 the October regular meeting of the Rochester Stockbridge Unified School Board District having a quorum I call this meeting to order. So the first thing we'll look at is adjustments to the agenda and setting some times for them. Jenny, we see a lot of you distributed the September minutes and the October first minutes. And I thought we had done all these minutes. The others are all approved because Christy didn't have the minutes when the agenda went out she kept it on there but those all the way through August is approved. Okay then I would adjust the agenda to remove items 4.1 from 4.5 from the consent agenda and add an item for 4.8 approve the minutes of something October first I don't have enough screens open to remember Jenny what's the date of those minutes you included um let's see that would be Thursday. Thursday October first correct yeah okay so we're gonna add a 4.8 approve the minutes Thursday October first um I think probably the whole consent agenda can five minutes oh and Ethan are you going to do your your usual role of keeping me on on on point do you mind sir I can do it if you like I don't know Ethan's not responding I'm out of practice with Google so I'm getting off this um yes actually if you could do it Amy tonight that'd be great sure I've got my phone right next to me and I'll do the time or what thank you consent agenda I think he said yep I've been in the consent agenda okay in the consent agenda for five minutes uh board comment unless anyone's got a lot they want to say I was thinking that would also be five minutes hey Carl yeah megan speaking um I just wanted to see if we could add to the agenda just a short discussion on um some stock bridge residents have been reaching out about hosting some kind of zoom or google meet to introduce the candidates running for the seat in November um let's talk about that in board comment unless there are comments then be 10 minutes okay um reports to the board Amy how long do you want I think we could all I mean the principals can correct me but I think all that could be done in 10 minutes same with uh business manager are you part of that 10 yeah I'm part of that 10 minutes Carl okay uh so let's make it be a total of 15 because we've got policies that people have their opinions on and by people I mean me um discussion items uh so how much time is that are we at now Amy you are at uh 10 20 30 minutes a half hour a half hour so um let's see if you just improve the plan all day report 7.2 7.3 and 7 I well I know that I would think we should probably spend at least five to 10 minutes talking about the board survey because that is awesome if you've not seen what Jenny did that's that there's some there's some nuggets of good information right there that we need to be talking about so I think that's five or 10 minutes I don't know how much the administration wants for 7.2 7.3 and 7.4 7.2 should take about three to five the academic report I think should take around five to 10 the budget should take 10 okay I would like us to uh have an executive session have the move the number 11 executive session around uh confidential attorney conversations uh although we could say confidential conversations around real estate I would like to put that ahead of the public conversation so that anything that uh rolls out of that and then we can we can report out and discuss in public and can we talk about in that whether we need to be an executive session yeah we can talk about it in an executive session and then we can come out and say of make our final decision about how we go forward because I I would highly recommend we not don't use executive session anymore for high school discussions I I I understand that but there's a I think there's some things we need to we we should be clarifying around that in executive we can come out and report on that I think I think you're absolutely right good thank I think the executive session should be more in the five to 10 minutes and the public conversations should be more in the 15 to 20 oh I think it should not be an executive session where we talk and talk and talk when we come out and give two sentences no but I think there's some things that we should probably go over before we get to that so we're going to have uh as 7.45 uh executive session around uh uh confidential uh communications around uh real estate and contracts the building conversation at seven at uh the executive session is five to 10 the building is 15 to 20 the uh super intended evaluation committee tool I mean that's not going to take long at all five minutes yeah five minutes okay and outdoor education and don't don't tell me that takes five minutes we we get we only get started at 10 to 15 um I give it 10 I think I've got a pretty clear vision of what I want to get done in that so okay um our uh 8.1 action items the continuous improvement plan I'm assuming you can take care of that with 7.2 yeah okay um new hires none and uh then we have public commented 10 and then we will take the executive session for a person we will we'll repurpose 11 into a second executive session for personnel matters great thank you and then uh we will come out take any other actions we may require and uh adjourn that work for all of us yes thank you Carl no worries um could you tell that I've been running a lot more a lot more google meets uh especially with high school kids where it's like agenda ideas organization focus um good so number five board comment uh the first thing I want to do is to formally welcome and wave wave uh there Keith Keith Spolecki uh this is his first regular meeting he is the uh interim replacement uh board member replacing uh uh Jane Janey um whose name what fine by my wife is like prompting me from offside um uh Keith and I Keith has been uh officially sworn in by the Stockbridge town clerk Keith and I had a uh had a fine conversation today he's looking forward to to being here as he put it like a fly on the wall and you know Keith thank you it's good to be here thank you Keith it's great to have you good to have you here okay Megan um what we were told you guys skip over four I'm sorry Carl yeah don't forget your first minute oh I did skip over we're running the board comment I was so organized I was so good for like three minutes uh we're gonna we're gonna circle right back we're gonna circle right back and I would entertain motion to approve uh uh the consent agenda do you want to do that as a slate or do people have individual comments about the two the two minutes from nine one and the ones that are minutes from ten one slate is fine they all are good that's three that we're approving it's a special meeting on the first the regular meeting on the first and then a special meeting on october first correct motion to approve uh those minutes do I hear a second second a motion has been made in second to approve the minutes as presented for two the october first or september first regular Tuesday september first special and uh uh thursday october first special uh is there any discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye all those opposed the consent agenda is the the consent agenda slate is approved by unanimous voice vote now circling back to the board comment I was just eager to welcome Keith that's what it was all right we're one minute in there you go circling back to uh to to to megan remember we asked about um we were trying to figure out if our booklet should include information for um uh like candidate bios or candidate position statements or get to know the candidate ideas and dina said that no it was an independent thing I think that the board should support that or and suggest that maybe if that was something orca could organize or or the herald what's that for the herald yeah or the herald exactly I just you I I got a fairly clear message from from from dina that we weren't supposed to we weren't supposed to be putting you know that information out as you know as the municipal body I think that I would certainly attend a forum like that and and I would you know participate as like an informed witness or whatever an expert witness if necessary but I don't I I think it's not the board's place to sponsor that megan uh jamie you have any thoughts on that no that's my that's my thought as well okay um I may um direct a few people that or have been vocal on stock bridge connections um to just inquire through email to both you carl and um you jamie as well about that yeah that would be great I you know I think that as the board share I have stayed I stay away I don't ever go to stock bridge connections actually because I don't think you know I I think that if I started engaging in that forum then I have to start engaging in front post forum and then I have to start what monitoring the mountain times message boards and so on I think that we you know absent of an official you know channel that I I try to stay away and tell people to email me and when someone says something and I know julie's told people and private message on stock bridge connections email carl at his school board address so I think yeah that is certainly appropriate to put that message out there and I think you know tag teaming me and jamie so that we can give the board response and the administration response is is is fine and when we do that we'll cc the board back so you all are in the loop as to what we're saying and we can all stay on on message I'm emailing martha slater or as we speak to suggest that she they the herald perhaps get on this yeah that's a really good idea okay I'll definitely do that carl um we also should also take roll call of everyone that's um listed if before we get too far wow man excellent I just wanted to remember yes thank you for for covering me that so um to participate I mean you are certainly well to listen to this meeting to participate in this meeting you need to be a a resident of stock bridge or Rochester and all we have our phone numbers and so to keep track of who's who might want the public comment we're going to need to ask you to unmute and identify yourself I'm going to go through and I'm going to identify you by your area code and the last two numbers of your phone call if you can just unmute say your name and whether you're a stock bridge or a Rochester resident that'd be great so 802 or 802 or 802 and kind of folks don't do that just so folks know what the open meeting was you only have to announce your names in this venue if you actually participate through public comment okay so we'd like to all that then then we'll take I'll take the board roll call the administration roll call and if people comment we'll have we'll make them say who they are that seems a lot less cumbersome Jamie thank you um so I'm Carl Grappi uh Amy I see you here Amy Welk Bonnie I'll go Ethan Bowen uh board member for Rochester Jenny Austin board member stock bridge Megan Payne Rochester Keith Spilecki stock bridge okay Wendy Stetson co-principal our son Bonnie Born Co-principal our son uh I did not say that I am uh I'm the board chair and from stock bridge but I am I am just a board member for all of us bring the love Amy that's um okay we also apparently we have Tara the business manager on the call Carl Grappi yes I am here okay and we have the uh our son or uh WRVSU uh IT jack of all trades yes Carl thank you okay we've now taken attendance um we've had do we have any other board comment yeah I'd like to um really compliment our administration on the job that they have done getting the school up and running and um you know of course I see the Rochester drop off and pick up and uh it is it is slick and it is smooth and it is efficient and I I just thank you for all the hard work you guys have done uh to get this up and running in such a wonderful wonderful way it really is incredible um and I also wanted to uh I saw that there was videos that were um posted I'm not sure where uh that one of our uh some of our teachers or somebody created about wearing masks and and it really was quite fun and inventive and really cute um so really they really put a smile on my face and I was very proud of our school for that so thank you amen well done thank you yeah amazing job you made video or a teacher made video teacher yeah the teacher a bunch of teachers got together and made some welcome back videos is there a way that I could see those I mean are they are they probably Facebook okay I because I I think that I I think that's awesome and I think bearing around what our what our teachers are doing what we can is important we can email have them emailed to you too Carl if that's easier than social media yeah that's easier than social media for your grandpa well and personally it's nice you know that's fine because that'll remind me to look at them as opposed to I'll forget to look at Facebook uh do we have any other board comment okay board reports Jamie you're first you have my report in hand um I'll add that we do have some exciting news that I'll let the principal share in regards to the grant from Efficiency Vermont so we're excited about that as we continue to work to improve our HVAC systems I'll also let folks know that we're in the thick of the budget season and you're going to see your first draft tonight I know it's going to look a bit different and I can provide some perspective to that and that you know what we're looking to get back from you guys in regards to feedback on the first draft of the student support budget that will continue to be brought forward as we move month to month next month you'll get a much more comprehensive picture because it'll be student support and the rest of your instructional staff that teach university students just to provide that context um and then also there was information that went out from me today um in regards to some changes to our school day we are extending the school day to three o'clock it's been going to three o'clock just from 130 to three was enrichment um that doesn't mean schools can't continue to have the 130 to three block look very similar to what it already was um there were certain schools throughout the su that we were having some staffing challenges from 130 to three I also emphasized to folks that if leaving at 130 is still their desire that they should meet with their principal and talk about an alternative pathway um that would allow for that to happen we can still continue to reinforce skills academic skills from 130 to three even if students weren't in the building um so I'm looking to at I think that there is