 to order at, oh, I hate to say this, 7.38. And welcome our guests, and thank you. I apologize again for not starting at 7. These full board meetings go a long time, and we're doing important stuff, but it's a little bit frustrating to not have them. Are there any revisions to the agenda? Everybody all set? Any public comments about things that aren't on the agenda? They're right on the end. Yep, they're right on the end, Kyle. There you go. I got two emails from people in middle sex encouraging us to vote in favor of the lawsuit. And I don't think I need to read the whole thing, but it just encourages us to read the lawsuit. One was from Joanne Bridenstine, and one was from Mike Klein, who I think is our husband and wife. I received those this morning. Consent agenda, a motion to approve the minutes of September 26th? So moved. Scott and Kari, any edits or changes? Carl's name is fell from on 2.1, seconded by. There's just a Y on it. Everything else look OK? No. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Do you guys want a few more minutes? No, we're good. You ready? OK. So we're going to get a student monitoring report. So I think the three of us need to go somewhere else. You can stand up. You can stand up. What do you think we're going to go to another? I should have asked you, OK, to sit for this report. Yes. OK, sorry. Do you want to sit and go inside the stuff or do you want me to do you next? All right, so are we going up? Yeah. Can I do it? Good evening, everybody. So this report is really a little more detail version of what we have going on here at U32. And so what you saw for the board members, what you saw from Bill, you're going to see a little more detail specifically to us. This does not include every piece of data that we get pulled. I think one of the things that I realized after getting into this is that we're going to talk a lot about literacy and math and the scores that are there. But our student learning outcomes require a broader group of SLOs, really. I mean, we look at everything from global citizenship to the sciences, to artistic expression, all these others. What I felt like might be necessary is to show you some of the same data that I show for literacy and math about how we're doing on our standards and show that to you for those as we go through the year. And so just highlight one SLO maybe a year that's in addition to what you're going to see now. And so I'm going to talk just a little bit about where we are with transferable skills, show a little bit of information from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. I think this is something that we've not shared with you before that we will show you some interesting statistics. Our course level performances, our standardized assessments graduation data. Some of that you did see already with Bill. So if we have questions specific to us, we'll get to those then. But feel free to ask questions as we go through all of this. So one of the things that we've talked about is that we want all students to be engaged learners. And we want them to participate in our communities. And I think one of our big pieces, too, is that our statements, everything we talk about in terms of learning applies to all kids. And I just want to make sure that we remember that this is every kid must demonstrate proficiency in each of the student learning outcomes to graduate. That's our policy. So we're not saying that some kids might meet this, some kids might get by, some kids might be there. We're saying that every student at U32 needs to meet these standards in order to graduate. And so we're going to start with the transferable skills because this is part of what we say is necessary. So what I did was I took all the grade levels that are in the proficiency system. So remember last year's data, 7 through 10 grade level. And we looked at where our students on each of these skills in quarter four. So I know that's like narrowing it down a lot, but we really just looked at quarter four so the end of the school year. And the way the bars work is from beginning to progressing to meeting to exceeding our expectations. And then this blue bar is not assessed. So there was no scores for, in this case, over 30% of our students did not receive any type of score in quarter four around problem solving. So on that transferable skill. And so Scott, your reaction is exactly what I would say. Why not? Like what is it that we're doing and not doing? And most importantly, I think that this blue, this bar right here is something that we need to focus on in each of these because what you see is working independently and collaboratively, we really did assess most of the kids on this, but engaged citizenship, we've got over 50% of our students were not assessed in any way, shape, or form. What we see with this graph is, do we have opportunities for kids to show that they're engaged citizens and do we also have ways for them to show that they are engaged citizens? So kind of two questions that really lead to the same outcome. And we as a school are obviously not having enough opportunities or evaluating the opportunities that kids have, right? And so I think that that's the big piece that we wanna see in this kind of look at a transferable skills, this kind of holistic view. And I think the other thing to point out here is when we talk about working independently and collaboratively, the reason that this one is such a high number of assessments, this is where teachers are typically assessing whether or not students are completing homework. Doing the work of the class, doing those kinds of things. So that's where those pieces fall. And even there, we don't have, we have a little more than 40% of our kids counting the not assessed and the other, the progressing in the beginning that are not showing that they can work independently and collaboratively at a high level. And so that's not necessarily a bad thing when you're thinking seven to 12 or seven to the 10th grade, right? So we're not going to expect all of our kids to be super good at this in seventh, eighth, maybe even ninth grade, but we do wanna see this as an upward trend. I think the trends are what we're gonna need to start looking at in the future, like where do these things move as we go from one grade to the next? As you can imagine, that multiplies each of these bars by four across a full year. So the data sets get really big in a hurry. And so I think this is why, as I started doing these, I realized we're probably gonna need to spend individual meetings talking about individual pieces. So taking transferable skills for one meeting, we're looking at literacy in another meeting, looking at artistic expression at another. Like we're really at a point where one day that presentation isn't going to necessarily show you as a board how our kids are performing across time and across grades. So we're gonna try to help you with that. The other piece that kind of goes along with our climate and some of our transferable skills is this is the youth risk behavior survey data. And so I picked out four things. Bullied in the last 30 days, bullied someone in that same time period. So were bullied, were the bullied. Ever used a vape that's actually including electronic cigarettes or things like that? That's a big piece of conversation, so I brought that in. And then the last one was at least one teacher-adult that they can talk to, the percentage of kids that say that they have that. So when you look at these numbers overall, being bullied in the last 30 days of when they took the survey, that's a 13, this is seventh through 12th grade and that's 13, 14, 14, 22, 10 and nine. And so we see an increase up to 10th grade and then it decreases back out when you look at 11th and 12th grade. The numbers actually pretty closely aligned with those that say that they were actually doing the bullying. So this is 11% in ninth grade, 11% in 10th grade, 10% in 11th and 6% in 12th grade. Seventh and eighth grade, I'm not sure why, but our kids aren't saying that they bully anybody, but there are 14% of our kids who are being bullied, so there's gotta be somebody out there who's actually doing it. But I would say many times, particularly as they first come here, the understanding of what it means is probably a little vague to kids as we get started. There's a lot about being an upstander, but we don't really talk about what are actions that you as a single person can do that they're perceived as bullying. So they don't necessarily see them in that life, that the actions that they're doing don't necessarily show that they're bullies. The other one was the vape, electronic cigarettes and pieces like that. You see that in seventh grade they're not reporting, these are kids not reporting anything, but 6% by eighth grade, 14% by ninth grade, 29% of our students by 10th grade, 32% by 11th and 27% by 12th. So a third of our students are reporting pretty much that they're using or have used a vape or electronic cigarette in the previous year pretty much is what they're saying in this. So that's a pretty high, but still close to the state average percentage. But we would certainly love to see that lower. We'd love to see that at zero as a school, but just data for you to consider. And then the last one is at least one teacher or adult that they can talk to. You can see there are numbers range from 79 to 93%. I think that it's, when you look at the seventh grade down there at 79%, they may not have found the adult that they can talk to yet. And so seeing a 79% there is not so bad that we've got that. These numbers are generally higher than the average. And I would say that for us, we look at them and say, boy, these are too low. So it's a really, it's a good feeling that when we typically see these kinds of numbers, many schools would love these kinds of numbers. Ours, we look at them and say, this is just not good enough for us. We have a TA program that should be making that near 100%. And so something for us to work on and to address as adults. Now, the next several sets of data are this student performance on standards. This is just like what we looked at with the transferable skills only. We're gonna look at grades seven, eight and nine literacy. And I think seven, eight, nine, 10 literacy, seven, eight, nine, 10 math. So when you see this, the first one that should jump to your attention there is that there's no assessment whatsoever on expository research writing. And that's exactly true. There is no expository research writing in the fourth quarter for seventh graders. In fact, there's nothing all year for seventh graders in expository research writing. That's not necessarily a bad thing. We're just not assessing it at that time. We're working on expository and expressive writing. So you see a little more here. Their language skills are reading and certainly speaking and listening. And so I look at that data and the nice piece of this is that you see that we emphasize particularly, this is quarter four. So we emphasize in quarter four more speaking and listening and some of the expressive writing, but we didn't necessarily, we don't necessarily work on expository research writing. You'll see that kind of stay blue for a while up there. And so when you look at the eighth grade, see, we did get a little bit more in, but over 50% of our kids are not doing expository research writing, but at this point in time, speaking and listening is now moved up to where every kid is assessed in speaking and listening. And so you start to see us close the gap. Expository writing, that wasn't nearly as large in the seventh grade, so our curriculum, this is a good view of what's happening in the curriculum is what this is. More than just student performance. So you see that we're starting to assess kids more robustly in grade eighth literacy. And then as you get to- So Steven, go ahead and put it on that. So why is, why are there a few kids that aren't being assessed in reading or expository writing? It just, you know, that's probably two kids or something. So that probably is somewhere close to five kids who didn't have any kind of score in their reading. And I don't know, we have to dig in to see like, why is there an individual student who doesn't get those kinds of pieces? It seems like all of them. You would think that, but those may be also students who weren't here for some reason or like, I don't know. I have to just be honest and tell you that I didn't dig that far into the data. So when we go to grade nine literacy, look at that expository research writing still hanging around it and that we're not hitting. So, but you see we're starting to close down some of the other areas