 Are there any adjustments to the agenda? Yeah. A motion to approve the minutes of Monday, December 19th. I'll move. Will you do my second bill? I'll check it. I'll check it? OK. Sorry, I moved. So we have any discussion on those minutes? It was a very impressive meeting. All right. All right. Hearing none, so moved. Except it was impressive. Board correspondence and communications. Anything else? All right, public comments. Raise your hand if you have a public comment. Do you have another public comment? Thank you. You're welcome. Reports to the board? Jamie. So you have my report in hand. I wanted to add a few things, oral updates based on work that's happening in the legislature right now. I did attend a legislative update on Thursday that was sponsored by the DSA. So one is there's a bill that's been passed in regards to open meeting laws and also changing the provision around how on our articles for our annual meeting we have to currently warn member. It talks about the percentage around per pupil spending. It changes that, not requiring that. It is still on the governor's desk and has not been signed yet. We have adopted a bunch of our warnings already. My plan was to just continue to move forward with what we've adopted. Actually, I feel like that language in most of our districts is pre-sound this year. The CLA is what is impacting us more so than necessarily per pupil spending. And so anyways, I just in case some of you probably got that update around the VSA, know that I've been following that. And it does not currently have the governor's signature. We expect that it will either have his signature. One of three things will happen. He'll sign it, he'll veto it, or he will just let it go until I would not sign it. We expect that to happen by the end of the week. One of those three things that's really late been gained from many of us around. We need to get our books to the printers. So we're just rolling with what we've got. I just wanted to say that. Other big topics is there's a large report that came out around childcare in the state and funding of childcare, pre-K programming. There was a sense on Thursday that that could pick up some steam, meaning that the legislature could possibly try to take that up. As you all know, I'm a huge proponent of early ed and pre-K. Although I did remind the legislature that our budgets have been adopted in many districts and asking schools to change what their pre-K layout is for next year, it's really late in the game. So please don't pass something without funding behind it is what I specify to the legislature. I think we're all supportive of that work. But please don't have a mandate locally for districts to cover it, which there's talk that could happen. So we're gonna fall in a little closely our proposed bill. I do believe something's gonna come out about childcare early this year out of the House Ed committee. Universal meals, I try to put that back on the radar because reminder that it is only funded for this year. I'm concerned about it falling off the radar. We have many new members to the House and Senate Ed committees. And I did not want them to forget that that's not funded past this year. And so I, along with some of my colleagues reminded folks that the nice thing is every member was in attendance last Thursday with the soup. So we had good access to talk these things through. The other thing that certainly we raised last Thursday in the group I was with is the idea of diversifying how we fund the Ed fund. Meaning is there an opportunity to relook at funding of the Ed fund so it's not just falling on property tax. And examples in some of our districts in towns right now where the CLA has dropped significantly, we are seeing major increases in tax rates not because of the actual Ed spending per pupil but because of the CLA adjustment, which is something that I'll have a letter that's coming out out of the SU office to our community this week and will be in the Herald trying to help folks understand how the common level of appraisal influences tax rates after budgets have been put to bed and revenues and things of that nature. So that's something that was raised with the legislature. One of the things I think is really exciting is that they are conducting a study in regards to deferred maintenance that's occurred throughout the state. I was able to be a panel with four other superintendents to speak to the group. And I talked about how we're leveraging ESSER funding and performance contracting to be able to address three of our failed boiler systems in the SU without having to add to the tax rate of our local districts. Performance contracting is something that in some corners of the state, I don't think it's been necessarily embraced. It is something that's allowing us to do this work and make certain we can keep our schools open and vibrant. I also said that many of our boards have been working hard to put reserves away to be able to deal with deferred maintenance and that unfunded mandates out of the legislature could result in our inability to do that pre-planning in our budgets. And so that was something that I raised on the panel is that we're trying to work hard to put money away and put reserves away and that we have started to work around a capital facilities plan but having additional costs be handed down, even though most of it is all good work, right? With good intentions could result in us having to kick the can down the road and we really can't afford to in our facilities. And so that was raised with the hopes being maybe that they'll start to set aside some money to help support districts with deferred maintenance. And so those are the legislative updates that I had beyond my report and I'd be happy to take any questions folks may have. The only other update I would offer before we move on is that also it was just an email just went out from the VSBA that Phil Gore has resigned as a board development coordinator must be very recently because it just was announced today. Wow. Just a comment on a question. If public schools are gonna survive any place in this world they could have strong, effective, articulate advocates and that takes all of us. And I'd like to appreciate and commend our superintendent for being there and understanding the importance of it. And it's with the kids, it's with the classrooms, it's with our teachers, it's with our boards, all of us. But it's also with the legislators and educating them about what's important and what's essential and why. And that effort is just we can't do it without the legislature being informed, educated and seeing the white. So I really appreciate that we need that we can't do it alone. And CLA is one example of it where why should because I'm from Stockbridge and for whatever reason we're close to Killington. So there are a lot of people that are interested now in ski houses and everything else or they're jacking up the prices so our common level of appraisal can't keep up with it. So are you gonna take it out in the backs of our students? The students that I happen to believe that one reason we've got strong property values is that we've got a good school system. But that doesn't mean we should be penalized for that. So that, the idea of deferred maintenance and the importance that we have to do that's a team effort. And the meals, the university meals and I'll conclude with the community conversations and I've been pleasure to attend those. Those are really good. And the atmosphere and the rooms is positive. It isn't like people are burning and they've got the spears out and they're ready to throw the tomatoes nose. Wanting to learn more, how to support more, have a conversation. And I think that forum here is to be working very well and I commend you and the team for figuring out that this is a good grant to go for and to do it. And community conversations really gonna pay off. I know in our community, when we're asking them to be looking at