still opportunities here within COVID uh increasing the course outdoor learning increasing experiential learning um and then also increasing how we actually look at the school day around alternative pathways um and so I'm looking to continue to emphasize that just because the school day goes to three doesn't mean it needs to go to three for everyone and it really didn't need to the last several years once act 77 took hold um and you know that that's one of our su goals is personalized learning and proficiency based learning and so I'm looking at how do we continue to um see opportunities in the face of a global pandemic um to maybe create some change quicker than we typically would have been able to as you know education sometimes does move a bit slow but uh I do feel like this is something that we need to we need to pick up on because we were a little bit behind the eight ball and in regards to proficiency based learning and personalized learning um and then I just got a compliment too and then I'll entertain any questions uh Lindy has been doing a terrific job um steering the virtual learning academy um you know many hands make light work but she's really been my point person um and uh she's doing a terrific job and um I was in both of your schools um over the past week they feel great uh I saw a really great poetry unit in sixth grade at Rochester yesterday morning and I got to see some of your students um share poetry and uh really talk about the why to the writing uh piece and uh the buildings feel awesome so you should be very proud I'll take any questions folks that have questions yes um I was wondering if uh this is sort of uh piggybacking on what I'm going to talk about in the uh outdoor learning we have a lot of teachers and possibly some administrators who have experience with outdoor learning uh outdoor teaching um um in the whole SU and as this is a goal in the whole SU could there be a guide to those teachers and what grades or what areas they're in that could go to other teachers who are looking for advice and ideas yeah that is something we've been talking about at the SU level um Ethan about you know we've got experts in literacy we're trying to build experts in math how do we build experts in outdoor education and so that you know we're creating these teacher leaders throughout the SU who are then leading our professional development exactly um and I think there's a lot of sustainability in that model there's also a lot of empowerment in that model so that is some of the work that we're looking to do as we navigate our professional development plan both as we move forward in the spring but for the next three to five years something that I've said to Marianne is you're going to see soon a well articulated professional development plan so you know exactly when pieces of the professional development are being provided throughout the SU over the next three to five years and so that that you you have a sense of who is expert at this point we've been identifying them yes um and you know you're right there are there's quite a few experts and that's one of the power you know the powerful things they think about having eight schools across the SU is we have a lot of staff and so we do have a lot of expertise when we look across there when we think about that collective genius and so we have pockets of folks that are really strong in this particular area I guess though the idea of the guide for me would be that an individual teacher could reach out to another individual teacher at the same grade level um at another school on their own and not necessarily have to wait for the in service on it or something like that that's why I would hope a guide might be put together that could be usable in that particular area you know absolutely right identifying who are those teacher leaders and and let the other teachers know yep I'd like to add to that um really quickly I think um just talking with your administrators they very well know probably in every building across the SU who those best teachers are to be part of maybe an outdoor education team that could really work across the entire SU to bring you know I think what every school wants to have is more outdoor education so I think a great place is to start with the administrators thanks Jamie you're doing a great job I also think uh to throw in my two cents that you know finding you know we did we did some work uh under previous superintendents where you know grants were found to take kind of tiger teams of of leaders out and get specialized education if we could if we could maybe get some grant funding or find some ways to send some of our already existing teacher leaders out to to a conference to uh you know to to get some specific training that they can bring back in the past at least it's found that you know training teacher leaders is is far more affordable for the SU and that having them pass their their knowledge out to their teams um it can be successful without the cost of saying we're sending every teacher to uh you know uh outdoor boot camp yeah I think we're all in agreement with the approach yep okay any other questions for Jamie okay uh Bonnie and Lindy tell us what you got to tell us so I think the addition into the principal's report um is that we heard back from efficiency Vermont I know we threw out some pretty big numbers about what it was going to cost to update the HVAC systems in both buildings and in Rochester all projects in that amount were fully funded with the grant so we'll be reimbursed so everything's covered and we're all up to code which is really exciting around that Bonnie do you want to explain your and Rochester Lindy you said all and yeah I did mean Stockbridge thank you so the uh we had two projects in Rochester one being the preschool classroom one being the gym uh the the gymnasium was the one that was funded um that's in the amount of $31,000 in change um the preschool one was not funded for a very simple fact that the uh uh the grant actually speaks and fine print to the projects have to be ones that can benefit the entire school and our preschool is just one classroom uh that was less expensive it's around $12,000 we are going to find funding to go forward with that because we do need to get fresh air into all parts of our building um the good news about the gym project and the projects in Stockbridge is that they have to be completed by December 29th to qualify for funding so they will be done pretty expeditiously pretty quickly um and we'll have uh we'll have those sections of our building uh upgraded so we were uh we were really happy to get that news and just so folks know the funding for the pre-k is I will go after other CARES related funds to cover that cost is the plan the only other thing I will say in the principles report a mistake on my fault if you see under the uh the second bullet under the first goal I left in the preschool in cutting and pasting this I should have taken that out because that was in the uh the September principles report um so that you were talking about the um the funding from Efficiency Vermont has the the other parts of updating our HVAC system been covered as well by by fund by okay thank you as far as getting the work done by December 29th do we I would imagine every every contractor is busy during Thanksgiving break and Christmas break do we have a plan in place for how we're going to coordinate getting that work done in those two buildings so it's it's it's it's done by then are we going to try to have all the kids spend one week in Rochester um while they're working in Stockbridge and Vicey Versey the next week or Stockbridge is already completed oh sweet and the work in Rochester is primarily outside on the gym roof Carl and we're not using the gym now so we don't believe that we'll have much of an impact we may very well have to move the preschool classroom into the gym for them to do the preschool but it's a little early yet we don't know quite for sure how we're going to make that handle the engineer who spec these projects um he's still very confident that he can meet this deadline um he had already made contacts with manufacturers etc to see about the availability of equipment and I spoke with him again uh this morning and he was continuing to follow up on that and should be back in touch very shortly he told me excellent excellent I just you know they say they can get the work done well we get the work done if you just be out of the school for the month of December I don't think it's going to have that kind of impact excellent excellent good good good I'm so glad to hear you're on top of that and I'm so glad we're getting that sweet sweet free money does anyone else have questions for the principles all right then that that means it's you Tara excellent thank you can you all hear me okay yes okay so I said my report earlier today so I'm sure you probably haven't had a lot of time to digest it so I'll go over it briefly for you um FY 19 audits are officially done for everybody in the supervisor union we have wrapped up fiscal year-end reconciliation for FY 20 and started FY 20 audits this week so like yesterday the majority of today I have spent my time with our auditors getting stuff prepared and with my team reviewing the additional information that's needed so that is well underway I shared in my report all of the reports that are due out of the business office in the month of October so that you all had some awareness of some of the items that and I'll try to continue to do that throughout the year so that you're aware of what's happening in the business world our FY 20 stat books have all been submitted so now the agency of education does their things with the data and then if they find any corrections or any questions then they come back to us and then we have to do edits so we can you sorry there hi Ethan just could you confirm what a stat book is please the stat books are what I have to report up to the agency of education for every one of our entities at the close of the fiscal year and it goes over all of the expenditures and revenues that we've received and particularly the biggest chunk of it is when we pay tuition or we receive tuition we have to identify that based on each supervisory union that we either pay or receive tuition for and then they match those numbers up and then that is how they determine the allowable versus the announced tuition rates that we can then you know bill back or have to credit back sending or receiving districts thank you you're welcome we sent in a revised FY 20 special education expenditure report when we were closing out FY 20 through the reconciliation process we found about 70 just short of $71,000 that we needed to include in that special education report so that's been resubmitted and waiting for approval from the agency of education and the school food authority world we started the verification process has to get started in October 1st which is where families get contacted to verify their income for their free and reduced application statuses we also have to start doing our in-person observations of all of our programs so that's the breakfast lunch and after-school snack programs if they're running we have to do those twice a year the site reviews as far as CARES funding is concerned we submitted our CRF application I made one small amendment to it and I'm hoping to get some further information on Friday when we have our meeting the business managers association has your meeting with the agency of education so I'm hoping for some update on timelines and how long it's going to take them to review and approve those efficiency Vermont Bonnie and Lindy shared that Rochester and Stockbridge have now been submitted so I did outline for you all what was approved for each of our entities within the supervisor union so that's in my report and that was a big project I mean the facilities and the administration and working with Charlie at efficiency Vermont and all of our suppliers and our vendors who are involved I mean this grant was done based on a proposal submission which allowed us to not have to go through the bid process because it was the state of an emergency so there's a lot of work that went into this and a lot of time so I'm very proud and congratulate all of our team for the great work they did to get us those funds thank you I just wanted to share just so you all are aware those who are at the executive board meeting last week also heard this when we have students that go to alternative programs they don't have the same deadline that public schools do as you recall we had to set your tuition rate back in January for what you were going to charge students who wanted to tuition into Rochester or Stockbridge so these alternative programs don't need to do that and they just had to file their tuition rates so we've got some pretty substantial increases primarily in special education which as you are aware you get an assessment out so there may when we're doing our budget cycle we have to look at all of that so we do believe with some of the other changes that we've made in special education that we're going to be good but I just wanted to bring that all to your attention grant updates we have committed our original our amendment one and amendment two for our grants and they have all been approved so that's great news and then plus the the discussion items to bring up the full board and executive board need to determine how we're going to handle announced versus allowable tuition they have to make a decision if we are going to do billbacks and credit backs when the time comes and if we do it for one district we have to do it for all districts so that's on there we need to nail down our process for tuition that we don't have confirmed residency verifications on so that's something that we'll be continuing to work through board stipends will be paid out at the end of this month I am going to be marketing all of our ancillary benefits which is life insurance long-term disability with Gallagher basket so we'll hopefully get some revised numbers and some rates on that and then the last item for discussion we had previously had a presentation from on core renewable energy on some solar net mirroring options for you all we have now also been approached by two additional solar vendors who are interested in providing a proposal for you so the executive board Monday night last Monday night authorized us to move forward with that and Ray is going to help me