 532, thanks everybody for coming. Agenda revisions, so before I open it up, I've got a few revisions to make to the agenda. And then I'll ask for other revisions and then I want to spend a minute or two actually reviewing the agenda and how much time we might be likely to take or set aside for different things. So first we wanted to add a discussion item 2.5. On a possible letter to VSBA. And connected to that we want to add an action item 3.7 to authorize a letter to VSBA urging action regarding future planning associates. We also need to add discussion item 2.6 about basically the Act 46 meeting that we're having on Wednesday, just to talk out if there's a specific way we structure that conversation. And then I just want to note that we may need one or two executive sessions. I'm not sure if it's gonna come up with respect to the letter to VSBA, but it's possible, I suppose, that there could be some kind of negotiation aspect to that or a great agreement. Yeah, I mean, we're two probably too vague. I think we can do the rest of it in open session. All right, yeah. And then for 2.4, the superintendent contact, contract at least, we'll need an executive session. Are there any other revisions to the agenda? Changes or additional time? So I have no more even since we just talked for the past two hours. Okay. That's why when you said to me, how's it going on like a spend a day? Sorry to be that disorganized folks. I need to talk to you about, we had talked about the last meeting the hiring of the consultant so we'll get to do a salary structure and then the amount of bargaining agreements. Okay. I need some advice of this group because by moving this meeting to now, our timeline's a little off and how we might award that. Sure. So I can talk to you about all that. That we might need an executive session because we might be talking about costs of contracts because we got all the bids today that we're planning to have a week and a half before we actually get the award. Okay. So we'll add 2.7 to our discussion agenda. Consultant for contract analysis, something like that. Okay. In terms of time, I was trying to game this out. It looked like a deceptively simple agenda. It's not one. So I thought maybe five minutes for the consent agenda, 15 minutes. I was gonna suggest that we table when we get there the special education and the hiring process again because Chris is not here and it was a particular issue. He wanted to speak to 15 minutes for 2.2, 15 for 2.3, 30 for 2.4, 15 each for 2.5 and 2.6, 15 for action items and 15 for the superintendent's report. That's two hours. So we'll have to carve out some time in there for the, for 2.7. We'll manage it, yeah. Okay. If there are no other revisions to the agenda and is there any public comments or correspondence? Doesn't look like we have any guests, but no, okay. Lori, are you, I assume you're here for the financial report. Are there other issues too that you wanted to speak to or that we can? I guess we'll... In the superintendent's report we'll probably talk about the finance. We'll put that in there. Okay. Yeah. Are you comfortable staying or do you want us to? Whatever you need to do. What's he doing first? Yeah, we can... You look like you're, the head's coming back to you. She won't say it, but I will. She is playing with some, there's some out there. Yeah. Okay. Let's try to move up the financial report and then something in the superintendent's report. Yeah, there's something in the superintendent's report. Okay. Any executive committee comments? Is there a motion to approve the minutes of May 30th? I'll move to approve the executive committee minutes of 5.30 and 10. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of approving the minutes of May 30th, we say aye. Aye. Opposed, dissentions? Okay. Without objection, I would move that we table 2.1 the special education hiring process until our next meeting. Okay, so let's skip down to 4.3 than the financial report, which is on page 15. So this report is not your final report from here, but it's your first report for the month of June. All the other boards have received your report last week. When I went through and updated it, there are still student information pieces that will be coming in for the next two weeks. You still have kids coming in, going at the end of the school year, believe it or not. So the financial system will be updated then, but for this year, that money is a pass through in revenue and an expense. So the net effect to this budget is zero. What I have updated for the month of June, you will see under revenue changes for June, we received reimbursements for some shared positions that we have throughout the supervisor union of $10,257. And you'll see that same amount in expense below the line. We have utility savings as all schools did this year of $1,664, which is right below it under the expense. And the conversation you'll have later will regard to job coaching to reserve the carryover from this year. It's $41,451 would be the amount that you would approve reserving for next year. You'll see that down in a box toward the bottom after the dashed lines. And what that is is we budgeted 80,000 and this is the part of that that we had not spent this year that we were asking permission tonight to reserve for future plans for job coaching. The line above that is another reservation that we would ask that you make tonight with regard to case management. We receive money for managing students who are state placed. And this money is money that we're receiving this year that we'll fund a position next year to do the case management. So we're asking you to reserve the cash that we have on hand for this year for a position for next year to do the case management. This is the 19,000? This is the 45,543. That's a lot of cash. Yeah, it's down by the job coaching reservation. Gotcha. And at this time, I mean our fund balance is looking pretty close to on track as last month. And I know depending on what you do with the contract, the bill said he wants to discuss later with regard to job classifications and wages close to how we think we're gonna end the year. There will be some swings for the HRA to cover some of our out of pocket costs that I'll come through in the next report. But it should be dollar for dollar. So again, that effective on balance should be zero. Any questions on that page or do you need to switch? Can I just highlight something there, Gloria? If you look at the total expect, the total year, the total current year operations, we're about four, tell me if I'm wrong here, about 114,000 below the budget right now. And that's based on those two reservations we're asking you to make, which are like 80,000, 70,000. So that's included in there. So what's the, what is the difference on that? Well, so I'm saying the difference between what our budget is and what we spend. No, what I mean is, you know, what is, what, is 14. I mean, was that because of, I mean, what, why are you? All the adjustments that you see of above and savings and increased revenues and all that gives us 114,000 less than the budget. No, we have, so you didn't have anything that was below in the projection. And how much of that 114,000 was based on, say, projections, last two projections that, these are all the other items. I think what he's saying is 27,000 of that would have been the surplus after funding of the public changes. We, you know, we had taken money out for the auditor that was beyond and we had reserved money for our Act 46 study committee. So 27 plus, if you're saying, what's the real operating benefit? It would be 27 plus about 14. So, you know, 41,000. Good news. On the next side is our Office Equipment Technology Fund. And so the highlights I'd like to make there are that there's a box that has 132,779. That would be our beginning balance projection for office equipment and technology for future servers, et cetera. And we have a five year capital plan or actually I think it goes rather than that. So it's anticipated we'll need that in coming years. You'll see we've got 100,000 reserved from this year's budget for the software and that would bring the sub total up to 232 if you add those numbers together. Our building fund, if you keep going down, has 78,719 and our fiscal agent fee, which is pretty much serving community connections has a balance of about $5,500, which looks like within another year we'll have to figure out how we would provide support to community connections when this fund gets to pretty good. Are we running it down regularly without? This has been a planned use of fund balance that we received from community connections from many years ago. I see. It did have been, because they don't have enough revenue and user fees to cover fiscal operations. Okay. And can I ask for the software change and I haven't been able to track the legislation. I don't know, did that actually? It's in the budget. It's in the budget, okay. That's what we're gonna talk about in a little more. That's what I was gonna go to talk about is that it's been, it's not controversial. It's gonna, if, or when the budget passes, they'll probably most likely be in there. Okay. It's one of the most controversial things that we've seen ever. We want to go to the same fiscal. So it's likely to happen. It's controversial outside the legislature, but in the legislation we're gonna go. Can you keep up on the financial report? Any other questions on the financial report? Comments? Thanks, Lori. Okay, thank you. And then, do you want me to take over the software part? Yeah, let's do that. So the superintendent's report is on page nine. We're gonna speak to part of that. Yeah, I was gonna speak to the start and I'll have already had more details that she's been heard of the financial software transition in the state. And you'll see on page 11, on a random, that's March 30th, they came out. At that point, March 30th is the morning, you can help me if I remember this incorrectly, but the state has selected software as a choice whether to go in. Somewhere around the end of March, beginning of April timeline. Senate, I'm not sure. I don't know if it was that. I can't remember right now if it was the House Ed. It was Senate Ed chair, Senator, Philip Baruch, or the Senate pro term. I never say this. Pro term? Pro term, thank you. Whether, Tim Ash, if he had put in that they want everyone to be on the same fiscal software, it's not well liked by the field because 80% of the field is in a different software that's already been paid for. So they're gonna make everyone transition to this piece of software. We, as you know, we're putting aside to go into, to purchase, to go into bidding, do an RFP, do a bidding, process for a new piece of fiscal software. But we still see uses, and you'll hear later on as we talk about other things, that money, we're not seeing the support that needs to be there to put that software in place right now. So, Laura, I probably took some of your thunder. No, that's fine. But Laura's been, she was part of the committee that started selecting fiscal software and started looking at the learning of the state and managed to transition to other things. Maybe you'd give some more details there, but I've missed. When the statement after bid, they had four vendors. A bid, one was disqualified, and we reviewed the other three components. One of the three was the vendor who has 84% of the schools right now. And the other vendor, I think I just said, was disqualified, called Focus. So, Tyler and PowerSchool were the two left. PowerSchool currently has no schools in Vermont on their system. This is their first time implementing the software in Vermont, as well as on a system-wide basis. They have a couple schools in New England, and the committee has been reaching out to some of those schools. There's a couple in New Hampshire to find out how did it go. So, the schedule you see on page 12. A couple schools are in round one. Some of them have withdrawn from that because they're merging and decided to stay with their current software. But I think there's less than four going up. And when they say they're going live October 1, they're actually only using the software for their budget for the following year. Okay, live January 1st is a couple more schools. And I don't know of anyone going up on round three at this time. But again, they