paying more, not because of this, what we're charging the schools, but the CLA. So we're building a community support system that's essential. So thank you very much. Very much appreciated that you can track what I'm saying. I agree with that 100%. All right, anybody else for Jamie before we move on? Thank you, Jamie. Hi. Thank you. So, fairly succinct report this week because we've got some academic data to look at as well. This is one of the weeks that we have a half day in service that we've dedicated to SUY professional learning. We've talked about all year. This is an opportunity to really leverage both some of the resources we have for the federal grants to bring in facilitators of that learning in a lot of pieces and be able to also bring our teachers together from across our school. So we've got next generation science standard, professional learning being led by VINs. That brings teachers from every single one of our schools and districts in to talk about science. We've got math, PD, literacy, both at the elementary level as well as an adolescent literacy workshop series that the Stern Center has put together particularly for us to address some of the questions that we've got around literacy at the older grades. We've got work on trauma-informed social learning and as well as looking at data and how to have that inform your practices. So a lot of different things going on. This is the third session. It's been a bit of a break since the last one we had at the end of October just the way our PD schedule works out and then we'll have two more that follow in March and May and that will be sort of complete the series. Some of these courses will continue next year. Some people sort of signed up for two year courses. I think they know that. The learning is really deep, particularly around math as a second language and the comprehensive reading course are both two year courses. So people will be able to continue with those next year. So we have to adopt the calendar that supports that. We'll talk about the state summative assessment results that are from last spring and then the last piece of that that we continue to update you on but I think about it a lot is the work around the curriculum work that started at the high school but it's also working through middle school and elementary teachers right now. And I think about this in particular from an equity perspective and ensuring that regardless of which town our students are in and what school they attend within our SU that we know that they're getting a high quality education and this work really works to ensure that both we use what's locally relevant but also hold all of our schools and students to high standards across and use the best research there. So I think that work has really come together and Michelle Martin's been working on that and it's been really great to see the progress being made there. And I think by the end of this year we'll have some probably good documents across all of the grade levels that will really support our teachers in helping students get to those high levels at each grade level. So I can take questions on any or comments on anything there and then we can move to the state summative results. So I have a question. Yeah. So I've been thinking in a town like Stratford and I know Tumbridge and Chelsea and Sharon are pretty much in the same bag and other towns in our district where we spend an incredible amount of money on secondary tuition and we have absolutely no control and no way to see how our students are doing and in fact are the schools that they're going to are they worth the money we spend on them? And so would this help us get some of that information? The work around the curriculum work? Yeah, you said that we'd see what was our students were being taught and so I just, I mean, it's just when we give so much money to independent and private schools and other public schools and we have no say in them. And I mean, in Stratford it's a huge percentage of our budget and then if anything was to be cut it has to be cut from our elementary budget because we are bound by the tuition that we have to pay and we have absolutely no say and we have no idea whether our students are doing well. Sorry, it's a great question. I think on the last part we should have a better idea of how they're doing and we can work on that to sort of bring that information together. Obviously the schools have their own data. But I think we can put our heads together too to get a better understanding of how our students are doing it as they leave and head into other schools. I think the other piece that is important is I think this aligns really well to the board's goal of making the White River Valley High School a really viable option for everyone. I think the more that we're clear about what it is that we want students to be able to know and be able to do by the time they leave the high school and how that vertically aligns well to what they're doing in, first through eighth grade and or sixth grade or whatever the last grade is in all of our other schools it makes for a really cohesive experience for our students and the more that we can show that and students and families will make different choices but I think the more that our own system is able to talk to itself and align with them and themselves will also be helpful for our students so that the experience that they're having as they move through our schools whether that's going all the way up to the high school really builds on itself and doesn't have sort of any kind of disconnects within it that you know, a sudden like, well I'm not gonna go to the high school because it doesn't align well with the experience I had in another town that it more and more makes sense as a whole system. Yeah, and maybe what I'm talking about is more legislative type thing, you know, and accountability. I just, you know, we hold our teachers accountable for a quality education that we employ and our administration and yet we have, I mean so much, I don't know, it's for another conversation at another time but it's been kind of ruminating in my mind. Thank you, Sarah. All right. Please switch over to the other reports. So you got a report in your packets which includes the information that was most recently released by the Vermont Agency of Education on the state's performance on ESPEC, the reading and math, some of its data assessments. We have looked at some of this, we certainly looked at this data last year and we treated last year as a baseline year because of the fact that we didn't test kids in 2020 due to the pandemic. So 2021 was sort of a restart, 2022 being the second year. So that's why in most of these, you're looking at two years of data. We can look at a couple of the graphs just to get a little bit of a better understanding. But I think in general, the story here is that we're tracking very closely overall how the state performed across both content areas and grade levels. I will say that in some places, we certainly saw a good growth. In other places, we did not see the growth we would have liked to have seen. I think it also reflects how we felt about the year as it went last year in terms of how much of instruction was disrupted due to any number of absences at the student level, at the whole class level, at the teacher level, and it was a much more disruptive instructional year than I think we expected when we started in September of last year. And so I think we do see that in the data. And a quote from the Secretary of Education was just sort of this long shadow of COVID that we're seeing in things like this, which assess accumulation of different material that you can't make up necessarily in one good month of attendance right before the test period. This reflects sort of multiple years of learning and where things have been successful, where they've been disrupted. So the first graph that you see in the packet it has our scale score across the SU in