where assessing kids more thoroughly in those. And then by grade 10, surprise. Maybe you might know what we do in the curriculum in the 10th grade, right? We actually have expository research writing that is happening in the 10th grade. And you see that we have essentially, by the 10th grade, we're assessing all of our kids when we're down to one or two kids. Absolutely. And the standard of each of these is it the same standard or does it change over the grades? No, the standard is the same across all of the grades. The expectations in the classes increases but our graduation standard is still holding the same. This is their performance in the class. This is not their performance towards graduation, right? So those scales are built together but the scales that these are based upon are the ones for the classroom performance. Are they meeting the expectations of the class? And so, any other question? We're about to jump from literacy to math, right? Literacy is definitely a stronger area for us so when we start to look at math, we look at grade seven, oh, wait. So when we look at that, though, 60, 50, 60, 70% of kids haven't reached the standard yet by 10th grade. Is that a typical place for them to be? I would say that's pretty accurate in terms of kids not being, so we would love to see that they're not just progressing towards meeting the course expectations. This is the bar that we want to see the largest, right? So the meeting, the expectations of the course and then certainly exceeding is always good to have, right? But we certainly want to see that. You can see, I think that this is a really good indicator that we have no kids at beginning to meet speaking and listening. They're either progressing, meeting or exceeding by the time they're in our 10th grade group. And if you remember back to the 7th grade, that's the one that we're assessing more and looking at more. Expository research writing, this is where it first really shows up with any robustness. And so you can see that as you work on it, have kids doing it for multiple years, you start to see more kids exceeding or meeting than you do in something that is just, this is the first year in which you do it in any depth. And so these are curriculum issues now that we're starting to see because you're gonna really see it in the math. This, I have to give the caveat. This is quarter four in the math program for the 7th grade. They didn't assess kids on number and quantity, yet number and quantity is one of the dominant standards of the 7th grade curriculum. So when I brought this to a couple of the math teachers and said, help me understand what's happening here when I see this. And they're like, you know, that's true. We don't really assess number and quantity in the fourth quarter. We only did that through the first three quarters. And so that then is a curriculum question of why isn't our curriculum spiraling back to this to make sure that we are both teaching and assessing. It's not just the assessment, it's the teaching of it that's the critical part. And so why aren't we assessing that to see how kids are doing keeping that moving for us? And so our data shows that you can see that we don't assess kids on a lot of these pieces and that those where we did, we have scores that are pretty low overall. And so when we move to eighth grade, you see that things jump forward quite a bit and we actually have functions show up for the first time. And Bill actually mentioned that in his pieces that functions as a standard didn't even show up for us. We don't assess until grade eight. So that may be something that we need to look at. Do we need it in grade seven? Do we want it there? But you start to see in geometry, quarter four in eighth grade geometry, or quarter four in eighth grade math is heavy on geometry. And so you see a large number of students meeting the course expectations around that. And very few that are not assessed otherwise. And then here at grade nine math, this should expose one of the big areas. Bill even had it up on his. Remember statistics and probability was not being assessed. We're not teaching it. This is a huge hole in our overall curriculum is that we are not getting enough opportunities for kids to learn statistics and probability in classes other than statistics. So in the past, math is broken down by each one of these. Geometry is more of ninth and tenth grade class. Statistics is something that a few students take in their 11th or 12th grade year. And that's really AP statistics or just a basic statistics class in one of those two years. Those courses are typically one section each. And so if we say that this is important for kids to know statistics and probability, this shows you glaringly that we need to be teaching it. We can't save it for an 11th grade class for a few kids. This is an equity issue, right? Because if only a select few kids get to take statistics in their 11th or 12th grade year, then we're not holding true to the fact that we think that that's important for kids to know. And so that's something that we've got to stick on. And so when you get to grade 10, now this was an interesting thing. You see statistics and probability in quarter four. They saw that there was a gap and because this is primarily geometry students in this area, they saw a gap and they added in a statistics and probability unit towards the end of geometry. So they actually address that issue at least to get going on it. So that's why you see that right there. And so I think what you see in our data, you see a huge number of kids here meeting the course expectations in geometry because 10th grade is primarily a geometry year. But our math teachers are actually now looking at do they need an integrated, a more integrated approach to some of the curriculums so that we're hitting all of these topics each and every year, giving students multiple opportunities to learn and demonstrate what they've learned. And so that's kind of a whirlwind tour of literacy and math. But here's the piece that if you can go down. So these are the S-back scores. This, when you move left to right, this is seventh, eighth, and ninth grade scores last year. So these are not a cohort, these are the individual, these are different students in each one of those grade levels. And so what you see is the gap in free reduced lunch in the seventh grade is a gap of 63. Our seventh or eighth grade last year, I only had a gap of 26, that's great. But it's 130 points, the gap for our ninth graders. That's terrifying. Are those averages? So each one of these dots represents an individual student's score. These are the averages of those two graders. Can you translate the gap into years of? So I didn't have that number, but Bill said that around 90 was three years. I don't even wanna guess what 130 is. More than three years. Oh yeah, yeah, probably closer to four years. I will say this, so I can see when I pull the data, individual students, so I can see which kid scored, right? I can't share that with you as individual student scores, but I can tell you that the outlier right here is a student who is fully capable of doing the test but is protesting the test itself. They don't want to do the test, and so that's their protest vote. That's not particularly helpful for us when we're trying to figure out what interventions to place in our school. Because I don't know, I assume based upon what I know about the kid and other measures that they're okay, but these kinds of scores, helping our students understand how important it is to do as well as possible on these tests, this creates in us a trigger for intervention. Do we need to get involved? And so I think we're gonna start coming with some ideas with our students where this is something that we have to talk to them about. Can we use some of our standardized tests to demonstrate proficiency? Actually add value to our standardized test scores in some of these areas. So in literacy, does this show a particular level of reading? And if you reach the particular level, does that mean you're proficient? Not just in the classroom, but through the test. And so those are some questions that we have to ask ourselves. And so there is good news. Yay, we have in read 180. So these scores come from our star 360. That was another test that Bill mentioned. There is a measure within star 360 called the student growth percentage. The student growth percentage is based upon the expectations of growth for a student based upon all of the other kids in the country that are taking this test and how much they grew in one year. So it's not a bell curve of growth, right? We typically looked at things like where do you fall on the bell curve? This is you compared to kids at the same spot. And to see how much did they grow versus how much you grew. So there's a lot of statistics into this. Anything above a growth of 64% is considered accelerated growth. Anything between 34 and 64 is considered typical growth. This is the good news. We had 32 kids in read 180. Their median growth, so the midpoint of their growth was 69%. So that's an accelerated growth for the group as a whole. All of our students across the same two year time period. So I looked at the first kids that went into our read 180 program to see where they were. All students across that same time period grew by 60 points. So good growth overall in the school, but even better growth for our read 180 kids. And in fact, when you broke it down, 16 of them had accelerated growth, 13 of them had typical growth and only three have below typical growth. And what I would say is that this just tells you what we all know about intervention programs, which is every intervention program doesn't work for every kid. These three kids need a different intervention. And so we need to go at them a little differently. What you can still see too is that their overall growth and change in their scores went up by 139 for the kids in read 180 and 121 average change for kids that were not. But you can still see that they trail their peers overall. And so we're closing a big gap, right? Even though our kids are growing or their growth is faster, they're closing a gap that's so wide that we're still struggling to get them there, right? And so this is a question that I pushed back into the SU as a whole. How do we make sure that that gap doesn't come to U32? How do we help our elementary schools recognize the need for early intervention around reading so that we don't have to close a four year gap in two years or close a five year gap? These are some big, big differences. The good news is that we can start to close it, right? That's the good news. The problem is that is it too wide by the time you get to seventh grade for us to catch them up with their peers before they graduate? That's a really tough question for us and we don't know. We don't really know that we can do it or what resources it might take to do that because this was a pretty big commitment of resources to get to this spot. And so this is good news though that we've at least found a way to help our kids start to catch up that are behind grade level in reading. Remind me what grades. So that we started in seventh. So read 180 is now, we have seventh, eighth and now ninth graders that are using the read 180 program. In math, our SBAC scores in math, same thing, seventh, eighth and ninth grade. So we have a gap of 39 in the seventh grade, a gap of 51 in the eighth grade and a gap of 102 in the ninth grade. But I think more importantly you see that Bill mentioned this black line that was a question that was asked. That's proficiency. All our averages fall below proficiency except for our eighth grade non-free and reduced lunch kids. So we have a gap and we're low. It's a bad combination. We gotta put some effort into math. In fact, we have math 180 now. We're actually starting to build our math capacity and really starting to look at what are the ways that we can close this gap. The challenges that we need to address there may be time on subject and there's all kinds of things that we need to address as a result of this. Steven, when are the SBACs administered again? They're in the spring. So we give them in April. So we've given some instructional time to these kids before this point. This is with three quarters of a year of instruction. What's interesting to me is that generally the better scores are those kids who are taking the test seriously and in eighth and ninth grades, the top scores of FRL and non-FRL are comparable. Yeah, well actually, our fully reduced lunch student in the eighth grade is our top performer. Yeah, which is great. I noticed that in the seventh grade, the top performers on FRL are