don't have to tell me, they tell the agency. So, basically how it happens is a letter gets sent to the agency, you get to go on a list, and they will say that they've reserved some money for every SU. So, there is some money in our name. I think it's only like $35,000, which isn't a lot. If we were going up by November 30th, it's supposedly the last date for round four. And I've asked them if they would consider kicking that hand down the road a little further because it's kind of a tight window. To say you're going live on November 30th and then go live on July 1, there's a lot more behind the scenes than what people have realized. And so, I think as they've implemented round one for that group, they're gonna learn more. They've had quite a few variations in schools that are jumping on. So, they have some, like Barry, who's going in round one as far as I know unless they will draw. But they are still a supervisory union with four entities, and they're expecting to be merging down the road. So, how the software would then take care of that problem remains to be seen, but they said that they could somehow come up with a way so that it's not so much work for the staff. We implemented, we were given a uniform chart of accounts by the agency of Ed in January, and I implemented the bulk of that this spring already. So, we're starting to work toward implementation no matter what the software is. We're working toward getting our books up and running with what the state's asking us to do. Because if you can do some prep ahead, merging is not, I mean, changing software is not as complicated. We're also gonna be making more changes next fiscal year. The state just changed a number of the things they had given us for that uniform chart of accounts. I think some of it's to meet the new software. I think they've gone from 32 characters, maybe even as many as 36 in each number. So, I'm still figuring that out. They are giving deadline extensions to anyone who is merging under Act 46. So, even though it says here, go live July one, they're giving other people extensions in the law if they've approved going forward with Act 46 for merging. As Bill said, the state is budgeting, and I think it's only like 35,000 an SU to pay for this, that money. Outside the software cost. No, that's all they're budgeting for our share of power school's total bid. So, that includes the cost of the software itself, which is presumably includes licensing and installation or something like that. It's a cloud-based system. So, you don't have to pay as much for licensing because you're just pretty much paying an annual fee. Sure. Is that like a per user fee or something? It's actually kind of optimistic. So, I don't want to get off on a negative tongue here. But the software purchase outright was going to be over 100,000 if any other vendor and this vendor seemed to go in low and I let them know that. Yeah, yeah. So, we'll see. I think the difference is this software has more web-based training, and less user-based training. Either way, you do have to pay for conversion. So, there is time that people will need to be doing their jobs and to be converting at the same time. So, there would be additional staff needed regardless of whether we'd be paying for software or not. I think Bill already mentioned the budget hasn't passed yet at the state and the system hasn't been tested, tried and true. So, we will know more, I think, within the next six months on how this is going at the state level. And we'll keep you updated. The summary I would give is that more and I are very confident that we're going to need more personal time because there wasn't anything in there. So, we had that in our original $300,000 budget that we had for our own implementation. We've been signed some of that money assigned. We also, I would say that we also probably should be thinking about using some of that for extra training. The question is, will they have extra training because this is a pretty small financial package compared to the other competitors who are much larger firms? And PowerSchool is a big piece, but PowerSchool Financial is a very small piece of software. So, anyone that's used to hearing there, they're the largest student information system in the nation, but they're very tiny financials, so they're never trained. Can I ask why this is on the agenda? Is this just for informational purposes? It's for informational purposes, but, you know, we're gonna be... So, we're going with this? I can't tell you that I'm 100% there. I wanna know that the state, you know, if the state, they may enact it in law, then we're wrong. Then, if they don't, then I'll come back to you with a cost-benefit analysis of purchasing our own or going for the state solution. But we were thought we're gonna come to the cross-tiders. I mean, Tim has put it in, and it was required. It's not an option anymore. He says it is straight for a minimum. He says it's straight for a minimum, and he says it's in public open meetings that it's because he's asked for financial information in the education field, and he doesn't get it. He gets apples and oranges, so he said that we're gonna fix this. We're gonna put one system on it. And the state has said that they aren't gonna pay for it forever. So, when you just said, well, there will be fees, there will be annual fees. I mean, some of the fees could be $25,000 a year on the only cost going forward after the implementation. That would be local budget, according to what we were told. Yeah, it's not a really critical question from the board perspective, I think. I was just trying to wrap my head around like, you know, what, I think we had sort of a value, sort of estimated a figure of something like $300,000, and I didn't know if that was all kind of extra staff or transition, or if there was, I guess I'm assuming if this is gonna be implemented statewide, that even if we had extra money to ask PowerSchool, is the name of it, to provide extra training or resources, they might not be able to, because they're gonna be so busy dealing with every different district, right? So I was just trying to get a sense of like, what the plan is for that money, I guess. But again, I don't think it's really a critical thing for us, it's really more for you. I conducted a survey of my peers, and found that it takes about maybe 3,000 hours of training, implementation, and crossover, and that's what I've got for four different supervising agents, additionally there's equipment, it's about scanners and things like that, that you don't currently have, that help automate the system. So it will be equipment, who else do we come up with though? It's cost of converting, you also have consultant fees, where you have to pay, you say NEMRIC to run programs to pull stuff out, because you don't recue every transaction. Yeah, sure. So there's cost, it's just a matter of which way we're gonna go and we just wanna let you know where we are now. Yeah, thank you. What's your gut with this? Is it a good move to software, or is it a bad move? Is it? It was not my first tools. I represent the principals and the leadership team, and they asked me to represent them to find the right software, and the other software had more bells, whistles, barcode scanning, you get a fixed asset, so it's already in the system, that kind of stuff, instead of. Do you deal individually with power school activists, or is there like a kind of a structure they can have to go through, AOE, or agency additional services? The agency's in charge of the Charity of Accounts. So I'm not quite sure they were still hashing over if I needed a new account, and it wasn't in the system. Do I have the ability to do it myself, or do I have to wait until they come up with a number and put it in? They really wanted to control the Charity of Accounts because of what you just said, the legislature wants data, and if everyone creates their own account numbers, they felt like that wasn't gonna make the system successful. So, I mean, yeah, we're someone at the mercy of what the state does. We've been talking about this for a while, preparing for it, I sure appreciate it, and I'm sure we'll see, after they get done doing what it is they're doing, exactly where we are, when we come back next year. I appreciate the update and information. So, are there any other questions about this before we move on? Okay, I think we can set the floor in for you. Yeah, sure. Okay, thank you. Thank you. You're welcome to stay, yeah, exactly. We say that to everyone, but somehow nobody ever takes us up on it. We're gonna keep that in the ground. Thank you. No, please, please. Thanks. It is okay. Can we turn it off? Turn it off, because I just don't like the cold on the chair. That's fine. I'm gonna turn it off. I think it's cool enough, yeah, I would say. If you get hot, tell me, I'll turn it back off. You just said it. So, let's go to 2.2 to talk about the SU board retreat, and I'm sorry I don't have this in writing, but I will just describe to the committee what Stephen and Floor and myself and Bill have done in terms of researching options for the retreat and kind of the recommendation that we wanted to bring to the executive committee, to not asking you for a formal decision, but wanted to get your input and your assent. So, as we discussed at our last Executive Committee, meaning we've been looking into the possibility of engaging experts who might be able to advance our thinking with regard to our goals two and three, goal two being focused on student learning, in particular, and goal three being focused on community engagement. So, we contacted experts in both those areas for goal two in student learning. It's Nate Levinson, who works at district management group in Massachusetts. Nate worked with the team to do a study for the state of Vermont a couple of years ago on student learning and particularly on the issue of how Vermont is doing with regard to services and investments to address what's common they're referred to as the achievement gap. And he spoke at the VSBA Board Chair Training that Chris and myself and Bill attended in May and made an impression. And what he was saying seemed quite relevant to many of the topics that we as an SU have discussed over the last couple of years regarding student learning. So, we thought he might be a good person to bring in. He is available on August 2nd. The cost for engaging him all in, including his fee and travel and expenses would be $4,800. That's actually down Friday, it's 4,500. 