English language arts as it compares to the state scale score and as it compares to what they've marked as the proficiency benchmark. So if you're looking at it in color, it's green for WRVSU, gray for the state and then black for the proficiency benchmark. So across each grade level, we are either, I mean, we're just right at the state, sometimes above it in two grade levels, a little below it, three grade levels. And at grade five meetings sort of the proficiency benchmark for ELA. So this is looking just at those grade levels last year. And the graph following that is looking at our proficiency. So a total percentage of students in each grade level who are proficient or above in English language arts. This is looking over about two years. So 2020 and, sorry, 2021 and 2022. And that's just, that's proficient and above and in each pair, it's the SU versus the, and then the state follows that. So you sort of look at sort of a group of four columns together for grade three and then the next four. So in most cases, you see sort of both the SU and the state going down from two years ago to last year. And I think that is an example of just where we're seeing sort of the ongoing effects of this disruptive learning. And then the last one for ELA, across the whole SU is looking, this is really aligned to our SU goals around English language proficiency and the annual target set you all set as a board to see how we'd get to exceeding proficiency in ELA based on where we started last year. The two bars represent actual scores, average scores of our students in each of those grade levels in 2021 and 2022. And then the line represents the targets that we're aiming for over the next three years. So again, grade five, we're seeing that we've met, we've kind of met that target for last year in grade four, a little bit of an increase in grade eight, a little bit of an increase, and then a little decreases it in three, six, eight, and nine. So some work to be made up there. So we've got the same set of three graphs for math. I can pause on ELA, I'll just keep going. Someone will interrupt me if they need to. And we started from kind of a lower spot of math, it's not an area that we've been focusing on as much. Certainly made a really good growth in our elementary grades. And like to see that we're definitely approaching the goals that we set in the proficiency benchmark there. The drop off, I think between 2021 and 2022 is smaller for math. So I think we are really our focus there where we put in some more time and resources and some intervention has helped in supporting that work last year. And if we look at where we are compared to our targets towards 2025, more upward progression towards those goals, not quite as big jumps as we'd like to see in order to get to matching that proficiency line in black and the stars, but the move from 2021 to 2022 is generally upwards and positive. And so we're heading in the right direction more. The last set of graphs, I won't go through all that. That's just our cohort by cohort, looking at current grade levels versus how those students did last year when they were the previous grade level. So usually when we're looking at the other graphs, we're looking at last year's third graders, or sorry, you're looking at each of the grade levels as they are, and this is looking at the same group of students for the most part, moving from one grade level to the next. So it tracks a little bit more how that cohort is doing rather than how is the curriculum instruction going in that grade level. Maybe a couple of things just to note as you look at that data, that we've got two grade levels where the number of students dramatically changes. Let's go to get that sort of Sarah's comment earlier. When we have students move from six to seventh grade, our numbers went from just about 90 down to a little under 70. So it's just overall, you're losing a closer of a fifth of the students. And then again, when we students go from eighth to ninth grade, we go from having 53 to 34. So you're using a lot fewer students to look at their academic scores there. So it's gonna be a lot noisier a number because one or two students can throw it off a lot more where the numbers get so much smaller. Throughout our elementary, we're above between 105 and 113, 14 for each grade level. So those stay a little bit more consistent from grade to grade. We're talking about, we've got kids moving in now, but it's about the same kids whereas we have a much different, we have a substantially different set of kids in seventh grade and then again in ninth grade. And then to come get everything else, we'd have no idea how these scores will compare to the new summative state that we will try out this year in May, which they're calling VTCAP, Vermont Comprehensive Assessment Program. The same subject areas will be tested, math, English language arts and science as well. But and the current company has been asked to do a study to compare, to see how comfortable the two sets of tests are. But at this point, I think that, I think we can consider that an unknown about whether we can look at these same types of data visualizations and wonder whether we're comparing the same things at all. So we may be starting on the new baseline, there may be a way to sort of translate one set of assessments over to the other and still figure out how we're growing. Questions on the two graphs that have vertical bars, kind of like the Syracuse, orange men in the Vikings and we want to split analogy to the sports, but college and pro, but you've got the orange and the purple. I'm looking at the, for English language right now. Are these cohorts, are these different kids? In other words, the kids last year that were in the third grade and now the kids this year, they're in third grade. Different kids, yep. So they're different kids. So it's really hard to, it tells you that the kids changed and they've got, in this case, in most cases, couldn't keep up, but we don't know how much of that is COVID or how much of that is just the kids. Yeah, so that's why we do the graphs at the end, which are the same kids. So you could look at your, right at your fourth grader, current fourth graders and know that the graph, the bar on the left side is their performance in third grade last year or two years ago and then their performance in fourth grade last year. So this is what you're looking for in terms of looking at actual, how that group of students is doing. The other graph is telling us, like if we consistently saw that, maybe there was a dip at sixth grade, well, what are we doing in terms of our materials, our curriculum, our instruction at that grade level that is agnostic of what kids are there, that what do we need to be doing in a different way with how we're instructed. These are not totally separate, but there's two different ways to sort of think about it and look at the data. All right, thank you. Does that make sense of the, yeah. It's why the bottom graph on those right is third grade. We don't have comparison data for them. They don't take it a second grade. So it's just that's where we're sort of sitting right now at the bottom of one line. Good. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you. Good stuff, thanks. Good stuff. All right. And we are at a net. Thank you. Sorry, I'm not there in a in person. I'm a little under the weather, but I thought I would keep my germs to myself. So my report just highlighted, I'm doing them, the rule chain spotlight. So for this month, my spotlight was on annual goals for IEPs and really a lot of the information in the bulleted list was things that were already in place. And I think they just wanted them written out and highlighted with the rule changes. But the most notable is that IEPs need to be written in a smart goal format. So that's specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. So that's the main thing to notice. The next part that I wanted to highlight was just some updates in our data. So in December, every year we do child count into the Vermont AOE. And so this is what our numbers have looked like for the past four years. I also wanted to highlight some of our disability categories over time. So these are kind of the top four, not in any specific order, but these are our top four. The last one is developmental delay, which is our early childhood. So our pre-K, those are kind of what the numbers have looked like over the years. What I wanted to just note was that we're kind of starting to see a downward trend with our specific learning disability. But if you can, if you just noticed, there's kind of this upward trend with an emotional disability and there's kind of this upward trend happening with other health impairment. And that's something that's just been noted in a lot of behavioral research and things since the pandemic. So this kind of our research is kind of going on the same path as state and national data. The next couple of graphs, I also wanted to just note was just the number of referrals, which is blue. And I only have data for last year and this year, since that's when I've been taking the data here. And this is just for the 23, this is currently what we're at for right now. So if just kind of seeing the trend, it looks like it's gonna be on a downward trend, just kind of making a guesstimate based on where we're at currently with the number of referrals that are coming in for our supervisory union. But what I did want to note too is also our initial evaluations is also gonna be on this downward trend, but initial evaluations that are completed. We have to complete an initial evaluation by law if students move in from out of state. So if they were eligible out of state for special education by law, we have to perform an initial evaluation here in the state of Vermont to see if they meet our criteria. So that's just something to note with the red initial evaluations completed. This is the biggest one that I wanted to highlight was the out of district, the number of students that were having attend therapeutic or behavioral independent schools that kind of specialized in these areas. If you look at the number of students from our FY2022 to my estimated FY24, we're definitely on a downward trend, which means our alternative classrooms at our supervisory union level are helping plus all of the social, emotional and kind of alternative academic curriculums and things that we're doing within our supervisory union is working. So it's nice to see that our that MTSS system that we've been talking about is really starting to make changes. And so I'm just really proud of that data. And Micaela and I will have a presentation later on this evening, a little bit more about what intervention and specialized instruction can look like at the MTSS levels. Any questions? I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight to the board, we've been talking about how we've stabilized special ed spending but then the add FTEs. Just a reminder that for every one of those decreases about a district placements, a good figure to use is 100,000. Some are more, some are a little less, but think about that as 100,000 per student. So that is part of how we've been able to continue to reinvest in adding some positions and things, but you not seeing your special ed budget go up. Nice. Thank you. That's great. Good job. Good work guys. All right. We are on. Good evening everyone, you have my report which outlines what's happening in February in the business office for both business office stuff, school food authority. And then I did add in my report this month just down at the bottom, the other projects that I'm working on for the rest of this month and then into February. And if there's any questions. Thanks for a great job so far in the budget. Thank you. Everybody's getting their stuff done. Okay, hopefully everyone has had a chance to review my report, there's information in here about NezDeck, the New England School Development Council, our data dashboard, EDUC Climber, the strategic plan books, which you will be seeing in the next couple of weeks and improving communication with TVs, providing updates in our lobbies. I wouldn't entertain any questions. Yeah, I was gonna ask that we focus on goal number four Action Item 4.6, Develop Population Projections, which you're working with for the New England School Development Council. But it's the last sentence that you have in there. One thing we can share is that Vermont is projected, or is projecting to have to lose almost 10% of its pre-K to 12 student population between 2020 and 2030. Now, if you think about that and talk about fewer kids in the classroom and cost per kid, and that's the big fixation. You just can't take, okay, I'll just remove a finger or a hand of our teachers and they'll save us money or we'll just consolidate everything else. That is something that I think we should, I suggested a future agenda item, talk about that one of our strategic goals is to be marketing our successes, being good, letting the population know we're being good so that we can attract kids that have a choice, the parents have a choice. So our system, because it's better. I haven't been to towns or better too, but I'll stick it with that. But if you look at this trend, is that mission impossible? To me, if we don't do everything possible, if the market awareness is being the best there is, we're gonna be at a point where the Jamie's of the world aren't gonna be able to keep pulling the rabbits out of the hat. So I just suggest that we'll, I don't have an answer to that other than being good and then letting people know that we're really, really, really good. Cause I don't think it has to happen here. And I think we've got so many assets in one capital and people and an environment that we could really do it here. But that's kind of scary. Well, the reason it says that we could share that is, and as that goes out of Massachusetts, and so there were some certain things I had to follow up with them about our structure that influenced the ratios that we're using about the population projection. So you think that might be off? No, no, no, no. That, because that's about the state. It's not just WRBSU. But I hope to have an update for you in the future. Talk to them. Yesterday they tried to clear those things up and we got those in their numbers today. Yeah, so we'll have population projections for each of the member districts and the SU. And the goal would be that we continue to do those annually. And we expect to be able to dial in better by year three. Yeah, I agree. Any questions for Ray? The policy committee update on board member conduct policy. That policy we got our first look at at the policy committee meeting tonight. We made a couple of changes. It's gonna come back to the committee next month for another review. And then hopefully we'll be able to pass that along to the committee, to the board. We'll look at that. One question I had to the policy committee on this or and it's drafted by our legal team. We primarily are exclusively talking about our behavior, our civility as not as board members, but when we step into the board room, when we step to the community meeting, when we are on a Zoom meeting, is it basically that's where this applies? Or is it mean also that when I'm down at the post office and talk to somebody and somebody's being very obnoxious about how terrible I'm doing to my job and I explode and I basically said, well, on and on and on it goes. We also talked about that behavior too as not. In other words, is the board membership civility rules go beyond when we're in this room to how we deal with people. When they're talking about school policy, I'm not talking about sports or red socks or something like that. I'm talking about school policy. Are we still held by this policy to be civil? No, that's my question. When you're conducting board business. Right. So when