do that. And they will be supported in providing that feedback officially on the report card. Yeah, I don't think this conversation is over yet. I think we're still working on it, but that's a little bit of a caption of this, right? A little caption of what we've talked about so far with this. So any questions on any of that for any of us? There was a, I got an email from someone regarding professional development days. There was a question that Bruce did, I think you got the same, same ask. They want a credit for those or something like that? Credit for those. They wanted not to do them or it was from Sam. I don't think I was copied, was I? Okay, I'll forward it over to you then. Yeah, I don't think I was copied it. Basically, I missed the call I think on Tuesday, but we went all over this basically. Okay, well, if that's been solved then never mind. Yeah, no, we basically, the idea was that we were gonna ask for the two days to go from, I got permission from the board to go from 177 to 175. Right. My permission from the board in the second vote to go from 175 to 172 and actually be one additional day for Tundridge because they had a heating issue. Okay, all right. But as I said earlier, I still have to get rid of the problem with the three days we got out in March. And I'm gonna deal with that first and then ask to make the request for the snow day. Okay. Sorry to interject, I just... No, no, no, that's okay, yeah. No, don't... Bruce? Yeah, if I may. Don, if I may? Yeah. So that would be the plan with the reduction from 175 to 175, 177 to 175. That would be... Those would no longer be student days, but they would be PD days. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. All right, so finally, there is an opinion from the CDC and all the health officials in the state that we will be able to reopen in fall. We just don't know what that's gonna look like, but they are assuring us that there will have to be some changes made. It may be a hybrid situation where we have some distance learning and some in-person learning. There's a planning group at the state level involving superintendents and others that basically are going to be going through this and doing a planning process for the fall. Their first meeting will be tomorrow and it'll have health officials. It'll have superintendents. It'll have state officials. And I don't know whether there'll be maybe the NEA. I don't know. But they're gonna try to shift. They think we're gonna have to shift between in-person and remote learning as we begin the year. So it's important that the system be set. So the five areas that they're looking at are leadership, funding, and policy. That's area one. Safe and healthy learning environments, cleaning, et cetera, cleaning buses, things like that. Using the CDC guidance. The third one is maintaining operations once we get going, how we're gonna use the facilities. That has to do with splitting kids in a classroom. I don't know what we're gonna do about preschoolers because they're all over each other. And I just don't foresee a way of dealing with that. And maybe even the kindergarten classes as well, they have a tendency to move around and that kind of thing. And then the fourth area will be continuity of learning, which is the curriculum work and how we're giving lessons, remote learning versus face-to-face, how that's gonna work and how we're gonna transact business. And then the final is the social, emotional and health of students and staff. I have to tell you that I've seen some signs of staff really, really being stressed. And I'm sure the parents are as well because this is going on for a lot longer than we ever anticipated. I mean, they're still doing it every day and I'm not hearing anybody quitting, but the VSA, my group, basically wrote a letter and was gonna be submitted today to the secretary outlining concerns. It was about four pages. We all got a chance to critique it, add things, subtract things, make our voices known to it by 10 o'clock this morning and then it was going to be edited and sent to the secretary about the things that we have to consider. For example, one of the recommendations is to have screening in the first contact the student has at school. Well, that first contact screening would be on the bus for a lot of these kids. And I don't know unless you have more people riding like monitors and things, how you're gonna do that. I'm not gonna expect the bus driver to take kids temperatures, even if it's so far ahead scan and know that that's right. There's a lot of things like that that we're grappling with. How do you redesign your class? One example was, Mount Pilier High has about 1,200 kids, but they only have 450 desks and because they're not, they're a very non-traditional way of doing things there. So the superintendent was asking, well, what am I gonna do by six or 700 desks between now and the opening of school if we've got to spread kids out in order to be able to make sure we keep the social distancing. So these are real world problems now for all of us that are things we just kind of took for granted. I think we ought to prepare, and this is my own opinion, I think we ought to prepare for some kind of hybrid at least for the first half of the year. I don't know, you know, and hopefully we'll buy some time until we get a vaccine, but I don't foresee a whole lot changing between where we are right now and where we will be in the fall. There was a lot of discussion around Driver's Ed. They did ask the... Excuse me, Carl, Carl had a question. Yeah, go ahead, Carl. My question, too. As far as when they're talking about a hybrid model, are they, does this include staggered start times? Does this include the kids being kept in one classroom and specials coming to the kids versus the kids traveling to an art or a gym space? I mean, is there advice about like pee or singing? Some of those sort of, you know, restricting activities, restricting access to things, stuff like that. You mean singing with a mask on? No, what he did say is that there will be protocols that will be in place before a school opens. These are things that are minimum that have to be met. Before somebody opens as a school. And that'll be between the AOA and the superintendent and principals, probably. Criteria that has to be met in order for you to open. Katie. That is yet, so. Oh, am I on the floor again? Sorry, it's Amy. Sorry, I got my camera off. Well, I've talked to some families, parents, and I do think it's very valuable to look at the hybrid option of what we had talked