4,500, yeah, okay. Trying to get the consistent fee across the state. Gotcha. Because he's worked with. Okay. Okay. We also contacted for the community engagement piece. We contacted Public Agenda. Public Agenda is an organization that did the community engagement training for VSBA in April that Steven and Floor and Chani, the Waterhouse. Oh, Dorothy, I'm sorry. Dorothy and Chani, the Waterhouse attended. Scott was there too? Oh, great. Very well received and people I think felt they got a lot out of that training. So we talked to them. They had a slight schedule conflict. They said they could rearrange their schedule to be available on August 2nd if we wanted them. The cost to have them come for the day all in, including travel and expenses is $4,000. So it's pretty similar. And in weighing the two options, the group that was asked by the SU board to work on this, our recommendation is that we go with the student learning topic. We felt like student learning is basically our primary reason for being as an educational system. And so that's really where we should sort of put our first efforts in investment. So that's the recommendation. We also discussed a little bit, the amount of time we were gonna have and whether we could do more than one topping and it didn't really seem like we could do justice to more than one of those topics in just a day or part of a day. So we wanted to just focus on one of them. In terms of where the retreat would be, we talked, there's not a lot of options. We talked about maybe trying to use VISBIT, their facility in Berlin, which can hold the number of people we'll have and at least as offsite from our SU, but not providing kind of like extravagant outdoor hiking opportunities, which is one sort of impression I got. People were hoping we might be able to have. Berlin Pond is right nearby. And then in terms of timing, we were kind of up on the air on that because we know that some of the district boards have discussed the possibility of trying to piggyback meetings on this retreat day and whether that was feasible or not. So that was a question we had not yet resolved. So basically the recommendation or the request for your input and ascent is regarding engaging someone because we wanna reserve someone, their schedules will fill up if we don't act to do that. So just your thoughts about what I laid out there. Share with the group that when I saw them down in Everlake-Mauri, they connected a lot of dots for me just really very engaging as a speaker and provocative and I'd really like to hear them again. I think a lot of the board members would get a lot out of the discussion about the student learning. It's amazing. Yeah, that was really good. It was just a short presentation. So I haven't been putting it on for a long period of time. He did it the next day. We had a team down there with the administrator with some of the administrators, Steven, Alicia, Bill Dice, Kelly and myself. We spent in a six hour, six to seven hour session and talking to them on Friday. He has different places to go. And he said, oh, I can make you. He said, I don't think that one has enough. Kind of talking about our objective, but our objectives are, he said four, six, six hours is a day. And Nicole, I think, said to you that six hours for the... She said six hours was necessary to basically do her topic justice, yeah. So that's how we try to get both. But, and Nate has some pieces on, you know, what he's gonna talk about is, the way we're staffing our buildings to reach student objectives that you saw. I think you didn't see that he's been getting a lot of traction with, he's working with 10 SUs in the state, but we're all seeing escalating costs for behavioral supports. And he's got some interesting data on how to do that too. Steven, did you have anything else you wanted to add? No. Okay. And doing learning objectives is the right way to go. Yeah. Okay, great. We'll move forward with that. Okay, Nate, he wanted to have, you know, as I said to you, I don't know if I got this to Steven and Flora, or I just don't remember your call this weekend, was, you must have, and we can figure this out backwards, but a time to do a planning meeting. Yeah, great. Okay. And somewhere I saw eight to five, that's gonna be something like really long day. Yeah, again, we haven't really sort of set it on the time, I, you know, I agree eight to five is a really long day. Yeah, I would agree with you. It seems like a long day to sit and take in information. Agreed. My two cents worth. Yeah, and I mean, I don't think that, correct me if I'm wrong, Steven, I don't think that our vision of this has been that we would come in, sit down, and discuss all day. Like a, you know, I mean, But the other pieces of kind of what exactly we would do and how to facilitate that are still a little bit up in the air. So, but we wanted to get kind of this cornerstone or anchor piece in place so that we could build around it, essentially. So. I might recommend for a planning meeting that perhaps we would bring Kari to the physics experience, working on that subcommittee. Okay. I mean, does that sound, I just think he would bring a lot of, Yeah, that's a good idea. Topic, specific expertise when you're trying to plan through. Sure, sure. Okay. Yeah, that's great. Okay. Thank you. Let's move on to board goals. We may be able to discuss with this pretty quickly. I know kind of what happened with all the district boards regarding adopting the goals that the SU board did at our June six meeting, except for one board, which it is callous. So I wasn't able to sort of discern or figure out maybe what, if anything, you guys might have done. So not to put you on the spot. I just wanted to ask if you remembered, you remembered what happened? My memories we talked about, I guess we probably didn't have an official vote but that's what you were thinking. Yeah, I just was curious. I think I went along with that. Yeah, I don't think there would be a problem with that. Yeah. Okay. My sense, I know that out of the six district boards, only one actually adopted the goals formally. The other five did not. There were varying but similar reasons, I think, in each case. I think in almost no cases were the goals actually on the agenda for the district boards to consider or to act on. And then in some cases, also boards did not have their full compliment on board members and felt it was important to have everybody there to discuss and to resolve. So that's kind of where we are. I think it's a somewhat, what's the word, not as unanimous an outcome, I guess, as I would have hoped for. My sense also is that also the boards that at least discussed the goals, none of them expressed any reservations or kind of objections to adopting them. Just no particular urgency about doing that. So. In my recollection of Margie, we had a new member. We also had been trying to set a retreat date for ourselves and so that's what it resolved around as much as everything. I can't remember if we adopted or not. We put, I'm sorry. What's that? The East Montpelier Board adopted them. Yeah. The Doty Board, which I did not attend, did not adopt them. I did attend the Romney meeting and. We were close, but. Yeah. And new members as well and the one three was there. So yeah. I think there's consensus for doing it, but. Right. I don't foresee a lot of problems with Calis. No. I guess it's going to be. You said you two definitely said yes. We're just thinking more on another one. Yeah. So yeah, I just wanted to review kind of what happened. You know, I'll confess to being a little surprised by that outcome and a little bit disappointed by it. I don't think it's that. I guess I want to try to split the difference. I don't think it's that big of a deal, but I don't think it's a small deal either. It's kind of a, you know, I sort of reflecting on it sort of thought about it as a, as a kind of interesting data point in, you know, our attempts to operate together as a school system. I'm not sure it was on our action agenda. It was not. So that's why we didn't, I think that's why we didn't go. I understand. Yeah, I understand. But I think that the fact that it didn't make it onto agendas also sort of was quizzical to me in a way. But, and I didn't, I thought, you know, maybe I should have, you know, done more reaching out to the board chairs or, you know, talking to Bill and Krista about it or pushing here to, but I don't want the boards to, you know, I just sort of understand what you're saying, but I also, you know, don't really feel like the boards should be relying in essence on the administration to kind of set their agendas either, you know, we sort of, we have this challenge in a way of how do we organize ourselves and, you know, hold ourselves to, you know, kind of timelines and that's what sort of the attempt to put goals in place really is in the first place. I think we need to get some clarity around that, though, because I think if anything, I think there's confusion and we don't know when those are kind of being automatically put on to move forward. Yeah, I guess I want to do it. I think that's an incredible move in that forward. Yeah, I wanted to raise it up. I didn't want to, like, take too much time talking about it tonight, but I guess I didn't want to, I think the executive committee is where a lot of this agenda-setting stuff happens and, you know, we really count on, I think, executive committee members to carry that work, you know, back to their boards and be ambassadors for it. But not all executive committee members are board chairs. No, it's true and... And I actually think if you tell Krista then I get a draft of what she puts together and I can say, what is this, where did it come from? Yeah, I definitely will do that next time, for sure. Yeah, no question. She sort of keep her all the agendas. Right, right. And if you want it to get on all of them. So I'm going to say this, I'm willing to make a talk and, you know, I talked about this already. You know, that's my role as superintendent is to make sure things make it from meetings to the next meeting, you know, and so... Yeah, I'm actually not comfortable with that. I know you're not comfortable with that. I know you don't like that. You didn't like it when I told you two weeks ago. But that's part of what the superintendent, I mean, we do is we, Krista and I literally sit down after each meeting and say, what's the number to do with us? Yeah, I... That works really well for me because, you know, two weeks or a month I might lose things on that. Yeah. I might not have been here and not even known that that was an expectation. Yeah, me too. I mean, if anything, if we're going to do that with those items and we're going, we're responsible for going right to the chair, then let's say that in the meeting, we'll say, okay, everybody, you have to take this to your room. And then maybe an email music. Yeah. Hopefully we'll do it. You know, writing. That way we know. I kind of took it for granted that that was going to just move forward on and then we would act or not act while we would act on it, but we would forget it or not. Right, right. That's what we discussed. Yeah, no, I understand. And I, it sort of seems obvious in retrospect, but didn't seem at all obvious to me, you know, in it beforehand. I wouldn't take it personally or think that. No, I don't. It's more, I really don't. I mean, I know it seems like this has been like a personal passion project of mine. But in a way, I just sort of see it as a kind of stating our intention to accomplish something. It seems important. The other pieces, we were all set to have a board retreat and we were told to wait until after August 2nd. We had one scheduled for May and we had to change it, but when we tried to reschedule it, kind of the word was wait until after the board retreat. Yeah. And everybody's doing it then. Yeah, no, no, it's kind of like a disruption. And we have never done it that late. We always do it in May or June. Yeah. We appreciate you postponing it. Yeah. So, yeah, sounds good. So I think like if something like that comes up again where we're hoping that the districts will all act and come to some meeting, like, you know, it's really incumbent on the executive committee and me and Bill and Krista trying to make sure that that happens. No, yeah, let's just, well, when those items come out, we'll just say it here and literally, I mean, it's kind of a bad assumption. Yeah, yeah. No worries. I was wondering about having a board meeting. We have one of our items is what's on the next agenda and maybe that can be an ending part of this is what do we want our individual boards to put on the agenda? Well, I definitely want to be sure it's on people's agendas for August, since that's the next time that the district board will meet. So for sure we want to make sure that, so I guess I'm throwing that out to the group to enter myself in Dovey's case to make sure that that happens. So I'm going to skip over 2.4. I assume we want to come to that last because it's probably going to require an executive session for us. And that will put us in 2.5, which is the letter to the SBA. So I have a new copy from what I emailed you earlier that we were finishing this up. I wish I didn't do it like this, Steve. You can hand one to, if you're going to come around. This letter, I will say, is one that, yeah, there's an extra here that Lisa can have, which I printed out in 10 copies. This has started the past three or four weeks. Superintendent's been talking about it. Let me finish this up for you further. As many of you are aware of, we had changed our healthcare system in July 1 to where we had a high-inductible plans where there were healthcare reimbursement accounts that went to teachers. We had elected to go with a firm Future Planning Associates to manage our HRA. On March 30th, they notify us that they were going to cease to do business with us for the contract that could give us a 60-day warning. And they actually, and we had been seeing problems with the administration of the plan before that. And there's a whole story going on there of issues, but they had a subcontractor that ran all the data system in the background, the