 We will call the meeting to order at 7.03. Do we have any adjustments to the agenda? And we'll move to the consent agenda to approve the minutes of Tuesday, June 20th. Do I have a motion? August. Do I have you an old agenda? I apologize. Okay, that makes sense. Sorry about that. You just do last month's meeting. I had it still left in. So moved for the August. Yeah, okay, August 15th. Yes, minutes of August 15th. Okay. I didn't give you the last round packet, did I? No, it's for a second. Okay. All in favor say aye. Chris was a second. Who was the first? Nancy. I'm sorry? Nancy. Who was the first on that motion? Nancy was the first. Chris was the second. Okay, thank you. All right, then we're on to public comment. Correspondence. Is there any public comment at this time? Hi, Peggy. Okay, do we have any board comment? So I had just wanted to piggyback on what Andrew was saying last time with the as a parent, I guess as a board member and a parent, but it was the registration portions of it was far better, especially if you have multiple kiddos in school. That part of it was very seamless. I think the only piece that maybe we can look at as we continue to refine this is there now seems to be a lot of redundancy. So the paperwork is all filled out, but we're still trying to figure out who's filled the paperwork out, who hasn't, so that we can get privileges like computers or every permission slip that comes home says, well, we want your medical information that the school already has. You know, so there's a lot of redundancies still in that process that maybe we can refine some because because on the registration portion, it talked about field trips and then every field trip that comes back, you get to fill the field trip thing out, flip it over and put all your medical information back on there again. And I just think maybe there would be a You're getting that still this year. Yeah. So elementary. So I'm just and that comes from both schools. So it's, you know, just I think we've made good strides and maybe that's the next step of the refinement is to look at, you know, how do we pull that data of what parents have submitted the slips and which ones haven't so that the kids can get their whatever laptops or whatever it might be so that we can get going for the year, as well as maybe some of these redundant pieces that keep coming back. But the registration piece, it must take me like five minutes for both my girls to share. It was pretty fast. Once you filled it out once and you just kind of copied it and added the second one and changed one or two things and you're done, you know. So it was really nice. Um, the only other thought I had on that topic was whether it would make sense to include some sort of questions on the regular survey that everybody has to ask that would, I don't know if it's possible, but you know, like give us some idea of household income or something so that you could then know who to target for those free and reduced lunch forms. Since I know that we're always kind of pushing to increase the return rate on those, like if there was some way to incorporate that into the thing that everybody fills out, kind of as an optional thing, you know, to then know like what percentage of people are saying that they're in this income bracket or something and then what percentage are we actually getting back. It's just the thought. Any other board comment? Then we'll move on to the celebration of learning. So yeah, and Ben won't be here tonight. So the celebration is just sort of an introduction to pathways and pathways has increased tremendously this year. So this is kind of an introduction video to sort of get kids interested. It's not a full video on that, but yeah. That was the thing is a good marketing tool. Actually it's a celebration of learning, but we had this playing at our booth at the fairgrounds to give folks a sense of what could be options at our high school and what I think could be a thing that's really that we're getting ahead of some of our regional competition on. About that, creating my own learning would be a better experience and be more tailored to what I wanted to learn. Community-based learning brings together our students and members of the community to engage in experiential learning, training, and career opportunities in Vermont and beyond. These experiences can allow students to demonstrate mastery of core or elective proficiencies aligned with their personal interests. In independent study, students co-create individual courses with teachers and staff based on their own interests and needs. In this work, they demonstrate proficiencies to satisfy graduation requirements and meet personal and school goals. Through independent study, students can explore any subject. White River Valley High School students can take a wide range of core and elective courses online. These courses, which are both topical and traditional, are taught online by licensed Vermont teachers and supported by teachers at White River Valley High School. Students often engage in learning opportunities outside the school on their own or with other organizations. We honor these activities and we build experiences with students. Through these self-contained experiences, students can explore and demonstrate mastery of academic proficiencies. We then combine these experiences to satisfy school requirements and help students meet their personal goals. I learned so much more than just history, self-confidence, self-advocacy, as well as just the knowledge base that you're building at a pace that you're comfortable with. All of this requires self-direction and WRVHS staff are here to help. Time will be provided during the school day for you to engage in flexible pathways. Each day, Tuesday to Friday, we have set aside a pathways period right after lunch. During this time, with support from staff, students will exercise their curiosity and creativity to explore their own interests. We hope this results in greater engagement and growth as demonstrated in student-led conferences and portfolio. We've been talking about time during the day and connections to school, but we need to remember learning happens everywhere. Flexible pathways are about strengthening those connections and honoring what we do outside the building as well as in the classroom. It goes so far beyond just normal classroom settings because normal classroom setting doesn't work for everyone. What are you thinking about now? What do you want to do? What have you always wanted to learn or do? Come see us. We're here to find those connections to your interests. Email us or come on by to room B6. Ben Boyington, flexible pathways. Jeff Clayton, community-based learning. I think some of the most notable things that I learned this year, like outside of school, like self-control, dependability and grit. Finally, don't forget to follow us on social media. I thought that created my own. Thank you. So yeah, Ben shared that a couple weeks ago. I was like, this is perfect for marketing materials, both internally to get our students to know what options they have, but also externally to give prospective students an idea of what opportunities could be here for them. It's interesting when you talk to students, too, about what's your passion? What do you like? They just don't know, so it's funny how you gotta talk to them a little bit. And then next thing you know, you find something, and Ben's really good at pulling that out. And the next thing you know, they're studying about it and getting credit. So really exciting. And I know it's early in the season, but what do we think our participation rate is or will be in the flexible pathway piece? I would say 80% of our student body will be involved with some sort of flexible pathway. There are some of the numbers in the principal's report. And it's early still, but I think that's quadrupled what it was last year already. Because it is block four, period four pathways. And the students who aren't doing a pathway at that time are using it for just general language? Yeah, and we're trying to get them, we have other groups like math and English that are working with kids to support them as well. And then we have the dream program and driver's ed going on during that period as well. My daughter's in dream. Oh, good. All right, superintendent report. So you have my report in hand. I got to enjoy my Saturday night at the fair with Nancy, which was a great time at the table that we had. So it's the first year that we've had an SU table at the fair. And I think we learned some things that we'll add to it for next year in regards to just try to have it be more do engaging. I think it was easier for me because I