significantly behind the top performers in non-FRL. Is that just a function of the cohort? It could be. That we would have to look into, is it a cohort question or is it a preparation question? Those are the two that we would need to ask around that. Yeah, and I don't have that. Any questions around all? A lot of test scores, a lot of pieces for us, but we're gonna. Same protest vote. Yeah, same protest vote, yeah. PSAT data, so this is your 11th graders. What we see here is that our score is the school is the first bar, Vermont average is the second bar, so the school average, Vermont average, and national average. So what we see, our math scores fall well below the Vermont and the national averages. Yeah, that's pretty rough. Our literacy, we actually see that over the years our literacy scores have gone up. I don't wanna say we've arrived with literacy because there's plenty of work to do, but we're at least holding with national averages when it comes to things like that, and state averages when we look at the PSAT. That difference is nominal. You saw this, you got to see the climb. So Bill started it right here, which was a great place to start for the everybody. You can see that we go back all the way to 2010, 2010, 2011 school year. That dip is not as, so the difference between the high here, this was a 95% graduation rate at the high point, and we are at 90% here. So remember scale of graph, that's not, it's not good, because we want 100%, but I would caution us to say that that was, that wasn't the stock market of today. That's just, that was a dip over a couple of years. We've started to see improvement now, and we're starting to see better, an increase over the last five years. By the way, I've only been here for five years. Just saying. It's teachers, I don't have that effect. So Bill showed this data earlier, so the stuff, the blue side is what we self-report the students, the gray, it's actually brown, this side is what is reported to us through the National Clearinghouse, it's the state data. We actually know now that we can buy our clearinghouse data, which gives us a much more robust data set. And so for $500, we're gonna pull a lot more data. The state just gives you the percent that enrolled, the persistence and the completion, but there's a lot more data. I've seen the National Clearinghouse data for a different school. It's really good data, because it shows you not only kids who persist, but there's another number that falls in here as well. It's the kids who didn't go to school immediately, who picked it back up, or kids who left and then returned. They have a lot of interesting data points within the college enrollment time, so you can see that kids may have left college, but then returned, they may have, they may have not started college immediately and started it later. So there's some other numbers that fall in there that I think will help us have a better picture. This to me, persistence is the most important thing that we can look at. If we are preparing kids for college and we're preparing them well, when they enroll, they will persist. This number is the percentage of these kids who enrolled who went to their second year of college. So if we're preparing kids well for college, they should be able to persist. Our numbers are not terrible in this category. So that means that the kids who enrolled were prepared pretty well for college, but then we have to look back at our enrollment numbers and say, is that what we want? And are those enrollment numbers that satisfy us as a school and as a community? And I think that that's a bigger discussion for us because this is where we have, this is where the debate starts to come is not everybody should go to college. That's not a thing that I want to be able to say. I'm not going to say whether or not a kid should go to college. I am going to say, are they prepared should they want to go to college? So my job is to make sure that every kid who graduates from U32 could attend post-secondary school should they choose to. And so there are a lot of options in post-secondary education, but if we don't prepare kids for something, then we don't break poverty cycles. And we, is for us making learning meaningful, this is making sure that our instruction is strong. Project-based learning is something that we've devoted a lot of time and energy into so far in seventh through 10th grade. And we need to continue to expand that so that all of our teachers are well-trained and they have the supports necessary to do because we feel that project-based learning is an instructional strategy that helps in proficiency-based learning. So that's making sure that we have all those opportunities for learning in all of our standards. I think that this is a way to do it. Transparency, this is an area where we are really having to put a lot of work right now and this is just making sure that we are transparent about what it takes to graduate from U32, what standards you need to meet, and how you meet them. And that's where we're revising our personalized learning plan. That group starts meeting tomorrow so that we can make sure that we have a guide that is much more robust than what we've been saying. Because this is, like I said, the kids will talk about that a little bit more. And then we also make sure that we can sustain our system. And this is the processes and schedules so that we have the right amount of time for proficiency attainment. This was something we talked about in the larger group. That was brought up as what do we need to do and equitable access to education. And so, creating a school that's safe and provides opportunities for intervention and enrichment. Equitable, it's going to be an interesting discussion for us as we start talking about things like math intervention and literacy intervention for those kids who need it because, and I'll use an example, in our middle school we have electives in our middle school like engineering, creative writing, programming. So it's a computer class. Those things are in our student learning outcomes. So engineering is a really good example. In science, that is an area where we expect kids to be proficient. But if it's an elective and not in the core, then some students will not get it and it is no longer equitable that we say that you need it to graduate but you don't necessarily get it unless you take the elective. So we really have to gauge are there electives or do we bring those things more into our core fold? And I'll argue quickly that we need to make sure that those things are accessible for all students multiple times. So this is gonna be a big part of our discussion I think as we start talking about what changes do we need to make to make the system sustainable. So you've seen a lot of data tonight. So not just the district, but from U32. Any quick questions that I can just try to answer? So the other thing that I wanna start doing is bringing to you like individual student learning outcomes, artistic expression, global citizenship and letting you start to see some of that same data because I think as important as the math and literacy is we say you can't graduate from U32 unless you've met those standards in all of those. I think it's gonna be good for you guys to see as a whole. So thanks. Yep. Thank you guys. Thank you very much. Thoughts for Stephen? Are you gonna digest it all? Digestion. Math. Thank you very much. The next piece of the agenda is the diversity, inclusion and equity belief statement which we've kind of looked at a bunch of times and I don't think it's changed. Oh, since August. Yeah, it says version three but I don't think that it's changed since then. Although pernicious, I don't remember that word. Was that there? Yeah, it's been there. Was it? Oh, okay. We can choose a different word. I think we should choose a different word. I had to look it up, so. We'll put that in there. And I'm sort of wondering whether we're adopting this or whether we're just letting it mall? Yeah, so the idea, the original vision with this was that we would come to agreement whether that's formal adoption or not but that we had some sort of agreement around what we believe with regards to diversity and inclusion and then we could use that as the basis for considering a policy. Policy is somewhat different. Right, yeah. But this would be the foundation for that. But do we want to vote on? I guess that's my question. People envisioning that we would vote on this or we would just, I mean, I actually think we maybe should vote and say we believe that this is the statement we want to stand by. And I can just live with that. I can live with that word. Okay. It has a slash. I know, I know. Do you want to proceed formally and then talk about it or? You mean make a motion? I'm looking to see if, I don't think we actually have it as an adoption. It's not an action. So let's look to do that. We have a meeting in two weeks. And let's look to do. Can we adopt this without you? You're gonna vote against it. No. No. But if I just email you, just a suggestion. Why don't you do this, do the suggestion right now. Okay. I mean, that's sort of why it's on agenda to discuss it. Sure, I know we're trying to move quickly. Yeah, but I don't want, this is really important. Okay, on the third bullet, I just thought that if you stop it, if you put the period before based on their identity, it just kind of covers everything. And then it also would, I mean, there's maybe more explanation, it seems to me, than is necessary. Suggesting taking the second sentence out? Well, yeah, and then just stop it. Education free of bias and discrimination, period. Oh, I see. Huh? Oh. Yeah, that would be efficient. It would be. We'll get rid of that word. And cut out the second sentence as well? And cut out the second sentence as well, yes. It's fine with me, it is. I like that too. Still all encompasses everything. Yeah. These are nice and broad. I think that was even bigger before we condensed it. Yeah, we've already cut it down. Yeah, but I think that makes it even more clear. Anybody else have comments about any part of this? No? Okay, it looks good. Let's put it on the next slide. You can do that, and I'll put it on the agenda. Any comments from the back? I'm sorry. Hi, Bill. How are you? In supporting Kari and putting this together, one of the things that I said to Kari a couple weeks ago was I had a chance to work with, I can't think of his name right now. I'm sorry, it's escaping me. You all know how I am with names. The superintendent of the year for the nation was in Vermont through Wieselville. And one of the things he said that I think we see playing out in our U32 work is that it's really important to set the culture first. I think you should adopt the piece you have in front of you. But my advice to Kari was go slow on the policy. Not because we don't want it, but we want to do it right. And that the culture setting inside the building and outside the building is really important to do to get the policy to become more active. Because either way it's gonna take a bunch of time to shift the culture. And that if you do the policy first, you may have more roadblocks. And this is from a high school where it's in Oregon that's been down three or four years ahead of us. And so I just want to say that to the whole board that that's important to be thinking about. There's a correct order of operations here. From other two things. So I'm not thinking that this is a policy. No, I'm saying it's not. I support you in adopting this statement. Statement, okay. What I'm saying is when you go to the policy piece, there's other work that needs to be done first. So don't, I know we had talked earlier about doing the statement and then doing a policy right after. Okay, okay. And learning that I had from other superintendents and principals that have been doing this work for three, four, five, six years. Because frankly in Vermont we're just facing some of the issues that are happening in other places in the nation for a while. That they have said, you know, it's really important to get that culture piece first before we go to the policy. And I can give you a longer report on that on my notes. I had a brief email discussion with the superintendent in Montpelier of what I was trying to find out about flag policy and they're now writing a diversity inclusion and equity policy. But they have been at it for many more years than we have. So that's sort of an example of that. We're going to slow down any of the work that we're doing in the schools. And together I actually want to speed it up. But the way to do this, the policy sometimes can take you down a road that you will slow down the work you want to do in the land. So in November we'll adopt it as a statement of belief for the board. And then we'll just consider where we're going in the future. Would you be in a position at the November meeting to speak to us some about what you're learning? Yeah, I can. I just want to make up something. Yeah, and it's late. Right. I'm also mildly concerned that we'd made a promise to the administration that we would provide you with the policy. This is different, though. Talking about a diversity and equity policy. We've got two things going here. I'm talking about that. Got it. Can I ask, is there a place online that we can find the statement so that is there a place? I can send it to you, or Bill has it. Yeah, I mean, it's, I think it's full material. It's included in the school board packet. Is that online? It's just something you can do. And we'll share it with our community when you guys have done it. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Just something you can do. Still a draft. Yeah, we're still drafting it. So to show you happy now. Everybody all set? OK. 3.3 is the flag policy, and that is on page 7. Last month we, or, yeah, it was last month, we talked about, we sort of have a draft of the policy. We listened to input from Lucy from the Roots and Democracy class. I kind of took all that information and put it together. And Krista put it on a piece of paper that now looks like a policy. So there are a few different things. I did not print a procedure. Jody sent me some stuff this week, and I just didn't have a chance to pull it together as procedures. But actually, that's not our job is to write the procedures. We can certainly help you and put it together. And we can do that for the next meeting. I just, I didn't have time in the last couple of days. But so the policy basically states that groups can come before the board to propose putting a flag up. They have to be legitimate student groups. They have to be able to say that the flying the flag supports the mission and the vision and the student learning outcomes of U32. That the flag won't bring harm to any student groups, students or actually other groups of students at U32. And that that request needs to come annually before the school board. It doesn't make any mention here of how long or how often that, I think, is going to come into the procedures and how it happens. The hope is that the board supports a flying of a flag. It goes back and the school gets educated in what that flag means and what kinds of things need to change or be explored. And then the students and the administration, it's not quite clear yet, will then decide when the flag goes up, when the education piece has happened. Couple of little comments. This might be policy speak, but in the first sentence, it seemed like it should say maybe granted. It reads like we will grant. You know what I mean? Automatically. Yeah. You know, I am not a policy writer, so. Well, sometimes policies are really bad. Have at it. And then in the last bullet or somewhere in here, it seemed like we might want to make mention that we would invite comment from the community, including the students, on a proposal if we want to hear before we make the decision. This is part of the deliberation. So you'd rather have that in the policy than in the procedure? Well, the procedure is for the staff to execute, right? You don't think the last statement in consultation with the U32 board and the school community has it enough? Well, that's as well. So that's when it's moved on. Yeah, that's after we've already made a decision. And sometimes I think it might be really obvious to us, and sometimes I think we might want to invite in other perspectives. So the board invites. I was thinking if appropriate, board will invite comment from the community, including students on a proposal. So if appropriate, the board will invite comment from students about proposals. From the community, including students. Can I just point out that there's a contradiction? And that's the request must come from a legitimate student group. But you say that the criteria for reviewing requests from individuals and or groups down at the bottom. So for our sake as an administration, we need to know if you intend individuals to ask for a fight or if it's just from groups. I would say groups. Students are student groups. Yeah, but up above it says legitimate student groups. Yeah, one of the journey's questions are what defines a legitimate student group. Yeah, a few friends. We think that that's a definite area of definition for us. Like what does it take to be a legitimate student group at U32? We've never defined that. So are there groups at U32 that don't have faculty representation or I guess a faculty advisor? So that's so and groups. So it's not just legitimate is the word that we're asking groups is another. So it's a club organization. What constitute a group at U32? Is it an athletic team? Is it like there's? Six guys standing in the corner. Yeah. So that's what we say. A legitimate student group creates a need for us to define what that means. Like that was the one thing when we looked at this. We're like, hey, if this is the policy, this is truly the policy is going to hinge around who has the right to ask for it and who has the right to ask for it is defined as a legitimate student group. And so we need to be very clear what it means to be a legitimate student group. And we've actually thrown a few things together saying, well, does that mean that you have an advisor, that you have a regular meeting time, that you know that. Your club name shows up in our handbook or not? Yeah, I mean, they're just like, those are. So is that something you want a decision from us on or is that something you guys need to wrestle with? No, I think that's for us to wrestle with. If this is your policy, right? Legitimate student group. We need to define legitimate student group. And that definition would fall under the latter paragraph there is school administration and consultation will develop operating procedure. Right, could be in the procedure. But we shouldn't refer to individuals in this. I think we should take individuals out personally. The idea there is that the idea has been vetted. It's been considered by a larger number of people. It maybe has an advisor attached. I mean, when I envisioned this, I envisioned student groups that have a cause, that have thought of what the right word is. Mission, yeah. What about work boots club? It would be the middle class because as I look here, everybody's wearing shoes and sneakers in the front and then a lot of us have work boots and other shoes as that. I mean, when you look at the thing that you brought up on the board in the college prep, I mean, your graph shows it all. You're missing the middle. That's where I look at it. That's a good question. And I think we definitely have to define. And then whatever group it is has to be able to support to say how they're connected to the student learning outcomes, connected to the mission of the school, connected to the mission of the school. I've also seen a problem with that because let's just say that my son or someone else decides to have a work boot club that they're the middle class or whatever the working class does that start chaos? The college prep kids that, well, we're working and you're gone. I don't know. I just, to me, it's an endless battle. I wonder, Adrienne, I'm not sure this is very helpful in terms of actually putting down language, but there were three things that that I would love to see in a policy. One is maybe some reference to, it is our policy to follow the US flag code and other related laws and court decisions related to flying the flag, flying flags in general, especially with the US flag. The second one was that, I think it's, from my perspective, the board has full responsibility and authority to make the responsibility for the decision and so authority to make the decision. However, the board, they should also be the board's policy to consult widely within the school and within the community. I'm wondering if it's necessary to actually to have to worry about such things in legitimate student groups and just stated openly that this is what our policy is to consult widely. We can't anticipate necessarily with whom, but not to limit it, I guess. Not to limit it to student groups? Anybody would have the right to actually make a proposal, but then. Beyond the school community? Is that, I'm just trying to clarify what you're saying. So someone from the community can say, I want this flag flown at U32? I mean, potentially, but I think, the idea would be that before we made a decision, we would just have a very broad consultative process. But we could also just reject it out of hand. We wouldn't have to, wouldn't be obligated necessarily to accept any old request that comes. That doesn't, it's not like there's a due process that gets, that we have to crank through every time somebody comes up with an idea. Is this making sense? Can you compare with that? Backing up to the earlier part, I was a little more. Yeah, because if we have, if it's totally our responsibility what goes up the flagpole and it's completely our authority to make that decision, then why limit where the idea comes from. So long as the student, the group, the community member, whoever it may be comes forward and they present something that's in keeping with our mission with the student learning outcomes, right? So we have that condition already that exists. So, I mean, the way I would understand it is that if someone brings forward an idea that meets that criteria that we've set or presumably will set, that then that's a legitimate proposal. Yeah, I think that's good, Jonathan. We can sort of set down the sorts of things that we think about when we look at this in this consultative process without necessarily committing to it. I'd like to avoid, you know, having a kind of, yeah, if you check all these boxes because we can never anticipate how many boxes or which boxes would need to be checked in order to, you know, I don't know. Jim, Jim Evans, one question. Can you, can... I think it will help clarify a lot of this. I'm sorry, I know you wanna move on. No, I don't wanna move on. It's just, it's hard to have a bored conversation with interruptions from the community. So, can we finish our conversation and then I'll invite Comet. Okay. No, I was just trying to incorporate which Jonathan was saying into just letting people know, informing people what it is that we would be looking for and in the decision that we would make. And that's not clear? No, no, I think the criteria, the sample criteria are, if they were sample criteria are very good. I just don't want it to be, for people to understand that if they can check bullet number one and bullet number two and bullet number three and bullet number four, then it's a done deal. Because we still would reserve the decision as to whether... Well, I think by adding Maddie to the top, we just, we did that. You can also say criteria the board will use will include the following. Yeah. Not be limited to it. Okay. Scott's raising a couple other points here. One is, could non-students make requests? Hadn't even thought of that. You know, it just makes me think, well, part of this whole idea is that it's a learning experience for students. That's kind of how I've been imagining it, to put together a proposal and demonstrate why something is aligned with our student learning outcomes and why it matters. And it's an opportunity to demonstrate engagement in civic affairs, which we have. That's what we're not recording. And as far as the group piece goes, because I did have the same reaction about why not individuals. I kind of like the idea that the group, it's going to have the weight of the group behind it. It's going to be vetted. We're going to get better proposals, basically, if it could be required. Yeah, I'm not comfortable with anybody coming in, that we're U32 and we're making policy for U32, and our goal is to educate the students of U32. Whereas an activist from upstate New York came and presented just something just because they wanted to see the conversation about it happen at our meeting. I just don't see that we have even any sort of jurisdiction over somebody who wants to come in and say, I want to find a flag at the U32 campus. We are here for the students. That's my take. And our communities. But we aren't here to, U32 isn't here to educate the community. U32 is here to educate the students. And our policies are about how we run the school and how we educate our students. Thank you very much. And I can certainly make reference to the US flag