 I'm going to turn it over to the board of the Muffler Roxbury School Directors. First order is public comment. I'm not seeing anywhere in the room. Anyone online, I just want to, I know it's on our agenda, but I just want to remind people that public comment is a period where we listen and we hear your concerns or comments, we do not react in real time, I know it can sometimes not be super satisfying, but we very much appreciate the input that comes through public comment. It's very valuable for us. It does shape what we consider and what we do and how we shape our agendas. We do do follow up with administration to check in on matters and make sure they're addressed and it's a very important part of the meeting. So I just want to reiterate that, that we value it and we hear you and you know it's a tough thing to do, but we also do not react in real time. So we will listen and reaction comes later. That said, do we have anyone on the Zoom who wishes to speak? If you do, you can either do the raise hand function. If you know how to do that in Zoom, if under reactions, if not, just go ahead and just raise your hand physically on the camera. I'm not seeing anyone. Okay, so there's like no public comment virtually either. Next order of business is our consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Move. Go second. I'll second. Any discussion? Discussion or something. I have one. Is that better now? Okay. I think we're better now. One question which I was gonna ask of members of the facilities committee. Oh, Seiji, you are here. In the minutes from the meeting, last meeting, shoot, I forgot to date now, there was an update about timing on ESER projects. And I was just wondering if it looked like we might not get to all of the ones that we had in the plan this year. Do you know, do you have any? Wasn't that the last equity or facilities meeting? Okay. So maybe I'll just add. This is Kristin, if you all can hear me. Yes, yes. Great. Yes, so the ESER funding, the sunset date on that is September of 2024. So it's my understanding that Andrew is kind of working with the capital projects and the ESER projects concurrently and working with the same contractor at least this particular year, but there's definitely some prioritization in terms of timing for these different projects. But I do believe the goal is still to get them all done, just not all this summer in this kind of current work plan. Okay, okay. Does that answer your question, Mia? Yes. Yes. Can you go back on? Can you go back on? Thank you, Kristin. It does answer my question. And I have a request to just make sure to keep the board in the loop and by way through the board, also the community, so that we're just maintaining a proper expectation on timing for those projects. So that just so that people aren't expecting something to get finished this year, if it can't get finished this year. So I appreciated that it was in the minutes of the meeting and that would be a great place to do that and maybe also bring it to board meetings just as an update as things are. Yep, we can add that to the next facilities update to the board. Thank you. As am I, when it comes to, not for false. Any other comments or discussion on the consent agenda? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great, consent agenda passes. So now board learning focus. So we have ability challenge is going to give a presentation and Libby informed me that Peggy Sue would ably shepherd us through this, but I've read the report, which was excellent and very informative and I'm really looking forward to the presentation. So I'm assuming that Kristen and Sarah are on the screen, okay, great. Hi, good evening, good evening. Peggy Sue, can you move us through the? Yeah. So we're very excited to be with you all this evening virtually, we've been to Montpelier quite a few times in the past few months. We wanted to kick off with just intros about ourselves and our organization so that we're not the handsome people on your screens. I'm Kristen Briggs. I'm the managing director of program with ABC, the ability challenge ABC as we're affectionately known. I'm based out of Connecticut, but I am originally from New York and have taught up and down the East Coast. I come to the work as a special education teacher. I started teaching special education at the high school level, have taught across all settings on a continuum of services and also transitioned into school and network level leadership before coming into the nonprofit world about five years ago and have been in this world ever since. And so I support our work directly with partners and ensuring that we are providing folks with best in class service and giving them the information they need to improve. And hi, I'm Sarah Semelius. I'm the founder and CEO of the ability challenge. And I come to the work as a lawyer or a former lawyer, I guess I should say and spend many years working in school districts in New York and then working also with school districts in the DC area. And now like Kristen, we are up and down the East Coast. And I started the ability challenge because I came in as a lawyer and said, there's a lot of stuff happening with schools and districts and there's so many requirements that are set out by the law. And yet what's happening for kids doesn't seem to be hitting the mark and kids are still lagging behind, kids with disabilities are still lagging behind. And so I started this organization and we now have been working on building authentically inclusive school communities and teams. So if you go to the next slide that sort of describes what we do. And so we work to develop critical core competencies with school leaders, educators and other folks in the school so that they are empowered to create those authentically inclusive school communities and teams that work together to meet the unique needs of all learners. So we're thinking compliance plus everything that goes to making sure that a student with a disability is appropriately served and learning as much as their peers so that they can graduate and be successful in life. And I can talk a little bit more about we're both