you're representing the board under board business that's there, you cannot, we cannot legally, the board cannot extend past that in sensory. So it's basically when we step into the board room. Or committee. No. Or as a board you're representing the board at a school event, right? So I think a good example could be Bill. I think it's really clear when board members are coming to community conversations. I don't think you get to take the board member hat off. I think it's been clear to folks you're wearing your board member hat at that moment. I would have considered that to be board business. Now that's the superintendent's interpretation. Maybe not every month's here tonight, but you know what I say to my staff is you don't, I tell my staff, you don't get to wear your parent and teacher hat at the same time. Which hat are you wearing right now? I know that you get to come into a meeting and wear both simultaneously. I think you should absolutely get to put your parent hat on. And then there's absolutely times you should be advocating as a teacher. I really try hard not to have them wear both at the same time. But I think what you're saying is like, you go to see you go to the post office and you get how you represent the school board at that time. But I could see a situation where say, every time you went to the post office, you're arguing with somebody. And it's, you know, I can see where that, this rule and this policy committee might be tried to apply to somebody like that. You know, like every time you went to the store or whatever, you get into an argument with somebody at the school board about school board's things. No, you're not representing the school board at that time, but it was an ongoing problem. I think some, the board might try to apply this, apply this censorship. I don't know. Yeah, we can actually come in and talk about it further. They did a lot of research on it. So we can ask them to better define the argument. But I mean, if it's just a one time thing, one thing, but if it's like every time, you know. Yeah, I hear you. Or an ongoing problem. Yeah, that's not, but I don't know if it would be a problem. It would be able to apply that policy and that's a good thing. I just like the thing that our job is so important, that every opportunity we have to win somebody over or at least get them to understand better or just open their mind where they're saying, okay, well, I'll get more information because that's the way I feel, but I'll get back to you on that. So maybe you made me think a little bit more about it. All that helps when it gets to the ballot box and voting on our budgets or everything else in school policy in this world. And so I hear what you're saying is that there's, we only can do so much. And there's first of in minutes rights that are huge, huge, huge, huge. So, you know, I appreciate you educating me on that. So there will be more to come on this policy. We also have an update on, there was a couple of changes on the fight policy that we wanna talk about now. I think we should do that. Do that. All right, so negotiations council. Hey, Sarah, you wanna talk to that where we're at? Sure. We met with the support staff last Thursday, both sides exchanged proposals and asked sort of broad questions so that there was understanding of what the proposals were, but we weren't into negotiating. We're gonna meet with them not this Thursday, but the following Thursday, where they're coming back with some clarification for us but we're off and we're meeting every other week with them and then we meet as a team on the other Thursday so that we're prepared and ready to negotiate. Questions? Okay. Superintendent of Evaluation Committee. We have a meeting tomorrow night at six o'clock. We meet with Sue from the VSBA to go over the questions that will be on the survey and timeline and all of that. So that's up for tomorrow night. So that's tomorrow night? At six. It's six, I've forgotten that, thank you very much. Kathy, if it's not snowing and bad, I won't be able to be at it. If it's snowing and what I'm supposed to do, it gets canceled, I can be on it, but. Okay. Just so you know. All right, and tomorrow is really, it won't be a very long meeting. It's just going to review the questions, which I'm assuming will be pretty similar to what we've had the last couple of years to keep along the timeline. So we'll be back tonight. Board Mentor Committee update. Eric on here today? No, Eric. We are moving along with our Board Mentor Committee. We have, not a board handbook, but I'd say maybe a handbook. We're putting together like a handbook layout for all the board members with things like acronyms and who you can contact and what you do when you first become a board member. And we're hoping to have it by March. Have it ready and out 12 by March. So it'll be an update on that at next meeting, maybe in my first look at it for you guys at our February meeting. I think what you're doing is super. There's no reason why people have to kind of work their way through the slops in the weeks of the first year before they feel confident in being, what their expectations are and how they contribute to being a good effective board member. So this is, I think it's going to go a long way. I've got some suggestions. I'll pass them on to you or just, I just think you need, really, really need. I also think, like to suggest that, I don't care how many years we've been on a board, we're going to learn something from this manual. So you might think about this being a manual for everybody. Yeah, I think the first year everybody should get a copy of it. Well, we've learned some of us have already forgotten, so thank you for putting it together. I like the way it's organized and just the level of detail you've got here. I appreciate it. Any questions on mentor committee? You guys are easy peasy tonight. All right, number 88.1, act to adopt A32WRVSU flag policy. Maggie was going to speak to you. And Maggie's going to speak to what we've discussed at our committee meeting point about the flag policy. Yes, I am. So there's pretty much the flag policy stays the same. There have been two slight shifts in wording. Oh, good. You have it up. So the first one is around who proposes the flag policy and really making sure that it stays more student-focused. So the original wording, so the process, okay, yeah. That bottom paragraph on page one, the school board will only consider flag requests from the school district students, approved school groups. And so that piece, that last word there or staff has been removed. So just trying to be mindful of like staff influence as opposed to more organic student voices. The last one is if you scroll down further to section C as in caps, keep going. There it is. After the hearing request, thank you. I don't know who's driving the show, but I appreciate your assistance. Is that the individual board make the decision as opposed to having the superintendent be the middle person, just again to keep the local influence or process, keep the process localized. That's a better wording. Well, the second sentence was removed too, remember Maggie. Yeah, so the board, oh, and that the board does not have to provide a, we're removing the board, we'll provide a written statement articulating why this flag request. Thank you. So what you all have in your packets is the revised version. Is the revised? Okay, I kept looking for the changes. This is, that is the changes, gotcha, thank you. All right, are there any questions to those changes? If you're none, I would entertain a motion to adopt the WRVSE flag request. Sorry, I thought you said there were any questions. I have some comments. Okay. Hopefully, is this any surprise? I wanna start with a compliment to the committee and how long and hard they've been working on this. In my research, this is not an easy topic. It's royal school boards from Maine to Southern California. It's gotten the states and all