code as kind of an overarching, because we do not have anything. So I would just caution using the US flag code as a policy, because the unintended consequences, the flag code, if you read through the flag code, the flag is not to be worn as an article of clothing. It's not, there's a lot of other parts to it. You might have to start sending students home. Yeah, and you're not going to do that. But I'm just saying that that reference, that creates a broader policy than possibly what you're thinking, because the flag code incorporates more than just flying the flag and how it's flown on a pole. It's how it's also used as a display and how it's treated in terms of article of clothing. Or so that there are very limited places where the flag code allows the flag to be used. Okay. And so I just don't think we're going to go down that road. Sure. I was hoping I would cover it with court decisions and all of that. I understood. So how about if I do a second draft, we can pass this as a first reading? Or if you feel there are too many changes, we can wait and try it again in two weeks. But I think that basically it's the same thing. And we could do a first reading. I can make those changes and we can look at it again in two weeks. Yeah, I just had one other thought too and it concerns the word legitimate. So I think that, I think a student group, if they came forward, and again, in keeping with the student learning outcomes and the mission of moving to the school. You know, if a group of kids have been studying plastic in the ocean and they're not necessarily a group, they don't have a title or a name or a faculty advisor or anything else, but a group of them all of a sudden have come to this realization, this is a serious problem and we want to bring a proposal to the board to fly a flag of something that brings awareness to the oceans, for example, then why wouldn't we consider that? If they didn't have a label. If that student group had gone to the effort of getting together and checking all the boxes on our list and communicating. Yeah, because in order to legitimate gets, I mean, Stephen was mentioning earlier that they would have to define what a legitimate group is, whereas we would accept a group of students that I think that's more inclusive rather than you can't bring that proposal forward because you're not a legitimate student group. I think that could potentially exclude kids. That's how I see that. So I'm gonna throw it back to you for a second. Would it be easier to have general student groups or more of a definition? More of a definition group. A student group. Yeah, I mean, that's not gonna be the automatic toe. Right, that shouldn't be the automatic toe. Yeah, pieces that you're not a legitimate student group. That shouldn't be where we start. I think just, but it should be students. I mean, I think that we've got to make sure. And I agree with Kari. I think the group has more power than the individual in this kind of situation. We want there to be a group that is promoting. We might get the guy who's protesting his aspects. Right, I think you're a protest for the question. So is there a motion for, why don't we just do this now, a motion to pass the first reading of this flag policy? Sure. Do we need to? It's a discussion item, it's not an action item. It is action item. Oh, is it action item? Yeah, it's 3.5.1. I'll move it. It's got it in a second. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Second. Carl, any more discussion? So I will make those changes and in two weeks we'll look at it again and we can adopt it if we're happy with it then. Yeah. Okay. And we'll have a draft of our procedures just so that that can be. Okay. So that you'll see what our case is around that. We've got a bunch of notes together. Great. Where are we? 3.4, Act 46 update. Do we need to vote? Yeah. All those in favor say aye. Sorry. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Thank you. Come here, Mel. Oh, it is getting late. Adrienne, I would say that you also said that you would take comments from the... Yeah, that's correct. Yes, thank you. And then I'm going to do Lucy. So... You adopted it already? We didn't adopt it. We passed a first reading. So go ahead. Yeah. Thank you. Steve and I was a great point. One, like you said, nothing is allowed on the flagpole. It's federal law. I mean, you can look it up on YouTube. It's actually not a federal law. The flag code is not a federal law the way that it's written. It's recommendation, but that's okay. I mean, there are... We still do pledge allegiance. We still do a lot of stuff and people serve in the country and that's why the flag is won. And for freedom, and that's why. Besides that, I want to... After the last meeting, it felt like people were against the black flag. And I don't think that's what this is. It's been turned into that. I think everybody's for it. I don't think that that's the issue. It's been twisted and turned into that. And I think what you guys are saying about putting flags on polls, it's about going below the American flag. That's the issue. If you had your own flag up there, I guarantee if you had a survey here and everybody didn't talk to anybody and is there an issue with everybody putting their own flags on a separate poll, there would be any of this discussion. And then there wouldn't be any worried about getting sued whether or not there's something underneath the American flag. That's my point. We've had a discussion about a second black poll. I'll find it. You don't have to. Be careful, because the quotes are not that... So we're actually looking at putting up... Actually, our thought is to put a flag poll out there that is a little bit taller so that we can place the American and the Vermont flag on that flag poll and then have the poll that's out there, because it actually holds three flags, right? That's how many flags that poll out there holds. And these are just our initial thoughts because we've got details on it. But we would like to say that on that second poll that we can fly up to three flags. But what we would love to do is have a student competition to create a U32 flag to be the top flag on that poll and then fly the two other flags, have a way for us to rotate through any of the flags that the board approves for students to have up there. I think it's a wonderful competition. People would comprise it. No matter if they're the thing in the sea that you said that's great. I mean, I think it would bring a lot more people into a lot more groups and there wouldn't be this you know, pulling back and forth. It would also allow us the opportunity, so right now we have an issue with going to half mass for the American flag, it brings the lowest flag down to just the ground, the eye level. And so if we have a taller flag poll, if you bring the American flag to half mass, the other flag would probably only be about three quarter mass on that, which is fine. As long as it's below the American flag, there's no issue with flag code on that and we would be able to leave all up to three flags there and there wouldn't be it, you know, arms. You wouldn't have to lower them either. We would have to lower them as far, right? And so you'd still lower them some, but that's just, that's respectful at that point. So I think we can come up with some good solutions that still provide us a way of showing solidarity for our student groups, showing solidarity for our school as a whole. I'm still respecting the U.S. and Vermont flags. And I think that the second flag poll is certainly what they're looking at as the better option. We're with you. And I'll send you the bill. Yeah. Yeah. That was untating. You know, be careful. I'm going to jump around. There's one other. Oh, I'm sorry. My voice is a little weird, so. I just like had a question for anyone. Like, what is like someone's issue of having our Black Lives Matter flag under the American flag? That's just, I just wondered about that. So can I just address some of the things that I've heard? I think that, so the board probably not heard some of this. So there, if you have multiple flag polls, I'm going to kind of start from that perspective. The rules around the flag code rules are different for the second flag poll, right? And so I think people feel more comfortable when we talk about any other flag than the American flag or the Vermont flag being on a second flag poll when they think about the code. I don't know. I have not had anybody specifically say to me that it's disrespectful to fly another flag with the American flag. Nobody specifically said that. I know that there's been concerns about it. But your comment tonight was the first time that anybody's actually made that for me, right? On that poll. No. Have we spoke? We've been going for over a year, day one, and it got twisted into everybody against the Black flag. I misinterpreted some. When I went off last meeting, when I finally was like, oh, this is not anything about, and then when I listened to friends and other people in their conversations on it, that's what this is all about. And then if you have a poll. I'm missing something. Yeah, can we just maybe summarize it really quickly that I think that the American flag and the Vermont flag are very powerful symbols for some people and they don't necessarily want to see any other flag. It's not Black Lives Matter or any specific flag. It's any other flag other than those because those powerful symbols represent something meaningful for them. Not everyone agrees with that, but that's what we should recommend. I agree, yeah. And at the time we raised that flag, we had no other options. And so that's where it went. But we're looking into options. Well, and the future. The flag code speaks to that. Flag code speaks to the fact that those, the American flag and the state flag need to be flung. The American flag is flown at the highest point, state flag beneath that, and that order can't be changed up. I haven't sat down and done the research, but I'm fairly confident that there have been a lot of circumstances in the past where the American flag is flown with multiple other penance underneath it. For example, in naval traditions, you could have multiple flags on one as long as the American flag is at the top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the, yes, the flags, and according to the flag code are naval. Once you move below the state flag, you can have the POWMIA flag. And it's actually only supposed to be flown one day for that flag. There's a specific day where that one's supposed to be flown. I'm sorry, I don't have that in front of me. And then from there, it's naval. And it actually, it's armed services. The armed services flags must be flown in order of when those armed services came into the space. It may just be done in your homework. I have to do a little bit of homework. So I think Kari's point is the one that I think he expresses what I was not saying well, which is that, and I think that you expressed it well. And I appreciate that, yeah. And I think that goes to, you know, the proposal that you talked about earlier about having a second flagpole, which is the American flag and the Vermont flag are on the one's flagpole only, and then other flags and then flown on another. Real, I'm just going to take one more because it's five of nine and we still have a bunch of stuff to do. I just wanted to speak on behalf of our comment about the second flagpole idea. The way that we kind of see it is like when we put the flag up in everything and then for it to be taken down and put on like a totally different flag, it's kind of like we kind of see it as like now it's like less important and now it's like being put down. I don't know if you get that, but that's how we see it. Thanks. I goofed. We're not going to do Act 46. We're going to respect our students who have homework and we're going to get them do their report and then we'll get to Act 46. Thank you. Do you all say the first one? So as you guys were watching, the boys' soccer just won their game against home player. Which was super exciting to watch. One of a while ago, I guess now. And the girls' soccer also won their game and field hockey won their game. So those three teams are going to quarter-finals. The football team has the game tomorrow and you can cross country as states on Saturday. I forgot to mention last meeting, but our group recently actually just won an award for raising Black Lives Matter flags. So the ACLU gives out... I mean, which... Which... Oh, Blam, I thought you said something else. Blam, yeah, Blam. So the ACLU gives out an award, a Civil Liberties Award every year and this year they gave it out to all the high schools