gonna talk a little bit more about our approach and how we do the work but I'll kick it back to the district team to talk through the goals for the project. I started in one of the things that Libby said to me is that she wanted the district to get involved in looking at what our needs were for specifically for students with disabilities. And around the time she said that I happened to get an email from Sarah and we had a great conversation and we decided to move forward in the work together really just trying to understand what our strengths are and where are the areas that we need to look to improve and just looking for the opportunity for kind of an overall here's where we are here's what the experience is like for students in our district. And then making sure that what my thinking is and my first year here is aligning was what makes sense around the needs of the people in the district. Is there anything else Sarah specific that you wanna be to mention there? Nope, I think that's good. Okay, the next slide. Yep, so the next slide really just crystallizes what Peggy through just talked through and it's when we set out the project we wanted to answer some key questions. So one is what are Montpelier Rocksbury Public School biggest strengths and areas of opportunity for a special education and how it's being implemented across the district to what degree are special education students being served adequately by the district and what are the recommended next steps for the district to address the identified areas of opportunity just to orient you. This is a flow for the presentation. So the first thing we wanna do is introduce you to the quality special education framework and that is what all of our work is grounded in. So we'll talk you through what those five key elements are. Then we'll take you through element level findings for the report. Share the high-level recommendations that we provided in the report and make space for questions. One thing to note in the quality special education framework we're also going to walk you through the process we took for the needs assessment and share the high level takeaways before we take a closer look at the element level findings. So this is our quality special education framework soon to be rebranded as our thrive quality special education framework. We have identified research-based knowledge, mindsets and practices for school leaders, educators, student support staff to transform how students with disabilities are serving their school. We came to this framework after research and a national survey to talk to hundreds of teachers across the country talking to leaders and other stakeholders in education should really get at the heart of what demonstrates a strong special education program. And so we were able to synthesize all the information and came with these five elements. So the element one is a culture of inclusion and collaboration. Element two is student-centered curriculum and instruction. Element three is shared understanding of and practices for special education. Element four is equitable systems and resource management and element five is meaningful family partnerships. They are not set up in a sequence in order of importance in any way, shape, form or fashion but these are the five elements that we believe that if these are represented there is a sound special education program in place. Can we go back to the framework for one second before we move on? I just want to add that I think when I started the ability challenge one of the things that I asked people was what does it look like when it's done really, really well like special education? And I got a lot of, well, I don't know. And then I got a lot of like questions or partial answers where people were like, well, this school or this district is doing this piece of it really well. And so the reason why we ground all of our work in this framework is because we want to say this is what both research and practice tells us works in schools and districts. And so, you know, it is a pie and it's our way of cutting the pie. Oh, there is no signal. Does that mean they're gone? Although the presentation is still there I just don't know if they have any help but us. Let's see. Hold on ladies, it's Libby. I'm gonna see if I can get them or see what's going on. Okay. Sorry I'm not in the room I'm having a rather travel emergency here than. Jim says that somebody tripped over a wire and it's getting fixed. Hold on one second. They can see you and hear you, but I don't know. Do they want us to keep talking or to stop talking? Why don't we give them one minute because I don't know if people who are not on the Zoom call since it's streamed live. There we go. You're good. Okay. Welcome back. So anyways, the bottom line for this slide is just this is the way that we approach the work and this is sort of when I was talking about how I started the organization as a way to really dig into and help support schools and districts with that compliance and the work that is going to support kids using this framework as a grounding for all of our services, including the needs assessment was just a really big piece of how we do our work. And so that's why we wanted to start our presentation with this framework and we're happy to talk through any pieces of that as we'll get to the questions. And now you can go to the next slide. Okay. So what we did for this process is we engaged in a really good great planning dialogue with Peggy Sue and she was fantastic at giving us access to the folks we needed and planning out a really good set of free site visit, during site visit and post site visit activities for us based on the things that we needed to collect. And so I'm gonna talk through a little bit of numbers here which are not on the slide, but they're in the report in terms of who we spoke to and what data we collected. Before we came to visit, we issued three different surveys and we collected survey data from 106 teachers, 34 parents of students with disabilities and all of your leaders. So we actually sent it out to everyone in those categories and those were the response rates that we got. We