know a lot of folks in our communities. So it's easy. It was easy for me to kind of start a conversation. I was a little bit concerned about some of our new administrators or things that that would be more difficult. So just how do we give a hook to get folks to come to the booth? So we've talked about some things like maybe spinning a wheel and doing some type of a question that's local about the SU where they could guess and then win a prize or something like that just to make it a little more engaging that way. But I would say in general, I heard a lot of folks that were just appreciative that we were there. And I really value the just the intimate conversations around what folks felt like was going good across the SU, what things they'd like us to focus on. You know, I think one of the things we continue to struggle with as an organization is I think we are improving our outreach to the school community, meaning like if you have students with us, right? Like we have social media, we have Blackboard, we have newsletters, we have SU websites and school websites that are updated on a regular basis. I still think an area that we struggle with is like how do we reach our constituents that aren't currently connected with the school? I think this was a good mode to try to start to do that. But I think, you know, in general, we've been hosting things at our schools to try to connect with the community. I think we need to look at more opportunities when there's events happening in the community that we go there. And I think I only saw two other educational identities that were there. One thing I guess for one, it took me forever to find it. But once I found where you guys were at. But I got wondering like maybe for next year, of course it's always a gamble, but if you notice, I can't even remember the name of it, but there was like a small school that was just outside, but had like an easy up, but their name was on the easy up type deal. And I think they probably got more foot traffic because they were outside. A lot of people don't go inside the building as much. So I didn't know if maybe for next year that that might be something to look into if can we get a Wildcat easy up, you know, and maybe take that gamble of being on the outside and not the inside type deal. Because I know it took a while to find it, but might get a little more. I think the one lucky thing we had going for us is that we were next to the fudge. Everybody goes to the fudge. Yeah. But on the other side, they were giving out these little bags and they were pigs, pig bags with the little ears on the side. And until every kid was looking for that and they had to come by our booth to get to them. So I didn't see the pig bags. I think they were done. But it was good to see it. And there really wasn't too many educational identities there. So I thought that that that was well. Well, every kid that had a temperate shirt on got a white river valley pen or pencil. Just say what you got to think of how many different identities are there. There was a dozen or more different schools that come there for the fair. So other things just wanted to highlight. Is that Makayla Martin's going to she's kind of spearheading at the SU this idea of a portrait of a graduate. We are going to be looking for board members that are interested in doing that work. So if you're interested, if you could just feel free to reach out to me, if that's easier for you or just mmartin at wrbsu.org. We're going to have community members engaging in that students are getting trained up to then hold conversations on this in their local communities. And the idea is that the students will be trained to help facilitate those conversations so that we're empowering student voice to do that work. That's an ongoing year long activity. And then at the full board meeting next week. I'm really excited is it will start to give a preview for the full board. Our rollout of our revisions to our curricular documents to make them. What I hope folks feel is much more easy to understand as for all constituents, meaning that they're not just internal documents that they're public facing. And that folks have a much better understanding what we want our kids to know understand and do throughout the grade levels. Teachers have put in a lot of work around that with that throughout the last year. I'm happy with how that's that's looking. And we're pretty close to being completed in every content area. There's a couple content areas that are a little bit behind. And just to remind folks, the agency of education supported us with that work. They've had members of their team right out in the field working with our teams of educators and helping facilitate that. So that was great to get that support from them. And then I'll take any questions folks may have. Okay. Everybody has anything for Jamie? We'll move on to the principal's report. Happy to start. I think that our whole report really highlights a great start to the school year. We have been in elementary doing a lot of front loading with social emotional and what our agreements are. We've launched been using through the SU in service the inter explorer mindfulness. So all of our elementary classes are working on having some quiet mindfulness moments, which we're hopeful will help help them in the long run have some more resiliency skills. And we are in morning meeting in addition to our responsive classroom added in positivity project, which really highlights a different character strength each week. This week we're working on curiosity. And then we're connecting that to our students of the week. So students of the week get a nominated for showing that character strength, which is a little bit different than what we were doing previously. In addition to that, there's been a lot of training going on and just our elementary teachers are getting trained up in some new assessments, which we're very excited about. And we started our first first half day and took some time to just connect about newsletters and just just trying to level the playing field with so many new teachers, which is really lovely and wonderful, but bring them all in. And our next half-day for SU we're excited to be doing PLCs and great elect groups. And then finally, we had a great ice cream social and we're getting ready to open up for open house. We're going to also have a flu clinic as well at the open house. And so yeah, it's been a great start and we're ready to keep on rolling. Ed, did you have a comment or question for? Yeah, I did. I was unable to get the principal's report and off the Google box. I'm looking at it now if we could go back up, but right after the other section that said middle school, there was some mention of the words, I'm sorry, the word suicide education appeared somewhere or something. Yeah, so at the SU in service, we heard from Sue Hoffner. And so her son lost his life to suicide. And so her family's foundation, one, spoke at the SU in service, but also they are funding it for all schools in Vermont to use this mindfulness moment. So definitely ask your kids about it. I think a lot of teachers are using it like after recess as like a quiet time to like bring ourselves back down and it's really like shows outside basically like a still picture on the screen and leads kids through some either breath work or just just an opportunity to like slow down their bodies. Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't get a chance to pre-read that now. I'm scrolling by, I'm sorry. And it caught my eye, I just wanted to know more about it. It was a lovely gift that their family is giving to all Vermont schools. And you can click and do it yourself. Ready for middle school? Sure. I would certainly like to echo it has been a wonderful start to a school year for a lot of reasons. Chief among them, a great staff and a really good group of students. That's the obvious, that's the part you know, but we're really seeing the dividends of the work that went into the summer work between teachers, between interventionists, aligning their various lessons so that there's a connection between various places, various content areas, and that's progressed throughout the school year as well. One of the pieces of my staff meeting this afternoon focused on learning from each other. So we had two of their colleagues presenting to them about how to incorporate ways to think about writing, how to sharpen writing skills across all of the content areas with some commitment to, well let's try some of these techniques. All paralleling various things that we're seeing in the elementary school, some wonderful projects where students are being guided towards kind of a scientific approach to thinking data inquiry for us adults by asking good questions, forming hypotheses, finding evidence, and we're seeing that in how the writing is being brought from ELA to science, kind of exciting work going forward to see this kind of collaboration among the teammates. I do want to highlight something that's not in here that kind of sows together some of the things my superintendent said. I had the opportunity to work the the booth at the fair on Sunday. Relatively slow start to the morning, gave plenty of opportunity for those intimate conversations with my colleague Dan Rivers. We had a very long probably 15 minute conversation with two legislators and I want to highlight something that's a positive of this community in this school district, this SU. They came, they saw who we were, they were engaging with us as educators and they had a lot of questions but they started with, okay what's going wrong, what do we need to know, what do we need to advocate for, they were expecting kind of a deficit mindset and right in the table in front of us are two beautiful examples of where this district is going. We were able to highlight the portrait of a graduate and talk about how that leads to ties with community agencies, with community businesses to produce that citizen of the future and we're also able to talk about the pathways. The video you just saw was a conversation started with them as well. It feels like we're actually achieving things that were talked about in the legislature a decade ago. So it's a very positive experience and I think all else aside you should be proud of the work that has been done that led to that moment in that conversation. The last thing I would highlight is one of the positive starts of the school year has been an all hands on deck approach to again defining what are expected behaviors. What are the the non-negotiables, language that can't be used, how do we interact with each other across a wide variety of settings and routines. We're using the advisory system that's built into our schedule I think to greater and greater effect and this Friday we start a curriculum that will last for the entire year called Character Strong that gives intention behind the advisory model so once a week we'll be doing a lesson that will carry throughout the following week and again that will last throughout the entire school year. I look forward to updating you on some of the results of that. And at the high school we talked a little bit already about highlighting pathways. Number two our enrollment is up from 190 last year to 215 so 25 new students in our building which is really exciting. We had the first community conversations hosted here. What a great dinner night out. We had over 25 people there so I thought Dana Decker did an amazing job. Very educational. It was a good night. And then lastly is this weekend is homecoming. We have our homecoming dance on Friday and he's on Saturday. Any questions or comments for the principals? Go ahead. I do have one. Is there a difference in the accessibility of the library rules for the different levels of school over at the Royalton campus now? There was a loose comment that I picked up on on social media that said high school kids can't get in while the younger kids are in or something to that effect but then it seemed to be dropped but I didn't know if we understand them in the library or not. I just wanted to ask about that. No issues have been brought to me about it. So I think where the issue is coming from is that our library and it's a pre-k through five as you know and then nine through 12 so a lot of the classes for elementary are in this library and so it's hard for our high school students to come in. Stacy Rupp has done a great job though of scheduling high school time and teachers are taking advantage of that so I think we're working that out. It's kind of new for all of us because she's a new teacher so I think there might have been some issues in the beginning that we've worked on. It was an anonymous comment on a social media site and that could mean some hurt feelings and it could have been somebody taking it personal because they got asked to leave for something or but I wanted to know if there was in fact if we needed maybe another paraprofessional or more people to help more kids that's all I really was interested in. Thanks though. So with the Andrew's touch based on the inner explorer piece is that just in the elementary only or is that something that's going to be done in middle school as well as high school? It's available to anybody who wants to utilize that. I mean I think that's a pretty valuable tool. I mean at least my experience has been the more mental health challenges have been with my early teenage daughters you know in that middle school. We'll pick on middle school because it's the melting pot. So is there a plan to offer similar tools in middle school or high school that kind of what Andrew's looking at right now in the elementary school? There is certainly the intention to offer that in terms of the plan. I'm coming to understand the kind of work that's been done already and what we're engaged with like the Claire Martin Center for like trauma-informed practices. I talked today you mentioned the mental health first aid so there's every intention to do that. To me plan means I can tell you exactly when that's starting. We're not at that point yet but we recognize it to me and we know we have some resources to drop on. Yeah and I just see that as you know completely you know you can't put a number to something like that and doing it right out of the gate while it's fresh it's a new slate for the year. You know it kind of goes along with what you said you know starting to work on behavior practices and if you can roll the mental health piece into it about bullying or harassment at the same time I think that would work really well. So definitely would encourage more of it if we we can do more of it or maybe one doesn't fit all maybe we have to find multiple tools for each age group to use. But yeah this does this program does go pre-k right up through 12. Yeah I think that would be great. I think it goes right up to adult. It does. Thank you principals. Tara. All right you all have my report which outlines what's happening in the business office during the month of September. One thing I want to point out as you know we have a few auditors this year that relationship is going very well but you have homework. Andrew you have homework. Oh boy. And then one other board member I would recommend Rodney because you're the one that signs the warrants but anyone else can do it and what it is is just a crowd questionnaire that the auditors want you to complete and then send in to them and I don't actually see it. So I will leave it up to you if you want to do it or whoever wants to volunteer is the same one as yours. Okay I think you can I guess I can do it. Yeah it's not that bad. It's only like 10 questions. And then if there is questions on there that you that don't apply you can write not applicable or doesn't apply to us. Oh okay. And then Ray if you could put up the fiscal year 23 year end projections please. So on the first page is our expenditure budget. I've outlined areas of overspending which we've seen throughout last year and then the areas of savings. So overall at the expected close of the fiscal year you're looking at an expenditure surplus of $554,362. If there's any questions on that otherwise we can go to the revenue side. If I could just jump into it. I just want to emphasize to the board that a big chunk of that remains to be the fact that we're leveraging ESSER to cover some of your interventionist salaries that we're allowed to do. And professional development and contact services so those are your big areas of savings so a lot that wasn't itself with ESSER offsets. With the whole idea being that then we could look to leverage some of that to put away like we have been to then be able to do capital improvements that we want to do on the buildings. Just every time I can say that so folks know I think and going forward we're not going to be savings. No that's what I just want to put out there like that's going away at the end of this coming summer. The enrollment figures stand out and that's certainly helping. What percentage of this is being covered under ESSER? I would say a big chunk of it. What would you say? Over 50% of your budgeted salaries and benefits for your interventionists are being covered by ESSER funds. I would say most of those salary and benefit offsets. What percentage of ESSER plus? I would say 80. Easy. Because your areas of ESSER plus or your areas of savings