that raised Black Lives Matter flags. We have that and I think Steven has it right now. I'm actually... Krista has it right now. And also on Tuesday, a bunch of... There are four or five students who went to the Roland Conference at the UBM. We talked about equity and different... So there was all different types of diversity that I was talking about. It was what I won and it was amazing and I really loved it. And then today, WCX came and interviewed myself and two other students about our restorative practice circles that we've been doing. So that was just cool to sort of share, I guess, like our new approach and what we've been doing at school. Lucy, how did they get... How did they know to come interview you? Do you know? Do you know? Did you tell them? No. Jody called him up and said... There was a piece about a Brownton High School, something for a couple of weeks ago and Kelly, who she reached out and said, hey, we're doing great stuff here at WCSU as well. So she spoke to the trauma-informed practices that we've been working on and the restorative practices. And so Galen Etlin came here and interviewed our three of our students and also Kelly and Bill and then went over to East Montpelier and they filmed a circle being done at East Montpelier and talked to some people there. So sometime in their near future, that'll show up on WCAS. That's great. That's great. And the stage 32 is putting on Little Shop of Horses, I think in two, so two weeks from Friday or a week from Friday. Sounds really good. Two weeks. Yes. And so this year, the music department did the concerts differently. So instead of doing all three high schools, so Band Chorus and Strings High School and then Band Chorus Strings Middle School, they did all Chorus and all Strings on one concert yesterday. And then Band is going to be done soon. I don't know the date when that happens. And then the last thing is that Student Council got on the agenda for the next school board meeting. So we're gonna be coming to talk to you guys about proficient seats. We've already been talking to Stephen and Jodi and Bill a little bit about sort of the students experience of proficiency based grading, and we're preparing some stuff to come share at the next board meeting. Excellent. Do you get any comments from your letter to the editor? We got one reply back. Yeah, so people should start replying to that. I thought it was interesting at least, but maybe other people did. But yeah, that is our reporter for this meeting. Thank you, questions? Thank you very much. You're welcome to stay, but it's nine o'clock. Act 46 update. I think what we, in two weeks ago, we tabled even a discussion on the lawsuit because we were missing Karin and Karen, and we just felt like it wasn't, and I feel really bad about it, that George is in here tonight, but I think we need to have this discussion. Thank you for waiting for us. If I know he wasn't here, we'd gotten his input, but I didn't know, he didn't let me know. So there is a pending lawsuit that I think 17 towns have joined against the state for forced mergers. And is it towns or school boards that have joined that? School boards and school boards, and I think individuals are being offered the chance to join as well. Individuals? Even individuals, yeah. Like taxpayer? Taxpayer, yeah. Taxpayer, oh, okay. Berlin voted to join it, Calis voted to join it, Worcester voted not to join it, East Montpelier voted not to join it, and Romney voted two weeks ago to wait until a decision was made. They joined earlier tonight. So they joined earlier tonight. So the question for the U32 board is, do we want to join this lawsuit or not? Can I sort of kick it off? Yes, thank you. I know that, I mean, we saved this for you, Carrie and Karen, because we know that you are, at least inclined to be opposed to the idea. And I know that the whole idea of a lawsuit evokes Kramer versus Kramer style, nasty, horrible, bitter, destructive, internecine warfare in which nobody wins except for the lawyers. That is not the case with this lawsuit. The whole point of this is actually to get the state to follow the law. That's the sum total of it. I emailed you, I mean, emailed everybody a copy of Janet Ansel's letter just to show you that it's not just me. Janet is actually a proponent of merger in general. She voted for Act 46. But in her letter, she too is complaining about the states, about the agency of education in particular. It's disregard for the provision of Act 49 specifically, which relates to a greatly different levels of debt. I mean, Kyle mentioned at the SU board meeting that the state board of education when they discussed us spent all of five minutes talking about our situation. And even then, they got it wrong. They're basic elements that the state board did not understand about our situation before they took a vote. And from my perspective, in order for this to go well, really the law has to be followed in its entirety. And that's what the lawsuit is about, to get the state agency of education, the state board of education, to pay proper attention to, not just to Act 49, the part that amended 5C4 and Act 46, but also to take seriously Section 9, we have played completely straight throughout this entire process. And I know most of you have not had the pleasure of being as involved in it as I have, but I've just been so discouraged by the agency's consistent showing of bad faith at every step of the way. And the idea of this lawsuit is to just get them on a proper track for everybody's good. But I mean, especially for ours as a district, is that if we get forced into this, it really will not be good. I think you understand that if you want nasty, brutish, bitter, horrible, that will be the consequence of being forced in, especially under the default arguments. So it's just about having, playing fair, playing straight, playing a stand-up game. Two questions for you. One, do you feel like when you say, getting the agency or the board to basically follow the rules, are you saying does it hinge on the difference in debt and that that should be defined as impractical, is that what this boils down to for you? That's part of what it boils down to, but essentially what's happening is that the agency, and the state board, the agency is sort of, I mean, I'm not sort of back up just a moment at the state board meeting down in my River Junction where they took that vote after five minutes of off-base discussion. I don't blame the state board for not understanding what the situation was. They were poorly briefed, and briefed in a very tendentious way so as to obfuscate the key points of our situation. Make sure you're using language we can all understand. Sorry, sorry. They were briefed so that they would not understand our situation. And so that is part of it. Part of it too is one of the state board members, I think David quoted as saying that he was drawn to this idea of greatly differing, and it just didn't seem to him to meet the greatly standard. But this is, why have suddenly facts and data flown out the window? Why is it now, I'm just not feeling it here. If that needs, there needs to be a proper process. A proper process, a serious process. That's a piece of it as well. And so a specific point on that, do you feel like the board has not read our proposal? If they have read it, they've forgotten it. That would seem to be their job. Just because they disagree with our report, does it mean they're wrong or we're wrong? It's not even that they disagree, they don't even understand it. Well, but as someone who did support our report, in a lot of ways, disagree that it is accuracy, because I think a lot of it is just subjective. I think of them as trusted experts. And am I wrong, but the final what needs to happen is we don't even have it, right? Isn't that November 30th? So we're talking about a lawsuit assuming what's gonna happen on the 30th when we don't actually know for a fact. And we've got a pretty good idea. Oh, good, a good idea. No, they took a provisional vote of seven to one. And the provisional vote is, it's essentially like a first reading of a policy. And it would be very unlikely for that to be completely overturned. And I'll add to that. They've been telling us for two years with a wink and a nudge, yet don't even try. We're not gonna let you do anything but what we want. So it's just about follow the law. If we're gonna do this, let's just do it right. And if at the end, having followed the law, there is an outcome that goes against us, then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. But at this point, just follow it. That's all that's about it. Well, another question for you. You're saying that if this isn't done properly, it will have consequences. And do you feel like, I think you used the word wrath, something like that. Do you think that's going to be directed at the school system? Or the legislature or the agency of education or the state board? I think it would be a 360 degree. And part of my concern is that Vermont, right now, and I think our districts included, our towns included, Vermont has the highest level of tax effort for education in the country. People are really committed to paying for education in this, for public education in this state. And we're facing a situation where a quarter of the population of our five towns will be feeling like they've been shafted. And this would not be as big a problem if more of the families actually had children in school. Because we kind of be holding them hostage. They would be, okay, it's our kids in the school, we have to support the school because it has a very close connection with us. Direct impact. Direct impact. But we rely to a great extent now on the goodwill of people who no longer have children in the school and who are very sensitive to change in property tax and follow it very closely. And if they become, if they start feeling alienated from the school system, particularly if we have one budget situation, I mean, the U32 budget tends to be the one vulnerable. I want to stay focused on where we are here. And I want to hear from other people too. I'm not fond of joining onto the lawsuit for many reasons. I see it as a distraction. I am comfortable with proceeding and following what the state advises us to do. I think there are, we already have two subcommittees that are looking at ways to push back. I don't know that it's quite as rigid and inflexible. I know the wording has said that this cannot be amended, but what's the harm? And when we propose our, so we have process going here for those things. And I just feel like wasted time, energy, money and a lawsuit. I totally understand the worry about people not being supportive of a forced merger. I mean, we never are in a whole act 46 process. We never put anything to a vote. A lot of towns did. We didn't. So we haven't had the chance for our community to actually weigh in except for this survey, which was just took 30 minutes and confusing and not well responded to. So I don't feel like we have had that chance. And I think we already do have a significant portion of our communities who vote no on every single school budget because they don't feel like they should be taxed on their kids, their non-kids. They don't have kids in the system or whatever. So I would absolutely, if we vote on this, I would, I also see U32 as uniquely poised in that we already are a unified board representing all five towns. And I think it would be a very negative statement for us to join into the lawsuit rather than be a positive leader. Well, I tend to, and I'm biased in this area I guess, but I tend to think I see the role of the courts as a place for grievances to be heard. And so in that sense, I think we should join the lawsuit in multiple other municipalities, individuals, other people have chosen to do so. And I think a full airing of both the state's position, the agency of education's position needs to be heard. And I think it's best heard in a court of law. They can make their arguments. And if they're convincing arguments, then the force merger will move forward. If they're not convincing arguments, they won't be. So I think I would be in support of moving forward with absolutely, why would we wanna foreclose an opportunity to have a full vetting of the arguments that they're going to make? The question is, if this has already happened, why does it need us though? It's gonna happen. And so that'll happen, those that arguments will be heard and why do we have to be signed on to it to be, we'll still benefit from it, because it's gonna happen. But I think there's a reason for strengthened numbers. I also think there's a reason for why people and entities have