also started doing some interviews and we spoke to all of your district leaders, so all of the school building leaders and all of the district office folks. We spoke with a selection of teachers and the school leaders identified students that we were speaking to when we went, when we came to the site. So then when we were on site, we did those student interviews, we talked to 22 students. Some of them I think we did afterwards in a Zoom, but we talked to many of the students while we were there and we observed 40 classrooms. So we went to every building, we did a lot more observation and review in classrooms, in buildings really seeing what was happening on the ground. And then we did a work sample review. So we looked at sample IEPs, curriculum artifacts, strategic plans, a number of different sample documents that would help describe what the program looks like. And I will note, although I said it already, but it was really important to us that we made sure to hear from a diversity of voices. So, students, educators, leaders, service providers, families, et cetera. Here are the main takeaways. If we had to boil down everything that's in that 60, however many page report to a couple of bullets, which was very difficult. These are the three main takeaways. We're gonna go into more detail. Just bear with us a little bit. But the first one is your community is your greatest asset. The folks that we spoke to and the conversations that we had gave us tremendous insight into what was happening in the district. And there are some really foundational mindsets for inclusion that are present. So we saw a lot of survey data and conversation data that really told us that folks are interested in this work. They wanna do better. They have mindsets that all students can achieve. And the students especially were just really thoughtful, curious and eager to make their communities better, which was really amazing. In terms of the second bullet, one of the things that really lends itself to that first element, that culture of collaboration and inclusion is a vision for inclusion. And folks knew there was a vision, but they weren't sure what the vision was. And so in the lack of clarity in this bullet is really around, they weren't able to state the vision back, but they could sort of paraphrase or say, we think this vision is about making sure that students have all the opportunities for which they are entitled. The other thing that was a little bit, there was a little bit of a lack of clarity around was how that vision lives and breathes across all of the schools. What does that look like in sort of day to day operations, right? And I think this connects to the third bullet, which is there is a disconnect between staff perception and practice. And so that comes up in the context of the vision because it seems as though folks understand and have mindsets that are supportive of inclusive practices and making sure that all students are included and learn and are provided with opportunities, but they're not always aware of the connections between the mindsets and then how their practices might be furthering or hindering those mindsets. And so some of this might be due to a lack of knowledge or skill around sort of evidence-based practices for supporting inclusive practices or it might also be sort of a lack of clear expectations across different roles about who's responsible for what, but we'll talk a little bit more about this as we go. And I think that that bullet will also become clearer as we sort of dig into the different components. Okay, so now we're gonna go element by element. So going back to our five elements of the quality framework, these are the elements. So culture of collaboration. I think I just sort of voiced over most of what's in this slide. What we did for the next five slides is we have some bullets and then we have a sample of the data that's in the report. And if you've looked at the report, you know there's tons of data in there. So this is just like a brief summary of that whole thing. As I said before, leaders and educators both perceive that they have strong inclusive beliefs. It's where the actions sort of break down a little bit that we think could use is a real opportunity for district support and work. And as I said before, that third bullet is that staff know there's a vision for inclusion, which is awesome. And they just need to have a little bit more clarity around what it is and what's the plan for implementation. Kristen. Yep. Can you go to the next slide for me please? Thank you. You're there. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. So student-centered curriculum and instruction is element two. A few of the most salient points we wanted to lift up here. One, it was incredibly evident across multiple data points that the district has made strides towards identifying priority standards and aligning assessments in most content areas. And it also was, we also surfaced that there is a lack of clarity for how to translate those standards into learning outcomes and academic goals and how to effectively measure that for student, measure student progress with that information. There's also an opportunity for the district to improve differentiation and specialized instruction practices, specifically in the general education classrooms. So one data point that was lifted up here that speaks to the learning outcomes and academic goals is around the use of data. And there was a bit of discrepancy between teacher perception and student perception in this area. So the questions we highlighted here is, teachers were asked, I collect a variety of data to understand student need and potential. For example, student observation data, interest inventory, student interviews. So majority of teachers were reporting strongly, agree or agree. Whereas if we ask students similarly, like my teachers know my students and strengths, which we would infer is possible through the collection of data. It was a bit different with fewer than 50% of students are reading that agree or strongly agree. And then we also pulled a poll here that just speaks to the fact that educators