with that project because I am not up to speed on what all the differences are and what all of it means so Ray is going to help me keep that organized and keep us on track as we get those proposals in so that we can present that to all of you as options if you're interested in doing anything additional with them and then I sent you your September expenditure reports so if you're looking at that and you have any questions you can let me know but otherwise that's my report Tara do you expect that you will have the solar proposals in hand in time for budget cycle so we did be revenue we'd be locking in for the 21-22 year I don't know how fast that can go into effect because I know we can lock in on the agreements and this is where I'm not 100 up to speed Carl I know we can lock into the agreement with on core that yes we're going to buy into the project but I don't know when we actually start to realize the savings on the bill because they have to build the array still so I don't know how it will work with the other companies so that'll be something I'll have to say stay tuned for unless Ray has any input he can provide right off the bat no I think you said it right you know they solicit customers up front and then build the array and literally the day when it's done the credits will show up the next month that kind of thing okay so so then we would be prudent not to be building in any kind of revenue expectations into our 21-22 budget correct excellent thank you does anyone else have any questions uh for for Tara no Tara how's the new assistant budget or business manager is that thank you Ethan so yes I totally forgot my new associate business manager started last Wednesday so he has his name is Jason Rogers and he came from us to us from Ascolba Savings Bank the branch manager in Bethel so he's been with us now for four days he went out on Friday with um Jamie myself Don McMahon and Mary Ellen to meet with our administrators so he is part of this budget cycle process so he sat down and got to meet everybody and started to hear the conversations around how we're going to build the budgets so so far so good okay thank you thanks for reminding me you're welcome any other questions for Tara no uh just so you know Carl we are six minutes over um all in a minute time for this slot okay um we have three policies that we're supposed to be considering we're gonna take them in reverse order um so you know these Carl just so you know this was to get comments these are gonna come to the full board in October this was just I'm trying to get boards to give comments now so we can revise so you don't have to take any action on these these are not for action okay um the comments I'm very interested in Ethan's opinion around uh uh the policy F F-30 budgeting because it speaks to um the composition of the board booklet and that is Ethan's baby have you looked at that part Ethan um quickly this afternoon but not um not with the book in front of me sort of checklisting it okay how soon Jamie you are you going to be asking the full board to approve these next meeting they'll come forward in October yeah they came forward to the executive board in September and they were good with these three so if you're looking to have any type of revision please get those to Mary Ellen sooner rather than later those comments because she'll bring them to the policy committee in October and this would be the second time the SU board will have seen these so I was going to be looking to try to adopt them at that level in October okay thank you I will I will uh thank you Carl for the because I thought about that as I was looking at him like oh this is this is stuff I was looking at um um that's Ethan yeah yeah let me let me my opinion is his opinion I will download this right now and take a look at this the the the records retention policy is one of those lawyer policies it's really hard for the board to evaluate because basically what it says is you know that we're going to command all the employees to follow these laws about record retention um without really clarifying what those are so it would be nice to see the supporting document that says we're keeping you know these were you know these records for this you know the current law and I understand the referencing the law because laws change but you know having an understanding of what those those those those laws and policies are and how because we're basically saying employees do this and if you don't follow these laws you're in trouble so understanding how the you know how we're educating the employees around them what they are and what that what those procedures might look like I know as a board we don't decide procedures but you know understanding more beyond just the the policy that says we're following the law would be good for us Jamie um could we instruct our our lawyers to break down these um laws into something more usable or is that somebody in the business office do that I just I agree with Carl it's it's it's not very usable right now and if you're asking people to follow something you want to make it usable so Ray Ray and I can speak to this um and Ray's raised his hand so I'm going to let him take the lead okay so um these are updates of records retention schedule from the state that go back as far as the 80s it's not so much that the board is asking us to do something this is what this update is telling us to do and so the policy is the first page of a 10 page document the other nine pages are the actual record schedules I believe that's what Carl's asking about but we did not think that that should go in as part of the policy itself and you are correct oh I am unmuted you are correct sir that is uh that is uh always uh been been the biggest thing that I've when I've gone to to the vsba trainings is yeah you know boards do not do procedure they do policy but just you know seeing seeing the uh you know seeing how the procedure is going to be implemented it can often be helpful for for understanding if the the the administration the su has the appropriate tools to do what needs to to do what needs to happen because sometimes it's oh yeah I want to follow all these rules and then you know we find out that we missed the part where some of the paras couldn't have they changed the rule where they had to be over 50 percent of special ed eligible kids in a particular power instruction for that pair of qualified for bed reimbursement and not 50 50 so that 4 4 kid should have been 4 5 and now we lose money so I mean I think it's just more of the board wanting to I think see that that the administration is digesting the laws and put together something that you know our people can can can work with that's all oh yep I can forward anyone who's interested or everyone the full model from the state which includes those okay if you can send it to me at least because I'm supposed to be our policy guy sure I I need something else to help me get to sleep at night um the last policy and this is the one that I have the most problems with is you know policy governance um has been a thing that's gone forward and back in Vermont a lot over the course of years and this to be really you don't mention ends you don't use you don't use all the policy governance gar jargon in the policy but it really does seem to be a heavy move towards moving towards a policy governance model um can you speak to to to where that's coming from Jamie you know I I actually would say that this is not a policy governance model this is actually just stating what's actually in statute right now okay and so everything that this speaks to is actually what's provided to the superintendent is in regards to authority the estate statue I mean that changed a few years ago they kept moving more and more responsibility into the su office oh yeah well known um and so this was an attempt to try to clarify especially as we bring on new board members in regards to onboarding of you know example being in statute that really the the employee that works directly for the board is the superintendent and under statute all other employees of the su actually work for the superintendent and so there's just some things that I was looking for this policy to better communicate for folks I also think across the su at times there's a misunderstanding that you know I work for an individual board member potentially and not at the you know purview of the entire board yeah so that's what this was an attempt to do is to better clarify some of that okay okay I will I will try to to to read through it again and look at it in that light and if I have any comments I'll send them to you director the other thing that I liked about it is it does talk about um superintendent evaluation which is part of what the executive board brought up um so that tied in nicely in regards to ensuring that we have a tool um that we're using on a regular basis to provide feedback okay all right thank you um does anyone else have any more questions about those policies all right we're going to move into the discussion items the board survey Jenny this is awesome yeah I've been scanning it and it's amazing I right I just sent you an email with a pdf I was wondering if it was possible if you could bring it up and we can just scan through it real quickly yeah you did a really really great job with with presenting it it's really wonderful um this something that we I mean it's this seems like a um you know that we really need to dive into to it and have no discussion about it um you know I'd almost like to call a special meeting at another time for us to to get together and and really you know hash it out I would say one thing I haven't um kind of compiled is for all of the open-ended comments so I was going to um you know I'm kind of figuring in the back of my head we'll kind of have you know also for the public as well kind of the the summary slides and then um kind of a list of the open-ended but also kind of summarizing um some of the open-ended I think the the easiest open-ended one would be about um I forget the exact wording but what sort of resources um that the community is looking for in terms of you know a lot of the answers are pretty common you know arts stuff like that and those are pretty easy to summarize um so I guess it's up on the screen and I know there's some people on the phone so we can't um they won't be able to see it but we're um this is kind of a draft so there might be um some things that we change and also the the open-ended so I'll just do um maybe a very brief summary of each page here um so overall there is 104 responses 44 from Stockbridge 16 from Rochester um one point I just wanted just a bookkeeping point if you notice if you hover over Jenny's presentation you see a thing that looks like a tack if you click that tack that will make the presentation swell to fill your screen middle-aged man eyes like me that you might I'm sorry to interrupt go ahead Jenny so I think actually that's pretty portion and I believe there are populations within the two towns as well um so I'm not going to go into detail I know that I just sent this out to the board right so we can and as Amy mentioned you know we may be able to get into this further especially when we have the open-ended comments kind of summarized so this first page is kind of the generic questions um as you can see you know most of the most of the respondents do not currently have um an elementary school age child for example um can you go to the next the next slide right I'm not sure I don't think that I can um so really one of the big questions um what's your preferred campus configuration um so as you can see a is the highest which would be Rochester and Stockbridge retaining separate school campuses and another thing to point out um I think on every question I know there was interest to some of our meetings at keeping um you know knowing what the answers were for the for each town so you'll see that the blue um the blue columns are the Rochester responses for all of these slides and then the orange is Stockbridge so you won't see exactly what the number is for Stockbridge but you can you know big picture you know get an idea of what the patterns are and then kind of at the bottom of the screen there um in terms of retaining separate elementary school campuses instead of a pretty big question I think that we were looking at I've also shown there's a couple questions that that I've shown as combined Rochester and Stockbridge and so the the graphic on the right is showing um so the question was if Rochester and Stockbridge should retain separate elementary school campuses but this shows um slightly over 50 percent so 53 percent either agreed or strongly agreed so really the intent of the pie chart is you know whether you agree or you strongly agree you know it's kind of a gray area so this kind of shows more succinctly um as a combined district where people's people's heads are you want to scroll down right um so I don't think we're going to all of these details since we only have a few minutes to go over this but um so the question on the left um so should both attend Rochester and Stockbridge students should both attend elementary school at the Rochester campus and the Stockbridge campus should be eliminated so you can um you know overall the one and all these numbers where there's one five one would be strongly disagreeing five strongly agree um so there's a general that from the previous slide this also kind of carries up here that um kind of agreeing with in general the idea of the separate campuses is if you want to scroll down we won't go through all of them but I'll try and get to some of the highlights um one that's kind of interesting that the Rochester and Stockbridge should split grades out their campuses um you can get pretty much a wide variety of of answers there from both towns on that one and then um you know we're kind of moving forward with the we are moving forward the elementary building but um we kind of had in the you know in our in our minds there you know getting people's ideas of what they do think about elementary versus high school so this on the right there confirms that more people agree with keeping the elementary camp elementary building if they had to what I think for the Rochester facility so this is what is your preference for usage of the Rochester campus so really the um the predominant for both towns is that the are such a pursuit the option of the town taking over the high school building which is good