 I'm going to go ahead and call the meeting to order. We do indeed have a form because all of us are in person and that's a treat. So, yay. Several things to do during the meeting today. First look at the ends, a big one, and also the self-evaluation, particular policy we're looking at. I hope everybody had a chance to either fill out a chart or at least give me some thoughts about each square. Great. So, we're going to move into the public. I need to ask for a motion to add something to the consent agenda. This is to approve the opening of a new bank account at Bar Harbor Bank. And the account will be the Randolph-Humann Senior Class Fund. So, if I could have a motion. Second. Thank you, Megan. Second. Thank you, Sarah. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Great. That is now added to the consent agenda. Thank you. All right, now we're going to move to public comment. I'll read the general public comment preamble. The board welcomes comments but is not able to take any action on them other than to direct the public to the appropriate staff member or to the complaint procedure. Comments are limited to three minutes per speaker. Chelsea will be keeping time. Time may not be ceded to another speaker. Comments are to be addressed to me, the board chair or the board as a whole, not to any individual on the board, on the staff or in the public. Please raise your hand either in person or the hand button online and wait to speak until you are asked to by myself. Please identify yourself with your first and last name and your town of residence. Please refrain from restating comments that have already been shared. You can express agreement with those comments. Order and decorum shall be observed by everyone. Shouting and profanity are prohibited. As the board chair, I will maintain the order and decorum of the meeting. And with that, I open the floor for public comment. Yes. So Nathan Wright, resident of Randall, class of 1995 graduate year. I just wanted to come today and have a discussion and express my concerns again about where the direction of the school is going and the recent problems that we've been having inside the school. I have a middle school child that's attending school and becoming very uncomfortable to attend the school there. Specifically with the bathroom issues and everything else that's going on there in the distractions in the classroom. I know a lot of you know there was a survey that went around the last couple weeks. Some of you might have heard it was tied to me and that I created it and I did not. But one thing that did it open my eyes is that there's different types of governance when it comes to school boards. And I encourage the school board to really look over those different types of governance and change it from a policy governance school board to a traditional or one of the other two. Now some of you might not even be aware that there's other types of governance to a school board. So in your email tonight after this meeting you will have an email link that describes the different types of governance that are available for this district coming from my email address. And I just feel that maybe the policy governance school board has been successful in the past. But with all the issues that have arised in the school board both with what we have read in the surveys that have gone around it's time for a change. So I'd ask again that the school board overlook look at those and come to a decision if a change is necessary for the community. Thank you. Someone else interested in making a public comment? Yes. I'm an old fan parent of a few OSSD students. Two topics. First one is equality and filing of HHB investigations. I think there's certain classes of students that get more help from the school than other classes of students. And for certain classes of students it's easier to start one than for other classes of students. At least that's my experience. And I think we should hold to quality under the law and it should be just as simple for everyone to start one if needed. The other topic is the survey and the petition that's circulating. The petition actually calls for the board to not renew the superintendent's contract. The survey is 12 pages I believe and in the end either gives a vote of confidence or vote of no confidence for the superintendent. Before the board decides whether to renew his contract I think the board should really look at both of those and see the will of the people before they make a decision. And in my conversations with people in town there are definitely people on both sides of the aisle who are signing the petition asking y'all to not renew his contract. And I really think you should give the people a chance to speak on this through the petition and the survey before you make a decision. Neither do I. Last call for public comment. Not seeing any. We will move on. The ownership linkage committee report. I am here. Heather, hi. Kacha, would you like to go first or shall I? I don't really have anything to bring in other than we didn't have our meeting for March that was skipped. We did go, some of us were able to attend the portrait of a graduate meeting the other night at the community dinner which was really nice and nice presentation and thanks to the culinary team for putting that dinner together as well. And so that was a nice introduction I think for the community to see what was happening and also to start gathering more input. And it was also exciting to see what input had already kind of come through in the conversations that have been happening. So that's all I have, Heather, if you have other things to add. Yeah, so I'd just like to put out to the community that the team met on March 3rd and March 9th to start to teach our students and how to collect data from the community and be facilitators. They led the community dinner that Kacha just referenced on April 4th. It was a great success. I believe we had about 50 people in attendance and the students led the data collection. We also put the data collection out on front porch forum. We sent it out in newsletters to families from all schools in our district. And also we did some more physical data collection. We created postcards to put out at senior living and at the library so that people had a tangible way to submit their contributions to the board for ideas for the portrait of the graduate. And the next meeting of the portrait of the graduate team is scheduled for April 18th and they'll be looking at all of this information to start to inform the first draft of a portrait of a graduate. Thank you, Heather. My pleasure. It was a lovely community dinner. I just want to say that. I think it's great to see many board members there. Okay, this is speeding along. I'm going to go ahead and move on to monitoring. If anyone didn't get one, there are copies of the policy chart. Thank you Ann for sending that so everyone had it beforehand. So I want to ask the group, if we adopted doing it this way, because it seemed to go really well the first time we were introduced to it during the training, right? I just want to do a check in to see if we still feel this is, has value for us the way that we're doing this. I feel like some of the, when this has been on the agenda, it's not a real engaged conversation. So I don't mean to blame the chart. It may not be the chart. It may be us needing to do more work and being engaged in the conversation, but I think this is one of the main responsibilities we have as self monitoring. So I'm interested to know if people think, feel that we should continue with this, or if there are other ideas, or if you feel this is it and we should chug along and try harder in terms of engagement. Anyone has any thoughts there? Before we were doing kind of like a survey, yes, before that was sent out into our email. We would do the self evaluation chart at the end, or the checklist. I don't think we were actually, we weren't addressing policies at each meeting and having an annual review of them. So this was done as a way for us to make sure that we were looking at our policies annually, but they were trying to also correspond to the time that we were reviewing them. It was with kind of pertinent to what was happening within the annual calendar and just making us really kind of stop and take a closer look at those policies themselves and help us just do a self evaluation on them. Yeah. Before we were doing that, end of the meeting that nobody wanted to do. Did we listen? Did we participate? Yeah, right. Right. So I think this is more effective than that was for sure. It is. I think some of them are more valuable than others. I appreciate the layout of having like all of the policies and kind of broken up into each category. I personally like to write them out and just like think about them, but I still feel like I don't. I mean, aside from like, yeah, we do this. Yeah, we could work on, you know, like, I just don't know how much, I don't know how much more I can give based on what our policies are. Do we hold to them and then how would we change them? I don't really know what to say in regards to that. Like, how would we, how would we change them if there needs to be a change? I'm still like unclear of that part of it. Right. I think we also, we tend to read through them and then if we get to a point where we're saying, some of the time we have kind of like, let's get back to that or let's, you know, that's a plan for next year. I don't think that we actually, I mean, I don't think we haven't gone through a full year of this yet, have we? No, we have not. So I don't think that we've ever revisited one where we're like, oh, we were going to improve that or we were going to do this or look into that over the course of the year. So I do think there's value in doing it, but I don't think that we're holding ourselves accountable to the outcomes that we're finding. Well, and some policies are meatier than others, you know, the subcommittee policy not as, not as busy. This one probably more so. So I guess a recommitment to this process. I think this process can be strong as long as we build an accountability strategy for the outcomes. Maybe it's just too young. I mean, I've only done a handful of these now. Yeah. But I agree to lay out having the policies and really actually think about, are we doing that? Are we not doing that? I think we can be honest with ourselves and engage with this process. I do agree with the accountability strategy for the outcome. So should we make that now? Oh, I was going to say, I don't think, because I don't think we have anyone who's like the note taker on these. This is what we came out of. This is the process that we need to move forward, especially the action items. I think we're all just like, yeah, that sounds great. Next. So I don't even know if we would be able to look back on one. So we had made notes or decisions on and actually know what we were going to do with it. I don't think I was the one that I had. Yeah, I did. But I don't think I... But I don't know if we were right. We necessarily put other people's notes in there. So do you think like something where we were, where we are either holding someone kind of as the person who, you know, maintains like the keeper of the policy process thing? And then we review, there's one that's like, oh, we said we're going to do something about this this year. Maybe six months later, we're like, don't let's not forget that we're supposed to have something before the next. I mean, I just mentioned that was not in the quirk's job description. Sam, don't make eye contact. Is it there now? So it sounds like let's, let's recommit to this. The last few questions, I think we haven't been, those are the ones we've been skipping. And that's where, what actions will we commit to taking? In the next year to improve our application? Who will be accountable to the leadership