were acknowledging and interviews that like we can really improve and how we clearly define and articulate for students what they're learning on a day-to-day basis. Thank you, Paisu. Element three is about shared understanding of and practices for special education. And so in this element, it was really clear that the knowledge of special education laws and mandates is an area of opportunity for the district. This is incredibly important, especially given the pending rule changes in Vermont that are slated to go into effect in July. And so that is a significant area of opportunity for the district. Additionally, the work sample analysis that we did demonstrated that writing and implementing clear and effective documents and programs is a significant area of growth for the district. And I will direct you to that chart in the top right of the slide. So we have a quality IEP rubric that we use when we analyze IEP documents that helps us get a sense of the strength of the document if the document has the key information in it. And so you'll notice for the different sections of an IEP, Plop is present levels of performance. We love acronym special education and IEP is individualized education plan. And so you'll see the rubric score is really demonstrated there's an opportunity to strengthen the quality of the present levels which really tell the story of a student, what their needs are, what their strengths are and should inform the IEP goals which should be standards aligned and should really speak to the areas that a student is going to demonstrate a progress. IEP placement speaks to least restrictive environment and how well that reflects what's outlined in the student's present levels and goals. And so we saw that as it emerges in the area of opportunity. How accommodations and modifications were outlined and specified the use of assistive tech and other supports and transition services which are applicable in secondary setting all more opportunities again to really strengthen the quality of the document whereas related services were pretty strong relatively in terms of what's outlined how those are reflected in service minutes and in present levels. Third thing that we eliminate that we wanted to highlight here rather is the clear roles and responsibilities between all educators who support students with IEPs can really help, right? So having folks understand their role in regards to meeting the needs of students with disabilities is a huge area of opportunity. Again, calling to those rule changes. A key thing that's coming with that rule change is it's broadening who can provide special education services, specialized instruction services to include general education teachers. And so it's incredibly important for folks to know not only what their roles are how they work together, how those roles interact. And so we pulled out another data point here in the bottom right. It's a survey question around roles and responsibilities between all educators who support students with IEPs being clear and well-defined and whether or not educators are regularly meeting with the adults who support a student with a disability. And so you'll see it's about, it's actually less, I'm saying less than a quarter teachers were responding or agree or strongly agree to those two questions and those two pieces are incredibly important in order to ensure that students are receiving quality support, folks need to know what their roles and responsibilities are and they need to collaborate often. So two areas of opportunity there. So my turn. So our fourth element is equitable systems and resource management. And so this one really gets to what are all of the systems and processes that support programming, effective classroom programming. And so where the strongest element or the strongest component of this element was really with the system of supports. And that refers to how students who are in need of intervention or additional support are receiving it, whether it's special education or just before a student is referred that they're getting those supports that they need. It's also called multi-tiered systems of support or MTSS. And it's a state requirement that schools have a process for making sure that students in need of additional support are getting those supports. It was very clear that the interventionists were providing a lot of great support to students in need of intervention. The one area where I think there could be a real opportunity for some attention is around whole school schedules and making sure that when Kristen talked about roles and responsibilities and collaboration that the schedules are supportive of those opportunities to collaborate so that general educators and special educators are bringing their expertise to the table and that they're sharing their different lenses to help design instruction that is going to really work for students. I think the schedule is also an opportunity to think through where students are getting services and how resources like your staff are being maximized to deliver supports in gen ed classrooms when appropriate so that students are getting the most access to content that they can. The last piece I'll say which is also sort of related to scheduling is this idea of a continuum of services. So IDEA requires that every school district have what's called a continuum of services which is basically a set of placements and supports that students can have that will give them access to general ed content when appropriate or specialized programming when appropriate. And so thinking through how students are getting specialized instruction where they're getting that support and who's delivering it will be a really helpful component to going to clarifying those roles and responsibilities and also thinking about the compliance with the new state regulations. We'll say going back to that intervention and system of supports, you'll see this quote at the bottom of the slide that talks about the district non-negotiable when it comes to schedules is that there is every school has an intervention block. And so that was really cool to see. We were at a couple