on the budget are the areas that we were utilizing ESSER funds to pay for those expenses. So if you didn't have ESSER funds we're probably looking at more about $100,000 ESSER plus rather than okay. And then based upon some of the over spent items is there any concerns in the budget that we are in currently with any of those pieces? The biggest thing that we see is because obviously when we're building budgets we may not necessarily know who you're bringing in as new teachers in the next fiscal year so we always usually see an overage on the new teacher health assessment because any teacher that you bring in that's new to the licensing pool we have to pay that new teacher assessment on for the remainder that they're employed by us. So that normally we do see in fiscal year 24 I did build in a small cushion for some additional new staff but that's definitely something when we start working on the budget and we look at your actuals versus what we're going to budget for 25 we would take that into consideration based on how many new hires you have this year on what we need to put there. Electricity and oil a lot of that's going to be addressed through our energy efficiency with EEI and the projects that are happening there. We couldn't project that fuel oil was going to go up to four dollars a gallon when we were building budgets so you know that's obviously part of our over spendage there and then trash and recycling. Again you know the the contracted amount for our recycling and our trash containers went up that we weren't anticipating when we were building budgets so again when we're starting to build 25 budget over the next two months we'll start to also increase those in 25 to help offset some of those. So there so there is a potential of those overages carrying into the current budget then? We could potentially but you'll see here in Royalton but because in Bethel we're not going to have oil you know where we already built in those savings there so we may not see the same scale okay yeah and oil prices are lower than what we budgeted so what we locked in on. So on the revenue side we had 51,000 dollars additional revenue for tuition we had just I'm going to highlight the big ones here we had an additional 49,000 on interest income and as you recall when we put our tax anticipation notes in place if we don't have to pull down the money from the tax anticipation notes that collects interest so that is where that interest additional revenue is coming from because we did have cash flow we weren't we didn't have to pull down our can as much so we were able to make some more revenue there. So overall on the revenue side we are 88,647 dollars to the good on expenditure 554,362 so the current projection for the fiscal year 23 surplus is 643,009 dollars and then down below is as of the 622 audit the fund balances and then what we transferred that 700,000 in your article this year. And then budgeted versus actual well projected enrollment at this point I mean is there any I know I just barely got your list yesterday so I cannot give you a suggestion sound like we're high school level anyway so okay next month yeah we'll be out there. All right thanks Tara. All right policy committee update. The full board is going to be taking up it's worn for action three policies next week we've got the final of the the board code of ethics policy we've got the oh come on Jamie help me here Rodney yeah emergency preparedness options based emergency preparedness policy and then building access policy and they're all worn for action at the full board and then would come in front of your board next month and I think we're in a pretty good place based on all the different feedback we received that code of ethics policies went through six drafts essentially and we'll take it up it seemed like the full board was in support at this point and then we'll go from there. So that's the policy committee update the only other update I would say is that I'm excited that we've gotten to a point where the policy committee is going to start the process to outline a 16th month window to review all of our policies and start to make revisions so what you will start to see is possibly some policies start to come forward to you with revisions proposed revisions for the board to consider and as we do that process we're going to be looking at a corresponding procedure as well so that's really the work of the policy committee we think moving forward here for the next year and a half facilities task force yeah we told the Bethel school last night uh it's coming good most of the registers are in the school and classrooms uh thermostats were in and I think the propane furnace will be operational probably the end of next week and the we get the act 250 for the wood for the wood chip furnace and that's floating in the ocean somewhere right now and it should be here soon so everything's looking good yeah the pad's poured the pad to port um yeah they'll finish putting in the propane furnace and uh I can't think of anything else so light in here I guess it's good and they still get the lighting to do in Bethel in Bethel yeah maybe if they had to do some work but not fully all right no not fully but um not like they're there every day no um and we also talked about the task force uh really focusing over the upcoming months as we're talking in budget season what our focus is for next uh year so know that the board we're going to be looking to have them come forward with some presentation for the full board to comment um in regards to priorities for next summer one of the things we talked about last night was them coming back next month with uh Banwell the architect that they've been working with at our our buildings uh around some drawings for um improving our entryways at both campuses specifically the high school entryway here and at the elementary middle school in Bethel with a focus on security the entry here is the one that goes out to the back car come on yeah right we have no way to well allow access during the day there right not lighted out here yeah um so is there next one is the EI capital improvements sort of the same thing they're kind of the same thing no no worries um anything else on that front or we'll be covered all uh you know I would say that you know the big thing is that we got the act 250 permit I mean the worry was that could hold us up another couple more months and the good news is we get it so they're moving ahead um and everything's run so it's really about just installation and connecting in the boiler system yeah so I feel like we're in pretty good shape great all right um board retreat planning so I think we're gonna postpone it from this Friday to sometime next August yeah uh does anybody have any time in October that would work could we do another Friday or sometime midweek if that works but same do you have any uh dates the SU ones in October my board calendar Andrew the SU ones in October right it is I think we decided on the 12th was it second Tuesday in the month thought that's okay said I could be wrong press second Tuesday of the month the 10th 10th for the full board thank you right I mean in general Tuesday nights are not good that right now can we just go can we go to the full board one and get like flexible pathways credit or you know I had never thought about trying to do it that way but that could be an option it's contact hours like you know I'm good sometime in in in October um should we um just send out a doodle poll yeah I could do that yeah why don't we do that there's certain days of the week that are better for board members if we were to narrow in on some dates the only day of the week that's not good for me is Mondays okay so no on Mondays I mean we could uh you know try to follow suit in what we did the first time with Heavenette you know the Thursday of the same week as the board meeting so we can update any items that we want to do for an action item yeah you know our next meeting is the 17th right so you know we could do it like the 19th and then that gives us an opportunity at the next meeting if we want to talk about any um retreat plans or yeah items or yeah we're the Friday the 20th we probably work too so 19th of the 20th yeah yeah no that would be good we could come up with an agenda in advance of the Tuesday meeting and then present that and we can comment on are both of those days good for folks right now I think they're good for me right uh probably like five eight or something like that all right so and both day Thursdays and Fridays are good for you I mean yeah I'll make it work it's basically what it is I mean I'll be late depending upon whether I have somebody to help with chores