since that's kind of you know where we're I think everyone's head is in this sort of scenario but we had this question out there to kind of see what people in the community are thinking this is really an incredible job Jenny it's very very good job thank you yeah I definitely think we we should uh plan a meeting within within a short time to really dig into this and talk about it in depth because you this is really really great job this is more kind of building in high school um so the one on the left are should are said should keep sense quo of the Rochester building so you can kind of see again there's um overall the numbers the total numbers are kind of between the one three and five but you can also see the breakdown of Rochester versus Stockbridge and kind of where each town where each town feels here and then the one about the option about whether folks agree or disagree about the town pursuing the high school is a pretty um pretty high agree and strongly agree there on that one and then this is just more kind of details about um if the town didn't take over you know if there's some other some other option for um taking over the building and kind of what what opinions are the one on the left is pretty strong disagree there the town taking over the elementary school building you know it's not something that we're looking at now but still something that we're engaging town town input on and it's kind of more you know talking about the buildings and what what what folks would support in terms of other options so really it looks like the towns um you're varying levels of degree for each town in terms of who they want to see take over the building um total numbers are pretty much either either the town or supervised reunion or some other entity it seems like you know people people are in support of and then so this is sort of taking a look at what the high school building should be used for whether or not they should be used for educational uses and special events are the main two one so i don't have the the actual numbers overall the support of using for educational uses and for special effects um it's definitely higher on from the Rochester side um and then that the Stockbridge is kind of the highest would be C used for special events and then the other um you know there's kind of some varying opinions on that one from the Stockbridge side so we'll get too much into these these were just kind of questions about um where where folks would be looking at sending their their youngsters if if there wasn't an elementary school in your town. I find it very interesting that um and then I think it speaks to perhaps the current climate in our communities that no Stockbridgeian picked Rochester and no Rochester no Rothcherry I don't know no Rochester I didn't pick Stockbridge. I think so I think there was one or two now that you mentioned it I'll have to look at that one maybe it didn't quite maybe the bar was low on there that it didn't show up but yeah that's a good point and so this is I think another thing that I think both towns that we all know that kind of supportive of an elementary school in in our own town so this was to say if if our said was to dissolve whether I guess how important an elementary school would be in your town and there's a pretty strong support from both from both towns on on that one here. Jenny really good job I guess my um my concern is that there's so few parents that actually answered this from both Rochester and Stockbridge is yeah yeah or even have any ties to you know students that have gone there I wonder if we've missed a pretty pertinent demographic as well. Yeah I didn't break it down there were some parents that did reply but like you said there's not a big number so um so I'm not sure how how actual hypothetical or how real that would be I guess would be the best way to explain it. Yeah but thank you I mean really a great job Jenny. We could come up with a time to to meet again to really go over this more in depth and to just kind of sit around the table and hash it out a little bit. I think that sounds good. Yeah definitely. I think speaking to your point Megan I think one of the things that struck me I agreed I thought that you know I'm always like we put together these samples these surveys we work so hard on them we never get the you know the response that we hope to get but what I really think what I think is important is that I think you really distilled it down we came with a good set of questions you know these I believe these are you know the questions that kind of really summarize the conversation which building which place how are they being used so on and so forth so I think that there's you know that that in itself is is good work because it can clarify questions that we can ask we can ask people in town meetings or forums. Absolutely I mean I I think the questions were really on point for what what our communities are asking and wondering about. But it also illustrates the differences between the two communities and how difficult it is for the board to make this come together and work. You have two very very diverse opinions about how the district should proceed. Now there's even a pretty big split you don't have to go through it in detail but in terms of supporting the merger combined between Rochester and Stockbridge 38 agree or strongly agree in terms of supporting the merger 26 is neutral and 36 percent as this ring or strongly disagreeing so there's you know there's definitely a lot of various opinions out there on on all of this. And I agree and I was going to finish up by saying that's why this the board needs to have a clear vision of how to bring that together to convince the undecided to go one way or the other. And I think you have to take this opportunity to listen to what the community is saying. So do we want to come up with a meeting time right now like next week to to get to talk about this survey some more. You guys are welcome to meet next week I'm totally booked in meetings already all next week. I open up the following. We wouldn't be sitting down and deciding anything it's just really going through it and talking it over with each other you know and really taking a look at it maybe we should just look at it. Do you want to have do you want to set a date I think you're right I think and I hear Keith do I think we can't let this just slip by and and not get to it. October 15th is next Thursday. Yes anybody else I can make that. I am pretty sure I'm going to have to double check. 630 board survey. Yes. Yeah. I'm good with that. Yeah we wouldn't have any action really just for discussion really just round table discussion like okay great thank you so much for your work Jenny. I'll put together the open ended I may not kind of plump them into groups but I'll at least put them all together and you guys can take a look at them. Thank you. Thank you very much Jenny. One thing I do want to toss into the conversation is let's keep the meeting on the 15th just around this or around related issues it can be it can be really easy to get a special meeting and then just start. Yeah. So okay. Only just only discussing no action just yeah the topic. You know thinking about thinking about community engagement how to engage community how to how to get them to do to talk to us when they don't want to stab us through the heart. Any other comments on the board survey. We can use improvement plan. So the principals can talk to you more specifically about the overarching goals of the continuous improvement plan but I did review the continuous improvement plans and those have been sent to Montpelier for the agency of education to be approved and of course there's grant funding tied to this. The overarching goals aligned to the SU goals we talked to you about that that's the way that we would look to do our work around our multi tiered system of supports to ensure we have really strong universal instruction that meets 80 to 85 percent of our students needs and then a proactive preventative model of intervention early intervention and we're going to talk to you about the student support budget and you'll see some of the changes that we're putting in place there tied to this idea of early intervention and so that is a big part of the continuous improvement plan as well as continued focus and literacy and the literacy work that we have been doing. Did I miss anything principals? No I don't think you're off. I guess that means no. No I think that covers it. Good. So if those two overarching goals sound good to you based on the goals that you see in our reports every every month if you guys could just move to approve those two overarching goals and that really those notes if the agency asked for them then we'll have them in the in the board minutes I've never seen them ask for that before but it is a formality and technicality that we got to do. What exactly was the first goal? It's to keep create a comprehensive multi tiered system of supports and I try to provide some better context to folks about what that means and it's really about responding to intervention but really strengthening your universal instruction to best meet all students needs about 80 to 85 percent when we're meeting 80 85 percent of our students needs and they're performing at grade level then we know our universal instructions working. You're going to get a data report by the principals here in a few minutes that shows you that we're you know I feel pretty good about I think we're seeing some gains in literacy but I'm very disappointed right now where we're performing in mathematics and so part of the student support budget too is going to talk to you about how we're trying to address that because we've got about 75 percent of our students not performing at grade level right now in mathematics. So in terms of the notes the first goal is in terms of the multi tier system of support. Is the second goal just early intervention? The second goal is focused on the literacy work that you guys have started and been investing in. So this is this is something that we approve we're required to approve every year and and Jamie is what you might you know this this is something that it often seems like the state just takes from us and puts it in a file and only reviews too wide too wide. I'm sorry go ahead. I think he's just not muted. No I guess he's not frozen. So yes this is the this is this is important I mean in the fact that it guides how we you know MTSS and the was it positive what's the the the the tied support program we use I can't remember the name of where you get the hands. Yes these are programs that are really important to us we're not just we're not just rubber stamping rubber stamping a a social emotional learning plan but you know I would entertain a motion to approve the the annual continuous improvement plan goals. So we're having a second second. Any further discussion? All those in favor of approving the approving the continuous improvement plan signified by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any nays? The continuous improvement plan is accepted by the board with unanimous voice vote. The fall academic data report that is the principles I think Jamie spoiled that for you guys. First of all thank you for supporting the continuous improvement plan goal. So what you'll see in our data is a comparison it's important to understand it's both buildings together because separately we're too small it would be identifiable at some grade levels if you pulled it out even further. So as you can see our reading scores stayed pretty close to the same from last fall to this fall. So that speaks volumes of how much we've put into our instruction and makes you hopeful that we're going to have a full year of in-person instruction to be able to continue implementing all of those strategies at the universal level. What is BAS stand for? Yeah it's the benchmark achievement system it's used with F and P so it's a lot of comprehension and understanding does that help? It's another test it's another way that we are okay. And it's in person like you and I would read together Amy you would read to me and that there would be questions I'd be checking for your fluency accuracy things like that. Okay versus the star 360 is given on the computer. Okay so I just want to add real quick Lindy I think it's important for the context for the board that those scores look similar but statewide we're seeing large amounts of regression occurring due to COVID. I know that the scores don't look better from last fall but what we didn't see is the amount of regression that one could expect based on what other folks are seeing across the country and in the state due to the fact that you know we were in a maintenance of learning mode last spring and not on continuous growth academically so my my expectation would be that you would have seen a pretty significant bump if it wasn't for the regression that occurred. Right I think the other trend we sort of tracked with in math is that math for some whatever reason and we're starting to understand it a little better. Math proficiency dropped more significantly than reading proficiency and that's that's happened in our schools also you can you can see there's a pretty significant drop there in our grades one through six. And you're saying this if kind of follows the trend of other other schools across the state or the nation. The math says I think we did a little better in the literacy piece to be frank I was thinking we were going to see I was thinking we were going to see a bigger drop. Right okay I think the hopeful news here Lindy and I've talked about this a number of times I think the hopeful news is that we also expect to see a pretty hopefully a pretty significant rebound because I think a lot of the drop had to do with sort of lack of robust activities everybody did the best they could do everybody worked really hard and did a great job but as everyone knows we went to distance learning with very little prep time and I think what our teachers did was was was really outstanding as well as our families and our youngsters so we're hoping now that we're back in in-person learning for many of our kiddos that will reverse this trend pretty quickly. When is the next assessment? Yep thank you. January is the next testing window. Oh sorry I didn't hear the question. It's important to know that Bonnie and I have both set data team meetings with our teachers so we're looking at it every other week to see