about last time we met that Debbie Matthews brought up that possibly we have situations where a child doesn't actually go back to school in our building and they are just doing the online learning. And is there a way that we can accommodate that type of situation? I see a lot of parents fearful of sending their children back to the virus breeding grounds. We all know elementary schools and high schools and everything, it's a large group of people together and stuff runs rampant through there. Germ factories. The germ factory, right? So last week we spoke about the possibility of having an option and maybe even there would be a teacher who doesn't wanna return to the traditional in classroom teaching that could be the district wide, the SU wide online teacher for that grade or certain number of grades. Is that being looked at at all? Yeah, the secretary did touch on that when he talked about hybrid that that was part of what he was trying to include in talking about that. They haven't, they don't have a system in mind yet but they're gonna work on it with this committee that's gonna be meeting. Yeah, there are a lot of people, I think this has been a real fork in the road for people deciding whether they're gonna keep teaching, whether parents are gonna keep sending their kids. We have currently 23 openings in the SU for teachers. So we've got a lot of hiring to do this summer. I mean, I'm doing what I can do now before Jamie comes in, but he's gonna have a fair share to deal with after July one. It just seems reasonable if we had another option that that might be another avenue that both our parents and students and some of our staff could take and we would be able to retain both the students and the staff. Yeah, yeah. So again, I think there will be some criteria that has to be in place. And I think that there will be opportunities for a couple of the superintendents that are going out on their own and doing this their own system. They're buying the software to be able to do some of this because they are afraid they can't wait for the AOE to give them advice. I know of a couple in particular that just said, I can't wait around here for this. The problem is if we disband like that and go all on our own, we may have systems that aren't compatible with each other and it may make it harder down the road when you're in a contract with somebody but you can't use the product. So I think we ought to be a little bit more patient for another week or two to see what this committee comes up with. And they did say, the secretary did say there would be protocols in place that would basically say what you had to consider before they get the okay to open come fall. The only other thing I'll tell you that was mentioned today was that the state, and this is a really good thing, is going to do some bulk buying or make available to us masks, rubber gloves, and a lot of the supplies we are gonna need in order to do this. We're all on our own right now. And that's not probably the most efficient way of doing this but they're gonna try to bundle some of that and be able to make it available to school districts. They don't believe that we're gonna need surgical masks and depending on what the job description is for the people who are using it, I mean, I think the nurses will need shields but I don't think teachers will need shields. They'll probably just need cloth masks or something like that. I told you last time we've made available about, I don't know, 1400 masks for each school. I know a couple of the bundles are still at the central office waiting to be picked up. We've divided them up and we'll get them out to the schools as soon as people come by and pick them up. But I think the state's gonna make it easier to get hand sanitizer and masks and gloves and things like that for us. And we'll be able to get that from the AOE rather than have to go out and purchase on the market for ourselves. So I think that's a good thing. Does anybody have any questions? Carl, did I answer what you were asking? I'm feeling like I didn't, but. I just was, as we try to figure out how we're going to, what we need to plan for for delivering services over the summer. Just as much as we can know about, are we going to be trying to do art on a cart because we can't bring the kids to an art room. We have to bring the art teacher to the kids. Do we need to have classroom teachers handling some of the specials instructions because we want to minimize the number of adults that interact with kids? Are we going to serve meals? Is lunch going to be served in the classroom? And do we have to plan how to move those, the logistics of getting those things set up? And I understand we don't have all the answers, but at this point, but I think it's just very important that we're constantly pushing to try to get the answers so we can have as much planning time as we can, because I just worry that if we end up spending the first few weeks back at school, just trying to sort out how to do school, it's just gonna be a lot of kids in classrooms sort of watching us fumble around. So the more lead time on some of these practical, how do we run an elementary school in a hybrid model during COVID-19, the more information you can give our administration, the better. So thank you for all your work on finding this stuff for us. Yeah, well, we'll say this for Stockbridge and Rochester, you have space, right? You do have space, you know? So I don't know, I don't know what it's gonna look like, I will, but I don't think we're gonna be allowed to open, Carl, until we certified that we have certain things that they want us to have. So anyway, anybody else, questions? Bruce, if I could just say, there was a meeting of the COVID task force today, three until four with a follow-up. Kathy's on here, I think she was there. Sorry, I don't remember everyone else. I see Mary Ellen. Yeah, I was there. Yep, and please correct me if I'm wrong. That today was about the big, big categories and having people assigned to or pick their interest levels for meeting starting next week to deal with the issues that you have discussed here. And those categories line up with what the state's gonna be doing? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. Okay. We, on other matters, I just will tell you that I am planning to resume being in the office as of June 1st, Monday. Probably it'll be every other day or a couple of days and as I'm out, we're gonna try to space out the staff. So we're not all crowding in there together. And I'll be in Monday or Tuesday and Wednesday. Christy and I will be in the office, maybe in the office, but we're gonna take a climb for all staff and start being back to the office on a more frequent basis, come Monday. So, Tara, do you have any news? Special Ed, you talked about today. Do you wanna share that or do you? Not yet. I will share that we finally received an initial response from Brad James that they have agreed in our sending us a sum of money. I don't agree with the sum of money. So I sent back a response this afternoon for Brad to review the additional documentation we sent to him. So hopefully we'll get a little bit more. And that was for the FY 19 that we've been waiting for and waiting for. Yeah, we're waiting for January, right? Yeah, next Thursday night, I will add to this agenda, the RFP for auditors. I asked for the responses by Wednesday so I can open them up here in the office when I'm here and then I'll bring that to you all Thursday night for a decision to be made on who we want to be our auditors for FY 20 through 23. And as far as the FY 19 audits, I am wrapping up the final reviews this week and getting them back to the auditors and then just waiting for the revised final draft audits. And then once I get them, G-HUD I've already sent out to their board. So I will send them to you via email first for you to review. And then if you have any questions, concerns, otherwise I'll ask you to accept them at your next board meetings if I get them to you prior to your board meetings. I have been delaying on doing the RFP for the tax anticipation notes in the lines of credit in hopes that the government legislative bodies were going to make a decision if they were going to change that statute of the 87% but I cannot wait any longer. So I'm working on the cash flows now to try and get the RFP out on Monday at that 87% threshold for the districts who don't have a past budget. So once that comes in, I probably won't have a response clearly in time for the R-SUD and G-HUD meetings next week. So I'll have to do special meetings for those two but I am in hopes to have the RFPs and the analysis of that response for the rest of your board meetings so that you can accept clear plan clears, school district treasurers. The RFP for fuel oil, I got the initial response today from the company that we're working with out of Maine, that buying group that we used to work with. He did let me know that we're waiting on one more company to provide their information, which hopefully we'll have on Monday. So I'll have some further information on that for everybody as well. We have decided to not do the universal chart of account transfer within infinite visions because when we did it messed up all of our systems. So we have reverted the two districts that we completed and we'll now be just rolling over regular fiscal year and I will have to manually crosswalk before I send up the reports to the AOE. So we won't change the chart of accounts until we go to the e-finance software starting 7-1-21. So that's what I've been working on the last couple of weeks. Thanks, Dara. Mary Ellen, you want to say anything? I think most of you were on the call on Monday night, maybe not Don, but we've been working on reanalyzing the contracts. Last year, I renegotiated all the contracts and saved the SU thousands of dollars on some of the services that we share across schools. And so we've been contacting them this year again to see if we can even get a further reduction given the situation that we're in. So I'm still working on that and working with greater like teams, we've switching from greater like meetings to now focus clusters and these focus meetings will be working on planning for the start of the fall. What are all the things we need to know as teachers to get feedback from them so we could bring it to the COVID-19 team and do all our planning with teacher input for all grades. So that's what I've been working on as well as being the preschool coordinator working with the preschool because our preschool coordinator isn't here right now. So that's pretty busy. Mary Ellen, do you want to see anything about the grading discussion? We already talked about this, Ray. I heard Ray, I think he did an awesome job. I think he summed it up nicely. Thank you, Ray. Yeah, I couldn't get on. I don't know why, but I heard him and I was like, you go. That's great. It's just what we talked about. Thanks, but no. The other thing I'll say is the final are the offers to the professional staff and to the support staff are out. We had to give the support staff a couple more days to get it back to us. The professional staff is due back on the 2nd of June, Tuesday, and the support staff will be the 9th of June next week from next. So Dina did confirm that they were both out, and we should hear back one way or the other pretty soon. Can I ask why the delay? I thought we were supposed to hoping to get a response back early in June rather than mid-June. Well, the professional staff went right out, and that's due back on this Tuesday. Dina didn't get it out until yesterday or today, so that's the delay. But I know it did go out, and she asked me, do you want me to try to get it back the same time? But I knew she hadn't sent it out yet, so they needed a little time to consider it. And so we agreed on the 9th. So that's about all I have unless anybody has questions for me. I'm not sure I can answer them. Hope these times are valuable to you, and I'll keep doing them as well as the odds and ends that we do on the weekends. It's incredible how many of those. I was putting the numbers on them, and it's good. So anyway, I hope you value those and look for those. I appreciate them, and I appreciate the meetings every week. It's nice to be updated. People are definitely still asking questions, so thanks. OK, well, I don't have anything else unless anybody's got any questions for me. I just had a question of Tara if she's still on. Yeah, I think she is. Yeah, I'm still here, Don. When can I meet with you about that paperwork? I will be back in the building on Monday. All right, I'll come up Monday after I work during the day. What time are you going to get there? I usually get here at 9, because I can't drop my kiddos off until 8.30. OK, are you there at 4? Yes. OK, how's the up there at 4 on Monday? Perfect. Terrific. Thank you. You bet. Again, we should be in person next week a lot more, so. OK. All right. Sounds good. Thanks, everybody. I will hand you the motion to adjourn. So moved. I'll second. All in favor, say see you. See you. See you.