to ensure it happens? And when will we, will we reassess? I think we need to make sure we hit those. Yeah, because it should be on our calendar. That's exactly, exactly. All right. Well, that being said, let's delve into this one. If no one has any objections, I'll go ahead and read it and stop with number one. So that we can talk about number one, please. I just have one more thing to say and that is, are we intending to get through all our policies in a year? Because if that's so, we need to do more than one per meeting, right? Like, is it counted up all of the things that we have to get through and like divided them into, you know, 10? Because it's more than one. So how long in this, just like how long doing it this way? Is it going to take us to get through the entire set of policies? Well, these, so... We don't need an answer, just a thought. Yeah. Well, if you remember, it was Jackie recommended that we do that after we had the training. And it's the governance process policies and it's the board management delegation policies. So it's only those policies that we're doing the selfie bell on. Because that's our, those are the ones that govern our work. And then the other ones, so there are one, two, three, four, five, 13 of them. And there are 12 months that the board meets, so there's one... Yeah, there was one month we missed one. Yeah. And we doubled up. Yeah. As far as circling back, maybe moving forward, we should choose like, you know, depending on how we break them out. We also assign one to follow up on each month. So six months from now, let's just say we set that as a date. We review two policies and then we review six months later from one that we set expectation changes on or something like that. So really it would be like two to three that we're reviewing. But really one of them is just the review of our review. Does that make sense? Am I saying that right? Mm-hmm. So that way we are holding ourselves accountable like in six months from now, yes, we're going to review this policy again, but it's only because we want to make sure we're holding up to what we decided on for changes or if any. Does that make sense? Right, because we may not feel the need to review again. So back to the logistics of it, how are we capturing everyone's sentiment on each policy? And we're having a conversation about an important meeting, but do we need Google Sheet or something? Well, we can exchange ideas on it outside of the meeting. Well, I mean, we just have one of the, we have blank ones every meeting and we just, I mean, we can do it almost the way that we did it with the end of the meeting, who's going to volunteer to be the note taker this month. Oh, yeah, that's good. Then everybody has to go. And then maybe we just have, maybe you hold on to them or Chelsea holds on to them and you have like the master copy. And then I guess the other thing would be like set a date on the top, say in six months we all are agreeing that we're going to revisit. It says it on our suggestions. I'll take notes. No, but just like a date on the front so we know in July we're going to review this again. All right. So you're dating that copy? I'll take notes tonight. Thank you. I'll give that away. I really wasn't dodging that. Your time will come. Okay. Tonight we are self evaluating on policy number 4.1 governing style. Policy wording. The board will govern lawfully observing the principles of the policy governance model with an emphasis on a outward vision rather than an internal preoccupation. B encouragement of diversity in viewpoints. C strategic leadership more than administrative detail. D clear distinction of board and superintendent roles. E collective rather than individual decisions. F future rather than past or present. And G pro activity rather than reactivity accordingly. Number one. The board will cultivate a sense of group responsibility. The board, not the staff will be responsible for excellence in governing. The board will be the initiator of policy, not merely a reactor to staff initiatives. The board will not use the expertise of individual members to substitute for the judgment of the board, although the expertise of individual members may be used to enhance the understanding of the board as a body. Big, big, big. Yeah, this one's hard because I think he'd break it down on the sentence by sentence. Exactly. And I'll say the first, I went through and just started circling words that jumped out at me or phrases that jumped out at me. And the first one I circled was responsibility. Will cultivate a sense of group responsibility. Do you feel we do that and do it well? Do that and do it poorly? No, do it at all? Or any other comment on the first? I feel like this one's also kind of hard. There's so many different aspects too, but I mean I think as a whole we do cultivate a sense of group responsibility. We try to speak as a group. We try to bring different perspectives and voices into the conversations. And I think that we do to the best of our ability the work of a board. Well, and I think even the conversation leading into starting with, you know, the wording of the actual policy is us making further effort to be the initiator of policy rather than a reactor to staff initiatives. You know, they're our policies in our initiatives. I think that the words are jumping out for me past or present proactively or reactive. I think that puts us in a middle ground of responsibility. I think have had to be reactive in some senses. I think we do a pretty good job given the governance style, but I think we do have a lack of response. We are reacting in some cases. I agree. The words I circled were strategic leadership and proactivity. I think that we have been lacking those two things specifically. I think overall as a whole we function well, you know, trying to speak with one voice, encouraging diversity and viewpoints. I think there's a very clear distinction between board roles and superintendent roles. Like, that's very clear. You know, we don't want to get caught in the weeds. It's clear in writing. Do you think it's clear in practice? I feel like it's been clear in practice in a very hands-off kind of way. And what does... I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but you say interesting things and I feel like I want to dig them out. What does proactivity look like? That's where it gets hard, I think, with the policy governance model. Because being proactive, to me, would often be sort of heading off problems before they come. Same again? That's what the policies are supposed to do. They can't head off every problem. There's no way to imagine it. Prepare for absolutely every problem. That's the good point. If we're finding that either a specific policy or the wording in the policy hasn't headed off a problem that it was intended to or should have, that's where we need to rethink, is the policy even working for us? It doesn't need more detail. And I think we can feel reactive because what we see are the things we have to react to. We don't know what's prevented. We don't know what is being headed off by the policies that are in place. We'll never know that. So it can feel like all we're going to see is reactivity, really. Because all we're going to feel is the problems and the discontent. Positive outcome? Hmm, that seems very pessimistic. We may not be able to see what's prevented from happening because therefore it didn't happen. That's what I mean. Okay. But there should be a way to see that our policies are effective and affecting. And that's with ends monitoring. Right. It's all connected. So if the policy is not working for us, and I'm not saying this one is or isn't, then it's either not getting us the information we want when we're seeing outcomes. Or, yeah. These are tough conversations. Not tough because it's uncomfortable, but tough to know what to do with. I would say the board still has some learning to do. I mean, we have some new board members. And it is a system that you have to kind of work at to kind of understand it. So if you're, you know, we come to it once a month, but if, you know, depending on how much time, you know, you kind of come in and you're like, okay, yep, it's good. And so I just wonder if that was one of my, I put most of the time and I just said, I think the board needs to continue to learn, not that we don't know anything, but in order to really get a system working and doing what it's supposed to be doing, you have to continue to learn how to improve it. And that's really what we're talking about is how do we improve our policies? And make sure that we're working the system in a way that's getting us the outcomes that we want. And that it's the right system for us to be using. Because we have someone saying maybe there's a different system. So one of the suggestions in terms of... Virtual folks can't hear anything. Do you mind seeing if the cards available? I apologize. But one of the ways sometimes of evaluating the policies is that like when problems come up or when controversies come up, that might be an opportunity to sit down and say, okay, what policies apply to this? And what do they dictate that we do? And in this case, did it help us or did it hurt us? So just trying to brainstorm some possible ways or even some, you know, they used to call them the table top exercises like that. You know, what is going to be the response or what is going to be the reaction given this problem based upon what our policies dictate do or don't happen. So I'm just throwing it out there as a possibility of a means to evaluate. I just, the comment again was it's good now. Lane is good at projecting so perhaps that's the problem. Sorry about that. People can hear him. Heather, can you, if you're there, can you hear us? Okay, so it might be in that home time. We were interacting with Heather earlier, so we have a push for your buttons to change. Thank you. Seems to be. Can we get a thumbs up from anyone online that you can hear us? Yay! Thank you, Jessica. So what Lane says is interesting. So when something that we feel we need to react to happens, we figure out what policy could maybe apply to it and see if it does. If it guides us, the policy should guide us. And then if it doesn't, what do we do? Look at it and change it and change it. That's the policy governance piece. If things aren't specific, if they're not working, the board can change the policies at any time. The other thing that can happen is let's say in terms of like the interpretations that are given to you with ELs and end reports. If you don't feel that it's giving you quite what you need, then you add a bullet point under it that makes it a little bit more specific and kind of narrows down the range of what the interpretation can be, if that makes sense. It does. And I think that, especially new members coming on, it's scary to think about changing something that seems like it's the written in stone rules when you walk into something. So I think we need to remind ourselves of what Lane just said, that we, they're our policies, that means they're our policies to edit, to question, to rewrite. Which I think is getting into number two, by the way, talking about, yeah, broad written policies. What I found, oh, I'll read it. The board will direct control and inspire the organization through the careful establishment of broad written policies reflecting the board's values and perspectives. Board values will be drawn from the diverse values of the community, informed by expert sources, both internal and external to the organization. I underlined that part. The board's major policy focus will be on the intended long term impacts outside the staff organization, the ends, not on the administrative or programmatic means of attaining those effects. I cheated and put in my own note in the middle, but informed by expert sources, both internal and external to the organization. Which, when