electronics of it, and the software piece of it with debit cards. That didn't work very well, and so on April 1st, the firm that was running the debit cards and the electronic system, and that was processing payments electronically called Datapap, took over the work. They have recovered other failures in other states around the nation, Missouri, being one of them, where a company said they could manage something for a big public institution, whether it be a collegiate municipality or education system, and then went defund. So they're currently going back through all the medical records for about 50% of the educators in the state of Vermont right now, because there's two different companies that service the HRAs. And there have been a lot of double payments to vendors, so a physician may have received two payments instead of one. There have been lack of payments. We have a couple teachers that, more than a couple now, that have been received collection notices. We've had to put a lot of personnel time here between Virginia and Missouri. There's definitely one extra FTE work coming out of their work, just trying to help our own personnel. We've had to go back into negotiations with the association and that has gotten contentious. And Susanna, I can call her and she can come in and give some more of this piece on this letter. It's 640. I forgot we were going to get her into 6, but yeah. I did, too. Let me see if I can get her. Susanna is who? Susanna Culver is our head of negotiations, and she's been right in the middle of this the whole time. So. Can we talk about more clarity around this? Yeah. Because there were bidders for this position? For the HRA? Yeah. No. For the Future Planning Association. They've been doing it for years. Yeah. Yeah, they were. Hi, Susanna. Sorry we're late. So that's alright. I know how it goes. Lost track of time. I already started an introduction of where we're at, and I kinda got to the point of we started to negotiate with the association. Susanna's been intimately involved in this Future Planning. To go back to Stephen, you were asking whether bidders for this actually be high, certified only two firms, Future Planning and Health Equity. And Future Planning, what we negotiated with the teacher was the only firm that could handle the type of debit cards in the way we wanted them to be paid out, which meant that Health Equity would run the debit card if the employer's contribution was spent first and Future Planning gave us an option of if you wanted the employee's money to be spent first you could go with that. About 50% of the supervised unions districts in the state of Vermont went with them because they wanted the employee money first or they had some other configuration that Future Planning said they could deliver on. What we have found out is that even they couldn't handle that. It's just accounting for all those pieces of money. So it's, we have a lot of folks across the state and within our own SU that it's hard to detangle where their payments are between their own contributions to the HRA, our contributions, have health folks been paid properly, we put a lot of our own staff. I already talked about Suzanne about the amount of time Virginia and Lori have been putting to this. Oh, they've been wonderful, but we're killing them slowly. More than slowly now, they're over it, they're ready to be done. And so we had to go back and negotiate with their association. So Susanna and Chani took up that lead. We were going to try and do it under the guise of a labor management. And tomorrow hopefully there'll be a ratification of a memorandum of understanding, but I know how much more you want to go into that, Susanna. Well, I think that part of the issues has come up with, I mean, this whole problem has damaged our credibility and our leverage and our relationship with the people we negotiate with and that's very difficult to overcome. And we're gonna have to overcome it this fall when we step back to the table. We are hoping that they will say that tomorrow in their vote, but there's no guarantee to that. But we've worked very hard, so we think they will. We think we're gonna get a yes vote and that will take us until the end of December and in the interim, we're gonna work very hard to find a way through that made the best future planning has delivered to us so nicely. So should we step right into the latter? Well, the latter, yeah, would be at the end. Yeah, you and I have been talking about this. John Pandolfo, the superintendent at Berry has been the superintendent's liaison to a healthcare task force. It's made up of five people that's not part of Beehive looking at what should be done with healthcare after last year was called for by the legislature. And he's probably the most, he's probably has the most detailed comprehensive knowledge of healthcare in the state of Vermont of all the superintendents. And he and I, and like I said, there's probably about five or six of us. We know there's gonna be more. So last Thursday, he took this, he wrote this letter and took it to his board to the Berry School District. And the Berry Supervisor Union will look at it this week to approve this letter to be sent to BSBA to have BSBA start putting together, how can we work together and possibly bring class action lawsuit against future planning associates. There, we have, as you saw in the draft, I just put $300,000 in there. But after Laura did some great quick accounting this afternoon, it's about $293,000 we've paid out so far. It doesn't include any of the staff time. We've got people losing their credit ratings that are employees around here. They've got debit, they've got collecting and agencies on them. And we have, as Suzanne just said, I think the thing that's the most valuable is our relationship with the association. It's gonna be hard to tally up all the damages. It really is. So, and Susan, this is Steve Love. And the reason I asked the question earlier about the initial contract with Future Planning Association, I was at the School Board's Association negotiating training three, four weeks ago. I can't be that precise, but in the spring. And it was discussed there that the reason Future Planning Associates was hired was because the association insisted on it. And that wasn't done at the negotiation table for us. You don't remember that. No, I mean, I mean, statewide. I don't remember the association. Statewide. I don't think there's anything on that. Now statewide, the Vermont NEA wanted first Planning Associates. See, we're unique because of the type negotiations we do. Anyways, there was a long discussion about it. And the discussion there was this is gonna come up in issues and districts. And Future Planning was hired because the Vermont NEA insisted they be hired. So, and there was discussion at that point that many School Board Association felt that they would not be up to the task. They were too small and they cautioned against it. And then the NEA insisted that that be the group that could hire them. Cautioned against it, but only because I was so familiar with health equity. And I was very comfortable with health equity. But as it turned out, health equity would stop work within the system that we were asking them to work with. First dollars being paid by the association members was critical in our negotiation process. And I don't think we would have ever wanted to give that up. We may have to look at a different formula to find a management company that's going to be able to handle this. But first dollars, 10%, we're looking at $250 for an individual, $500 for a family. Those are not large dollars, but they are dollars that never existed before. So, you know, they had that to look forward to the association members did. And then with Future Planning not being able to keep up with those payments and reimbursement of any dollars they're after, it's been very, very difficult for them. But I don't think we'll want to give that up, but we have to find someone who can manage that. Well, and maybe I shouldn't have brought it up. I was just mentioning it from a negotiating point. You may want to contact School Board Association to get some additional information because the suggestion there was school board shouldn't be eating the failure of the system because it was the stance that it was going to fail and they didn't want to go with it. But that's not pertinent to the letter. So, that was just some information for the negotiator. So, are we being asked to open this letter? Yeah, that's what I'd like to do is we get this letter to BSBA to help, which is rather super intense as well. We're taking this draft to say, let's start putting together this request of BSBA. They represent the school boards. Let's see if they can start at least there before we go ask our own council that we pay and they may be still have to pay some to BSBA to do this. I don't know, but at least start with what can they do to support the school boards. Can I ask what, do you have a, Susanna or Bill, do you have a sense of what's the likelihood we actually would recover any damages? I mean, if Future Planning Associates is a small company, one that's on the rocks at best, perhaps, you know, is there, if there were a judgment in favor of the SUs signing on to a class action lawsuit, like would there be any money to recover or? Well, they manage other organizations besides public schools. And they do this, they manage 125 plans, they manage FSAs, so they do some other pieces for payroll contributions. And they have to do health care for schools. For a while. For a while. This wasn't their first shot at it. Yeah, they used to do it under other plans that would help under BS. We used to do it for years. Okay, I just wanted to ask. So, I don't know how much, you know, if they had a huge suit and how, I don't know what their liquidity is or assets. Okay. Well, I think it's one way of saying to the association that the school boards, it's not their fault. You know, it's something that happened. It's really disappointing that it affects a relationship when it wasn't the school board's fault. You know, it's just something that happened. And for the association not to be able to understand, it was kind of beyond the school board's control. It's a little bit. I hope you get some kind of realization. Yeah. And there are some, and I have to say this again, you and I know there are some that know that realization. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so I want to say that as well. There's different philosophies that we all come at. And I see everybody comes out with healthcare. There isn't one that's winning the tie. So there are different viewpoints. So relative to the letter, my only observations is I support the concept and I support most of the letter. I just think the letter uses the word we too frequently. So in other words, I think there are times when we should say, and I'm looking, I don't know, third or fourth sentence, instead of while we and many other systems, we should say while Washington Central Supervisory Union and many other systems, I think we should get rid of, so for instance, we know for a fact, if Washington Central Supervisory Union knows that for a fact, we should say WCSU. I just think that's in my mind that clears it up. Yeah, we can plan that out. And then the only other thing that I had was either, is there gonna say the Washington Central Supervisory Union Board at the end, or is there gonna say the Executive Committee of the Washington Central Supervisory Union Board respectfully requests. Those are the only two things that I made any notes on. Well, I think it should be the Executive Committee because it hasn't gone to the board yet, right? To the full board. Yeah, that's an interesting question. And if we wait for the full board, when's that? Well, Matt, we'll have to- And we would get it Wednesday. And that is also- We have a forum on Wednesday, right? We do, it's not on the agenda, not on the warrant agenda for us to discuss it. To me, it just- It wasn't here tonight either, so. It just seemed, well, there are times when you can vote on things that aren't on the agenda. No, I think the action agenda is sort of, our use of it is a convention. It's not a legal requirement, so we can add things to it if we want to. It just seemed more precise if we say the Executive Committee