student improvement and proof of student learning in these proficiencies not waiting and hoping until January that there's been an improvement. Wonderful that's incredible. The other thing the other thing we want to say full disclosure even if we got back to the levels where we were in March we wouldn't necessarily be ecstatic about it because as as two schools we had a lot of work to do before we left in March and I think I speak for both of us when I say neither one of us are going to be content until every single one of our kiddos are strong readers and mathematicians and you know thinkers and and things like that so that's first to say that we have a lot of work to do. Lindy's done a tremendous job with our materials in and the FNP program and making sure that we have those aligned and in place as Jamie said I think we have further to go in mathematics than we do in literacy and that's certainly what we're what we're taking on now. Does anyone have any questions? I know there's not too many that are doing virtual learning kind of tracking where they are sure not right there it's kind of a teacher how they're doing I guess don't make sure that they're keeping up with the rest of them. So that's actually our virtual academy faculty meeting tomorrow Jenny is we're working on that to make sure that that's ensured for our virtual kiddos just as it is for in-person too so I'm going over that with all the staff so they're clear and we have clear benchmarks and then are monitoring them just as well to make sure that our virtual instruction is as efficient as our in-person instruction has been. Right so the virtual learners did not take the star 360 pass then right? No they did it just doesn't come with the same fidelity it's not in this data but because they took it in a different testing window but it's just taking it at home is a little different than taking it at school for a wide array of reasons but it does give us a good jumping off point to make sure. Do you separate out the scores? I'm sorry two questions I didn't hear both sorry. So those numbers are just for the in-school student? Correct yes. Do you break out the scores for the two at home versus in-school in-person? Yes it is broken out because at home are virtual learners they in a class they're from eight different schools so it's broken out so each building can see how their virtual learners are doing but I also have access to all that data as well as their teachers too so we can use that. But the data you're looking at Keith just for so we're clear the data you're looking at is for in-person kiddos. Right but will we be able to see both in the future? I would think so yeah we should have the tech kinks worked out poor Ray he's my number one person right now but we should have the technological kinks worked out of the assessment happening at home that we'll be able to have it done in the same window next time around. Okay Ray go ahead I thought you wanted to add something. Just lots of hope an affirmation. Does anyone else have any other questions on the academic data report? Okay let's move into the the budget piece the student support page of the budget. So we sent today the one page draft and you'll know on the bottom this was the first draft and it's for discussion purposes only. This would be for your student services so you can see in the left column that that's your principal's administrator's administrative assistance as well intervention guidance. Just a second Tara. Ray do you have this document so you could post it so folks can. I don't believe I do. I'll read forward it. So the guidance team the nurse your regular education paraphernalia and then substitutes and within each of those function codes this is salaries benefits supplies using fees all the normal stuff that you would see in our long form this is just a quick snapshot of what our projections are based on the staffing needs that we talked to Bonnie and Mindy about on Friday. Principal do you want to highlight and provide some context about the why of some of the changes and talk about what we're excited about within these changes and then I can hit on any other additional programming around the why and then board I would love to entertain any questions or comments you may have. I think one of the things that we're most excited about is the opportunity to have math intervention. It's a it's an area that we need to provide a pretty significant additional support in and so by other parts of the budget around a bit and looking to sort of kind of right size things in our schools we're able to bring on it looks like funding for a full-time math interventionist and I think that's a that's a missing piece right now in our in our program. Yeah and just to echo that it also expands that we currently don't have a full-time interventionist at Stockbridge it's someone who's a 0.9 position so we would expand this to full-time and it would be covering literacy and math and to echo Bonnie it just really fills in that math gap and support that we're looking for. I noticed that it says the SU will include a 1.0 math interventionist so that would be at the SU level for all schools then. So no that's for your schools Amy and part of that is just around how we have to use our grant funds due to free and reduced lunch rates and so they will actually be employed at the SU level and then sent out to you and that has to do with our ability to spend those funds and how we have to go about that and so it will be your they'll work with you every day but they'd be employed at the SU level due to right now free and reduced lunch rate numbers and how we're able to use those monies. So that means that we are paying our share of the you know our SU share of that of that salary for the I mean the title funds we're not paying anything for so the math interventionist is completely grant funded but the mental health counselor we we'd be paying probably some portion of that because there's some sort of group grant. Now that that the mental health counselor or somebody that your principal has asked for we're going to try to have some type of approach systematically across the SU that we will again use some title funds to collaborate with either either Claire Martin Center or the health hub to create a team of therapists that we can then deploy out into the schools we may use some MAC funds for that too so grant funds will support that work to make certain that our students have therapeutic interventions occurring at the building level it's part of why we restructured at the SU and so it's I think it's important for us to talk about the student support at the district level and so that you know all right we're down as you know we eliminated five positions at the SU for next year the board approved we'd added the associate business manager but part of why we did that was because it freed up quite a bit of grant funding that now we can look to deploy differently and part of that strategic plan is that we deploy it out in the buildings in front of students my sense was that we were starting to get a little top heavy here at the SU office and so the idea is that we're looking to get more staffing out into the buildings so overall you know based on the fact that you are going we're going to be trying to provide some additional grant funds to give you some more additional student support both in math and at the therapeutic lens through a mental health counselor we are looking at about a 2.66 increase around you know 19,307 so one of the things I'd look for you guys to do is to give us a sense so yeah that sounded okay at this point guys because we will bring this part of the budget back next month in addition to the rest of your instructional staff so you keep getting it pieces by chunks so you're not trying to have all this at once and so I'd like to get a sense from folks whether or not at this point this is making sense to them or if folks are feeling like you guys gotta you gotta go sharpen your pencils or how about x is the decrease in the FTE is that because some of it's going over into the SU numbers well there is there was one position um that we might look to reduce um at this time I don't want to talk about it because I'm a big believer that we need to as management give some folks a heads up before it comes out public and so the principals um and I would look to have a conversation with them by November and then we could tell you what that position is in November I like so looking at this you go ahead go you go first Amy it comes before I was just clarifying with the because the intervention is you know the line that went up um and I thought it was for this math interventionist but then you were saying that that's covered by title funds so um that that line item went up because of other additional um um interventionists being put in there Jared do you want to talk about that yes there are multiple individuals included on the interventionist line okay so you see a larger increase in that because they may potentially have different tiers in their health insurance program okay so all of that the this is salaries and benefits that are included in that as well so where some of your other function codes may not have been the same quantity of staff members who may have also been on different health plans or may have been an opt out so there's different factors within that function code that impact that one more than some of the others so there it's not a change in staff it is just it's this it's where we're at it's just how the raises and all the everything and we're not yeah we're not i'm not prepared this budget cycle to talk to folks about exactly what what that is um because i i don't think that that does this a services management to talk about yeah like all our figures are and then with the subs is that oh it's last amy amy just got dropped um yeah i'd love to talk about the subs real quick this is something yeah i'd love to it's something that we're looking to deploy across the su and so it's the idea one um schools i i think uh traditionally we've not done a bad job about it but just under budget in the sub area uh historically and um so we're looking at making certain that we budget appropriately to cover subs and also we're looking to bring someone into your school community um and i think that the schools have been enjoying it we've had floater subs um that have serviced our students daily um due to coven we wanted folks to be trained up in the procedures to be here daily in the event that someone was out and so what this budget includes is is that we bring on one person that becomes part of the rochester stock bridge school community in the sub role um and is an everyday sub they'd show up every day um to substitute um and then we would utilize them across the two campuses in the event that someone was out so that it just does lengthen your bench a bit um so there are some more extra monies put in the sub line to make certain we have the ability to do that have we've been able to hire those subs yet jamie we have yeah we do have covid subs okay across every district of the su and if that if that sub is not needed because knock on wood um all our staff was able to be in they are being deployed to to supplement hopefully they're doing something more than just being an additional recess monitor they're they're they're absolutely right i certainly like the idea that you know we were seeing and no insult to to to bonnie and and lindy and in the principal's admin you know that we're pivoting to to to put money into um intervention and into subs and pulling it from administration um i think that's you know that's pretty positive um regular regular ed para is going down that is that because third students are are no longer with us and and it's just it's it's a it's a cost savings based on our on our uh uh current student population or is that a cost savings because we're we we can be lean and mean it's it stays the same fte wise i i can't explain the difference so i'm gonna look at tara yeah i was just i was i was looking at what's going on we saved a thousand dollars that just seems such a weird number maybe someone got divorced or something your factor carl of what was budgeted in f y 20 versus what's your actual in 21 okay um last question um you're showing the increase of 2.66 two and two-thirds percent um is that the benchmark that you're shooting for across the budget you're developing is there i mean obviously we're in public session but that number is hard to take without any context um actually so the way we're budgeting is zero zero budget so we built the this budget based on what we thought our needs were we didn't start with a percentage and say how do we get there okay zero based budgeting so that happened to be where we ended up when we sat down we didn't say we got to get a three percent we didn't say we got to get a 2.5 every one of these budgets throughout the su we said what do we need how do we how do we strengthen programming and analyze each position um around personnel and so that's where we came out and that's why i would look for you guys then to say all right guys you're at 2.66 percent now this is how we think based on the current climate that you need to be looking at as we go well you know you know cost of living is 1.6 so this is a point over that um however average school budgets increase three percent per year so you're under that what i i i don't think we can really speak to or i don't feel comfortable as a board speaking to you know a percentage cap or a floor but what i what i would like to see is when you give us the next piece to whatever that is that you you you you chunk whatever you know if you said it was regular instruction you jump that into the regular instruction cost then you also show us what what now our overall budget cost is so that we can see you know not just what this piece where you say this is zero budget and you say zero budget we really need to spend 2.66 more because the money we really need versus the so here's the zero budget cost on the teachers and that now puts our total cost here so that's exactly what we'll do see because i very much like the idea of showing us the budget in wedges of the pie you know here's the administration here's the teachers here's operating costs you know so and so forth here's su costs um but i know that at least for my mind the biggest thing with our budget and percentage increases is where we're where we're sending our seven through twelve hours because