or not okay as usual might miss out on the brisket though when we when we do it we'll just we're gonna do it where do we do it for location wise I mean um the last one we did we did at the su office as kind of just a more intimate location but yeah then whichever day is fine because whichever I'll drive over there it's just you know yeah anything local I'll always make a good effort so okay um so does nobody have a preference between the Thursday and the Friday I guess uh why don't we send out a poll and yeah figure it out okay and then we're on to the pros and cons of unified elementary and middle and high school campuses might turn this over to the principals so we um created a survey actually not all of us I created a survey for the elementary thinking about stakeholders as the students the teachers and families in greater community and pushed out to teachers and staff uh just to give us all of their feedback on what they first saw as potential benefits or drawbacks pros and cons I know peer shared the same survey with his staff and then Jeff just sort of did a check-in at one of his staff meetings and collected some of that same information so we have that raw information but instead we synthesized it down to some of these these bullet points I think these are like the things that generally had multiple people mention so uh so I'm happy to read it out so the benefits for elementary teachers would feel less isolation in their grade levels high school teachers could work with middle school teachers would be more easy and seamless and departments could work together collaboration and communication would be easier teachers would have opportunities to work with grade level peers increased professional expertise on at one level in the building potentially more services available having the elementary principal at campus every day was mentioned a couple of times efficiencies teachers would not necessarily need to move from campus to campus predictability and teaching assignments for teachers um class sizes would be more balanced this one was mentioned a thousand times it felt like more expanded opportunities for peer-to-peer social connections I think that was specifically associated with elementary collaboration on all levels events could be one night for each campus resources would be more focused and less spread out and library would be specific for the grade level and then of course there's concerns as well and try to capture all of those so loss of elementary town specific community if removing elementary it may impact CBL dream project and the high school and I would also say middle school and elementary interactions busing was probably the thing that was brought up I felt like the most space issues and how it would work with sports teams and fields and things such the middle school stays at the I hope I articulate this right I think what it was saying was if not to lose the middle school concept and if the middle school was to move to the high school that they wouldn't want to have to be treated in a junior high fashion I hope I calculated that right other things where will the infrastructure fit the needs at each campus and teachers that had committed to a specific campus with their contract and a shift in teaching assignment location could be a challenge for their travel so I think that was that's sort of the synthesized version of what we've got for you yeah and what what I would offer to the board to is is that if there's this is the first time we're really having this discussion the desire to continue this discussion we're more than happy to share out all the feedback it just didn't feel like this would be the place to share all that right and so what I you know what I think that the board needs to do is is you know have some discussion about is this something that they even want to pursue right think about what other data they need and then what I would recommend to the board is if it was something they wanted to pursue that it would make a ton of sense to create a task force that had community members on it students on it teachers on it some board members on it that we would look to have an outside person possibly facilitate that conversation and really study it and gather community feedback about it with the notion being that then that task force would bring the board some type of recommendation for the board to consider and then the board could decide whether or not they wanted to pursue that recommendation I mean that is those are all the steps I would advise the board to consider if this is something they if this is a topic they wanted to continue to consider am I making sense like I think this is just day one and then you got to decide is it something you wanted to continue to discuss do you need like more time to chew it and then if you were to do it I really think you need to take the step of like a study task force that really looks into the pros or the you know concerns what the concerns would be for each community chew on all that and then that group would then make a recommendation to the board to consider that's that would be my advice okay with a reminder just to go back to your articles of agreement though at the end of the day if you were to close an elementary school on either campus the way the articles of agreement are written is that results that requires a super majority of the board supporting that and then it goes back to that town and all the constituents of that town would take a vote and it's that town that would make that decision right I guess my I don't really have a opinion one way or another if we leave it or do something different or I just kind of see this as kind of more of an exercise like like we're talking about tonight of policy revisions and things like that I think you know we wouldn't be really doing our due diligence if we weren't at least constantly looking at our structure and you know in this case it's more of a physical structure but I think it would be I think it would be good to at least keep the discussion moving forward with it and and I would probably be kind of curious as to see what what more I think there's probably a lot more benefits that aren't listed here you know you know different pathways or things that can be offered between the middle school and high school that would look better or you know all the elementary under one umbrella what that looks like and it doesn't hurt to maybe explore the community to see you know I think as Andrew had stated we kind of know what the communities were thinking six years ago but are they still thinking the same way today or has it changed or so I guess I would be pro at least just going through the study portions of it to get more information and and you know at that point is coming back to the board and looking at everything yeah I I am not really in favor of doing this mostly because you know I think that there was a lot of concern at the time of the merger that you know this would be a step towards like there was a lot of pushback again like I think if the thought was then that it was a step towards then there'd be another step towards the elementary school getting taken away from one community or even not being in both communities that we never would have passed it then so you know I certainly wasn't it wasn't like a trojan horse to then try and do more consolidation later you know and I do feel like one of the things we heard a lot during the process was that each community needed to have an elementary school and so I mean maybe things have changed but I don't my feeling is that they probably haven't because I think most families you know want their elementary schools as local as possible and so I'm guessing there isn't much support for this in the broader community and and so I'm not sure that I would want to take the you know a stir up this when you know it was a big lift kind of getting the consolidation we did done and I don't you know and I think that that was needed at the time um and you know I I don't think we need to stir things back up with this kind of thing when I don't think that there's much likelihood of there being support in each community for it um so I know that's my view on it I I can see how there would be benefits but I do think you know there is something to having your elementary kids in your community and you know if if we were at a point you know like one of the reasons why we did the consolidation the first place was you know it did feel like we were getting to the point where with enrollment declines that we had gotten to the point where you know there were issues with trying to serve the population size that we were serving and if we you know felt that