legislatures involved, all sorts of stuff going on, a lot of it's silly. But the underlying thing is, in what you're trying to grapple with, the importance of giving students not only a choice but a voice and how we do that responsibly. And the legal cases that are underlying this, including the big one in the city of Boston, where I used to work, where the Supreme Court decided that, and that makes sense to me, that they didn't have a flag policy. And in fact, the flags are flying. We're not governmental flags because there is no policy to underlie that. And that's what's driving this to have the ability of us as school boards. And school superintendents to decide what we wanna do to help students convey their voice, empower their voice. You have to have a policy. And that's what's driving here what you had to do. What is unique in my research is that it isn't just one policy. It's a policy that each district can develop. And that policy can be dealing with the flag, non-governmental flags on school flag poles and or flags inside our school buildings. My concern is not our goal, which is to empower. It isn't fear that the kids are gonna go wild. It's our moral imperative to make sure that they feel safe and confident. We give them the open their minds. We open their hearts so that they're skeptical, but they learn to listen. That they are curious about the world beyond themselves and their close friends. They are thinking about the future and their future is not totally controlled by themselves. It's by their environment, their community, their families and how we as a schools, families, communities, states, countries, the world conduct ourselves and encourage them to think about that and then to get passionate on something. And that's where the voice comes in and to constructively channel that voice for what they're advocating. What I'm concerned about is that it seems like we're hung up on flags. And in my experience, it isn't flags. It isn't flag poles. It's what we do as individuals, no matter what our age is to try to make a difference. And I'll just give you if I can share some stories with you back in 1965. I was a sophomore at Syracuse University and a bloody Sunday in Selma happened. And I was a member of CORE and we had some contacts with a rural community in Northern Louisiana. And we decided to go down there. Some people would call us freedom riders. No, we just went down there because a couple of black churches got burned by the Klu Klux Klan. And it was really tense. I mean, you had bloody Sunday, you had the Klan's reign of terror, they called it down in Louisiana. You had the old little Leruzzo, who was this white woman trying to make a difference in the South. And she was shot down and killed because she had the audacity to pick up a black man who had run out of gas. And she was driving him to the filling station. Yeah, you just don't do that. And then on top of that, when we contacted the FBI, the FBI says, hey, we can't guarantee warranties, basically they can't guarantee or assure our safety much below Cincinnati. Think about that, Cincinnati. We're going down there to help rebuild the church. This isn't about me, this isn't about college students, even though we're pretty damn young. But when we got down there, what were the students doing at a segregated high school? They walked out of that high school. Why did they walk out of that high school? Because they had terrible conditions where there was a drinking fountains that didn't work, the heating systems didn't work, the leaking roofs, no decent books at all in the library, overcrowded classrooms, and then that school board fires their black coach for attending one of their meetings. These kids hit the streets. They prayed, they barged, they sat. Television's camera, stations came. We helped as little as we could, as much as we could. And lo and behold, the segregationist governor of the great state of Louisiana showed up because this was too much. And worked out some arrangements where those school conditions would change. Who did that? Kids, kids. I mean, the parents were around this because they saw the danger of their kids out there. They could get mugged, they could get shot, they could be pushed around. We're not talking about bullying here. We're talking about stuff that's really, really, really serious. Kids did that. And you had another next year out in Delano, California and the Great Strike. I don't know if you followed the grape workers and farm workers in California. But they worked on, a lot more green carders, but they worked terrible wages, terrible working conditions, pesticides up and down or around, treating like no human being should be treated. And so they, Cesar Chavez basically said, hey, we're gonna go on strike. Well, the kids, the sons and daughters of Cesar Chavez and the farm workers said, we can do better than that. Let's take a walk. Walk where? To Sacramento. And we'll call the kids and all the high schools all the way up the way, San Joaquin Valley, and see if they'll join us. And that's where I joined them up because I was a community organizer in Stockton. And so each time they picked up more people, kids all the way along, tell we got to Sacramento. The governor of the time refused to meet with us. But that March got, again, galvanized people's attention. And that's right, turned into a great boycott of not eating and buying American grown California grapes until things got turned around. Who are the big pushers there? It wasn't only Cesar's events, it was the kids. And then you go eight years later in Boston, Liberty's chosen home and they had a federal judge that said, Boston's public schools are segregated. This is 1974. And you're gonna have to integrate them. And I was part of that in a small way, but my part was to try to get the kids to hold the temper down, to get kids to be able to communicate. And so we had a chance to integrate Boston's public schools. That basically blew up. And I wanna go into the gory details, but again, you had kids standing up, trying to make a difference here. It wasn't enough. Even with a massive police presence. Wow. And then the black parents having their kids getting on buses and these kids getting on buses when rocks were thrown, bricks were thrown. I mean, this was pretty nasty stuff. And my point is kids do make a difference. They have made a difference. Our moral imperative is to help them make a difference. But I don't think flying a non-governmental flag on a school flag ball makes a damn bit of difference. Excuse me, that's an exaggeration. It doesn't do it. It doesn't do it. And it can also endanger our ability to unite our community behind our educational purpose. And that requires not only their support but their financial support and going to our games and our concerts and linking with the teachers and understanding what's going on here. And I see this as an unnecessary risk for the greater good of that voice. Kids can have that voice and the plays that they act in and the music that they play and the clothes they wear and the poetry they write and the letters to the editor they make to the marches to wherever it is. And it can be for any generation. Food and security, the environment. You name it, they can make a difference. And I would hope that they do however you vote tonight. But I'd like to propose an amendment basically taking the flag poles off the choice that, and if you'll put that up, it's the second paragraph of the flag policy, you know. Bill, you can't make an amendment if we don't have a, we don't have a motion on the floor. So there's nothing to amend yet. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. He wants to change the policy before we vote on it, is that what you're saying? Yeah. But so you put a motion on the floor and then you- I want to, I want to motion to amend. Yeah. And there's no motion on the floor. Okay, I hear what you're saying, Sarah. So you're saying- You need to move it. So I need a second. And then we need a second and then we'll have a dissent. And then you make an amendment to the policy and then we vote on your amendment and then we vote on the policy. Correct? If he gets a second. If he gets a second. Okay. All right. So do I have a motion to adopt for the WRVSU flag policy? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. Is there a discussion on the- Yes. Motion. I'd like to move an amendment. Okay. Do I need a second on that or can I go ahead? Yes. Somebody has to- You need a second. So say what your amendment is. Okay. It's a second paragraph of the policy and I'll read it. Therefore, it is the policy of the WRVSU that each district within the supervisor unions should adopt its own flag policy consistent with the procedures set forth herein. Member districts may designate space within the district buildings to hang flags that comply with the requirements herein. And then this is the big change. All member district flag polls on school properties shall exclusively fly to the United States and state of Vermont flags. Right. Do I have a second? Second. A second bills. You seconded Amy. Thank you. Yes. Any discussion on the amendment before we vote on that? Okay. So now I do a vote on the amendment. So all those in favor of bills amendment to the flag policy, I'm gonna go through, do a roll call vote. All those in favor say aye. I'll start with you, Sarah. No. Maggie? No. Shannon? No. Tammy? No. Sylvia? No. Board? No. I'll go to the others. All right. I'll go to the other side. The other side. All right. Sylvia? And I'll make yes. So it's passed. So it's passed. We'll do that. You can't get nine if it won't pass. You're gonna have to be the end mess on this. Members 16, member four. You have to have a quorum on the 16 member board. You just talked about this at the policy committee. Right. No matter what motions you have tonight, you do nine votes to approve it. Okay, I misunderstood that. I thought you needed at least half over half. No. You have 16 members. You need nine to make a quorum. Only a quorum on the board can take action. And Robert's rule is that means you need a whole nine to say yes. Is that on amendments too? Yes. The board can only take action on a majority of the board. You only have nine tonight, which means you need unanimous votes to take any action. Okay. So the amendment did not pass. So now act to adopt the WRVSU flag policy motion is back up. Is there any other discussion on the motion? None. I will do roll call for the motion. Shannon, this is to adopt the policy. Yes. Amy, Tammy. Yes. Sarah. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Sylvia. Yes. Rodney. Yes. Phil. Yes. And then Kathy's a yes. All right. Policy is approved. Policy, the flag policy is approved. You know, so thanks guys. Board developed. The board will receive part two more presentation on the changes to special education law specific to Act 173 and how it relates to our ongoing work in creating a comprehensive system of support and CSS. So it's Michaela and Annette. Well, thanks for having us again here for around two. This particular presentation is around the layers of support within a multi-tiered system of supports and particularly we'll talk about what intervention is and what it looks like and how we get there. And also kind of giving some idea between the difference between intervention and specialized instruction. So you've seen this particular graphic in our first session. We just wanted to just give a reminder of what our MTSS system looks like, right? The universal level incorporates all students. And then when we start to then think about targeted intervention it's for some and then as we move up for intensive intervention it's few and then it's even fewer when we get to special education which is really focusing on specialized instruction. So we've been working with staffs around this idea of how a student is referred to special education and all of the process that has to happen before that can happen. So we've been really emphasizing this idea of it's a layered approach and it starts at universal instruction, high quality and then we move slowly through the other layers until we can determine whether or not it's actually a student has a need for a special education referral. So we're hopeful that we will continue to see a downward data point around referrals to special education because of this process because we've been a lot before. Nice, I just saw a note on there too just to add that graphic which I think do think is really helpful is actually on our WRVSU website under departments and MTSS intro to MTSS. So if you need to share it with anyone that's a way to get it out to families if you're having conversations and as a reference point it's like other places it is but that's one of the places you can find it to as we sort of continue to build up our new website things like this and your feedback that that it's helpful is good for us as we add more information there. So we also wanted to educate the board around this is not something new that we meet up that we have been working with the Agency of Education's field guide since 2014 it has been in existence and then was revised in 2019 prior to going out for COVID. So we use a lot of the information that the Agency of Education has provided as guidance and this is all embedded in research. So it's we're focused on we have 10 principles we're focused on to tonight around having a comprehensive data system that supports this idea of looking at student data and making decisions as well as having expertise at the building level to help support this idea of continuous improvement with students and growth. So this is where it's a foundation of our MTSS is how do we make decisions about students and also universal instruction like Audra talked about tonight with our smart and balance data we went to a data driven decision-making model. So this guide has helped us create that framework. Yeah, so this slide really kind of breaks down the difference between what intervention is focused on and what it looks like at the targeted and intensive level and then what we call intervention or services look like when students then qualify for special education and as part of their IEP gets specialized instruction. So intervention is really data and team driven decision-making same with specialized instruction. It's really focused around data and teams and teams making decisions based on what they have for information about their students. Interventions around gap filling. So it's really kind of targeting on what is the data showing you are the gaps in their knowing in those foundational foundational skills whether it be in academics or social emotional learning and then you really target those skills and then progress monitor them along the way. And with specialized instruction it really is yes, focusing on those skills that are gaps but generally when a student needs specialized instruction that instruction is then really long-term. They need that kind of modified or accommodated curriculum to make long-term adequate progress. Unlike at the targeted and sometimes intensive level where it can kind of be more short-term and really focused with the kind of an exit goal at the end. Also at the intervention level there is a lot of progress monitoring that happens just to make sure that the team is meeting on a regular basis and really discussing that student and making sure that the intervention that they're using to target that goal for that student is proper. And if it's not, they make adjustments or if a student's made a goal then they'll talk about next steps. There is progress monitoring when it comes to specialized instruction but generally it lines up a minimum of four times a year and generally progress reporting goes out with report cards. With intervention there's a lot of documented through kind of a school-based targeted intensive plan. We used to call that the EST plan but