we did the, what we're doing it right now, right, with Portrait of a Graduate, ownership linkage, design, yes, thank you, the design team. So we're progressing is what I wrote. I didn't choose one of the some of the time, most of the time. I mean, I think these, these policies were written in 2016, correct? When we switched to a unified, adopted. And so that was when the switch was first made to the unified district and bringing the three different boards together. And so I do think that there's, that there is a hesitancy to like to change them. But I do think that now having a few years in, you know, I do wonder if we're not being proactive enough to sometimes look at them and say this is not, this is not showing us the detail that we need to move forward. And so that's where I, that's kind of where I feel like we get a little stuck. It's like, okay, these were, these were adopted, these came in, you know, now what, eight years ago almost. But a lot has changed in eight years. But those policies haven't changed with, with us. At all. Yeah. Probably at all. And I don't know. Just tweaks here and there. Yeah. But really not much. So before that change happened in the unified district, what was the governance? What did that look like? I came in just as we were transitioning over. It was three independent. Yeah. Well, and we started doing, we were doing policy governance even when we had multiple boards. Basically, we would do everything was getting done at the, at the SU board. And then we would go for like five minutes to the other boards and just approve everything. So it was, so we were actually, and we were using, by that time, we were using policy governance because I don't. Yeah. I wasn't there prior to policy governance. So it's, it's been going for quite a while. It's just that the structure of the board changed because you had the SU board and then you had the three other boards. And we would just, we would meet, we would do all of the work in the SU board. And then we would divide out into our little boards to do whatever things we needed to do in order to meet the legal. And when you combined and came up with, did you come up with these policies or was one board. No, the SU was using these policies too. So they're older than 2016. Yeah. So they're probably older than 2016. Yeah. We re-looked at them again when we came together as one big, because we had to adopt them when we became the one big board for the whole district. So that's why that was in 2016. Yeah. So they've been used. So, but this is where I go back to in the monitoring process, that's when you realize if you've got a problem with a policy. Or if a concern comes up and you look, you find which policies are impacted and you look at what does the policy say and is that concern addressed. And if it is not, then you would then tweak that policy to pick up the concern that you're having. And so that's where I think that's the hard part of policy governments is the whole monitoring policy and really understanding what monitoring is about. It's a process for your superintendent also because they've got to understand how to create a monitoring report that effectively gives the information that the board is getting in a format in a way that makes sense. So that's where I come back to, we might not need a whole general policy governance training, but maybe monitoring and looking at monitoring reports and assessing, learning how to do that more effectively so that we can look at our policies. Because that's what that process is supposed to allow you to do. Right. And I think changing the perspective a bit to look at what we can do rather than what we can't do. I think that I feel that my time on the board has been a lot about learning what we can't do or where we can't be involved or what we can't say. And I think and I would like to find a way to feel that would make me feel proactive if I felt like I was participating in something where I was doing rather than constantly concerned about what I can't do. I think specifically in situations that have happened in the recent past, it feels to me like we should be able to make some kind of statement, but then we can't make a statement because that is sort of overstepping the boundaries and getting more management, but I don't see it like that. So I know that that hasn't been allowed this past couple of years that I've been on the board, but it seems to me if we don't say something out to the public in support of our school or our students or our administrators or our public or at least come together to create some kind of sort of calming of the waters among the community, we're not really effective at all. That is one way that we could be effective if we could write that into our policies. But staying silent and just not ever saying anything to anybody ever about anything feels totally ineffective. Well, I think it gives a perception of disengagement. Yeah, that if we don't say anything that can be perceived as we don't think anything about it or we somehow aren't affected by it or don't know about it or aren't involved in it when in fact we all were elected to represent what the community wants to see from our schools. So I think any perception of disengagement, unengagement, de-engagement is destructive to our relationship to the community. I mean, I guess I agree with you in my mind, the community is defined as our school community. So that is our teachers and our students and our administrators and our community members like those four key parts. And at various times throughout the two years that I've been on the board, it seems like I've had all four of those groups sort of approach me and say, you know, what gives? Why isn't anyone saying anything? And I'm like, it's policy governance. It's just how it is. So can you be more specific about what the issues were or what policy was involved? Yeah, so that's where I struggle is that the policy connecting the policy to making a public statement is like, there's a divide there because. So we had the COVID thing, is it related? So COVID. So COVID. So the board, did the board have, I mean. I think sometimes it feels, I mean as what I, not to take your words, but I think sometimes the thought is that if there's a statement made, it's on, it's getting into the like administrative piece. And we're not supposed to be oversight of what's happening from an administrative level. At least that's the kind of message that I feel like comes out of this that our directive is the global spot, not to get involved in day to day or situations that are happening directly within the school because those are not things that we as a board should have influence over. We should have influence over the administration that is. Well, we do have in that we have our policies that say these are the guide rails within which you have to operate. So we better know what's going on, but we're not within these these guard rails. We're not going to say, oh, we think you should be doing this. We say you can't do anything outside of these, but manage it, or at least that's what the system says. Now, again, we don't, I mean, we can decide we want to use a different system, but from my understanding, that's the way it's set up is you've got to operate within these parameters. And so, I mean, maybe some of what needs to happen is the board needs to reassure the public. Our administration is doing what what they should be doing their following policy. There are a couple instances and in number two, it says the drawn from the diverse values of the community informed by expert sources, both internal and external to the organization. And if the only thing we're monitoring and the only information we're getting and and are responding to is coming from one person, I think that can be can leave us uninformed or not not fully informed. And that's not to say that Lane is not providing incomplete information, but we should be getting data and information and what is going on for people, how the system is working for them by from more than one person. So regardless of who that person is. And I brought that up to the board my it was either my first or my second year here. Because the question became there were a lot of things that were cleaned up in the district at the time that the board had no clue had been going on. And I brought up that very concern is that if you have one person reporting to you all the time, and that person's not honest, how do you know. And so that's been a and I put that I asked that question, but we didn't have a good solution to it. The best thing that I could offer at the time and it was one of the reasons I think that the board had turned to bringing in the SBA folks to come and talk. Because the idea is the best solution that I could come up is that, you know, if you've got legitimately, you know, large volumes of people all saying the same thing doesn't necessarily mean that what they're saying is right. But you got a responsibility to investigate. So if you ask me, you know, what's going on? And I tell you something and it sounds rational and reasonable, but yet everybody is still upset. Then as part of your oversight function, you need to go in and check, you know, do a legitimate check in, get some more information or ask me for more information or ask somebody else. There's plenty of people in the district to talk to. Because I think one of the most important things is that there's got to be an amount of trust between superintendent and board. And when everything is quiet and silent and it's just reports going back and forth, I don't know how that can be accomplished. I agree. I'm in complete agreement with your comment. So the other thing is that's why it's important to have the ownership linkage. And that has been a downfall of the board for a long time since I've been on the board is getting out and making a plan to connect with the community and to check in with the community. Whether it's about executive limitations or ends, we haven't done that. We've focused on what happened last year, you know, we get tied up in the administration more so than reaching out to the community, checking in with the community. And that community includes staff, faculty, students. So how do we do that? Like in my mind, we have a meeting and we invite people to come and just have a conversation and it probably gets heated at times. And then how do we make that not a total sort of bloodbath? I don't know. You really think it'll be a bloodbath? The thing is, with all the tension there's been or incidents there has been, I think it's important to state at the beginning of anything and the middle of anything and the end of anything that the goals we have are pretty in line with each other. We want our kids to be safe. We want our kids to learn, be successful. And I think it's very easy to forget that when you're in a heated conversation with someone who has an opposing view about something else. It's hard to remember that you actually have something in common with them. And I think it's worth, this is where I think that we have a PR problem in that we need to get people together and say, you know, it could be a statement, but say, hey, this is why we're here. And we think that you agree with us in this very umbrella kind of way, what we're all doing here and why we disagree and why it gets so passionate. I think we've got to go back to that very base level and realize that everything that goes on, it's just, I feel that the way that we've been functioning is so restrictive that it has given a perception of we're inaccessible. We don't really know what's going on. We don't listen. And I think we need to do something about that. That's what I feel our PR problem is. And I do think we need to gather people and say, this is what we mean by ends. These are the ends. We take them really seriously and we think that you do too. We think this is what you want. Which we have a subcommittee for. And right now that subcommittee is working on portrait of a graduate, right? And so that's one great thing that's happening. So that's good. But it is the larger, like the overview look is how do we, how do we achieve that connection on an ongoing basis? What does that look like? The only time, and correct me if I'm wrong because I'm making a pretty broad statement, but really the only interaction that I've had with staff as a board member is in negotiations. You know, those aren't fun. Sometimes they're quick. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes someone's satisfied. But that being the only association that we have with the staff. It would be nice to be able to sit down and be like, how's it going? What are your concerns? Tell us, you know? But I don't, I mean they could come to the school board meeting. I guess this is the format for that. But is it? You do, you do, you do appreciation breakfast or lunch for them every year. That's a good place to kind of. And we haven't done that in the only four years. The only caveat that I would would put, I think the connection is incredibly valuable. I think it should be happening. The cautionary piece as you, my recommendation as you look at possible policies is you've also got to be able to weed out. The perception from the reality. So if you've got five people that come in and are saying, you know, this happened. You've got to do your investigation and check to see if it did or if it's some shade of what they're saying or it didn't happen at all. That's a key piece that I would argue the board would have a responsibility to do to me and to any other administrator. Yeah, there's always going to people that are upset. My job typically is to tell people no. People don't like to be told no. And to make sure that what you're hearing is backed up with something and that there's also an opportunity to be heard on the other side. So you're getting both sides of the story. Just like we do when we do an investigation with a kid or a staff. So that's the only caveat that I would say. There needs to be a policy or a protocol in there to make sure that that happens. So you're saying if we went to a meeting with all the teachers and they were like, our administration does this and our administration does this. And they're all complaints that we come to the administration and say, these are the complaints we heard. What do you have to say? Millington yells and screams at us. I'll quote some of the survey. Yells and screams at people. Millington does this. Millington does that. Those would be concerning things for anyone to hear. But there's a responsibility to check to see if they actually happened or what the context might be. So it's very hard to put the two roles. Because you're in a similar role to I am. You're just collective. When people come into me with a complaint or a concern, I hear it. I get concerned about it. But the first thing that I try to do, which is hard because we're human, is not to pass judgment. And then sometimes I have to go back and oh darn darn, this is happening. And get my thoughts clear so that I can go and I can talk with other people and start to investigate around things and find out the full story of what happened for any judgment is made. And so I think that's the key piece. I think one of the reasons that most boards and the states say, you leave the superintendent alone, he's in charge of operations. You don't interact with staff is because of that concern that if folks are just hearing from a one-sided view, they can react on that. And then big mistakes can happen. But I think if I'm making sense, I'm not. Absolutely. I think the. And I welcome. I wish people were looking at more things. I actually I welcome that. I've been asking for it for years because it again, it builds that trust. Right. I think we've gotten to a point now where we're so there's there's such a divide that the concern would be if we had one of these conversations, it would immediately be a complaint. But if we established at least not even a relationship but an understanding of what we all were trying to do saying how's it going do you feel like you have what you need to to reach your goals with your students. My hope would be that it wouldn't immediately be. Well, Lane yelled at me. It might be. It might be. I can't work with this group of people because they do this and this and this. So we hear that once. Okay. You hear that 15 times. Then you want to look. Okay. What's the deal? But again, the trick is that that you need to look and get the full scope and support context. Absolutely. You need to have an apparatus in place to do investigations. You always, you always have. You just, you can call in, you know, pho or anybody you want, who's, you know, independent to come in and do that look under policy governance. That's one of one of the things that that that should be happening if they're legitimate concerns or if they feel is legitimate. Yeah. To me, this is this is seeming like it's open out by a whole. I think it's important that that if we have a concern that he's not treating staff appropriately, we need to look at our treatment of staff policy and figure out what it is. What is our concern in terms of this treatment of staff? Is he treating them unprofessionally? What have we accepted for his interpretation of that? So if he gives us a treatment of staff monitoring report and we all sit there and go, yep, oh, yeah, we totally get we totally agree with your interpretation. We're going to take all of your evidence. That's that's where the problem is the problem is we got to look at that treatment of staff. So what I'm hearing and again, I haven't I didn't bother to read all the 57 pages of the survey because one, I don't know where it's coming from. I don't know who the people are that filled it out. So and four of them were staff people four of them were at least from what I saw on the data. So I don't I don't know who they are. Are they staff who have been let go? Are they so. I'm not trying to add. So I would say let's let's if we don't if we have a concern and at any point the board can say, you know what, we've got this survey that came out. We have people that are concerned. We want to monitor treatment of staff right now or at the next board meeting and bring us a report and he will need to do that. We can ask him to do that and we can look at his interpretation and we can say, you know what, we need more. We need more information. We need an anonymous survey of the staff. We need, I don't know, we got to come up with what we want. What is going to be evidence for us to show that he is treating staff professionally because we have a policy that deals with treating staff well. But what I'm but but that is still the only person we are listening to. And this sounds like I'm this is a hard conversation to have because I feel like there are implications that I'm actually not trying to make. But there are even within policy governance processes to to develop an evaluation process that doesn't have to do with the that isn't prescribed by the policies. And the VSBA will help us to design an evaluation process so that we're not trying to figure out if we should pay attention to a survey or not. An anonymous survey and I agree, that's very difficult. If we don't know who it's coming from, it could be someone who doesn't live in Randolph or doesn't go to one of the district schools. We don't know. But I want to push back a little bit in that the only thing we can do and the answer will be one of the EL reports. Because if if Lane feels and we and there's evidence there and it's reasonable, his interpretation, does that give us all the information that we may need? It doesn't. In my opinion. Right. I mean, he I mean, and again, you've got a balance and you have to think about trust. I mean, there there is a certain amount of trust there. We also have some other safeguards. There is a collective bargaining agreement that has a grievance procedure. He or any of the administrators are doing something that is super egregious. They have the recourse of that collective bargaining agreement. How many grievances have reached this board? We have a complaint procedure that's set up so if it is something that is not involved or they doesn't rise to the level of the collective bargaining agreement, it can be brought to the board through the complaint procedure. There are legal so there's harassment policies that the district has to have by state and federal law. So those are there. So again, what I'm it just, I guess, I mean, these are maybe I guess I'm I am not feeling like people within the system are in are being treated so poorly that that the administration is I don't know, but we wouldn't know about it. If it if it were really egregious or or even minor people can because there is and think about how many open forums there have been. Lane has had an open forum almost monthly. The principles at the high school and middle school have had them almost monthly. I don't know about and again this is sort of interesting. The elementary schools don't seem to have this controversy that seems to occur around the middle and high school. And I'm not sure what that's all about. But I think they have open. I think I worked with them to make sure that every school this year as we came out of COVID because it was safe to kind of get back together. That they put into place advisory boards that also serve as their open forum so that they can hear the piece that in is making it again my my goal and all this is is is trust. I don't care what you need to do. You can look at anything that I've ever done. I could care less. I know what I've done and I'm actually proud of a lot of the work that I've done. I wish other people saw that. That's one of the things that bothers me a little bit. But we're in this situation where you're hearing a lot of things again from an entity that is staying silent in terms of who it is and who's involved. 74 people on a survey or 80 or whatever it was out of 7500 people in the district. And I want to make sure that the board can feel safe and secure in the work that I'm doing in the work that I've done. That's my goal. Whatever you needs to happen so that you can feel safe and secure, despite whatever the background happenings are, that's what's important to me. And for whatever reason, I agree 100% with Ann as well. This is a difficult concept. But for whatever reason, the way that policy governance is structured is you never get the opportunity to ask me those hard questions. Hey, we heard from 15 people that this and this happened. What's your side of the story? Policy governance is that shouldn't happen. I am happy to provide it because it adds to trust. So where is the room where we do that? Executive session here. Executive session mostly because most of the stuff would probably be around personnel. Again, I have no problem talking about anything. I have no problem sharing my records. I have no problem sharing my investigation notes. I have no problem with you talking with any of the administrative staff that work with me on a daily basis and are often co-involved with me. I rarely, especially in terms of investigations and conversations with folks, I'm rarely there by myself. Heather's with me and a principal is with me. So again, I would like to have the air at least cleared and you guys can decide which is your job, you know, based upon, you know, we've got these complaints out there. Let's dig a literal or have Lane provide us some evidence so that you can either say, yeah, he did it, or you can say, hey, you know what, it's been kind of a one sided thing. I had sat silent for a year and a half, you know, unable to defend myself. Just keeping my mouth quiet because that's kind of what policy governance sort of requires. So it makes it