that was the case with the elementary school where we'd gotten to the point where the you know population size was too small that we couldn't adequately serve them then I think that that would be a consideration but I'm not I don't know I don't feel like we're there right now you know maybe there would be some benefits to merging but I don't think like we can yeah so that those are my thoughts I totally agree with you just the the few people that have spoken to me about that they've gotten wind of this happening and saying are they really going to try to do away with our elementary school people from Royal Tenant have chatted me up on this a bit and yeah I think there's huge resistance to that and as a middle school teacher for 30 years I am really opposed to bringing the middle school into the high school because that's the kiss of death and especially since we have sixth graders in our middle school I think that could make it even more difficult because it's really hard to maintain that middle school focus when you're connected with a high school and you're sharing staff with a high school because the lines get crossed and the scheduling and just trying to keep them separate is really difficult so Peggy well good I'm unmuted for for once in a while um I would be certainly supportive of studying it I have been through a merger type of thing before when we merged elementary five different elementary schools into one larger school and yes there was a lot of opposition exactly what I'm sort of here are a lot of conversation exactly what I'm hearing here we want to keep them close to us a lot of people didn't want to give up their neighborhood schools and it was kind of interesting you could go to a neighborhood school and in their gym you could touch the ceiling library was a closet um all these different things that weren't available because the schools were small which is nice to have small schools but by merging they got a library they got technical things they got a decent gym um and I see a lot of benefits to merger and especially because it brought the city together in one spot yes we are wild cats but are we but in some cases we're Bethel wild cats and we're Royalton wild cats we need to be wild cats all the way through so it's another aspect of it that can be presented and I I know the people who had the hardest time with merging the schools were the parents and the teachers the kids were absolutely fine with it they had no issues with it they learned how to write us on school buses because prior to that they were walking to school so there was a fear of school buses and all of this stuff so as I said the adults had a harder time with it than the kids did now I'll be quiet Rodney you read do you guys want to come up well I guess uh I mean I can see the advantages that's for sure I mean it just seems like it'd be more efficient but I think there will be a lot of resistance from the ones that have to travel and it is quite a ways to go from here to Bethel every day if you got elementary kids but uh I would have to leave it you know you got to leave it up to the Royal the residents of Royalton to decide if they want to travel or not and if it's worth the efficiency that we would gain so yeah I'm okay with putting a study committee in but I wouldn't want to dive too hard into it and just see what the majority thinks so because I do feel it would be more efficient but I don't know for you know the extra travel and whatnot that some people would have to do would warrant it and I do know that there was a lot of fuss when the unification happened set that off again I can't really see a problem with looking at anything and evaluating anything to see if the needs have changed or what the constituency thinks has changed if all we're talking about at this point is putting our feelers out and finding out if this is what the towns want I don't really hate that I mean is it is is our time better use somewhere else maybe but if we can't find somewhere else I mean this is one of our our tasks so you know if we get wind that that they've changed what they want we should maybe look at it I personally like the way the system as it is now but my responsibility is to some people who who may not so I'm willing to look at anything I believe is there an opportunity maybe for us to reword what this study would be instead of the main focus being looking at potentially moving two campuses of elementary to one could just be more of a study into our school infrastructure and seeing what's working what's not elementary could be a piece of that because you know we've also talked about is sixth grade working for middle school right I mean you know we we're one of the only schools have sixth grade middle schools and it's challenging because you know like just on sports level if we go to compete with another team around here they don't have six grades on their teams and we've also had the issues where like we had to solve earlier this year where would you even know that there was a piece of Cal Ripken baseball that didn't get covered in middle school and those kids were getting lost in between fifth grade and seventh grade so I just wonder if I think if if I hear what you were asking was more of a doing an internal study moving a little bit farther on to what what could this look like the pros and cons more in depth then bringing that back to the to the board just you know to see if we want to go forward further with that but I just wonder if we could just word the study in a matter that I mean there's always going to be people in the community that's going to hate change and usually they're the ones that speak up first right they're the ones that are going to call you I mean just because four people called you doesn't mean that everybody in the community is against it or for it or whatever I just wonder if somehow we can and whatever this study group ends up being called if we can call it something more general terms yeah we're looking at the elementary that's one piece of several things we're looking at you know could we maybe title it more you know just going back and seeing you know did all the merger pieces really come together the way we thought they were going to come together are they working like like Ed was saying are they working the way we thought they were working or maybe we're going to surprise ourselves and find out there are some things that aren't working for us I think anytime you throw something against the wall there's going to be people in the community that's going to be upset one way or another so but I just wonder if there's a way of moving this forward maybe a little quieter or a more different wording on it because I think I do think there's more to it and then just the elementary piece I think that we need to look at but again I don't see what the what the big deal is in studying something yeah as Chris was just talking I I had a thought how long ago was it that that we did the merger it was a couple of years at this point correct 2018 okay so I mean at this point shouldn't we be taking a look four or five years afterwards and assessing what worked what didn't and I mean it it's not that crazy to me that we should be taking a look back about this time and evaluating how well it worked you know for for everybody that that is truth is truth a lot of money and a lot of things were were involved taking a look back at least a cursory look back I don't think is that that of an idea just to make sure that everybody is happy with with what they got and and if they are I say we leave it alone and and if they're not then we we talk further yeah I mean I think I I would be more favorable towards that kind of framing of you know the five years on from the merger how are how are like what are people's thoughts on how we're doing and you know part of that could be a question of you know do of like would people support a unified elementary school or changing the middle school structure or something like that there could be multiple questions yeah I think I could go along with that totally too I like that idea of you know it's time you know it's five years in let's yeah what what could be changed in the future or yeah what's going good and what could be better people hate change but uh some people are okay with customer surveys so they'll tell you what they think if you if if you just tell them we're evaluating it's a gentler touch then hey we're trying to change something and we do need to we do need to know before we could change so we're being truthful in that we're saying we want to know how we're doing and that change is not a necessary component but the the knowing is we need to know we need to know