we have no choice over that and what all y'all are spending at the su what what are you guys spending down by exit three and how much is that going to cost us because we pay we pay we pay the su and we pay the the the the sending tuitions before we pay this 2.66 so while 2.66 sounds pretty okay if i'm going to find out that my my um sending tuitions are going up 11 percent 2.66 is going to have to go to under you know it's going to have to go negative see what i'm saying yep no that's good yeah you the pie will continue to get built right and we'll keep it broken down like this so you'll see you'll see it'll show student support reminder 2.66 next piece 1.5 the total of those two together equates this bottom line in this percentage i think that's what you're you're saying right curl oh yeah yeah and i mean i understand that we don't know yet what woodstock and what sharing academy and what all the you know what all the other schools are going to charge our district for our kiddos you know we don't know yet we haven't passed an su budget so we don't know yet what we've got uh you know what we've got to pay you guys first um but you know keeping keeping track of that because the context of the 2.66 doesn't really matter until we know some of those you know unmovable does anyone else other comments on this all right then we are now at the point if let me get it and make sure i'm not jumping again yep we are now at the point where we're going to go into the quick executive session uh to discuss real estate transactions confidential real estate transactions we would invite in invite in tara to that conversation and we would invite in our attorney david roo otherwise it need to be just board members and so i'll wait till ray turns off the recording and i'll get sugared out oh yes administration too are we going to hear a motion in a second i would entertain a motion to go into executive session is another meeting link yeah how are we doing this we have 19 people on the call so it makes more sense for sol to get on another yeah you do that ray yep you can send us a meeting link while i entertain uh entertain a motion get it seconded in past so moved put the work do i hear a second second okay emotions were made in seconded to go into executive session to discuss a confidential aspects of a real estate transaction including the board our administration our attorney and executive session got oh thank you for turning on record ray thank you everybody for sticking around our very very promise short record session or executive session was far longer than we expected and we apologize for that um there was a statement that uh we're coming out with and if i can find it i think jenny's ready to read it yeah i have it if you don't have a car please go ahead and read it uh so the rochester starboard working with its consultants including lawyers wastewater engineers and surveyors to define the scope and size of the high school property that it will convey that it will propose to convey to the town for one dollar in the near future so it's not to adversely affect the elementary school or the delivery of educational services once that plan is ready it will be shared with the rochester select board and the public thank you jenny um it's important to also to to to also note that in you know in the efforts of being transparent in the conversation that happened in executive session um one of the goals that was reiterated was that the board very much would like to have this problem resolved and not in the 21-22 budget um ethan are there any other comments you might want to add well i have to say i'm not exactly sure one of our discussions was whether we needed to keep these discussions in executive session or not and i would say there was no consensus among the board about how we proceeded with that whether we make this public or make this private um uh we followed ultimately the advice of our lawyer and our kept the discussions private for now um uh and i think it's um keith what is there something you would say that was not included in that statement i think your state i would like to hear your what you said at the end well keith you're muted sorry about that um all i was saying is that i i think we need to be fully transparent with the community and i think that the discussions we have regarding the um what we do with the high school building should be had in the in the public forum i agree with ethan um and that's what i'd like to see the board do moving forward i would add to that that one of the instructions we gave to our you know super interior and our superintendent and our and our attorney in terms of um the the the consultants and such that were mentioned in the in the statement were that the goal you still what the board said its goal was we announced after the budget was voted down we announced our reduced budget and we said that we were working you know we were not having the building used for any educational purposes uh during this year um that we're still following forward on trying to keep that process moving forward um in terms of building use in terms of disposal of building obviously complicated real estate and transactions like selling a high school are hard and obviously a lot of that needs to happen um in you know as our attorney reminded me like 20 million times carl you can't talk about that um you know some of those details need to be kept uh uh private but i think it's very very important i think ethan and and megan and amy and jenny and and keith will all agree that the board's overall goal is to not have excess building in rochester on the ballot if you can do it we are really trying really hard to do it so it's not necessarily next year i can't promise that and my attorney is probably rolling his eyes that i even mentioned so that might be an alternative because he never wants me to say anything until we can guarantee it but that is what we are working towards is divesting that building and you know um consolidating all the educational services we need as our administration you know advises us to do they're superintendent they're superintendent advises us to do into the one building we understand that goal and that's what our community wants and we saw that in that survey we looked at um you know stay tuned and please be patient is that a fair statement and please feel for the other board members or administration people tell me how i've got it wrong i think we lost you there for a minute i will be able to move on i yeah no i i was i was actually i'd actually muted in and and shut myself off like i need more chili um and you guys could tell me how it was taken no i think we're good i mean i would suggest that we it is it is becoming late in the evening and we still have 15 about 25 more minutes left on the agenda yes another one i would like to hear about the superintendent about evaluation tool we can move to the next agenda item easily like i said i just thought that when we came out of the out of exactly the question there might be more so i had i had actually was going to get more water so i'd start i'd started walking away when when you guys had uh a call to me again so let's move to uh um so carl there's i'm missing half of what carl's saying is it my connection or okay i i've turned off my camera in case it's mine does that improve it improve me me and i'll ask yes carl i don't yeah no i was just i thought that we we had we had reached a good point um in the building conversation and we were ready to move on to uh the superintendent evaluation piece 7.6 if you have something more to say about buildings or about that process please continue i'm not trying to hush you um yeah i think um megan we had talked earlier in regards to um having a liaison between um the school board and and the select board and and um uh and we had discussed that um you know maybe i or uh eson would would be maybe that point person i think Amy you said you would do it i think that sure yeah i i think so okay i think you lost with that Amy i that's fine i just um so so i just wanted to um get that out there statement that we have a liaison um that you are volunteering i'm hope i'm i'm not volunteering you but i think that's what you said earlier when we talked that you would be the liaison yeah between uh the the the entities the school board the select board and any third party entity yeah no i go ahead carl can we i i would like to because you're going to be having formal conversations with the board i would like the board to entertain a motion to to appoint Amy wilt as the liaison between the school board and uh the select board so moved do i hear a second second motion is made in second and all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed okay so thank you so much for volunteering to do that really important important role of being the communication channel between the two groups you know um i don't think i'm speaking out of turn when i say that one of the things we talked about in executive session is about you know the timeliness of moving this this piece forward so please if there's select board or envision Rochester people on on this this call as well reach out to Amy talk about what y'all need to talk about and then bring it back to the board because again one of the things the board had committed to was trying to divest itself of one of the two Rochester buildings by the end of the school year um all right the next point is the um 7.6 superintendent evaluation tool this is very quick i i stepped up there's to be a committee put together of board members and i believe faculty as well jamey to evaluate to come up with a process for evaluating the work of the superintendent um i immediately in the meeting of the executive board stepped up to say i would do it and then i thought and then others suggested i take it back to my board and see if there were others who were interested in being on this committee um they will be creating a whole criteria for evaluating jamey's work and and we'll meet regularly to do so um i'm serious simply to ask you if anybody else is interested in being on that committee or if you have any input i would do it if if you want me what's that i would do that with you ethan if you want me okay good okay then that may be all we need to do um cool then oh and then my computer's my other computer screen is when bright blank tell me that ethan you are on about outdoor education so i want to make this efficient as i can um first start through the question i understood it that three hours of outside time per day was not a recommendation but it was actually a health standard for um one of the ways we could go back to school and i'm hearing um incidental comments back and forth about people not being not classes not being outside three hours a day um computers don't want to take the computers outside oh it's too cold and i just want to emphasize that i think this is this is a health issue a corona issue that these classes happen outside now the second part of this is and this is why i asked you earlier jamey about outdoor education it's not just some fanciful thing that's further down the line one of the ways you can keep kids students and teachers engaged outside later because a lot of people are asking me how long are these tents gonna last um and i'm like they can last a long time if you know how to teach these kids outside so they're not cold and that's how to engage them in the outside so they're not just sitting there trying to type when it's you know 37 degrees outside um so i i'm seeing a sort of lack of cohesion in the approach of how you're using these tents and how we're approaching outside education so i'd like to have the administration talk about especially going forward to a full school day are we in is three hours still the standard is it going up um i just not hearing enough information about that and i would like to know more so it was a recommendation from the task force and certainly it's research based that we would try to do three hours i will tell you that my high school students are not outside at all in most cases so it's definitely not a standard that was set um by the department of health or agency of education we're certainly we're trying to use the outside um to make certain folks felt comfortable and to build up stamina um and to ensure that folks felt safe to come back i personally believe that our students are demonstrating that they can engage really well outside if it's done correctly and i think there's pockets where we're doing it better in some places than others and i think there's others that just jumped in at a deeper level around that and so i'll let the principals talk about what they've been doing but i just wanted that to give you a perspective across the su around the outside versus the inside and i don't know who wants to jump in first like i know example lindy i think you have some classes that are outside almost all day and some that are not outside it almost all day i was actually going to say i have kids requesting to spend more time in their classroom than the teachers would like to they really enjoy the outdoor space and are very grateful for that um we're expanding to some activities in the woods we have tapped into our local resources in our building we have two teachers who came to us from nature's outdoor classroom so they performed uh in progress at the beginning of the school year and have been working with other people to make sure that's happening uh i would say the kids are staying really active we're definitely hitting three hour mark in stock bridge um i want to say the exception was probably last friday uh because it was a little chillier and the kids were moving in and out i would say they just transitioned more and that was one that one way they got more exercise as well which was good for them um as we go to the full day we are keeping some of the enrichment model and using some of that extra time for more intervention blocks for kiddos to make sure kids are getting some extra academic support currently that's happening outdoors so that'll continue to happen outdoors as long as possible um i think it's important to emphasize i really appreciate that outdoor education i also need to ensure that our instruction is as explicit as possible for kiddos so they're making gains as well and we're trying to find the right balance i just uh i can't give an hour timeline for the full day i gotta work through that with the staff in the building lindy is there ways