difficult. Well, some of it, I mean, I spoke to our legal counsel when I was chair and I was told. You did better not to just with a case going on you better off. Yeah, I mean, and some of that is our legal system and the way it works. And I'm not I'm not a lawyer. I'm going to take legal advice. So I'd like to make a proposal suggestion. That's a proposal because we have spent a lot of time on this particular agenda item. And it seems to me that planning to come around to this again in six months is a long, long time. It seems to me like this should be something that we continue in in in the next meeting. I mean, I agree. That's my suggestion. In terms of getting things done in speaking to what we talked about in like looking at the policies when we're going to look at them again. In my experience, like running businesses. It's like you look at it. You look at it today. You look at it tomorrow. You look at it the next day and you keep looking at it until the change is happening. So it seems like we should be looking at things every meeting. But I know I know we can't look at everything every meeting. The hot topics. I think we should be looking at again next week, next month. This I think is a important thing to talk about again and think about between now and then and bring ideas to the table. Because let's not forget this policy number is governing style, right? Right? And and we are it's important that we evaluate, first of all, if we're governing in the style that we are committed to right now, if we are successfully doing that, if we want to continue to successfully do that or not. The two biggest pieces that has to come out of a relationship between the superintendent and the board is clear roles. Doesn't matter what the roles are, but everybody knows what their role is and that we don't step on each other's toes in clarity about what folks want to achieve. And so, you know, whatever things that the board is thinking, that's my recommendation. I would argue that if whatever you decide, if it meets those two qualifications, right? Provides clarity, establishes clear roles for both the board and the superintendent, you're golden. And as long as nobody's asking me to do anything illegal or unethical, it doesn't matter to me. I'm your agent. It might be helpful too for folks to take a look at the VSBA is working on governance quality standards. So if you look at those draft sort of quality standards, you'll see that one of the things with, I mean, they're pushing a policy governance. That's whether it's called policy governance, the system of policy governance. Whatever a school board does, it's going to be policy governance based, not necessarily the brand policy governance, but it's going to be governed by policy. So you might want to take a look at that. It's in the latest VSBA. One of the links is a link to the proposed quality standards. And that might be helpful to look at as you think about how we're governing. And there are regs that the state has about what roles, you know, there's certain things by state reg and state law that is a superintendent versus a board. And so those things, if you're thinking about adjusting things, just I would maybe have Pietra come and talk with you about that or if you're thinking of changing so that those pieces are there. So should we move that it's on the agenda for the next month? Or to be at the table at the next discussion? Because that means to continue. Great. Is that a motion? Sure, so moved. I'll sign it back. Got that one done? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Extension. Great. Thank you all. Okay, first review of N's report. What's that? This is alumni. So the N's report, so what I had promised the board was the second that there was viable data from the state, I would get it to you as quickly as possible. The state still has embargoed some of the data, kind of that you're seeing. But what had happened is it looked like I was Googling around and searching around just to see if there was a way to get my hands on it in a way that I wasn't violating the embargo. It looked like Secretary French had a press conference at the end of January where he actually as part of the press conference released what we call preliminary data. So it's not the final data, but as a part of kind of reading the document that's there, it said that the final data would be within a half a percentage point of what was presented. So this should be pretty accurate. So the intent tonight was not so much to come in and do a full presentation. It was to make sure that we got this into folks hands. And what I might recommend, and you can tell me if you'd like to do something different, is maybe take some time to digest it because it's a lot. And then over the course of the next couple of weeks, if there are specific questions that you have, email them to me and I'll create a presentation around those questions. I can present the basics of this so that the community has it, but I think that might be the best thing to do. And there's other data that we can pull in. I think one of the most important things about these end reports is to remember that there is a ton of other educational data that's out there. We've got to track my progress scores, which we talked a little bit about in October last year when we didn't have the state scores. There's the formative assessments that the teachers give. There's a whole plethora of things we could look at, discipline rates for specific infractions, you know, attendance rates is something that's in there, rates for suspensions. They are not in this report because this report is really designed just to give you what you need to be able to say, yeah, we're on track in terms of the ends or we're not. But if there are other things at other points in time that it might be fun to look at, which most districts do, I'm quite happy to provide that. Matter of fact, I felt things have been kind of very sterile because most districts look at quite a bit. So it would be interesting to hear what other districts are using for that then first. And then also I was curious about the proficiency-based grading too. Do we have a separate report for that or would that be something that we could potentially include in how that is being done? You can include it. The value of the data, we'd have to look at it together. With the proficiency-based grading, it is an objective grade. The teachers are taking their evaluation on this project. Yeah, the kid did a portion that kind of fits in with this standard here. Is it enough to show that? So there is that subjective piece of it, the S you certainly could. There is a whole other question, the discussion that I've revamped for the third time with the admin team and have talked a little bit about it with the faculty at some of the open forums that were there about whether the proficiency-based grading, the way that they're using it or standard-based grading is valuable. And the concern is, and they have the same concern, is that to be able to track all those individual standards takes this much work and the benefit we get from the kids is here. And so the loophole that I have suggested, and we can do it now that the curriculum work is complete, is the standards that they're using. Those are the standards you're supposed to be teaching in your curriculum, right? So we now have curriculums that outline all the standards that the teachers are supposed to say. The loophole is this, is look, you know, in terms of a graduation proficiency and in terms of the standard, if you get a B plus or higher in Algebra 2, you've met these standards and you've met this portion of the graduation proficiencies. And that's the easiest way to do it. And then you could literally go back to A, B, C, D grades that people are most familiar with. And then you also have enough resolution because of the testing that's being collected that the students really needed to know in detail what the standards are. We just pull the track of my progress testing that they're doing, which is actually shared with the students by the staff anyway, to communicate where they are. So there's lots of easy ways to do this. But yeah, that is certainly something you could look at. What are some of the other things that you've heard other districts are kind of incorporating into this? Typically, you know, having done the presentations in Massachusetts, high schools are the flagships of the district. The district will survive or die depending upon the success of the high school. And so the things that they typically look at, if they are academically focused, right, the state testing is top notch. That's the first thing that they look at. They look at ACT scores. They started looking at SAT scores because there was a change in the SAT exam. Prior to maybe about a decade ago, the SAT was a reasoning test. It wasn't a subject test. It was basically an IQ test. How well do you reason? What they were finding was that there wasn't a strong correlation between how well students can reason and how successful they're going to be in college. So they switched to a format that's much closer to the ACT, which is ACT tests you on. Your science is up through biology. It tests you on your math, usually up through geometry or maybe algebra too. It's based upon what you should have learned had you been following, you know, what the national standards for curriculum are. Other things, depending upon if there are specific problems that people perceive within a district, like if we've got concerns about climate at the high school, then some districts will also take a look at their disciplinary data. You know, how many kids are cutting classes? How many kids are getting into fights? How many incidents of bullying are we having every year? To, again, we have a perception that there's a climate issue. I would agree that there is. But the data fills in the blank about how big the issue is. And then it also over the course of time, if when the board sees that data says that's not acceptable. We need you to work on this. We start to work on it and we continue to give that data over time so that you can see if it's changing. In some cases in districts where there's a lot of diversity, equity is a big deal. And we should be doing some of that here as well. You know, how many times are our students of color getting suspended for, you know, a specific infraction compared to our white students? Those sorts of things. So there are some that are specialized depending upon what your needs are, what your perceived deficiencies are. But the standards ones are usually AP scores, SAT, ACT, and then the state scores. You know, every year in October I would march up and that was the presentation as a principle I did in front of the board. That's a good question. And that's what the community wanted you to talk about. Do people want to take Lane's suggestion that we really take some time to come through? Email him individually questions that he can put together. Presentation for next. I think this last paragraph will lend itself nicely to our conversation on governance this week also. Policy governance is a really good model. It establishes roles and responsibilities. But they're my concern, like I stated in there, there are some places where it's sterile. The ends document, usually that Ian was talking about a little bit, you know, a little bit of work on the ends. Ends documents are usually short. It's, you know, over the course of the next, you know, six months. You know, we're going to improve, you know, worker productivity by 15%. And so we measure how many of whatever it is that they're making. So it's usually a single sentence and a single data point that shows whether or not you met it. We're dealing with a very complex thing in terms of student learning and achievement, given the fact that every student is different. Every student has their own