of schools while they were having it. And it was interesting to see how different leaders were using that time in different ways. So that's mainly sort of the takeaways for equitable systems and resource management. I'll also just like address this pie chart in case you can't read it, but basically it says we asked leaders, the statement staffing and special education supports in the district are distributed in a way that addresses the needs of all students and supports the development of an inclusive school culture. And we had about 30% agree. And so, this is an area where we may wanna dig in and get some more information about exactly what was behind that answer because there could be a lot of things sort of going to that high number of folks who disagreed or neither agreed nor disagreed. And our last element is families. And so, one of the things that was very interesting about the data from the family survey. So we have the data from the family survey that informs this section as well as some of the questions that we asked throughout the interviews and the student focus groups, they also sort of feed into the element around families. And what was really interesting was there was just a really wide range of perspectives from families. And so you'll see even in the two charts that we have there, like the yellow components are the agree and strongly agree. And then the gray and black components are strongly, so the gray and black are strongly disagree or disagree. And then that white section is neither. But you'll see that there's a large distribution of answers in both of those parts because just sort of the wide range of perspectives from parents. Parents were very favorable when it came to how their child's school communicates with them. So we got a lot of positive answers around feeling like their school was communicating with them well. There's an area of opportunity when it comes to staff seeking out cultural connections. Excuse me, I have to have a cough. And asking about student and family's backgrounds. So that was an area just to point out where there could be some mark and some improvement. And I'll just, I'll leave you guys with that circle pie chart. The parent, that question was, I believe the school expects the best from my child and you'll see that over 50% says, said, they agree or strongly agree. And then the rest, there was a small percentage that said strongly disagree and disagree. So we can dig a little bit more into any of those charts when we get two questions if you have them, but that's sort of the big overview of our takeaways. So what we did was there's a lot of recommendations in that report. We distilled them into the sort of one or two biggest recommendations for each element. And so you'll be able to see all the whole list there, but we're just gonna talk through a couple of the recommendations here. So for element one, we talk about the disconnect between the vision and how the vision lives. And so our recommendation here is that you develop a clear action plan that talks about how that vision is going to be implemented and sort of live across existing district wide initiatives. And so, I think this is already being done and I think if it's done in a more explicit way, that will really help folks see, oh, this is where, this is how the inclusive pieces of our work really play out day to day. Can I add a beat Peggy Sue? Can you go back to that previous slide? Another thing to call out here is the, this was a through line across many of the recommendations is that there are foundational pieces already in process that the district can build on. So for example here, the district has done a lot of work around their continuous improvement plan with the AOE, the work that's being done with PLCs, et cetera. The vision and the action plan will explicitly draw the connections for the district around how all those pieces fit together to serve students with diverse learning needs. So it's being able to take all those pieces and really pull them together in a clear way. For student centered curriculum and instruction, similarly the foundational pieces here is to build on the work that the district has done with priority standards by building out some very clear curriculum maps with clear learning outcomes that align to those priority standards and provide folks with a scope and sequence for the year. So what that'll do is allow teachers, students, families to understand like we have the standards, we know what we're saying are the key things that students will learn in this course. Here's how that's actually gonna play out over the course of the year, how those outcomes map out across the year and that all together becomes your curriculum map. There's also an opportunity here and we recommend providing every educator with professional learning on promising practices and data-driven instruction. So building on that work that's been happening with interventions to really amplify how that plays out for tier one. Support in the classroom, that core instruction and how that can then build out into intervention instruction. And I also wanna know if at any time please feel free Peggy or Peggy Sewer-Libby to jump in if there's anything else that you all wanna add to some more information and insights. The New Yorker and me might be talking very fast. For shared understanding of and practices for special education, biggest recommendation that we would have here is to develop clear expectations for developing quality IEP documents and then providing staff with the training to build their skill in crafting those high quality IEPs. Specifically thinking about like what is an accurate description of a student's present levels of performance look like? What data should be included? How do you collect that data? How do you use the present levels to build those standard deline goals? How do you make sure that those two pieces are informing the specialized instruction and services that students need in order to be successful and access the general education curriculum? What is the least restrictive environment for that student given all of those preceding components? And