that we can support you to encourage more outdoor education because you know my kiddos what we don't have is delivery pizza what we do have in our neighborhoods is freaking woods no i you know everybody's been great the community's been great uh i mean i'll bring it back to the staff to make sure there's not something i'm missing but i really feel strongly if i kid you not when i go to have lunch with kids they're begging to come inside because they've been outside all morning um okay so can we set out can you know as we as we because that's going to keep going even higher as it starts to get to like frosty temperatures are there warming hut or ideas that we're thinking about to try to brainstorming as classes at least at staff bridge on what that means we've started to add layers to our like did you send your kid with all the different layers as part of our health screener form things like that so they're brainstorming as classes on what will make them more successful learners as the temperatures start to change so the 1918 flu in verandah did you know that what families did was they they took rocks to their wood stoves and they warmed them and families brought warmed rocks to the school to put into the huts where the kids were so they could learn outside and keep themselves warm with these warmed rocks and i'm not saying we need a warm rock um you know thing or what i what i really were successful when we think outside the box so how can you tell us because i have i i've heard from you know a half dozen families in the last three days you know you got those white hunts at Stockwood Central what you're gonna do what you can't be out of the text because they're not warm and i i'd like us you know knowing and thinking about what we can do and if there's grants or there's ways that we can support you as a board i think it's really really because what i don't hear from the parents is you're not letting my kid inside and pissed off at you no no i don't understand that what i'm saying is we're outside so much right now and we're getting there i we've had a couple cool days it's on the radar teachers need some time to figure out what's working and what they need so i don't have those answers right now and you want to be outside as much as possible that's the honest answer yeah and then there's if there's anything y'all think about that the board could do please reach out to us we'll have a special meeting we'll pass that motion okay because it seems like the feeling that i at least have gotten and i'm on the stock bridge side where everyone's crabby but also people that are crabby don't talk to me because they're crabby um but you know it's it's working really well y'all are doing a great job i suppose i buried the lead right there but you know it's a big thanks to you guys for doing all the all the great work you're doing at the school with the kids but i really i want to if we can be thinking about what we need ahead of time so we can be rolling it out so it seems natural and appropriate it's not like well we're inside now but you know next month right i want us to be anything you can do to be on top of it and please understand that you do not need to wait for a monthly board meeting excellent some of you needed we can we can feed give that to you and go back to our our pitiful lives thank you time check sorry bonnie do you have anything to add you know i thought they just put a time check on me yes and i was saying you knew i'd go over there all right so we are at public comment i think if there is any public that would like to comment i will go through a list of uh people that are still on on the on the call you have to identify yourself and then be a uh stock bridge or Rochester um resident i'm going to start i'm going to say your area code in the last two two digits digits of your phone number so 802 oh two and then i will move on and now i've been 802 48 star six time you and as ray pointed out in star six to a mute so i'll go back to 802 oh two star six to a mute okay 802 48 it go hey it's ten pratt hey timmy how are you good you i just want yeah good so i just want to make sure that you and ethan understand that it's cold out there for those kids and if they're saying they want to go in they're already mingling from 130 until after three o'clock so it's not a big deal if the kids want to go in and stay warm if they want to go out they can but to force them to do it isn't doing any educational good so that's my spiel okay there are strategies in education that have kids active and not just sitting outside and i think that's the big difference we're looking at is how you can do sixth grade work level work being active outside and and how you do it you don't have them sitting still for two legs so their fingers get cold and this is what i'm really wanting people to step up to is the idea of rethinking how you're teaching outsides because it's a safety issue they are safer outside than they are inside especially before this hvac work gets done right bonnie can you can you speak to tim about how you're handling those concerns in your classrooms well you're muted yeah i would echo much of what lindy said we're working to get there i can't say that kids are out for a full three hours every single day i can say that most days most classes come close to that we are trying to figure out new ways of instructing we don't have a faculty that is highly trained in outdoor education we're getting up to speed on some aspects of that it is a bit of a balance this week for the first time and i think it was because there was a rainy day last week and it was you know a little bit less beautiful than it has been this fall i took a couple of parent calls regarding they did not want their children out when it was raining when it was chilly when it was cold so um i guess i guess the best thing to say is that we're working at this on several fronts i'm certainly aware it is safer when we can be outside um and we're working hard to do that but there are also instructional needs that we uh haven't yet figured out how to do as well outside as we do inside especially some of the more uh needs for more explicit direct instruction but it is a it is a goal we're continually working toward it um the Rochester campus faculty is also talking Thursday on as the day expands uh what type of outdoor activities and outdoor instruction can we build in to the extra time that we're going to have and Lindsey do you have any comments on that how's that working at Stockbridge i mean i would say the same to echo the same we have someone who comes like i said a classroom teacher came to us from nature's outdoor classroom she's showing us some active ways to keep kids engaged that isn't just sitting at a desk typing but we've got to continue to build on it okay one thing i would say i think it's an you know an important distinction to make is um some of our teachers are are very good at taking what we do inside outside which is not necessarily outdoor education they're working to understand that better but uh they haven't had a lot of time to really do that their heart certainly in the right place and their desire is there um but we have a ways to go to say that we have a um uh extremely robust outdoor education program are we moving to the towards that yeah we are we are moving towards that excellent thank you okay um so 802 your number ends in 48 do you have any comment thank you 802 your number ends in 97 do you any comment uh thank you robert meager meager i'm not sure it's not your last yes it's robert mayor i do have a comment uh i hate to talk catacys you catacys you on the open meeting law but i'd like to state a couple thing i take a couple of observations okay for one you know this is not you are allowed under the open meeting law um to do certain things in executive session but it's your choice okay you're um and i understand that your your attorney is going to give you a very conservative view of what should be public and what is not and so what his advice is probably very legal but it's your responsibility to balance that against the public's need to know i mean and to operate in the spirit of the open meeting law you know if you if if you look from you know at 3131 it says after making a specific finding that premature general public knowledge would be clearly placed the public body or a person involved at a substantial disadvantage and then 1f is confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to the body well okay you know that's the question is is is would you be on in a sub placed in a substantial disadvantage and i don't mean politically i mean of it substantially i don't think they they intended that being a political disadvantage that correct i i agree with you okay the other thing is is that you know you're when you enter an executive session there's two questions you should ask one is it legal and two is it necessary okay that's so uh just to conclude it's my own personal opinion that there's nothing you know this is supposed to be we i i understand that you're you want to get rid of the building i i i thought that it was to ought to that you intended it to go to the to be sold to the Rochester town if possible that certainly is not clear at this point but at any rate it's my personal view that all of these discussions from this point on should be in the public even if it's politically inconvenient and you that i mean you really should in general i mean one you're the agenda item of the number 11 of executives session confidential attorney client communication you really should be more specific than that when you go in it doesn't serve you or the right we actually went yeah it doesn't you are the the public to make that so general because people it people have a lot of suspicion of what you're you're covering and the other question is is are you know are you meeting the criteria of of um you know three one three one that it's that it's uh you are at a substantial disadvantage is that and are you discussing more than just the attorney client communication you know that's and i don't think you're doing doing a good job at this and and therefore creating a public relations problem okay um i would say that i personally think and you know i guess i'm the guy that gets to personally think that because i'm the chair that it was appropriate um we came out of executive session and and and made you know a statement about um our intentions um discussing how we want to enforce those intentions it's a very complicated issue if you think about it because there's you know there there there's a building that has a value that is more than a dollar that building's value um or that building gets to be conveyed to the select board of Rochester for a dollar um how that you know that's one of those kind of educational municipal sort of agreements that are made because that's how all the um merger agreements worked um obviously that building is worth more than a dollar um understanding how we're going to discuss that how we're going to work with that and what we're going to do about that and when it's going to perhaps transition from the school budget to a private budget or to a town budget or to whoever assumes the responsibility of that building i'm i'm sure you can agree that there's confidential aspects of that discussion yes carl i hate to interject i just i think the simple way is is that the board did ask itself those two questions and at that time decided yes that this was appropriate for executive session by the majority of the board jamey summed that up much better than i was doing okay but i as as a member of the public um i especially when we're trying to enter into a collaborative uh venture with the town and with with third party entities um i do not believe and i'm conveying my opinion to you all based on many many years on school boards that this is not that that this is not the best way to enter into a collaboration okay are you a rochester or a stock bridge voter sir i am a rochester okay and that i'm i'm i'm that needs to be entered into the record because it's important that we know that people who are having conversations with are allowed to have the conversation um so as far as there are this is a very difficult question to answer because i have to think about what my board is asking me to say and not say and what um you know my lawyer or the board's lawyer has asked me to say and not say i think at this time you just robert i think that we definitely understand what you're saying no and uh well i think it's important to say that our goal is to do the best thing to benefit the students of of the the the art you know rochester and stock bridge we have an asset that is a building it is an asset to the town of rochester it could be an asset to a third party uh uh purchaser who might want to start a nursing home or a factory or you know a collaborative working space or whatever they might want to do you know it's an asset we need to consider as a board and we're doing this as a board so when i'm saying this this is not carl giving a stock bridge opinion or carl giving a carl opinion this is carl giving a united opinion of the board which is that it is our job for our taxpayers and for our students to exploit that asset as best we can what that means is that not only do we need to use that to to educate our children as best we can we have to consider whether we want to divest ourselves of that and do that as best we can our feeling at this point has been we've made this clear in many many many board meetings is that we don't feel we need two buildings there is no reason for us to have two buildings at that rochester campus our question has been which building is the best building and we've now seem to be pretty much sugared on and i am only speaking for what my observation of our conversation is because we have not made any formal declaration of this our best feeling of what that building is is that elementary school building so we are pushing very hard to work with the rochester select board to see if they want to assume that building for a dollar and use it as a community as an asset because dude if you could buy that buy buy that our auditorium for a buck i might want to do that um we're trying to push this process along as well because it's been it's been a number of budget cycles and we don't want to put that building on to another budget cycle if we possibly can there are things in that negotiation that need to be kept private for example how do we