needs, their own thought processes are starting out at different levels. So one of the things that you'll see as the groups have been doing their work this year about reinterpreting the ends is a lot of them are starting to focus on what we call the scaled scores. So that you can see growth over time as opposed to did they hit this threshold. So there's a lot of parts and pieces to it. The other thing that I think I talked a little bit about with policy governance that I think is difficult is because it focuses so much on the ends, right? Did the scores go up or did the scores go down? We don't talk about the means. In other words, everything the district is doing to achieve that because it's the means that the community sees and latches on to. Oh, what? You put in $60,000 worth of a new English program that's the top research in the country? Why yes, we did. Those are things that connect with the community. That won't. And so I think that's, there's probably ways to manipulate around it. But until we're talking more about the means, the things that the district is actually doing to achieve that, the community is always going to feel or be in the dark about what's happening within the schools to improve them. You put in at this point in time the $600,000, $700,000 STEM program, gated 12? Well, yes, we did. Three years ago. How many people know about that? It's in the newsletter all the time that not everybody reads the newsletter. We revamped the science curriculum, the math curriculum, the EL curriculum. There's all sorts of work that's going on. So do we need a motion to move this to next discussion? No, because this is the first review. Okay. Thank you, Lane. Policy decisions. This is a second reading of the selection of library materials policy, the selection of curriculum materials policy, and the addition to EL policy 2.0 inequitable, being the word that is added. Is there discussion to be had on any one of the three? We can vote with the second reading. We vote with the second reading. Hearing no discussion. I move to accept library materials policy D22 as submitted. All second. Thank you, Anne. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Curriculum materials. I move to approve policy D23, selection of instructional materials submitted. Second? Second. Thank you, Sam. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. And then EL policy 2.0, considering the addition of the word inequitable. Is there discussion? Is there a motion to accept? I move to approve policy 2.0 global executive constraints with the addition of the edited word inequitable. One second. Thank you, Megan. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Thank you all. Legislative update. I'll try to do this one quick because there's kind of three that run to the top. The first one is that the universal meals is moving forward. We're just waiting to figure out what the funding is going to be for them. Just so folks know that if the program is voted in and that they decide to draw the money from the education fund, it will add six cents per hundred dollars of assessed value on everybody's property. So it's quite an expensive move. But I think one of the things that's happening is that once you put a program in place basically it's hard to pull it back afterwards. And so that's kind of a big one that's coming that may or may not have a budgetary impact on all the districts in the state depending upon what they decide for a funding source. The PCB one is interesting. They kind of started to combine two of the things that they've been working on. They got the PCB testing and remediation that was put into law about a year ago. They're also having discussions about construction aid, right? They did the big survey to take a look at the state of school buildings in the districts across the state to see what shape they were in and they're not in great shape. Matter of fact, we were a building, RUHS was at the top of the list in terms of the building that was the closest to the end of its useful life. So they started to take a look at these two pieces and said the problem with the two of them is that with PCBs, if we get a hit on PCBs, immediate remediation has to happen, right? So maybe somebody's got to replace a fieldhouse. Maybe somebody's got to rip out a whole hallway in the classrooms and replace them to be able to remediate it. Does it make sense to have districts doing this type of expensive work when if we give them construction age, they're probably going to rebuild or renovate their buildings anyway? And so they've taken the focus off of the PCB side so much and right now they're really focused on the construction aid side. So I think the PCB piece is going to go away and then they're going to be trying to provide districts with money. We're in a quirky space with this is that we're like the old car that every month there's a big bill. The next one you're going to be talking about in a little while is the renovation of the fieldhouse. We have parts and pieces in the buildings that are just getting to the point where they're worn out. They need to be replaced while we're waiting for them to decide on construction aid. If I knew the construction aid was coming, I would probably suspend a lot of the work and really go to the mat to try to convince the community, hey, if they're giving us half of what we need anyway, let's rebuild the school and the technical center system. But until we get a final answer from them, I can't do that. We've got to keep things up and running. Do you have any idea what a final answer might be? My honest guess is they've done one, what they do is if typically what I've seen is the pattern is it costs a lot of money and they're not 100% sure they'll call for another study committee for another year. I'm hoping that does not happen, but my guess is that's what they'll be. The last one that was kind of important to us was the full-time preschool that we built. We built over the course of the past couple of years free full-day preschool for four-year-olds across the district. It's basically adding an additional year of education for our students. It's catching them at an early age so that we can kind of pre-identify any disabilities that they may have and work on them right then and there before they may develop more fully over time. Lots of times as the students are going up through the grades, the work that they're required to do gets harder so the disability becomes more pronounced how it's manifesting itself. So if we can mitigate it now, it may save the child in terms of their academics later and may save us in terms of IEPs. The other thing that it does is it's an attempt to try to mitigate some of the behaviors that we've been seeing especially post-COVID because when the students are coming in, a lot of the work they do is socialization. So we were one of the districts that actually built this a few years back. The community was exceptionally supportive of that work. But the problem that we've got in maintaining it and there's three other districts around the state that have done the same thing is that while our students are here a 1.0, a full-time, the state is only paying us for .46. So like with a high school student, this past year we get about $14,000 per high school student from the Ed Fund to support their work. In the case of a preschool student who is here, we're only getting 46% of that even though they're here just as much time as the high school student. And so we made an effort with the Vermont Superintendent's Association to try to get in front of the legislature and explain our cause to them. They did not want to hear us. And so my guess is that that may be postponed. A lot of it, legitimately so, is the fact that the universal pre-game model that they're looking at is extremely expensive. But we were trying to say, okay, forget about all the rest. Give us the 1.0 to help us maintain these programs that we built. So we're hoping and we're going to go after that fight again next year when the time comes. So those are the three biggies that we've been working on. I have a question. You were saying $14,000 per high school student. Do you know that number on elementary student? In terms of what we get from the Ed Fund, that's what we get from the Ed Fund. It's like $13,000 something. When you look at the tax documents that we give out to folks as they're kind of analyzing our budget, it's got a name for it. Everybody would recognize it. But what it literally is from the district's perspective is, oh, we see that equalized amount there. That's the amount we're getting from the Ed Fund per kid. And so what they do with the, again, with the preschool students is they give us 46% of it. Because there's a mandate that we do 10 hours of preschool. So they pay us for the 10 hours, and going beyond that, we get nothing. And so we're trying to, as we're trying to help the state as well with their preschool problems, because they've got them across the state in the early Ed, it'd be nice to actually get some benefit for that, that we can pump back into helping the kids. Not to be confused with tuition, right? So there's what the state gives us for the students, but then there's the tuition that you guys voted on, probably in January, and we charge other schools that send students here. And that's in probably 22,000. We make almost half a million dollars a year in tuition and students. So that's a good question. Making me try to remember stuff from three months ago, though. Great. Thank you. The consent agenda. We have minutes from both the last regular and the special meeting. Professional contracts. Administrator contract. The auditor. Yeah, we might want to talk on the auditor. Yeah. I had a question about that. Yeah. And I kind of feel like we should break these up a little bit. Minutes, contracts. All that stuff when we do have the addition. Yes. As well. Any changes to minutes? Did anyone find anything that needs to be changed on the record? Never did. Great. Then I'll entertain a motion to accept minutes. Just those two first on the consent agenda. So moved. I'll second. Thank you, Ann. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Great. Is there discussion on professional contracts? Did we get, we did NECA's already, right? Done. Do we do NECA folks? Yeah. Well, yeah. Last one, okay. Yeah. Or administrator contract. No, no discussion. I'll entertain a motion for those two contracts. So moved. Second. Thank you, Sarah. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Excellent. Thank you. The auditor. I heard a rumor. There's a question. Well, I just was wondering, was there only one bid? Yes. So if folks are comfortable, I can kind of explain two things. One of these would probably be under the financial piece. So we'll talk about the old auditor and we can talk, I can provide information about this as well, but the new potential auditor. The old auditor has been very good, has been with us for a while. But I think if folks remember, in fact that school audits are incredibly difficult and time-consuming, not a lot of people want to do them. And what happened to the auditor's groups around the state during COVID was similar to what happened to everybody else. People just started leaving the profession. And so it left them shorthanded. So they have been working on our audit like they always do since last October. The audit was due March 31st. They're saying that they will have it to us by May 15th. This provides a pretty big problem for us. Those audits are required to go to the federal government on March 31st so that we can get our federal funding. And Title and Esther and everything else, the IDEAB. So for us, that's about two to two and a half million dollars worth. And so we've been harping on them. Can you at least get us the basic info that we can get to the federal government? Now in the end, it just means that we'll be late getting stuff in. So the amount of actual harm that will be caused by it will be minimal. But it's delaying everything by a month and a half. We have staff that I have to riff every year that are grant funded because we're required to have a contract in their hand before the grants are assured. So we riff them and then when the grants come in, we pay them. Or we sign them to their contracts. And so this might delay for another month and a half when I can get those contracts in their hand and pull back all the riff notifications. So that's the current state of things. And there is not much we can do about it. I did talk with legal counsel just to say, hey, is there a way to put some pressure on them? Hey, are there people we can talk to to get extensions for this? And the answer is no. And so Robin did go out. Our old auditors told us last year, this would be the last year that they would be doing it because they just didn't have the staffing that specialized it anymore. She went out to bid. This is the only auditor that is there. She has checked with them. I think Robin from the conversation that I've had with her feels very confident that they'll do a good job. The one thing that we did talk about is that when we do a contract with them, if the board approves these auditors, is that it will have in the audit that it is due March 31st as a part of the contract language with some reasonable consequences if they missed that date. We don't want to make them harsh, but hey, every day that you're behind, maybe you give us 10% back of the money the 60 grand we forked over to you to do this work. Will they agree to that? I have a feeling they might not agree to something that extreme, but they might agree to something less like 1% per day. That is actually common in contracts that you do when people are building buildings, right? If they're guaranteeing you that your new school is going to be up and running by such and such a date, lots of times it's okay. Every day that you're late, you're giving us 5% back of what we agreed to pay you for it. When we do the contract, do we do it for five years, or do we do it for one year? It's usually done every year. Maybe this year we just don't do that, so it doesn't create a bad... Yeah, I'm okay either way. It's kind of like people using the conflict resolution protocol. It doesn't upset anybody because that's the protocol that people should be following. It would not be something unusual to see in the contract, but we're happy to. The other thing too is with this one, if you approve it, right, it's a one year. If we're happy with what they do, we can report that to you. If not, we can try to see what else is out there. They're actually... they look a little cheaper than our last. My concern with that is if you feel like we want to have that in there to have our source contract with them, not have it, and then to add it later, it might feel like, oh, so you didn't like what I did. I'm referring to policy. I have a responsibility to protect the district's assets, and so I have now identified a gap. They were supposed to have it done by May 31, but there was nothing in the contract there that guaranteed they would. I get that. So as long as the spokes understand, that's the only reason I'm pushing on it is just because that policy exists. All right, I'm just going to say one more thing about this. Wouldn't the assumption be that they would get it done by March 31? Which was our assumption with the group that we're working with as well. But it's put us in a two, two and a half million dollar bind. It's going to impact the morale of staff because they won't get their contracts. But that's a good point. Again, I follow the policy because if I don't, you can find me as being insubordinate, but that's a place in this particular case where you could adjust it. You could put that little bullet under there. And that might be good practice if that's the board's desire. This estimate is that kind of within the range of what are... Yeah, I think it's actually a little cheaper. They have a big team. There's like 30 people who work for that firm, and a lot of them are young. And it is a tremendous amount of work, which is why a lot of people, if they don't have the manpower, it's almost impossible to do. And you have to kind of specialize in it for school. School audits. Do we have to pay their gas money from Maine? Unless it's in their contract. Grab suburban, you know. So I'll move to approve the auditor for this is RHR snipping company. All second. All those in favor? Opposed? Thank you. Facilities reserve funds request. The high school gym floor replacement. So the, we had talked... I'm actually working on this one for about a year. We had talked a few times that this would be coming along. What's happened? And I don't know for sure, but I think that is the original floor and building from when it was built. So it's quite old. Two things are going on. We've got water that is actually seeping up through the concrete floor and pooling underneath the wood, right? If you think about the basketball court. And so we've got the wood that's being damaged and it's warping, which is not safe. The other thing that happens with these floors is the reason that they do wood is because it's flexible, right? When kids fall on it, it gives, so they don't get hurt. But they need to build it with a layer of absorbent material. Choose a little erase floor. It flexes, allows the wood to flex when the kids fall. In the terms of our field house, that degraded many years ago. And so it is a safety issue as well. And so what we're trying to do is resolve both of those things at the same time. They will come in part of the, if you read through the document here, they will come in, they will do all the water sealing after they rip things up. They'll repair and level the concrete. They'll build that substructure floor. They'll get the absorbent material, shock absorbent material in there and then they'll put the new wood on top of it. It also includes, you know, putting in the logo and then putting on the 5 or 10 layers of polyurethane or whatever it is that they use. It includes two other things. Putting multiple layers of incredibly hard paint on the walls so that when the kids are bouncing balls and things off it, you know, it's not getting damaged. It's not chipping the paints and things. It also includes repairs to the bleachers. The kids, for a long time, were allowed to climb up and sit on those bleachers when they're closed. That damages the superstructure of them. And so I've been working with Katie and Lisa and our new athletic director, you know, Nick, to really work before we do these repairs to make sure the kids know not to be on there. And so they've been doing a pretty good job about that. So the bleachers have to be replaced or just repaired? We actually had a civil engineer come in and take a look at it because that was one of the questions that I had because replacing them is incredibly expensive. It would have added probably another $150,000 to $180,000. They looked at it and said, no, they can be repaired. I don't know what the dollar amount for the repair is, but it's in the bid here. And so that's the plan. The bleachers themselves are actually in good shape. It's the superstructure that holds them secure and steady. And so that's kind of the work. And the only time that they can do this work in the next three years is starting next week. So if we're going to do it, we've got to do it. If you don't want to do it, then don't do it. Great. These compounding issues. If we don't, that's one of the reasons we're having some issues in terms of fieldhouse uses because we've got to get the work done and they can do it. Directly affect if they were to start, if we were to approve this and they were to start construction next week. How does this directly affect the students of the district? They've already spent the last two weeks talking with the teams. A lot of the sports are outside now. Okay. And then kind of connecting with the smaller schools if any of the in-house spaces to work. So they have a whole, facilities has been talking with Nick Bent. They've done a considerable amount of work doing that planning. Okay. And hopefully it's, I think, don't quote me on the date. I think it's about a month, a month and a half's worth of work. Okay. That was my next question. Thank you. Yeah. They were supposed to build in refinishing the floor here too, which I think they may be doing separately at this point because we were going to try, figure it might be cheaper. We might get a deal if they did both at the same time, but I don't think it ended up being cheaper so they didn't include it. So just kind of thinking back to the conversation we had before about legislation and then construction costs and schools and stuff like that. You know, just feel like it's prudent to bring up that, you know, investing this kind of money from our facilities reserve funds, obviously, in the thought process of if we are hoping that down the line we get a new school building, this is a significant investment to make into a gym floor that may only have a five or 10-year lifespan, even that much. So just thinking. Yeah. And that's my concern as well. The reality is that if the board could have a different direction for me, my feelings on the matter, though, are if we're not going to get matching funds from the state, I am not going to ask this community to fork over the kind of money that it would be possible to replace those buildings. But it's always wise financially to use other people's money when you can to get things done. So if the states want to come in and pay 30%, 40%, 50% of it, that is something that I would go to the map for to try to work with the community to get them the support. The reality is I don't know in Vermont, Massachusetts would fast track building projects. They had a school building authority, the SBA, that they called it, that if you were doing work, they would help you get stuff done quickly. My guess is, given what I'm watching with Burlington, this is probably a five to 10-year project once we decide we want to rebuild. And in order to decide we want to rebuild, we need to know if we have state matching funds. You could, again, that's my... Sounds like we need to rebuild. No, we need to rebuild. My opinion, and again, it's only mine. The board, and it wouldn't bother me in the least. Matter of fact, it'd be great because we'd be working as a team pushing on it. But my feeling is that I don't want to go and ask this community for $150, $175 million to replace that complex unless we've got matching funds. I don't know if I could sell it. It's a lot easier to sell it if we know that somebody else is ponying up a significant amount of money. In the meantime, we're spending, like you said... You're going to be spending your $300,000 a year to repair things as they need to be repaired. Big issue, you know, I was hot and heavy to revamp the whole science wing because of the age in the state of the science classrooms at the high school. But again, now we're kind of sitting here thinking about this. There's also a dramatic need for that wing of the high school to have air conditioning put in because the sun blares on it, and it's 115 degrees on certain days up there. We've tried to put in air conditioning. We've tried to put in... I've been talking about putting in the heat exchangers up there, but the electrical system is so old it won't support it, so then you're talking a gigantic builder rip through the walls and upgrade the electrical to be able to supply. So, you know, no matter what we do, it's going to be expensive. Cheaper just to rebuild at this point. Have we gotten... Sorry. No, go ahead. Have we gotten other... I mean, this is fast. Turn around for 321, and then they want to start next week. They met the report. They had three. This was