then how are we determining and communicating that to the necessary team members? Okay, element four. So aligned with the recommendation that Christian just made around like some good solid core training on IEP documents, I think this recommendation could go with that one or it could go after that one to say that clarifying what the continuum of services, what are all of the different ways in which schools are supporting young people with disabilities and how are those things playing out in the IEP documents is a really, will go a long way for getting to that clarity of what's the program and what are different individuals' roles and responsibilities with respect to that. And I think it will also help students understand exactly where they need support and how. So that could be something that happens in tandem with the training around IEP documents but it's really important because that is what is gonna go into that document around like where is the student currently performing and how are we going to give them the support and services that they need to be successful in school? And that's where the continuum comes in. And then the other related recommendation there is to lead work with principles around the ownership, planning and implementation of the components of the continuum. And this is an area where we've seen traction with other partners to say principles are really responsible for how that program lives in their school. And so we wanna make sure that principles have the knowledge and supports that they need in order to own and manage, for lack of a better word, that program. Lastly, for families, one of the recommendations is to create a list of district-wide expectations for family engagement so that folks are clear about what it is that they should be expecting. It's also an opportunity to get parent voice to say what would you like from the district and how might we sort of memorialize and clarify what the expectations for folks are when it comes to how we engage families in partnerships around special education. And then the other one is to, it's similar, but it's like to start to think about what those partnerships really should look like, feel like and sound like in the district. Like what makes this district unique and how do we wanna make sure that our parents are really part of the community of planners and decision makers when it comes to opportunities to inform their children's education. We have talked a whole lot, a lot of information. So you wanted to make space for any questions that you have about the report, about the findings process, et cetera. Sure, we have some. First of all, thank you. The report was excellent, very comprehensive, as was the presentation. Super informative, really appreciate all the hard work that went into it. Questions for Kristina or Susan or Peggy Sue? Brett? You kind of talked about equitable and efficient whole school schedules. And I know that we've talked about how difficult that is at the high school level. I'm guessing you're talking about at every level, but I'm wondering what that looks like and whether or not it would say like expand the intervention block at every school or not isolate the intervention block for intervention. I'm not just curious what that looks like if we do it better. Yeah, sorry, did you have another thing to take that away? I think the answer is it depends. That's like the former lawyer in me is gonna answer that way. But it really is like, I think about clarifying what the district's priorities are when it comes to the things that every student needs to experience as part of being in this district, right? So we can say there are certain things like opportunities for teachers to collaborate with each other that are really important to sort of build in. And then I think it's also about thinking through like how to make, sort of all goes back to that vision, right? How do we make that vision live in something like a whole school schedule? Because there are a lot of decision points that need to be made and they could go in a bunch of different directions. And Kristen, I don't know if you have anything to add, but like the biggest thing I will say before you jump in is like it's also around like making sure that we use the data for what students need to drive the decisions around what is being provided so that kids are getting the support that they need. That's, yeah, that's why I would, so that the school leader in me and the high school teacher in me who did scheduling for my tool, it's about determining what drives your decision. So for example, it might be, oh, well, I start with my specials. We would advocate to start with the students with diverse learning needs and it's making decisions around where do we wanna ensure students are receiving the support, right? So we talk about special education has two functions. One, remove the barriers that a student's disability presents to them in the learning environment and two, give them access to the general education content. So knowing that those are the two purposes and functions of special education, how does that live in your schedule, right? Does that live with, we need to make sure that our teachers are collaborating so that general educators are clear on what strategies and support students have. So we have to build in common planning periods, non-negotiable. Does that mean that we wanna make sure that we're providing special education support, specialized instruction in core content areas such as math and English? Okay, depending on how my staffing is set up, that means I need to make sure my English courses aren't colliding with each other across two grades because my special education teacher needs to be able to give that support across those two grades to students in those classes. So Cicero's point, it is kind of like, what did you say? It's like four and four D. I used to work for, call it four dimensional chess because it's like all of these different variables and factors that need to align in like just the right way. But it starts with getting clear on what your students need and using that to set your priorities for your