class action lawsuits. The more the better is my view on a lawsuit. The more signatories there are to a lawsuit. The court sees that list of names and people and individuals and municipalities. That has a new impact. I think, I mean, they're human beings too. So that's how I see that. And we know where Scott stands. I'm very torn on this. This is sort of the toughest piece of this. I've been 55, 45 in favor of merger all along. I think we have a very cumbersome governance system that demands a huge amount of work out of our administration that they can be putting into the school rather than a bunch of grownups coming into the building to talk about policy. That said, I also treasure our local democracy. And feel like we're seeing it diminished blow by blow. I mean, really, a lot of us live here because it's one of the last places in the world with a really genuine, enough people to fit under an Oak Tree democracy. And we're definitely seeing that whittled away at. My town is the last one that still votes on the school board on the floor of town meeting. And that I'm very proud of that. My town is proud of that. The people who send me here are proud of that. That said, this law is horrible. This mandate is horribly written. I wish we'd given the level of messaging that the state gave to us about their intent to not let us come up with an alternative. I wish we'd spent the last two years designing our own better governance that was closer to what they wanted and was gonna demand less of our administration supporting our boards. But that said, I think that the way this legislation was written is reprehensible. And I think it's reprehensible the way that this whole process is unspilled, the five minute, not really paying attention, not really listening, being dedicated the whole two years to just saying no to us, regardless of what we came back to. I also struggle, Karen, I'm coming back to your point of, I struggle to feel like as a school board, that's what we've been sent here, that I feel like this, this is, I want the voters and the select board to join the lawsuit. I think that we as a school board have been sent here to work on building a better school and that political legal, putting resources and time and energy into a political legal battle isn't what we've been elected to be here to do. I'd rather be putting our efforts into improving our student learning outcomes and creating equity of learning opportunity. My, the Worcester vote, the Dodie board voted unanimously to not join. That said, I know there were a couple members of that board who only turned that corner at the very last minute before the vote. And I think that there was some element of wanting to put a unified face forward involved in that. I do, I'm a municipal employee. I serve on multiple union municipal boards. I serve on this board over the course of the past 10, 12 years. And I'll tell you my disappointment in state level governance has just grown and grown and grown from those experiences. I feel like I spend all day every day fighting to make things work for unfunded mandates that have been handed down to me from the state. I find myself battling to make real life daily decisions that I can pass past bureaucrats who just wanna follow the letter of the law, you know, the letter of the law, be it whether it's a good law or not. All that said, I'm very torn. It's really where I am. You can stop there. Yeah, I can stop there. I'm gonna let Kars be, because you've had a lot of time, a lot of time. No, it was just a clarification about money if I may correct you. Yeah, yeah. There is no money being demanded of any school bus, so. Ever? There's a GoFundMe campaign. Exactly. It's privately funded. Is that guaranteed? Yeah, you know, you can pull out. We can pull out if. So, privately funded. We're not committing any money by donors. It's literally a GoFundMe. It's literally a GoFundMe. I mean, because couldn't there be like conflict of interest if like there's a large pack that's contributing to it that is pushing initiatives that are anti-educated? I mean, like, that could be aligning us and it's being paid for by, someone could question our ethics on who is funding it. That's, wow, that's Oliver Stone material. Maybe. I'm a celebrity. It's Oliver Stone material. I mean, but no, I mean, seriously, someone could later say, you know, this lawsuit was funded by this money and it's unconscionable that the U32 board would align with that group or party. I mean, that's sketchy to me. I think, yes, I. I'm not sure if it's possible to actually see who's. Okay, I'm gonna take the floor. Yeah, I'm just gonna say, I'll try to be brief. You did a clarification, and thank you. So, first I want to say is that, boy, this doesn't get any easier. I mean, we've been on this for over three years now and we're still struggling. And so, let me just say, well, but the first thing I want to say is that I understand the origin of the law because I'm not a fan of our government structure. I never have been. I mean, the first year I was open-minded about it, but it quickly became apparent to me that it's just inefficient and confusing. We are one system or are we six systems? You know, we have one CEO that reports to one board or seven boards. It's just, it's kind of horrendous in a lot of ways. And so I've never been a fan of it. I am sympathetic to the debt issue. I do think that that's grossly unfair. I thought it was pretty interesting that where Janet ended her letter was basically what Adrienne and I had proposed back last December. Give us time to, you know, even out the debt, you know, because it's not fair. In terms of the process, you raised the process. I understand that point. I can't really speak to it because I haven't been following nearly as closely as you. I do know that we were identified right off the bat. You know, while this was still a bill in the legislature, we were the model. Like, this is what the legislature wanted was unions like ours to become a single government entity. So this is not really a surprise that we've ended up here. And I guess for me, it boils down to priorities. I feel like this is such an adult issue. This is not an issue that touches the kids very closely. And, you know, talk about the inefficiency. It's taken us many years to get to the point where tonight it was so clear in the student learning outcome report that we have six graders that are on average, groups of six graders that are on average two or even three years behind their peers. That's, to me, is the thing that shouldn't stand. That's where we should be focusing our attention. And I'd like to, you know, put our energy and resources there. Even if it doesn't cost us money, it costs us to enter into a lawsuit. And I just don't feel like it's a priority at this point. Make a motion to vote. You want to speak? Sure. I thought long and hard about this. And I thought about it as a U32 board member. And I think that's where I need to keep my focus. We're a U32 board and that's what we're thinking about. I thought about it as a taxpayer. I thought about it as a middle sex resident. I thought about it as even a teacher and living a merged board in the school where I am. One that merged very eerily and very quickly and seeing the bumps and the difficulties that have come from it and some of the good things that have come from it. So, you know, this kind of this whole view. I hear people saying they want a lawsuit because of the taxes. The input that I get is that we don't want to lose local control. So, I'm getting kind of a mixed signal. You know, the taxes are going to be unfair, but really, if you fix the taxes, we still wouldn't be happy because we would lose our local control. And so, I'm having a little bit of trouble with that. I do believe that a board of all the schools would work in the best interest of all the kids in all the schools and that I don't think the elementary schools would lose anything. I think people really do care about kids and it doesn't matter whether they're from middle sex or East Montpelier or Worcester. I'm fascinated that the Worcester board unanimously decided not to support this. They're the school that we think has the most to lose. They're the community that has the most to lose. I actually believe they have the most to lose if we don't join. That I am very concerned for them if we end up with individual boards that they're not gonna be able to sustain a quality education for those kids. That was one of my checkpoints two years ago when I was in favor of some sort of murder. I don't think the school will close, but I think they will lose a lot of opportunities for those kids. I'm also concerned that we didn't put it to a public vote out in the community. We have heard very strongly from a very small number of people. It's been the same people over and over and I believe them, I believe their cause, but there's a huge group of people out there that we haven't heard a word from for whatever reason. They don't care, they don't know, they want it to go through, they don't want it to go through, but and the state board basically said we should have put it to a vote. They didn't, no votes were not actually considered by the state. Well, somewhere I read that was the, somebody said you didn't put it to a vote to the public, so it's hard to really know what the public feels and I do believe that. And I think what I come down to is I'm a U32 board member. We are a combination of five towns. We work very effectively and I think it would be distracting to us as a board to worry about a lawsuit. The lawsuit is going to go on with or without our name on it and the results, I don't think the results will change whether U32 joins it or doesn't join it and I would love to see our energy go towards our kids and the learning outcomes and letting these guys focus on what's really good for kids. So that's where I come down. Do you have anything else on last remark? You've noticed how the discussion has drifted from following the law and having the process work as it should, according to the law, into sort of the pros and cons of merger. I was hoping that to kind of, that's what the lawsuit is actually about. It's not, it's just about doing it right. Do it right. This is just a point of clarification and I'm really apologize if I've missed it. Where's the language of the lawsuit? I don't think I have that. There's a letter. There's a letter from Margaret McLean. The one we had seen at the last meeting? Yeah, it basically, but it's not the legal. Okay. No, I haven't seen the legal document. Okay. I'm gonna take public comment and actually, yeah, let's do that and then we'll make a motion. And like, 90 seconds, just because it's 9.30 at night and we still have other stuff to do. Charlie? Yeah, first I wanted to disclose that I was asked recently to be one of the main attorneys on the suit. I'm probably gonna do that. And I'm doing it on a low bono basis, like half my regular rate. Plus I'll be donating some free time as well for it. This isn't a lawsuit, this is an appeal. You folks made the decision. You said, we have an alternative governance structure that we think works. You have an agency of education that said you're wrong and the board is gonna rule against you agreeing with the agency of education. All you're doing right now at this point is, as you pointed out, going to the court to appeal the decision rejecting your alternative governance structure. I would posit to you that if you made all that work and put all that work into it, that you actually have a moral obligation to carry it to the next level. And to determine they have a court of competent jurisdiction unbiased, like Heather Boshi, unbiased, I'm not like her, she's very biased. Let them decide whether this law works. With respect to the law, the courts look to the intent of legislature when they read a law here. And I think as you pointed out, this is a messed up law. The intent is not clear at all. I successfully defended Act 68 on constitutional grounds against a very vigorous challenge by Killington. I successfully changed ballot access laws in the state, all predicated on the fact that the intent of legislature was not properly being discharged by the bureaucracy responsible for discharging it. And that's what you have going on here. So from a legal standpoint, they gave a moral obligation to do it. With respect to this conversation about students, I can't think of anything more important than students knowing that the adults who have control over their education are standing up for something that is meaningful to them and that participatory democracy still lie to them well in the month. So I encourage you to join this