subdivide that property and dry that property line because in our in our mind as a school board it's most important that we do that in a way that benefits the students let me move on to some other callers i think it is getting late and i think we just need to be efficient in our answers if we can thank you very much for your time i'm sorry i i i i i i apparently dove too deep thank you go ahead um we are now at um 80297 or an 80202 sorry it's 97 carl and i think she unmuted now so she should be good to go great can you hear me hello we can hear you okay so this is charity colton from stockbridge hi charity sort of is in alignment with something robert just said and that's the simplicity of the statements that the board came back with and i just would like to ask for clarification on my understanding of the original article of agreement information which was that a town could purchase the building in this particular type of situation for the one dollar plus debt incurred in coordination with that building prior to or during the merger is that no longer the case no that is exactly the case i was just i was just saying the simple one dollar to make it to to make it easier to understand yes so my my request would be that it's again similar to what robert just said i'm from stockbridge so i'm reiterating this a similar aspect to a Rochester resident that in some cases it is feeling very much like we are being given extremely simplistic information that makes it very much feel that we are being bamboozled or withheld from information that is pertinent to the situation i realize that there are aspects that for legal reasons need to be done in executive session i'm not disagreeing with that but i think it would behoove the board greatly to be more distinctive with the information they provide so that you do not continue to get town residents from both sides that feel like we are being kept in the dark at the interest of not being told something we don't want to hear i think everyone can agree we'd rather see honesty and transparency at this point and not continued evasion on the side of the board and when you make an extremely simplistic 20 word statement that is exactly what you're doing is evading the true concept that's all i have to say yeah thank you charity um this is this is difficult to speak to and i will probably upset our attorney and and and and a little bit upset our board but the general like you know we are trying to move towards a resolution of the situation it's hard to discuss details because the details aren't known yet we don't know where the property line is going to be drawn we don't know where these things are going to happen what we're trying to push towards and what we said in our meeting last month and before is that we would prefer and i use the word prefer as like a particular word because i don't want to promise i don't want to say we're not going to have it but we would prefer to have this situation sorted for the 21-22 budget that is our goal that is what something we are working towards we have attorneys because you got to have attorneys we have our administration involved in what resources they you know they want and how that property line would work and where the playground is going to be and all that stuff in terms of dividing the property lines those sorts of conversations are still going forward what the board is saying or what the board is working towards is the other side of that conversation because we can decide where the where the where the the the high school and the school board and the and the elementary school line split and who's septic is what but what we need to decide is who's taking that other piece of that puzzle and that is what we are working on aggressively with the rochester stock of rochester stock bridge the rochester's select board we are trying very hard to solve this problem and we are trying very hard to be you know transparent about it and it is 10 o'clock at night and i have been talking about this for three and a half hours and that is not your problem that is mine but the point here is that either you're going to believe that we're trying to solve this or you're not and i'm trying to solve this are you Carl that's that's good that's a good answer thank you Ethan i guess i'm a little offended um i guess i'm offended by being asked if i'm trying to solve this okay i guess i guess first of all i totally over spoke and if late i am tired i should not be on this call as a personal person because this call is supposed to be about me being the school board chair yes so i apologize for miss speaking because i let my personal opinions come out and many of you have gotten mad at me because i haven't done that but this time i did so i think i'm going to leave this meeting um i would entertain a motion to adjourn i have a second um i could also take over and finish we do have a an executive session if Carl if you need to step down we have a quorum and i could take over for you and finish out the meeting um would that be acceptable to you or would you rather adjourn uh can you give me like two minutes to catch my breath hope um are there any more calls waiting to happen yeah star 48 needs to unmute okay thank you i don't think she's had a chance to talk yet yeah i don't have a good thing so if somebody could feed me the numbers i'd be happy to take over star 48 would you please unmute star six and give us your comment if you would thank you are you available and then lindy do we have another number six to unmute star six to unmute if you're there sure probably might be just worth asking is anyone hasn't had any extra any other public any other comments and let's just we'll get to that i'm getting for you getting lindy i'm just hearing it's joanne on star 48 and she's trying to unmute but it's not letting her so i don't know what how to help that's what i'm trying to say she can hear us but i can't get her unmuted yeah don't know what to do this is sorry joanne um sometimes technology decides for us i think rey is coming to the rescue it looks good well no i don't know about that uh joanne you could drop out and come right back probably a good try it will take a minute of course yep is there another call lindy do you see another call my list is just not um you know i think star o2 was called i don't know if that person had anyone personally let's let's wait for joanne if if she can hear us if she can't get back in sometimes calling with a different phone if she has her cell phone help she's she's gonna send me her question so i'll read it if you're okay with that good so joanne if you're okay you can send me that question i'll read it for you i'm seeing dots just to give a little play by please coming thank you lindy you're welcome i appreciate it yeah for my i'm when i'm on these meetings with my i have to use my ipad and i have i can't see the shot i can't find it on my screen yet i can't on that computer um joanne's question was in regard to the liaison for the communicating with this um rochester select board she wants to know if there can also be a stock bridge liaison so there's representatives from both towns communicating with the select board uh with this the stock bridge select board no sorry with the rochester select board so like amy's representing part of that conversation is there also a stock bridge person that could be there am i saying that right joanne this will be liaison yeah i want to clarify it's it's the liaison is to transfer information back and forth it is not to make any dealings or to to promise anything or to discuss anything really more than just being able to uh bring the information back and forth so that you know the the the school board is position is we're at this stage and then to talk with the um select board and then tell us you know having a liaison with the select board of well this is where we are with it so we're all on the same page we're able to roll this giant stone forward together i would add um that the way that the the the agreement is written is that um this is not you know this is this is a first right of refusal this means that the rochester um you know when the school board decides they want that it wants to divest itself of a building the rochester select board has a first right of refusal to give them a dollar and take it um right i think she's just saying um she's wanting equal representation yes thank you she feels like it's equal and uh it would have to be uh uh keith for the next month or so until after the election um or jenny or you who would do it and i mean i don't know if that what if that if that gets the image of fairness across that join's looking for we could investigate that how about we leave it no it's not it would not it would not be with us jen you know the the first right of refusal solely to the rochester select board no carl carl that's not the question that's not what the question was i'm sorry i think you missed the first part of the question was in addition to Amy being a liaison with the rochester select board to the rochester select board with our school board could there also be a stock bridge school board member that's part of the liaison team so that's a two person team that would i would encourage all all people to come yeah no i think i think certainly that would that that would be helpful but ultimately that's ultimately that's up to the rochester select board no we don't we don't have we as a board have no legal right or anything to say about how rochester select board makes that decision as david would tell us and hopefully he's not still here billios but as david would tell us the way this works is this the the the r-sud school board says we have deemed this building unnecessary carl i don't think that's the question it's not the question join is trust us that we're working on the question here friends along yeah so what i hear is yeah so even saying something or i would like to join we hear your point we understand that you're looking for equal representation so that stock bridge can feel that they're well represented and we will investigate that is that that's good enough we will and i'll i'll personally ask the other three members we won't take the action tonight because it's late can you hear me now oh there she she got another phone i got on yeah i appreciate that i would like to also ask if we could have these meetings in person again i know the other boards are um and because it really it's very much a disconnect with us just sitting here and um i think we lose something if we can't we can't participate yep we'll investigate that i don't know what the criteria is jamie is there some i think there's less i think there's less libation drank also when we're not at our home i'm just saying there you go at the point yeah do you have any guidelines on this or is it up to us completely it's totally up to you as a board i've encouraged all the the boards since august to consider having at least hybrid meetings and we are having hybrid meetings and other districts within the su okay what i mean by that is that the public can call in virtually or decide to attend and the board shows up either virtually or in person based on how how they feel comfort wise and there's and there's certain parameters i'm sure of how we set up the meeting in terms of where we're spaced out checks we've used gymnasiums and other schools uh and then we just make certain those are disinfected yeah for that the morning when we we were all in person for support staff union negotiations i was like at one room with the one end of the room and i actually had to get up and like stick my face in the camera if i wanted to be seen and everyone else was at the other end of the room when we were massed and there were six million sandwiches can we take this this meeting is out of control and i think that you guys need to figure something out to have better meaning because this is ridiculous okay jaymey had a question on the hybrid meeting would it count to have a quorum as part of the board was on the phone or would they have to totally fine just like just like you are now there well to be to be technical because i'm pedantic like that there has to be one person in a public space where people can attend correct so that we we could have we could have me sitting in in stock with central school and and it wouldn't be the same remember i could be in the library and there could be public allowed to come into the multi-purpose room and that would count for a public meeting can we can we take this under advisement and let's talk about it for our next meeting that we might make the next meeting thank you so much i think that's all our comments for now i'm going to make a motion that we do not go into executive session tonight i'm the one who wanted it and i think it's too late and it's not the time to deal with this issue so i would entertain carl if you don't mind entertain a motion to adjourn are you still planning to meet on your behalf lindy what's your question sorry sorry are we still planning to meet the first tuesday of the month in november is election day and that might be good point thank you should we move it to the the second tuesday let's see that i think that'd be good because we'd have results of the jimmy and i would not be available for the second tuesday we have two other board meetings that night um all right let's let's just a second i'm pulling on my calendar and do a thursday of that week um um megan the fest is that what you just said that's thursday is what i'm offering thursday the fest works for me thursday is this hang on i think are you making other me a meeting work on first day of the fest i will message you guys tomorrow if i can that's okay i assume that keith will be um the representative from stockbridge until uh whoever's duly elected would be sworn in so that he would still be a representative on that thursday but that is that a fair assessment yeah okay i can't make the fest sorry megan i cannot make the fifth i can do the fourth i can't do the fifth wednesday the fourth how about we do this by email and not tonight i'm happy to coordinate this team thank you jimmy thank you carl will you entertain a motion to adjourn please i don't know i want to make us all wait around for a while no thank you i would entertain a motion to adjourn so moved nothing the motion has been made and said that we are done so we are done no next thing we do know because election day so we're gonna we'll be to be determined exactly thank you