approach to scheduling. I would say we also talked about some of the leadership teams are times that we have for like TV and stuff. So if we're going to say this is our priority, then that means we need to give it time. So looking at not only our schedules, but also when we have opportunities and have our staff together, how are we using that time in most effectively to make sure that we're looking at this work? Thank you, I understand that. Yeah. I wanted to just, oh, somebody's got a low battery and needs to get a plug in. Oh, I'm sorry. I think that, over here. I don't want to lose us again. I first want to say just reiterate Jim's thanks and both to the ability challenge and also to our administrators, to Libby, Peggy Sue, our principals, to our special educators, to everybody for being open to having this review of our system. I can imagine that there were moments that it was a little bit difficult to be vulnerable with these assessors and also to have this information shared publicly is huge for our district. And so I just wanted to say a big thank you to you for engaging in the process and for the willingness that it took to do that. And I'm curious to know from Peggy Sue and Libby and maybe even if our principals could chime in, that would be really cool. Just now that you have this information, what are your, what are you prioritizing getting going on? Yeah, I can start. So first I just want to apologize that I am down the hall in my office. I had a little personal emergency that I was listening the whole time. I just needed to fix that personal emergency as well. So Kristin and Sarah, thank you so much for joining us tonight and sharing the presentation. I appreciate it. Mia, to answer your question, it's a slightly longer answer. So we looked at this as what are our immediate actions? What are our short-term plans and what are our longer-term plans? And our immediate actions were that we were dedicated to ensuring that our staff all saw the audit prior to it was going public. So we spent the last few staff meetings as well as the last few leadership meetings dissecting the audit and talking about what does it say and what were some of our really quick wins we could do? What are the ones that are not gonna take a whole lot of effort but will have a huge impact? What are the ones that are gonna take a whole lot of effort and have a huge impact? And so we've spent a lot of time talking about those things. We don't have specific, we just haven't had time yet to put like specific, very specific plans, but we do have broad themes that have come up with that, that I'm happy to share if you'd like that to happen. Does that sound good, Mia? Yeah, that would be helpful, thank you. Okay, so one of the immediate actions that all of us in the leadership team can take is really start making intentional efforts and communications to staff, like highlighting the work we're doing, like the work around priority standards and proficiency scales and helping people connect the dots. That was really good feedback for our leadership team to hear that we may be connecting the dots but others might not be. And so how do we do that in an intentional effort? That's a definite immediate action that we're all trying to work on better right now. In terms of shorter term plan, and I'm looking at this by like what can be accomplished by the end of the summer before next school year? It's developed that clear action plans with timelines and owners and measurable goals that Sarah Christen referenced to tie our vision to offer inclusion to district-wide work that we're doing to develop effective listening and communication to better connect the dissonance and perceptions that's happening right now. To provide leaders foundational training in special education laws, that's something that Peggy Sue has on tap. Christian and Sarah might be helping us with that. So that our district-wide leaders can be, or our principals can be the leaders in the building for the special education program. One of the things that we've done at MRPS, I know for as long as I've been here is really rely on our director of student services. Thank heavens we have such a fantastic one now from Peggy Sue for much of our special education needs. And so we need to help her out with that and increase the capacity of our building leaders to ensure they can be confident in their knowledge of special education law and their place and as well as the program in their school. We're really being intentional right now, Mike and I were talking about this earlier about interrupting deficit language when we hear it from anybody in our system and try to change that language. So we're not talking through a deficit lens. And then also before summer is really thinking about how do we really allocate human resources based on student need and staffing areas of expertise, which we talked about last board meeting and Peggy Sue has already done a lot of just simply based on staffing ability. In terms of longer term plans, kind of one to three years I'm thinking, we're building in time to schedule, into schedules that will intentionally allows for classroom teachers to meet with special educators as well as the specialist teachers to meet with their special educators so that everyone's on the same page with a child and understands what supports they need. Building in time for in-service where special educators and classroom teachers and support services like instructional assistants can go over IEPs so they really get to know them and dig into questions and concerns before the school year starts. Developing whole school schedules that reflect our vision for whole school inclusion beyond that one intervention period. I kind of got, I had a little anxiety when Kristen was talking about the English classes at the high school because I know how hard scheduling can be. So that's something that we'll have to pay attention to this summer and the spring as we're building schedules. We wanna increase our capacity in the variety and types of specialized instruction. We've been talking about that a lot this year and we definitely need some capacity building