appeal to defend what you have already stated was your goal in this government structure. It was you, and I should know better than to try to voluntarily. You're gonna have to slam the door really hard. You don't need to. He did make a very important point though that the lawyers are still meeting and figuring out what's going on here. And the latest thought is that this really is an appeal of the decision and that's kind of a procedural avenue it would take. And I think the word lawsuit scares people a lot but an appeal is expected when the original decision maker decides the other way. And I don't view joining this lawsuit as taking up time, money, or creating any distractions. I think it's literally just raising your hands in one minute when a vote is taken and then the lawyers are gonna run with this. It's not gonna cost money, it's not gonna take up time. It's not a distraction. This is the most important decision you will ever make on this board because it is about how every other decision for decades maybe hundreds of years gets made. And I need to respond to the idea that we don't know where the community is. I think that's flatly wrong. We had a professional survey done by the University of Vermont. It did have a statistically significant amount of responses from every town. It showed clearly East Montpelier was about to wash but all four other towns strongly supported keeping our local school boards. You are the representatives of those towns. I emailed my representative Adrian last night asking where she stood on this. The response was, you wanted to see the sentiment board. I would have preferred the response of, well, what's the sentiment of the community that that's where you would love to for how to take this vote? And yes, maybe Worcester voted to not join it but look at the survey, Carl, of where the sentiment of the Worcester community is on this. They overwhelm and they support keeping our school boards. They know if we merge taxes will go up and they may lose the school. Calis is clearly that way. Berlin is clearly that way. And even East Montpelier, it's split because some people realize, yes, taxes will go down. They might like that. But people who are thinking a little more deeply about this know that your two members on the seven person board aren't gonna be able to stop the other five members who, when they need to cut the spending to deal with these increased taxes, where do you think they're gonna look first? They're gonna look to the town that caused this huge increase in the first place. And I think East Montpelier is gonna be the most vulnerable to the effects on the students. So this is just, it's a hugely important issue and I think your vote on it should reflect where your towns are and just seeing this process through and let's get an answer from the courts of whether the state board has followed the law or hasn't. It's all motion. Okay. Excuse me. I'm making a motion for the U32 board to join the state wide lawsuit. Second. Second. Any more? Next discussion. Just really quickly, when I responded to Charlie's first point that we had this obligation to follow through our proposal, you might remember I didn't actually support that proposal. The reason I went along with it was because all of the other boards did. I thought there was a higher principle that we act unified after going through that whole excruciating process that we were gonna act like one board. That is no longer an option. So I don't feel that imperative. I think that's the way that U32 will go through it after all of that. And I do wanna say that whether we vote to support the lawsuit or not, it will go on and it will happen and the results will happen. So all those in favor of supporting U32 joining the lawsuit say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Nay. Nay. Two to four, we're not gonna join. Thank you very much. That is hard. And I think we're all gonna be okay no matter how this comes out. We've got really good people working for all our communities and all our schools. I'm gonna move on to the question. I just say two. What's our approval plan? We only, we usually just say two to four. Two to four. Two to four. Yes. Four to four. We're quiet. We're quiet. Thank you. Thank you so much. The next thing I hear is the board calendar which was just put there for your information. It's sort of a way for me to set up the agenda with Steven and Bill. And you and I can add the SLOs onto there or you can just add them on each month. I can just put SLO and you can vote which one. I love the idea that you're gonna do that. Yeah. Reports to the board. It is 25 of 10. Let's do this really quickly. This is way past any time we've ever been here. Central Mon Career Center. So they are doing a meeting on Monday. I can't remember the date. Coming up soon and George is going and therefore he will have input on future meeting times and Steven will be the last meeting and for going. Bill and I will be attending that meeting as well. Okay. Great. Terrific. I think I saw you over there but I didn't register. You can come join us if you want. You have a seated table. You need to have a discussion on the 7th. But we've got... About the Tech Center. About the Tech Center. I keep that on the future agenda. Yep, it's right here. I'm doing the November agenda. We had a discussion last time. Steven gave us a lot of information about that meeting. I understand that. Just so you know. I understand that. It's on there. I think there will be more of a discussion you need to have. Okay. Great. Student report. We got administration. Did you do your report already tonight? Yeah. Yes. I would add the students didn't have one little detail. We could have two students who represented U32 at the Superintendents and School Boards annual conference. Oh, cool. And there's a discussion about Latisha and... Latisha. Latisha. Thank you. Latisha and... Oh, help me. Devante. Devante, thank you. And he's been here before. Yeah, Devante. Both of them, yes. Yes. They did a beautiful job. They had lots of kudos from lots of people there. Devante stole the show. You really did. That was awesome. He was great. Were they talking about equity? Yes. They in North Country Essex were supposed to be there but couldn't make it. North Country had their... What is the same as our Glam group. And it was just a really good discussion. They got some hard questions. They answered them beautifully. Thank you. I was very... I was smart in the beginning, so... That's my report about it. Great. Thank you for remembering that. Thank you. And I'm glad she brought up the ACLU award. I saw that somewhere. Was that in the newsletter, maybe? Maybe. That's who I saw it, yeah. Finance. The report is in... Not in this one, but that one. It looks pretty similar to last time. I have some questions about the food budget, but I'm not going to do that tonight. The finance committee has a meeting schedule. Yes. We have to move that 13th meeting to another town. We have to move it? My colleague told me that. So I really wanted to talk with you, Karen, about your schedule. Yeah. So before you leave tonight, after the meeting, let's talk. Okay. Action agenda. Approve the first reading of the flag policy. We have done that. We're sinned, so we, because the full board adopted all those policies tonight, we can now rescind the U32 policies that we have that kind of reflect the same thing. So there is the board purpose and function, the personnel recruitment, and selection of appointment and background check, and employment procedures policies. And public complaints about personnel. Oh, sorry, I didn't get to the next line. And public complaints about personnel. Is there a motion to rescind all those policies? So made. Carl, in a second? Okay. Jonathan. Any discussion about those? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Approve retirement out for teachers. So every year I am supposed to bring to the board in October, or prior to November 1st, the option to have a buy out for early retirement for teachers. I was asked to ensure that that happened this year. So I am. All boards have seen that tonight. My recommendation has been that we do not offer early retirement to any teachers. You have the choice, there's nothing required to you. The only thing you have required in your labor agreement with the association is that you act upon it. Is there anybody that would like to offer early retirement to teachers? It costs you more. It costs us more. Yeah, not against the advice of the administration. Emotion to me. I think it does not offer. You need to do it in the positive. So a motion to approve the retirement out opt out for teachers. Is that correct? Yes, you do it. And then we vote against it. You vote against it. You do it in the positive. We're going to vote against it. I'll move that. And a second. I'll second. Carl. So all those in favor of offering a retirement out opt out for teachers say aye. All those opposed say nay. Nay. That's good, of course. I attended. I goofed last time and did not actually, we didn't appoint members to the Act 46 debt committee and the Articles of Agreement. I apologize. I don't know how I forgot that. But so a motion to approve Scott to the Act 46 debt committee. I'll make that. Carl. And a second. Second. Discussion. You're going to do it. You're doing a great job, Scott. We appreciate all your efforts. All those in favor say aye. We do. Opposed? And then a motion to appoint Carrey to the Act 46 Articles of Agreement committee. I'll move it. Scott, and a second. Second. Carl. Discussion on that? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you guys very much. That's a huge load of work in the next 30, 60, whatever days it is. Sure. Sure. We have done 5.6 already. Is there a motion to approve the board orders? So moved. A second. Second. Are there questions about them? I found out what scorpions suckers are. I was going to ask that question. I had to never, you were far in a row. You were far in a row. I was like, what the heck is a scorpion suckers? There's three items before that. They're lollipops with like fake scorpions in them. Because? Where are the board here? They were here. Why are we using them? What are they for? I think they collected to the previous three items. Which was very outcome. So we did an October 5th in service was brainstorming around, with our teachers and design protocol, we asked our food service to model risk taking and meals. Let's say breakfast was awesome, lunch was not as well received, and dessert was scorpion suckers. Were those well received? Actually, I think those were 50-50. It was, yeah. I had a couple of TAs that were super excited to not have those. I think you had a lot of them over. I think they look awesome. They can't really squirt them. Yeah, so they're lollipops, they're pretty colors, and they have like a little fake scorpion in there. Oh, a fake scorpion? Yeah, a real scorpion. Do you remember what page it was? No, they're not. Do you remember what page it was on? Oh, it was on the first set, and it was like on the second page. So don't ever let anybody say we don't read this stuff. I will say that we're the mind to come. Exactly. Did I do a moment to approve the board orders? Is there a second for the board orders? A second. It's got any questions other than scorpion suckers? There was removed two skunks, too. JSTOR, JSTOR subscription for $2,000. That's the academic database. Is that for the library? Presumably. And if so, is it possible for community members to use it? I don't know what our license says about use. OK. We can find out that. But we can't find out. OK, great. But substitute teachers could probably use it while they were working here. Or if you go to Kellogg, you can get access to it as well. Do you have the amount? I'm pretty sure Kellogg, Hubbard, has an access to it. They don't? No, no, I'm sorry, I was just going to do it. What's the total to release of these? I'm holding two. Which one am I reading? Both of them? Yeah. I think the top one has both. We should add them together sometimes. Just here. I'm going to hand it back to you. If it's two orders, you're going to need to add just two. $83,125.20. Hold on. Sorry. $125.20. And then $88,035.37. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Future agenda items, I got a whole list here for November. Board communication, front porch forum. Why don't we wait until after we have another one? That's a good idea. Talk about it, we're going to have a budget process. That's a great idea. Thank you very much. We can adjourn. It's quarter 10, I apologize. I tried. You stuck it out the whole time, but I shouldn't press it. So what do you guys need to do too?