actually the cheapest. But I'm just wondering about timeline-wise, even if we go with somebody a little bit more expensive, but they can do it, we can buy ourselves a year. It gives us a little bit of opportunity to watch this funding come down from the legislature. There's a nice gym up the street at VTC. I don't know. I feel like this is feeling rushed for me. Yeah. Recognize that this has been in discussion for a year. So, it didn't just kind of pop up. They did a lot of work to try to figure out how extensive the repairs would be. I think it was last year. I mean, they even had the civil engineers come in and take a look at that they did core samples to see how bad the water infiltration was, so that they understood if the concrete needed to be replaced. Okay. So, they can either start next week or in three years. Is that what I'm hearing? But no, you're... And so, I'm not trying to talk you out of it. I'm trying to provide... But we have a safety issue in the meantime. You have a significant safety issue in the meantime. So, we can't really invite people and play on these floors. You can, but it's more likely they're going to get injured. Well, now that we know we have a problem, we put people out there and somebody gets injured. That seems like a not a good thing. That's on the meeting. Next time, kick me under the table. I think it is important that we maintain the gym that we're going to be using. The best way... At least until we do rebuild, if we do rebuild, or when we do. And you might decide the best way to build a new school is to maintain the old school because the kids need some place to be while the building is happening. And then what you could do is if there are certain sections of the building that you want to remain like a separate field house, maybe with a track and a turf field. And we've done the work on that. Then maybe the rest of the building gets demolished but we preserve those pieces that are solid and usable. So that was my next question. Are there any other parts of the gym that would say come up in PCB testing or whatever that we can be? I do not believe so. I do not believe that we're going to see hits in that building. I may be wrong, but I do not believe there's been enough, especially with this will be enough work. And they have to do a little bit of the asbestos and that type of testing before they're allowed to go in and do that work anyway. Because they need to know if they need to remediate it while they're pulling the old stuff out. Asbestos especially. But they've done a fair amount of work in there in recent years in terms of painting the walls and revamping the area where the weights are. So is the 33,360 in the 208? No, it's in the request. There's a total here. 26,263,400. Got it. Can you tell us how? How do we go about constructing you to start looking at how we build a new building and where that would be and what that would cost and start getting some momentum in that direction? Because we haven't talked about it. I'm excited to do it. I did have one open forum. We had a smattering of people there that night and it was a thumbs up across the board about looking at it and pursuing it. Recognize that there is significant cost just in the investigation. There may be soil surveys. There's the architect's fees. My guess is, and I'm going back to 10 years ago the last time I was involved with something like this 10 to 15 years ago, just that initial assessment fees is 150,000 to 200,000 and to get the architectural drawings. We have the money luckily in the reserve funds. So it's not like we have to go out to the community and ask for it. But if you want us to get working on it, you will have a bunch of excited people. This is something that we need to... And I have to connect with the state to see what their rules are. I'm going to make an agenda item for next month. I don't know. That's it. I was going to ask. You get to decide. Yes. But do we need to move to do that? No. No, we just need to get going. Okay. Yeah, that was my question. So what's the item? Discussion around... New building. New building. If you want, I'll have Bob and Wes here. They talk longer than I do, but they'll be able to convince you definitely to do it if that's the intent. So we would be just talking about approving the spending for... The design. The design. Yeah. Okay. So my guess is... The fantasy is with some discussion, some educated discussion, is that we do the new construction out on the current athletic fields so that we can use the old building while that is happening. When the new building is done, we move the students into... The old building is demolished. We save the parts and pieces that are worthy of saving for good uses and can have them do some work on those pieces that remain as well at that point in time. The athletic fields get moved to the front of... Where the building was. Where the building was. And then it's the opportunity that, like I said, if we're spending $175 million on a new complex there, then why not go ahead and spend the extra $900,000 to put in a turf field and then become kind of since we're central in the state, be the place where everybody across the state comes to have their tournaments. So the architects will draw that up, right? Different options. And he'll be able to say, if you do this, it'll cost you this amount and if you don't... Cool. Next month, let's get on it. You bring a shovel, Sam? Rain my heart out. I don't think it's unreasonable to... I think it's worth it to start the explanation discussion. Spone type of plans on paper would look more attractive to everybody in the community. This is the new age. They'll be able to do it in video and graphics and be able to email it out and people can take a virtual walk through the hall. Right. So I guess we need to make a decision on this. I move that we approve the reserve funds for the RUHS gym floor. I second. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Change of signers. I move to approve OSSD and RTCC accounts as submitted for change of signers. All second. Thank you, Megan. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. And in one addition, to approve a new account at Bar Harbor Bank, for the RU Senior Class Fund. Do I have a motion to approve? I move to approve the addition of the bank account at the Bar Harbor for the senior signers. Second. Thank you, Sarah. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Closing. Reports. Superintendent Director Principles Financials. Did I miss the superintendent's report this time? It was your end report. End report. Oh, okay. That's what I was going to say. After 43 pages, I was like, yeah. That's good. But anything to mention on the financials? So the one thing just to be aware of in the financials goes back to the auditor's report. Actually, let's start with the basics. So based upon where we are currently in the year, we should have 25% of our budget left. We actually have 39.54, so we are well in the black. We should have another million dollar surplus at the end of the year that we can pump back into things or we can decide what we want to do with. That said, the reports that you get for the next probably two months are going to be kind of wonky. One of the, especially in terms of the revenue side, without that auditor's report, we have grant money that is owed to us that we have to apply for reimbursement for. We cannot get those reimbursements until that auditor's report is done. Not going to impact our operations or anything like that, but what you're going to see is that the revenue side, which is where we report the money that we get back, you're going to see it look all out of whack for a month or two until we get that. We're not going to lose any money. It's just it's going to take two months to get it caught back up. Assuming they have this done on May 15. That's the thing I'm more nervous about. I'm not as nervous about the fact that it's delayed. I'm more nervous about the fact that we might get to May 15 and they're like, hey, we just haven't done it yet. But they're guaranteeing us. I've got to give them credit and they have been a very good firm to work with. They've been very wonderful people. Any questions on the financials? Staff appreciation update, please. Oh, I haven't forgotten. So we have our list. There are five businesses in town that we will be approaching. I've approached one and the other four will get an email for me tonight seeing if they would like to be a part of it again. I think that puts us at 55 cards from each organization. You have five businesses? Yeah, for a total of 275 was what you told me, right, Linda? 275. So I think we'll be good. So I'm going to approach five. The goal is hopefully to have five that will join us. And then I guess the only question was we did have those cards made up last year. I can see about having those done again or if that's something that we wanted the students at RTCC in the graphic design program to create. Not sure whether they would or not. So I should have for you by Monday, I'm hoping. It's a PDF, that's the problem. What you guys sent me last time. I could get the original document if that helps but they could probably just make up whatever we wanted to say with the little staff appreciation thing on the back. I'm hoping by early next week confirmation because then those people just need to send me the invoice that I forward to you for payment, right? And the only question I had I think was last year ours expired. They had an expiration date but would they actually need that because we've already paid the districts paid for those in this year's budget? I don't know. I know one of the issues was expiration date was like June 30th on some of them which is pretty short for people. On the gift cards? For them they really shouldn't have one. I agree. You said you can't expiration on the gift cards? Gift cards are considered currency so you're not supposed to have an expiration on them. There is a time limit on it but it's years and years. Yeah. So are we not going to have it? We're not going to have it. But the businesses need to know that. I can talk to them about it. Once they have their payment from us they've been paid for those cards whether people redeem them or not. Okay. So you might get shrugs but no it's not income until it's used. Oh really? Even if we've paid for them? Correct. That's interesting. It's in limbo technically. Accounting wise. That's not great. So that's the only reason a business might say no. So what is the expiration then do anything? If we set an expiration date by that date if it's not used it's not like they're getting that and then they would shift that money over. Okay. Yeah. I felt like you couldn't have the expiration that was something tied to the district financials because it was June 30th. Whatever you worked out with those guys. Thanks Linda. Great. Thank you. Thank you. So if you need any assistance with anything let me know. Thank you. I just need to get the emails out. Okay. Alright. Action items recap. So we are going to continue with the policy 4.1 as Ann pointed out if people could look at the governance quality standards that would be very helpful and also in terms of the end report comb through it and then individual email lane questions that will then end up in the presentation. What's that that you or what we need to look at on the VSBA site? I can send it out. It's they're putting together some quality standards. Quality standards. Okay. Districts. And if you go on like the latest VSBA weekly thing that they send us if you look down it'll say he's like rules for quality standards or something like that on it. I can send them out. I can send it out also or I'll link to it. Okay. Executive session. You're on. That's why I needed a candy. I need to move to executive session to discuss to discuss personal. Great. We will enter executive session at 802. Got it.