now it's a targeted intervention plan which will follow a student basically from grade to grade in school to school. So then basically you get this nice long-term picture of what the student has been going through and what kind of their process has been through their schooling. So it's a really nice way to kind of what I call a learner profile. You get this nice learner profile throughout the years. Same with specialized instruction. There's a lot of documenting and aligning to a student's annual IEP. Generally students are reevaluated formally, minimally every three years so there's still is a lot of documenting along the way and you get more of a microscopic, I call it kind of learner profile with specialized instruction when it's more of a broader learner profile and more of an intervention level. Michaela, do you have anything to add? I just want to emphasize that we're really focused on documentation. Yes. We were working with our school team that the documentation is equitable throughout the SU because schools are having to do differently to ensure that when a referral comes to Annette's desk that they have the proper data and documentation without the student's profile. So that's where we've been working a lot with schools around what does that look like? And when a referral does come to my inbox, I designed last year a digital referral form and it has a lot of very data-driven specific questions and I ask for a lot of documentation within that form. And what I generally do is I review very thoroughly, I read everything and then I give feedback back to the team. So I reach back out to the building principal and the team that put in the referral if I have questions or something's missing or for next steps. Just the last slide just shows you, this is what it looks like at the building level. So there's multiple steps that need to happen. So I know the boards will be hearing a lot about track my progress data in February. We're already into that data right now and schools are doing that as well as looking at what is their track my progress data look like at a school classroom and then an individual level and then they will determine at the team level what other what we call diagnostic assessments. So to deeper dive into what a student may need. So we've been trying to create menus of support to help schools and principals understand like here's what you could be, here's another level of testing you could do to find dig deeper into a student's gaps that they have according to what track my progress said. And then a team will then decide what they're gonna target and the intervention that will be used and they'll set up a progress monitoring schedule where they'll regularly test a student to see if actually the intervention is working. And then if a student does not make progress after multiple cycles and deep analysis and the building principles that has assured us that the universal instruction is also high quality then there could be a referral for a special education evaluation. But that takes a good portion of the year to get to if the student doesn't exit. To want to show, I'd like that board to see that the venue of supports just to give the board some something clinging into the resources we provide data teams looking at different interventions to target academic gaps. So these are different approaches to intervention that we can use to address literacy. And so teams can use this as a reference point when they're in data teams to see what is that diagnostic telling us that the student's struggling with in regards to reading. And then the team can use this template to inform what intervention might be the most, well, hopefully is the most appropriate to target those academic gaps. And if it's not working, again, we could come back to say, all right, if we're not closing the academic gaps, why? Is it that the intervention is not happening with fidelity, right? Like is attendance a concern? Is it that the intervention that we're using is not actually honing in on the skill that we thought it was the student was struggling with? So when we talk about progress monitoring students I share that to give you an example of those are the types of conversations teachers should be having in data teams at our buildings about individual students. And that is even when a student's entered into a targeted intervention plan, not getting intervention via an IEP. Well, so when we talk about early intervention that's what we're talking about, right? We wanna be talking about kids that aren't meeting adequate progress on a regular basis. And this is a tool that teachers would use. So a lot of PD this year has been focused on building more and more tools with our classroom teachers as well as our interventions. So Anna's been working all year long with the interventionists around how do we continue to build our expertise so they can support at the data team level. Nice. Yeah, so what it really comes down to as part of this multi-tiered system of support and also what Act 173 provides us is that we're able to provide kind of all of this, menu that you see, you're able to see that we're able to provide a lot of intervention early as possible instead of having to wait until we feel like a student then qualifies for a special education. So it's just wonderful that we now have these resources and the ability to catch students early and have conversations about students early. I mean, early as three years old when they're in our preschools, because I know our preschools are starting an early MTSS system. I've been working with Renee. So it's just wonderful that we just, we have these items now and this ability to do this to catch students really early and not have to wait. So this is really exciting. Back at business school there's an old adage to manage just to measure. And I'm a big advocate of that, but it's clearly not the only thing. I mean, once you've got the data, you've got to figure out what am I doing and how can we change it and make it better. And what I like about this system that you're implementing and effective on it is you're not afraid of them getting the data, get the measurements and you're not afraid of saying, hey, is it working if not figured out? And it's our responsibility as the leadership team to help the teachers and educators with the right tools that they can, that data can turn around. And that's to me a form of a potential success. Any questions guys? Thank you guys. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Audit updates, possible action. So there's no action on it tonight because it's not attached to your packet. And as far as the updates concerned, I'm just waiting on the revised draft of the SEL Audit. Hopefully I'll have it in the next stage. Oh, that's good. So far. Projections that I had for our central office were on par throughout the years. Yeah, all right. So public comment. Raise your hand. Would you have a public comment tonight? Hearing none. Presentation, new hires. Nothing. Any other business? Future agenda items? But the audit, you'll get your SUI track and progress data. We'll probably be ready for our first reading potentially of the policy we discussed tonight. I see like I think we're just gonna be wanting to move forward. Yep. Let's just see what it is. So I'll warn you for discussion. And we'll have a discussion on the mentor committee. Adam, you can look at the next board meeting. Oh yeah, we probably the, our transportation bids are out, the RFP. And so we very well may be ready to take action on a contract plus transportation contract. Nice. Right. I think we'll be in time later. Yeah, every night. So. Yeah, so. All right. Put some local stuff in there. Yep. I said to you. I'm sorry. Our next meeting is Tuesday, February 28th at six o'clock. And if there is no other business, I'll let your hand motion to adjourn. So moved. Suck it in. Ha ha ha. All right guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Thank you.