if something does need to change so have it framed like that that that we want to know because we do want to know that's that's the whole gist of this yeah we don't want to change anything if it's not going to be better so do I mean do we feel that that might be the better approach I mean would we still get accomplished what we yeah I think so I still would suggest we have we think about a committee right I mean I think you'd need a committee to come up with whatever the survey yeah send it out and then I mean I think you know there's always a tension between you know just getting community feedback and you know we also have expert educators who you know it's their job to do this kind of stuff and so like how much do we weigh the community versus like what the professionals say you know but I think it would be great to do a survey I think is kind of somewhat open-ended survey of like it's been five years since the merger how do people think we're doing on a broad range of things like communication with the community you know engagement and then based on that survey that we can put that to a committee to examine the survey is that where you're kind of thinking and then based upon the concept come back and we would dive a little deeper into that is that I think the committee would get the feedback back and then bring it back to the board and then we decide you know is there something that committee could help synthesize it right so who would who would develop I'm sorry who would develop the questionnaire that we would put a committee together to do the questionnaire or is that something that we would do ourselves committee for the committee would put together the questionnaire okay you know because they'd want to have the staff and sure you know yeah what I was sort of thinking is this could flush the rest of this out could be possibly a really good retreat topic right because it is visioning for the future so as a retreat you could really dig into this like we could backwards design it right like we could say where do we want to get to in regards to the information right like and say what are all the steps we need to take to get there and even build out a timeline okay that sounds okay so we'll is that making am I making sense yeah no I think that that's a great idea that this could be kind of planned for a five-year review can be one of the retreat things and you know some of that might be we come up with some things to do or it could be you know like make a design the committee and get these people to come and then this is the outcome we were looking for all right a question maybe Andre you already said who it was but and I missed it so this piece of paper who are these people that shared these concerns what was your we surveyed all the staff okay so yeah we have not gone out today no just just people who are on the email list or show up to our staff meeting it'd be interesting to see what the you know say the staff versus the students versus the parents would look you know how many of those items would be on a pro for both or a con for both or or different things that would pop especially students I think it'd be really great to get students that would be neat to maybe if you could do the this questionnaire is you know like that is give it to the three sample populations to see what what that information comes back because typically if you just send it out who's going to fill it out probably mom or dad most of time right yeah and not so much the teachers or the kids will get a say in it so might be interested to be able to can we can we go ahead in school and just put a questionnaire out for the I think we wait well I would say this was specific to unified middle high school campus and elementary I think have the committee design surveys for each group yeah that would be neat to have yeah and you know if we could do a survey of alumni too for the people who have graduated from people that over the last five years or whatever yep yeah I think that was good um okay uh so we'll have that as a subject at the board retreat for tonight we'll move on to the capital reserve fund request basketball court yeah this is your idea yep so you know we years ago we put basketball courts on the parking lot area just some old old kind of basketball hoops and a lot of people use those through the days and they've been bent one just broke this summer with a tree from the storm and I thought you know kids would maybe use that more often if it was a better court and so I looked into getting a quote for like it's about 20,000 with the lines painted on there black top gave a quote of getting rid of that pavement that's there because it's not a you know grade for basketball courts and then Vermont tennis court would paint the lines and I was thinking maybe putting some pickleball courts in there as well so it would be a half court three on three four on four half court court that is kind of at the end of the um driveway out there and I just think there might be an interest in in some use for that I see it's funny I was down here this weekend setting up for a brave challenge event on Sunday and there was like six or eight people out in the parking lot riding their bikes I just think that's the one of you know like kids used to just go on their dirt roads and now they have to come to a paved area to ride so it was good that they're using that so Tara has the quote this is just the black top that I have I don't have right Vermont tennis court so if this is something the board is willing to allow for use of funds we can do an up to dollar amount so that it includes the work from Vermont tennis courts and we could also just take this up next month too that's why it says action slash passable action doesn't have to be denied yes right yes 185 is the black top well at this point by the time you do it we're going to be into snow time but yeah so be spring that they are available I know um when I got on the board um under the um facility um committee there I had I'd gone out in one piece I talked to each each custodial staff needs school to find out you know what are things that aren't covered under the budget that they need going forward and and then I had talked to our athletic director at that time and one thing that was brought up by the athletic director at that time was some type of more structured multi-purpose court at each campus so here in in Bethel because both of them get usage but they're both in a parking lot they're not very safe so that you know the idea was maybe long term was how do we build into a budget or or look into a grant if there's something out there about building a multi-purpose court at each school so if so if we did something here at the high school would that that area would that take away the parking in that area or how no Vermont tennis court was going to put like a resurface like you see on some of the outdoor courts like at Woodstock rec and they said because we'd be paved or would be plowing through that they wouldn't do that surface but it's a tighter surface at the concrete would go on or the black top would be then what's out in the parking lot right now it's like kind of cracky I guess so my question is right now the way it's constructed right now we have the hoops there on the side of the parking lot yeah so it would be constructed relatively similar we're just going to resurface what's there yeah resurface and it'd be at the end like you're heading towards the baseball field right at the end there kind of in that corner to the right but like a full court with not a full court just a half court yeah so if I guess to not to say fair but just because it was something we had talked about in the past would it be feasible if we were going to do one here that we could do something similar at the middle school campus as well because the hoop there is rather outdated and again you have you basically the same issues are there yeah and you'll go by on like a Saturday or whatever and there's one or two kids out there playing basketball our last board meeting there was two kids you know it's pretty it's pretty old you know it probably needs a little bit you know it needs a you know new backboard and you know it's got some things that need to be done there but I just wondered if we're gonna do one can we could we do you have money in the reserve fund right like it's really just deciding how you want to prioritize that I mean there's definitely there's money there to do both yeah and it seems like this would be a good I do think if they would get used so yeah I think it's a really good idea both locations that is something that's important to the kids and it's a lot of community use in both locations