of Washington. I know it might not carry the same weight, but then we could follow this up. Yeah. I don't know, Bill, do you have any thoughts about that, or? I don't think either way. I mean, I think if you just, I mean, your bylaws allow you to take whatever action you want. This Executive Committee, I think we've been trying to transition out of that, which is what I think Stephen's pointing. Right. If you want the board, then you go to the board. If you want the Executive Committee, I think either way to get something to BSBA that we need to say, hey, you're gonna need to start. And as Flores said to me, because this went out, I sent out the whole list, and she's Stephen's backup, and she's one of the BSBA reps. She said, make sure your BSBA reps, which is Lucas Herring out of the very board, it's one of them. So, you know, they have the copies of these letters taken to the BSBA board to say, hey. You know what, this isn't actually saying the whole thing. It's just saying Matthew. But speaking on behalf of WCSU, so yeah, I wouldn't want to do that without at least some, you know, at least the assent of the Executive Committee or the board to do that. So, will we know yet how many as youth were actually affected? Was there a number behind that? We, I only have the percentage right now. I haven't gotten to try to get the number. Okay. But, you know, why don't I just put Executive Committee in there? Why? It's fine, yeah. I mean, we can either do it that way or we could, you know, vote to make a recommendation to the SU board and we can put it on the agenda on a Wednesday. And I don't. It would take up a lot of time for that. Yeah, that is a concern. I'm comfortable with it either way, but if people want to, Steve and I take your point that we've been trying to make sure that the SU board weighs in on things that. Well, my thinking was I could support it either way. Okay. Executive Committee makes it precise. Okay. Let's do that then. But I also thought it would be reasonable. I mean, it's a reasonable assumption, I think, on our parts that our boards would support this. I think it's unlikely that the board would say no. So we could do it either way. Okay. Are there any other comments on the letter regarding wording or content? Okay. I mean, I'm sensing, so I guess I would suggest that we move it here and then we'll inform the SU board on Wednesday that we did it. That being the case, I'll entertain a motion. So I'm going to move it to the office. Oh, I should. You want to do a comment? We all like that stuff. Oh, don't move it. Thank you, Dorothy. Sorry about that. Moving to authorize sending a letter to the VSBA urging action regarding future planning associates as amended, I'll say. Is there a second? Second. Dorothy moved. Did you decide to change it to Washington Central Supervisory? We did, to Executive Committee. I mean, don't send. And we're changing the, the we to, to WCSU. What's the, more antecedents, less pronounce, I guess. I don't know what I did. The doctoral student came out with me because I would have like, no, you can't have that in there. Is there any other discussion regarding the motion? Okay. Hearing none. All those in favor of authorizing the letter, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, abstentions? Thank you. Is there any, just out of curiosity, does anybody, I'm sure they have, how about these people that have there? Yes, we're literally, they're coming and sitting with Warrior Virginia and Daly. We have two in here today. Susanna, thank you very much. Thanks Susanna. For adding this to an agenda that's probably only 50 at the last minute. We appreciate it. We love it. Thanks. Thank you. Have a good night. All right, you too. Thanks. Okay. That brings us to 2.6, which is the Act 46 meeting on Wednesday. With your permission, I wanna say something that I maybe should have said at the SU Board about this. I've had some people reach out to me and express concern about this meeting and some of the ways it could go wrong and so on. So I guess I just wanted it to say that I didn't really foresee a lot of potential in scheduling a meeting like this for disruption or sort of divisiveness. I think because my assumption has been that all six district boards in the SU approved the AGS proposal. That is our collective policy document at the moment. Unless and until one of those or more of those boards reverses that position or changes its position, it remains our policy document. Nothing that the AOE has done in its analysis and recommendation changes that. So it seems like the natural next step is for us to get ready to defend that proposal to the State Board of Education. I don't know this for sure, although my sense is that the date for that will be August 15th. Yeah, that's confirmed now. Yeah, it was confirmed on Monday, which is today. I did feel, I knew that we wouldn't have time to this. What came up, there were some things that were. I knew we wouldn't have time to discuss the issue at the June 6th SU Board meeting. I thought people would have things to say. I also thought it seemed appropriate for us to create a forum to generate a public record of kind of where people are at as this whole process unfolds. That was the thinking behind asking the SU Board if it was interested in scheduling this special meeting on Wednesday. So that's kind of how it came about. I have a couple of other things I could say editorially, but I don't know before I open it up to the other group to say anything that might be on your minds before I would do that. We discussed it at our meeting, our local East Montpelier meeting afterwards. And there wasn't a lot of discussion and I'll say that I probably, I don't wanna say dominated. I spearheaded the discussion and I didn't hear objection, but so I'll say mine instead of East Montpelier. I think what came out of our discussion is in our mind, in my mind, what's important for the meeting Wednesday is developing a timeline in a process exactly the same way we did for the AOE. So in other words, we know and now there's a date. We know we need to present to the Board of Education on the 15th. So in our mind, I can say however, in our mind it was who's gonna present the same scenarios, the same situations we discussed and jointly agreed upon on how are we gonna present this to AOE, how are we now gonna present this to the Board of Education and piggybacking on what you said, not a meeting to reexamine what we wanna do, it's just a continuation of the process of what was presented to the AOE. How are we now gonna present this to the Board of Education? Who's gonna do it exactly what's gonna be shared? The exact same planning that went into the AOE should go into the Board of Education and it becomes more of a structural planning meeting on how are we gonna manage this process? Can we all agree that this group is gonna be the group that talks to the Board of Education? Can we all agree that this is the information that's gonna be shared, that kind of thing? But if, yeah, that's fine. I really don't wanna go through bashing the agency of education, bashing, rehashing everything that, we've been there, we've done that. We know what we have to do next and they don't think we need to hear. I personally don't think we need to hear about how people feel about one thing or the other or what the State Board even said. It's just so negative. It comes out, people get really angry. People have been ignored in this and I think we should be angry. We need the general public. Talk about the general public. That's not who's angry. We're hearing the same people saying the same things that we've been listening to for two years. Well, the question is, well, what would be the strategy? I mean, obviously it's gone deaf years and they're not listening to the Board. So this is, you know, what strategy works to turn them. But it's not a political strategy now because it's pretty clear that they're not going to, we know what they're intended. And, you know, they're going against, well, I know, but it's crystal clear now. I think the only thing that actually begins to provide that is, is a loud, is a pretty loud voice and something that kind of takes it on that political highs because essentially that's what, it's the only thing you have to fight with. I don't know what you think, Chris, but I've watched this happen before in a lot of places and this has been a kangaroo court, you know, pretty much all along. And I think we're going to expect more of that. You know, I think if we just play along quietly, you know, we might just roll over and consolidate because that's what's going to happen. I don't think that should be happening. You know, when you've had the kind of work that was put in by these communities for a couple of years, intense work, and we came up with this, you know, and it's determined that this was clearly not going to work for us. And that- Let's see, if the discussion goes that way, it's going to blow up in a little bit more. I agree, I don't know. It's not going to be ripping it, it's me that discussion needs to be on a strategy. It doesn't need to blow up in that room, it needs to blow up. There needs to be uniformity of strategy. And it has to be validated for us. Doesn't exist. Yeah, I think the issue, I think there's a challenge on both sides of the problem of what's happening. You know, our AGS proposal is a fragile, hard one compromise that has unity of voice. But I think it's fair to say that our boards have been and remain fairly divided on some of the core issues. I think that what, and that's on both sides, I mean, you know, we heard some people starting to speak at our last SU meeting to the fact that some on the board would prefer that we move more expeditiously in the direction of- Of what? Of consultant, well, one, I'm saying, I think others may have been more restrained in their sort of holding back from saying such things. But I think our, you know, what we have said in common is that we, you know, this is our best foot forward. This is what we all agree on. We've, and I think that we, by doing that, said that we value our unity of voice. And perhaps, I guess, I could also say that we took a look at this and said we don't feel like what the state is expressing as a preference is something that we as school districts can do to each other. That's how I would characterize some of the spirit of that AGS proposal. I agree. So I think that on either side, if I think of people who are up in arms and incensed and want a strong fight and objection against what's happening, are to bring that to the board discussion or if folks that support consolidation and merger for whatever reason to bring that strong voice to the discussion, that's where we're gonna fracture. I would suggest, and this is just my opinion, I would suggest that if the opposition to what's happening, some feel it needs to be very strong and very concerted, that that's something that has to happen or what it would best happen outside the board structure. At this time. This whole discussion, we're way beyond that. That discussion and argument has already been handed. Essentially, we as a group have made a sign on a path. It seems to me that the goal of this meeting is to figure out how we follow that path. It's not to fight back and forth again. This is about. This is about. I think you misread that it wasn't. We agree. I just wanna say quickly. Okay. Anyway. I wanna give a little bit of time to this conversation now, but I don't wanna have the conversation that might come out on Wednesday at this moment. But I would agree with you. But it's giving you a taste. I get it. That's why I wanted to mention. I mean, I think that the concern about the meeting on Wednesday is that it really could. I guess what I would say, Rick, is if you're looking for a consensus to take draconian measures, to express our opposition or displeasure with what's happening, I think that will bring out the divisions that the very real and still present divisions that exist on Wednesday. Well, what would you have me do if the people of our town are in Worcester and all our towns in the end are really being discerved by this action? Okay, it's something, and I don't, I mean, you look at me, I've been vocal of this. I'm not the only person. There are a lot of people that people, like Michael Dwayne and Kyle, and these are