so the drainage stuff that we had way back when was there gonna have to be anything done with the parking lot for that nothing done with the actual parking lot we are going to have to put in it's like a holding pond essentially to the yeah to at the end of the parking lot to the right that's finally just about finished in regards to permitting and then we'll have to go out to bid in the spring to get a sense of what that's going to actually cost to the right after the parking lot it'll be after the parking lot to the left so we're going to do a catchment so this is about water runoff there was some permitting issues when there was the addition and so what we've been approved for is that we would do a catchment at the end of that parking lot so you you're at the high school parking lot we will catch the water runoff off of that parking lot and then it will go down and be directed into a catch basin that's right at the end on the left opposite of where Jeff's talking about for the basketball court in front of like the sugar house area it'll go in there and then it will float down into the brook right next to it and then we'll run down into the white river and that was good as long as we did that that covered the gym construction right and then there's also the practice space performance space project that you mean that expansion performance arts lab so Jeff just reached out to that group to find out in regards to where they're at with fundraising to see if we would have any offsetting revenue Jeff you just reached out today so we'll see what that group says the music booster right that was working I mean I guess my question would be like if we resurfaced this and then that would not impact that no yeah like if if that part of it was redoing that no that would we never discussed the driveway over there so if we if we would resurface paint paint lines for either basketball slash pickleball or you know combination there and then would we be looking at new like hardware for I mean the hoops you know it's behind us but that way the hoops the hoops that are out there now you know I'm going to cut all but one down because yeah I don't know how safe they are really so it probably needs a new back board and right we'd have to get new basketball potentially a new setup there so yeah so pretty much whatever we did at one campus would probably be similar cost at the other campus right I think that would be great and it might be something that that could be implemented right in the spring right I mean right now by the time you bid it you're probably not going to find anybody this time you know it's black top said they weren't available until spring yeah they said they would come right as soon as school ended graduation the next day they'd be here yeah that'd be great so they come back for the following year in the year or they can use it in summertime yeah I do think um looking at the possibility of pickleball at each two painting those lines I do think we could get a lot of community use uh be a pickleball yeah um I mean there used to be tennis courts on this campus right yeah that's how I learned how to play that's where my forehand's good geez for those that that's a joke I'm not great with I haven't seen yet Wimbledon so it didn't work out so well and and do we feel that the two locations that we have are suitable locations that won't impact other things like parking or safety or you know are you talking right where the other one is Chris that back yeah I'm just talking based upon the one the one here at the high school and then the one at the middle school like do we feel that they're in a safe accessible area or would they while we're doing it if we're gonna tear a hoop down like if we move it to another section in the parking lot might be safer or something well the middle school one I mean when they're out there shooting hoop sometimes cars that are parked right there are kind of now there used to be I don't even know if it's still out there there used to be a little court out behind the gym at the middle there still is and we and we redid it last summer because I never see well I'm not there now but I never I would never see the kids going out there to use that one I'd see them going out into the parking lot using the one there the one I'll back it use more like more by the elementary after school yeah type but definitely a larger conversation that can be had about investing in the middle school specific playground for lack of a better word rec area they use equipment differently currently they're looking at constraints with construction that's going on we have a field we have some equipment and there are parallel conversations happening there's some community grant money that is that can be earmarked for additional resources I think I love the idea of parody a champion that I love the idea of having that court which does get used often moved maybe more towards the greenhouse out of the main flow of traffic so an eye towards safety but also how that ties into a larger project of how do we make that a middle school specific space yeah I think that's I would welcome that like I said there are several parallel conversations happening we recognize it's a neat and I love the idea of Perry I love the idea of making a safer opportunity and I hear your point about if it's in the back are we attracting community members as opposed to if it's by that crown jewel of a greenhouse and is kind of the entrance into a middle school specific area yeah that sounds great I think there's a that's an exciting conversation I think we put this on the agenda for the next task facility task well I was going to say it sounds like maybe the task committee could help move that forward with some help yes since there's no rush on this since it's not going to happen yeah except they might get booked yeah and we definitely would welcome Jeff to be a part of those discussions with our task committee if you've done some of the leg work or anything sure but we I think now we've got to set up so we'll meet the day prior to your meetings so this could be a big chunk of the agenda possibly next time so I think we could be ready to move on this sooner rather than later yeah and I like the idea of both campuses kind of looking at it holistically with rather than just like well we had this parking area and we could just minimally pave over this and you know like maybe that's what we wind up going with but it would be good to kind of know like the pie in the sky like what would we have for facilities you know Ed I just want to make sure I heard Jamie right earlier at this point we could probably I'll say probably do this at both campuses as we stand now is what you said right financially we have yeah we've got we've got money put into reserve to start to take on some of these type of projects yep okay one of the most important things to me that if we can financially do it at both I'm interested in talking more about both right so yeah um I mean that's we're kind of having that roadmap of what facilities work other than this we're going to be doing so we can plan that stuff out know where this fits in terms of that as well would be helpful agreed okay I think we've got plans to move forward on that um then we're on to public comment is there any public comment okay new hires and resignations I'll go ahead Emily okay almost misty there um I was just wondering if there is uh I don't know if anyone saw my note in the chat but is there a summary of those survey results available anywhere that like we could see yeah we got that I didn't see it in the principal's report that's why I was just we'll make good yeah it's because it was completed late after it was all put together we'll add it to the folder Emily okay thank you because I know there was some some deep concerns at the middle school and I'm not sure they were like fully reflected there so I just want to make sure that's I just want to take a look at it yeah okay um any other public comment or then new hires and resignations I think we have any that's good yeah I don't think we have any other future agenda items we'll have finalizing the retreat agenda um you're going to have your first academic data report and then a further discussion on outdoor athletic facilities that's going to be a fun meeting that's that you have to get in the thick of it yeah all right our next meeting is Tuesday October 17th so yeah I'm at the Bethel campus I entertain a motion to adjourn so moved if we come over the date on the retreat I'm going to I'm going to send you guys either the 19th or the 20th and we'll see you there okay thanks everybody we adjourn at 8 20 if you let me I'm going to block out both