AGs and they're against this in a very vocal way. A little bit more eloquent than I am, but even as much more so than I am. You know, you have, this is a big issue, and it has blown up elsewhere. It's not going away after this year. We're gonna go down this path. And when the reality does hit six minutes balance in a few years, it's, we're gonna be digging out of a bigger mess. That's why I don't, I mean, I wanna start fighting that room, but this is something that we all have got to do collectively and go about this in a little bit different way, because that preferred model does not work for us. I guess it definitely doesn't work for our town. But the not all boards feel that way. You know, that's good, but some do. There are a lot of people that. But my, so let me just say this. I think that our, there is a real advantage to, right now this is a state versus community or district issue. It really is a disagreement between levels of government. It is not currently a disagreement among the boards in our SU. Which is unusual, because a lot of the places where we're really nasty to their neighbors and it's really, really difficult for them to live together now. And I think that's one thing that we really need to praise and carry on as much as we can. That yes, we were divided. We have found a way to come together. Please let us continue this path because it seems it will be the one that is most successful. If you enforce this, because it's a financial problem on us, it will be a disaster for those five towns. They will not automatically come together the way we might if we're allowed to do it on our own. Well, what I'm trying to say is that that's even more true if we now, at this point in time, I agree. Fracture as boards and start to, yeah. So that's really my main, my personal main concern and sort of hope for the meeting would be that we'd be able to navigate through that without having the boards come apart in there in the way that they want to proceed on this. I would see why it would be a war at all to me. And that actually surprises me that we're going there because we've already made a decision about where we thought we should go. And we've basically, you know, kind of getting forward. And more than that, you know, we've been politely given the middle finger essentially by to this point. And you know that, as I see it, I mean, this is not something you do. And that would be at the whole, that whole seven to six speed process was set up or the intent was to really explore. I was actually to look at the preferred model which didn't work for us. But we developed, you know, something that would. And I just don't see, you know, I would see this meeting being about how we push that forward. Not, I mean, what would you see this meeting? I mean, the only other option is to kind of roll over and let this happen. And they're, you know, I'm going to, I will happily and personally go if that's the will of the board, I will go to the state board of education and vigorously defend our AGS proposal. If there are, I think, just so that you know, I think if there are suggestions raised that we take other actions, you know, legal or political or otherwise, I'm not sure. I think there's a cost-benefit analysis to how much does our strategy of resistance or what risk does it pose for dividing our school system against itself? And to play devil's advocate, what we have now is a compromise and there are almost 50% of the people who agree, who agreed initially with what the agency of that has proposed. Yeah, but you look at those five lines and there are clear winners and losers in that. I told, I told, I'm playing devil's advocate though. We're not going to roll over that. But importantly though, that the boards that would have been quote unquote winners on a financial basis voted to say we're not going to do that to Calis. That's what I thought. Isn't that what our proposal is about? We should be defending this proposal. Absolutely. So we're opening up those wounds and splitting those. We want to defend it. I think this is about defending our proposal. Right, how are we going to go after I see it? And how are we going to do that? It's not a plan. And then in my mind, if the board of education says exactly the same thing the agency of education said, then it comes to the point where there has to be a stronger discussion on, okay, are we going to go in this direction or are we going to go in that direction? I don't think we're at that point yet. I agree. So again, to go back to what I said at the beginning, I think this meeting Wednesday, you know, here we talked a little bit about what the AOE said, but that's their recommendation. Our, what I'm suggesting, one of these Montpeliers suggesting is that's still the proposal we made to the AOE is still our proposal. And how are we going to present that proposal to the board of education? And then whatever the board of education decides, dictate what our future, and we would need future meetings of some kind perhaps. But that would happen after the board of education and we would bring our same plan, our same compromise plan, you can call it if you want, but our plan that we all agreed to, to the board of education. And I think there we would bring it, we would do a comparative of what the response was and the areas where we felt there was flaw in the first rejection of this policy. Yeah, not even, I mean, I would say, I mean, you're reading the AOE's recommendation and we can talk about this on Wednesday, but I felt like it was like looking at our AGS proposal in a fun house mirror. It's been suggested to me, I think that's accurate. So there's two other questions that I wanted to raise with the executive committee. They're just questions. I don't even know if it's really a good time to raise them, but I think they are questions that I've had. One is that if we, if the state board is going to do what all indications are that it will on November 30th, then the implication of that is that we're supposed to be, we would, supposed to be operating by as a union district by July 1st of next year, which is an incredibly short timeframe. And regardless of what we hope happens or wish to avoid, I guess I wonder if we would be doing our school system at disservice if we decline to do two things. One of which would be to consider at some level what kinds of articles of agreement, if we're gonna be forced to do this, what kinds of articles of agreement would we want? Because if we don't have that, we're gonna get the default ones from the state and we're gonna have 90 days to either change them or accept them over the holidays. And then the other side of this is apart from what the boards may have to wrestle with is what the administration of the school system will have to deal with in terms of thinking about suddenly changing from the financial and HR administration of six legal entities to one over an incredibly short period of time. And that's just scratching the surface, I think, of what the administration would have to do. So as triggering and as incendiary, as those questions could possibly be in our conversation, I guess I'm asking you if those seem like questions we ought to be raising with the SU Board, or? I think that's the only way we can do that. I just think it would just throw everybody into a frenzy, I'm not that bad, but it really would get people thinking of what I want if this happens rather than we need to be thinking together still. We all agreed to this and we're gonna, as far as I was concerned, we agreed to see it together to the end. We haven't gotten to the end yet. We have to get a strategy of how we're going to approach the end game and get a good one and go from there. And I think raising this issue now, wait till after we've had our meeting with the... Until after August 15th. Yeah, until August 15th. I think it's good for us to be thinking about it, maybe, or whatever, but I would not bring it up with a meeting. I think it would make it long and cranky. That's in Cindy, or as we know from the last discussion. Yeah, in a way, it would not be very smart of us either to start, I know what you're saying. I'm really wrestling with it, I've wrestled it a lot. I mean, I get what you're saying, and I think it's opening up a can of worms, but I also feel like there's a kind of responsibility or due diligence piece of it. Well, if it comes down, I mean, let's think this forward. If it comes down to us having this imposed with no choice, and then with essentially, and we decide not to really play hardball in some way and fight against this. I mean, those articles, don't they in a sense become a lot easier because what are they going to do? Yeah, that's all I'm saying information. Go ahead, please. I've been looking at this and talking with my peers who've gone through merger. The fastest merger in the state was done in three months. That super intense motor, unified district, David Downs, who's a good colleague said to me, he said, but I never wanted to do it in three months again, he said, we missed so many things that we were legally, we didn't have right. And I know that Chris, either you or someone in your office was constantly on the phone with elections of all of us and all of that. And they said, we barely had, they didn't even have all their federal IDs and they barely had everyone elected and they put the policies on like two days before they had transferred into another organization. Other super intents who have done this over a year said it's a lot of work but it can be done but they'll be extra, they had to get into a lot of extra overtime. And so one of the things I started to do, Matthew and I had this discussion to a scope because I don't need to know now, I like the discussion about, let's ask this after August 15th, I think that's fine. But you all know the budgeting process. I need to know, I can push the budget, we start September 15th for budgeting for the next year. That can still happen in the schools. But I need to know what I'm budgeting towards. Probably no later than November 30th. And that's really pushing it. Lori would say to me, that's too late bill. And so I just want you to understand that for a good thing, you're essentially building up. Building up? You're taking 17, no we can't build it that much. We don't have the capacity to do that much. You can probably give me more personnel. It's either, we just don't have that flexibility in our personnel time. Plus we're looking at the financial software shift which may be happening concurrently. At the same time, plus negotiations, plus a couple other things that are heavy hitters. So I can wait, but there's gonna be a point because we get closer to the end of September, I'm gonna be saying, you know, we're starting to get into harm area. Not that it can't be overcome, and maybe harm is too strong, but we won't be doing the due diligence that we've been doing in some years. When is the next full board meeting after August 15th? September, I believe. End of September. End of September. That's too late. I think, I do wanna wrap up this discussion. I'm sorry, Bill. I just wanna say, I think we're gonna have to actually really think about whether, I think we're gonna need extra SU board tanks. No, that's sort of what I was leading to. Through this whole process. It may be a board meeting to elect a committee to figure out articles of agreement and the other things in case that's where we end up. Yeah. I mean, we may have to schedule a meeting at the end of August or early September just to discuss that. Because as we're proceeding here, it's not gonna be like, yeah, sure, we shouldn't do that. There's gonna be some strong feelings about it on both sides, but I just wanted to wrap up. I feel like we don't change course in any way until we hear what happens after August 15th. Are we gonna hear anything? I don't know what the time frame is for. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't expect we'd hear any feedback from them until November. Just like the last meeting you did. Yeah, exactly. Somewhere I heard or read a knife here and read things, I miss some things, I don't know if it was anything, that they make the decision as of November 1st, 2018, but it doesn't necessarily go into effect for a year. So you'll probably know that it's better than I, but somehow I got that. No, it's very clear I went and reread Act 46 on Friday, reread Act 49 and looked at all the F&G's operational July 1st, 2019. I remember that, yeah. And for not? I don't know what that answer is. I just know that your violation of the law of law, yeah, but what I'm just questioning. It would take away our money, of course. It was six months before the. Or take over the district, you know. And is this able to do that if they do think that would be a wise decision? I think this is where, you know, there's a play with fire, political fire, I don't care. I mean, where would they, will they be? So I suggest we'd not approach this on one step. Okay, that's fine. And wait, and you know, maybe, I don't know, in the next executive committee meeting, but figure out a full board meeting that we probably need to schedule at the end of August. Yeah, okay. To do the next step. And we can talk about that with the SU board on August 2nd too. So I just kind of point out some dates. You don't have an executive committee meeting until the end of August. So if you want to discuss your calendar, I'm sorry, you know, some people like to get out of here and be included, but you're gonna, I would like, unless you want to meet Matthew and you and I to do it, which is, you know, if you want to talk about dates or if you and I want to figure that out, I'm just trying to say we don't have an executive committee meeting until the end of August. I would say let's discuss it and bring our recommendation to the August 2nd retreat about it. Because we do have that opportunity to come to that. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm sorry, but. Okay, thanks. 2.7 is the consultant for contract analysis. So we had bids, as you were all aware of, in the main meeting we're going out to, we put an RFP out for folks to look at job classifications for the non-bargaining positions. And we had three firms come back and it's a wide variety. They range anywhere from $7,200 to $56,000. We submit it, we sent out to six different companies that do it. I haven't had time to do reference checks for with that bigger variation, I think there's a very difference in thinking about the scope of the work. So there needs to be some interviews with phone calls. We were hoping to get folks going here in the end of this month, beginning up next. If it's under $15,000, according to the statutes, I can award. If it's over $15,000, I need to award to award or the executive committee. So you could, I'm looking for some discussion of process. I can tell them that it's gonna be held a little bit longer and we can come back together at the next meeting to be termed, or we had them all hold the prices for 30 days, but we'll be on the 30 days. But I'm not at a point, and I'm just looking for some thinking time for this board for, and I only need five minutes of it, I don't need a lot, but just to say, hey, how can we, I think when I see almost a factor of eight, that hey, something's going up, something's going wrong. Did they both read the same proposal? What's the third one? The third one's $26,000 and we were thinking we're trying to get it under $20,000 to do this. So what's the $7,000 one? The $7,000 one is one, there isn't much on here, it's Jack Cleary, Cleary HR Consulting, Human Resources Consultants out of South Burlington. There's some people here that I recognize their names or recognize their references. The middle one is Hikarovic and Boardman who does our insurance, they're $26,000, they've done this with other supervisory unions, and then we went, the third place was Corne Ferry, who has worked with the state to do this type of work with the state of Vermont. And so, and you can see the thickness of it. It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like, okay, so I need to go back and look at that if it's, I didn't want to go much, that's why I told you back in May, it's 15 to 20,000 is what we're trying to scope this work out, and it really needs to be done. I mean, they keep bumping into places where it's like, we need this leveling on job classifications around here. So, Hikarovic and Boardman is a known entity and they've come in not sort of ridiculously out of scope or from what we wanted to spend on this. Otherwise, we're looking at pushing this off until at least the beginning of August, and not the end of August. Right, of course. I mean, I'm thinking about talking to one, to these two, Hikarovic and Boardman and Clary at the corn fair, when I saw that come today, I was like, yeah, no, thank you. But to the same, I want to know what Jack Clary, the principal, I don't know how big his firm is, I need to look into that. And Hikarovic and Boardman, what were you thinking 26,000 was? What is the experience of this $7,000? Well, that's why I have to get to the references and things like that. What are people seeing and doing? How much of this is he's expecting us to, how much is he expecting work inside the house to help versus how much is it on your own? Because we've said in the RFP, we're gonna give you these documents, we'll give you all the job descriptions and benefits that everyone has. And I'm wondering if, just what their assumptions were. So, what's being asked of us tonight? To your approval tonight? If, I'm not asking for approval, I didn't want to ask for approval tonight. I was in this place, Stephen, thinking, if we would like me to stay below $15,000, I think there's a way of doing that. I think it's like anything, you're gonna get what you pay for. So, if it was even worth considering going up above the $15,000, if it's not going above the $15,000, I can award this myself as your superintendent via the statutes I'm purchasing for you. But we can also authorize you to award a bit of not more than X. Not more than X, and you can do that. And I can just go do that. But I've got to do the analysis, and we were planning what we set out the RFP this week, it was next Wednesday. So, you can generate yourself so we can have to do the analysis so I can be sitting here with you and making that proposal. And we had to switch the date. And you had to go. Do we want to set a top end for... So, what's in the budget? We're using fund balance. Yeah, it's... It strikes me on that, you know, that parking board. I've dealt with them before on the insurable side. They were very good and they were very thorough from that, and I don't have no idea with something like this, but I get a lot of doings, but I trusted them in there. I think we did something thorough. I think we have a real estate to do. So, we don't have a recommendation for... No, no, I'm just asking. I think you're a question of what's the... What are you willing to spend as a board on this? What do you value it for, for the issues we've talked about? Would you have time to do the analysis and award a bid by the end of next week? I'm trying to, yeah. You would, and that'd be your preference would be to do that. That would be our preferences to get it out of here before the first of the month. What if we approve a top end of 26,000? Sure. With the thought of perhaps that is too much and there could be some negotiation to bring it down. If we approve a top end of 26, and we're comfortable with that, then essentially what's billed pick between those two plans. Would you like to word emotion? I will make emotion that we recommend a maximum amount to be spent on hiring a consultant to... I don't think we'll know how to do that, but we approve. Yeah, can I offer a friendly amendment? Yes, you can. You can just offer the motion. So the motion is to authorize the superintendent to award a bid for... Consulting services to align our non-bargaining contracts. In an amount not to exceed $26,000. Did you get all that? Yeah. And I would second that. I don't want to make the motion. You can make the motion. All right, that's the motion that I think. Okay, thanks. It just sounded like it was coming from after that. It really was channeling my voice. You said it so well, Stephen. Okay, any further discussion of the motion? All those in favor, if they say aye. Aye. Opposed, abstentions? Thank you. Do we want to do the action agenda? Or actually Bill, there were other things in your superintendent report. I don't know if they do want to speak to any of those or I had a couple of questions, I guess. I can't, I just didn't know if you want to do the action. Let's do the action agenda. Let's do the action agenda, okay. Let's get some action. No, I'm going to do this. Is this just one? There's one, yeah, I'm making sure that you take one as you go around, I'm going to need one of those back. I'm going to take one back. Is that okay? Oh yeah, sorry, thanks. Two of these names you'll recognize and I'll explain that in a minute. Are these both? Yes, please, thank you. Yeah, you got one more. One more, there's four, or four of them. Okay. In my, in some of this, I explained in my superintendent report, I'm going to say we have in, as you know, we've been doing a job coach. I'm going to start with Ann Carter, who's been in the long-term special educator math coach at East Montpelier and is retiring. And we're able to tie her back at point four to help our math coaching, because we need more math coaching and our data shows that we need more professional development in that area. And so Ann has agreed to come back from retirement for point four position as a math coach. She's been very successful in that work. She'll be focusing on elementary work and on selections of a new math program. Did she retire this year? Yes, end of the year. Patty Tappo is another retirement. And we need, yeah. And she is willing to be, and that's a one-year non-renewable for Ann as all retirement positions we've been doing after someone retires and a one-year non-renewable. We've done that. Adriana, as you know, we've done that with Seafarers and didn't reach that mass over U32. Patty Tappo, we need a point four speech-language pathologist and summing up all the student needs that's been in the, for two years, we've left it unfilled. And we've had to contract out some to make that work. So we're trying to lower some of the special education costs. Patty's willing to come back and work point four. Mainly she'll be based at East Montclair. So we didn't go back to the East Montclair board to see if, sorry, we thought it was. We'd East Montclair board would be fine with that. Oh, one of these is not yours. The U32 one that says Katie Stanley, that is not yours. That's the U32 board. We'll hear about that in August. If I get you, Philmore and Milconi and that says U32 is, because that's special. Before you move on to Lauren. So the reason these two are only interviewed by two people is because they're known enemies. No one knows entities in this system. It was like. I'm comfortable with that. Internal postings only. We follow what's required in a negotiated agreement. Yeah. No one people. Accessible. Very successful. Lauren, and I'm gonna have a hard time with the last thing. Milconian. And Milconian. That's close to what it sounded like from her eye. I just can't get it through this head of mine. She is a special, we have one special education position that's open to at U32 for Andrew Conborn today. I interviewed Lauren actually today, purposely to hopefully to bring her to you tonight. She was interviewed, you can see everyone on the bottom was Steve. Steve and Bill Dice, Brittany. She comes to us from the new school here in Montpelier. She's working at our master's degree in leadership and education. She's worked in Montpelier. She's worked over in Rivendale. So she would be our last special educator at U32. We still have one opening in Berlin that we have not been able to fulfill. There would be three tonight. Sorry, I have to do the next up. Here's Bill, how about that? So I'll bring that up to U32 next time I see all of you. Do you want that one back? Sure, that will be on the coffee table. That's okay, that's the tea. Here you go. Thank you. I don't know if there's discussion or not, but if there's not, you could move this to sleep. Yes. Go ahead. I'll make that motion to accept the new hires for Washington Central. Is there a second? I'll second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed extensions? Thanks. Okay, 3.2, approving blanket authorization for check orders for F1-18 and 19. This is on page seven. This is a statement that we do every year essentially to authorize, I'm sorry, Bill, not to do it. You're doing fine, yeah. To authorize payroll checks and accounts payable and et cetera in months that we don't meet or when we change our meeting date, if it would create problems or incur late fees or things like that. So moved. Second. Is there a second? Okay. Do we need to sign this, Bill? It looks like we do. I'm starting with Dorothy. Okay, yeah, good. Come around. Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed extensions? Okay, and then we have the investment bid on page eight. Yeah. Which is also fairly standard in something we do every year. Bill, I'm sorry. Bill, is there anything special we need to know about this? Just all the, it's community, national, and the reason we won't, you can see they have the best, we... Community, national or community? No, it's community banks, I mean, yeah, yeah. The reason we're staying with them is because we look at the differential of the school districts from the interest to the loan rates, it's best for the schools and we like to try to keep our bank. And these are the ones with all the other districts? Yeah, they have one that's used for a community bank. Thank you. It's so easy to get those to you. I know, but we'll just... So I can remember the motions. And I would make a motion that we approve investment and operating accounts to bid to a community bank, any for the time period July 1, 2018, 30 July, June 30th, 2019. I'll second that. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions. 3.4, authorize the superintendent to award the propane bid. This is, we got these bids in the way of 24 hours of time around. You all did that, so we get all the districts to buy. We can do 3.5 as well, the insurance bid. Okay. I think I can actually save this money and God's better coverage this year. Would anybody like to move those? I'll move both of those. And I'll second them. Okay. Should I make a... No, go ahead. Of course, any discussion? No, finish that, finish that. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions. Thank you. Yes. So backing up as a point of order. Yep. Dorothy and Rick both shouldn't sign this. I didn't... Oh, perfect. No, don't worry, I'm gonna vote for you. I'm not voting. I'm not voting. Excellent. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I watched you go right fine. Perfect. 3 many times. 3.6, authorize the reserving funds for job coaching and case management. That's what Lori talked about. That's what Lori spoke to, it's the 45,543 for case management and 41,451 for job coaching. Okay. So moved. Adrienne moved, is there a second? Second. Lisa, did you get the numbers? Is it in the documents? It's in the financial reports. 15, it's at the bottom of 15. The 45 and 41,000. Is there discussion of this motion? It doesn't sound like there is any discussion. So that being the case, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, abstentions? Thanks. And that, I think, is our action agenda. Are there any comments or questions on the reports to the board apart from the superintendent report? So this would be the director's report. Director's report. Just an observation. Yeah, go ahead. So the world peace game, yeah. I went to the site, actually, I was very excited to read to the world. However, I think there should be a plan for some community outreach. I think it's really good. I want to go with it. I get no problem with it. But I don't mean community outreach. I think there should be some communication to the community about what this is and what it's about. Rather than just having students do it and go home and, you know, what were you doing? I was participating in the world peace game. But what's that all about? And just a paragraph or a few sentences with a link. Just, I, when I went through it, in my mind I'm thinking, and there could be some people in our community that might feel uneasy about just seeing a few words and what does that mean? And just so that it's communicated, this is pretty quickly what it's about. Here's a link if you want more information. That's it. And, you know, maybe I'm being overly cautious, but that's what's struck me about it. Okay, thanks. But when you go in and look at it, the learning that occurred has been destroyed. I think it's outstanding. Bill, any thoughts about that? I think we can get something out of it. We're training our teachers to be able to integrate this into our curriculum. Either at the middle school or five, six, we don't know if we can do it twice and get two different objectives out of it. It's phenomenal when you see it. We sent two people out to be trained and they came back to point being Jen. She said that we have to host this next year and the day basis is making all the playing boards, which is like, it's three dimensional chess on something well above that level because the number of pieces is five dimensional chess. Well, three dimensions deliberately, but the kids have to do it all. It's transferring the space. Or more than just chess pieces. Oh yeah, and so they have to negotiate with each other and it's a whole simulation. It was designed to take people outside their comfort zone. So I just think from a parental point of view, it would be good for parents to kind of understand that, there's son or daughter might come home. The conflicted part where it's through the process. It's important that they do. I think it's just so that it just doesn't happen and the parents like, well, what the hell's going on there? You're kind of in this, they're all cranked up on what's going on. Just so, here's the link. We strongly endorse it. We strongly favor it. This is what we're doing. But if you want to find out more about it, here's what. So I'll check with Jen. I think that has been done with 25 students already. It's going to bring it to the rear of the hand, which is the plan. This is coming to be part of the parental process. While we're here, the director's report. So pretty very briefly, tell us, we have 80 students signed up to attend the extended school year program. Who signs up? Typically for the students that are required in their IEP to have extended school year services. Can others come? I don't know the answer to that question. I don't think we'd ever turn anyone away from that, but it's been to include the students that have that in their IEP that they need extended services to the summer. We provide the transportation. We provide the transportation we actually need at each school in each town. We don't go to run all the bus routes, but we run a bus from each school to where it's been hosted the past two years at Eastmont Hill. And before that, U32 will be at Berlin this summer. You would really have about three schools being hosted. Those are the three. Are there any other comments on the reports to the board? Four, two through four, seven. I don't mean to rush, but please feel free to raise anything you want to raise. Well, I just, I highlighted the clunky hiring process especially, but obviously that's another. Well, that's the superintendent report though. We're going to come back to that actually. Yeah, yeah, no worries. Okay, so let's, I have 4.1 then, a superintendent report. And yeah, I had some questions about some of the things that were in here or wanted to hear. But I'm assuming the special hiring process that we table would address this clunky process. Yes, it's really hard. It's really hard. I had someone from Berlin. We've gone through three candidates now. That I, it's not been that some of it's the clunkiness of the board process, but some of it is, it frankly is, if you're a special ed teacher, you can, you can play districts off of each other if you're past April. Right. That's right. You can choose. So just for those who weren't there, we had quite a discussion about this at our April meeting. Yeah, and I, you don't need to go through it. No, it's all right. I think, again, Chris McVeigh had some strong opinions about it, and also we're kind of at the tail end of the hiring process this year. So with other fish to fry, we didn't really feel like we had to prioritize it for urgent conversation in June. But it is definitely, it's going to stay on our agenda and get addressed one way or the other. So we've covered a lot of this already, actually. I guess it's just the grants fund update. That seemed, that seemed, so. Partentious to hear something under all of it. Yeah, it's going to get there. We're going to have to start looking at other avenues to fund our curriculum camp, which is our biggest teacher development project that we do every year after this summer. So next summer, we'll have to look to other funding sources or within our internal. We've talked about this at this table before, that we may have to start putting money aside or making sure that it is the way, I don't know what the percentage is, but to me it's a majority of the reason we've been able to make the curriculum and proficiency work we've been able to. The release on Wednesdays at the high school is having an effect because you have such a concentrated number of teachers. So we've talked about that before too, but the Wednesdays we're knocking the bang as much as much, especially at smaller schools. So that's part of it. And Calis elementary school is going to lose its title one status, which is a lot of money going away when we're looking to either cut personnel or increase funding. And those are your supports for your struggling learners. Are they losing that because they have fewer free, there's a bunch of kids, the percentage to do down below they're around 30% now, and you have to be over 40. So the number of kids that are in poverty is going down and the number of kids is going down. So in Calis, and so we've been told, we've been grandfathered already one year, we'll get grandfathered for the FY19, and we've been told there's no way to come back. So that's your reading supports and some of your math supports for students that are struggling. Are there any other districts that are sort of on a similar trajectory in terms of just to try to anticipate if this is gonna keep being a problem? I don't see a big difference right now in the demographics of the percentages of free and reduced lunch kids in any other district. Dony's actually been on take up for now the highest where Berlin is second to the highest. And Dony and Berlin have always been close. So if we consolidated, I'm just putting it out there, would they still look at each individual school or do they take it as a whole? So by a federal legislation, they'll look at each school because this is federal money. And so some of the money that we reserve, where you asked us to reserve is to try to address some of the shortfall for that. I'd say we're, I'd like to use some of the job coaching for FY19, but we're gonna start getting into that place of using, having to use other funds from somewhere else besides federal funds. We've been, and for most of our summers, we're in 70, 75 people working for two or three days on curriculum and people like it because they get it done right after school so they have their thoughts already collected and then they go away for the summer. It's just, it's a good time to do some work with people who say, I'm willing to stay for a couple extra days and do that work. Is that federal money? Yeah, and that's the money that's going away. And that's got us, and if you look at anything under Jen's site, all that curriculum work, all the proficiency work, that's where we're developing all that, it's pre-K graduation work. And that's true statewide, isn't it? Yep. That's going away. It's going away. And it's going away on the special education site too. I just don't have a, Kelly at the point of writing this report, we didn't have a full accounting on the special education site. Okay, well thanks. That's important to be aware of. Yeah. It's just interesting to see how we work through that. I just want to make you aware of that. I didn't mean to. Let's talk about that. Okay, so the last thing on our agenda then is to discuss the superintendent contract, which is going to require executive session. So, I have a motion to move an executive session at 737 to discuss the superintendent's contract. 731. 732. 732. Is there a second? I'm 37, were you given a second? Hi. Is there a second? Sure. All those in favor? Aye.