there. We wanna clarify and update the continuum of services so that not only are building leaders but also our special educators are clear about what the options are and are clear about that least restrictive environment. And when we're saying things like a child needs one-on-one services, that's pretty restrictive because we're saying that there are no peers around them. So is that exactly what that child needs? And having people be okay with asking those kinds of questions around least restrictive environment. We're looking at developing more clarity about when a student is released for more intensive services or intervention. How does that happen? What's the process? How can we talk to families about that? We wanna continue to define our EST system. That's our multi-tiered system of support that we have as the board knows we have been working quite a bit on and we'll continue that work over the next few years. We wanna create expectations for family engagement and one of the ways we're gonna do that is create family advisory committees. Peggy Sue will be having one, Mike will be having one, the principals will be having one and I will be having one so that we can clarify what's best for family engagement and have family advisors who can speak directly to the leadership about what's going on and what's bubbling. And then time to dive with educators to really dive into data-driven instruction which is something some of our educators really shy away from sometimes. We're providing training on writing high quality IEPs that will actually happen sooner rather than later. We wanna build instructional capacity and differentiation and this is actually a place that we're rethinking some of our plans and moving into more differentiation from where we were before because as a result of this audit. And then thinking about how do we have regular communication with a variety of stakeholders to highlight the priority areas that the audit brought up. And those are the biggies. I'm sorry, that was a long-winded answer but I wanted to make sure that we were good. All right, I think that was better than brief when it comes to, I'm sorry. Truly this is incredibly complicated. So I appreciate you taking the time to lay all that out. Would you add anything, Peggy Sue? I don't know, that's all that's beginning with. Yeah, we're good. The good news is that Chris and Sarah have a number of different trainings that we can keep up their going with our work with them. So that's what we're looking at right now is using some of the specialized grants that need to be able to have them stay with us and not leave us after this. So that's part of what we're looking for. Beyond the summer? Yeah, yeah. One of the other things that stood out to me was the need to help with teachers and others in the system understanding their own biases and how to mitigate those when it comes to either establishing expectations with students or working with and engaging with families. Where does that fit into the work that you're gonna be doing? Well, it doesn't have to be, nope. No, go ahead, Peggy Sue. Well, I was just gonna say, now that we've got an email today about the equity audit that's gonna be starting and I think that one of the things that frequently gets about equity is people with disabilities. So I think that's a really important part that I'm happy to keep reminding people as we do that work that that's really important to do. So I think that this is like a nice frame that then going into that, this already provides something but I think it's really about a lot of it is that keeping it in our forefront by talking about it and really, we have fantastic special educators in the district who do a great job of reminding people that we have to think about all students. And so I think that's a big part of it. It's just really starting with them because whatever we do for them it's gonna help all kids, so. Lily, do you wanna add? I was just gonna invite, I see Julie and Katie and I know Jason's in the room and Beth I saw earlier. If they wanted to add anything to that list because the leadership team has talked about this quite a bit to see if Peggy soon, I forgot anything. Or even like name one of the things that Libby said that you're most excited about, that would be, I think great for us to hear. I'll jump in, hi everyone. I know that this is definitely an area for me that we're spending a lot of our time focusing on looking at as we're starting to identify our schedule for next year is really looking at how we can try to ensure that we're maximizing the number of interventionists and staff that we have that it's moving forward into next year so that we can be a lot more intentional around that and increasing the amount of time and opportunity that we have for some of those services. And I personally am excited about the changes in the laws that will allow us to have greater flexibility with how we utilize our team. And so that's one of the things I'm most excited about. I need to talk more, but I don't wanna take up everybody else's time. I can jump in next at UES. We're also focusing on our schedule for next year right now and really looking specifically at our reading blocks and thinking about how making sure they're not overlapping across grade levels so we can have the most amount of expertise supporting each grade level at that particular block as well as that collaborative time to make sure our teachers have time to effectively plan together and look at student data. And so I'm excited about that scheduling work and that's what we're doing right in this moment. There's some. So the staff we just met used our guiding coalition time as a staff to kind of rethink a little bit and keep tweaking our soul and block which is our main intervention area. So we have some changes coming for next year, not major, just keep tweaking continuous improvement to kind of force change. I think scheduling is probably not in the forefront. That seems like a bigger change. I'm gonna need to do more research to get that going. But we do have more time from the 730 to 815 time that we're looking at trying to make staff more collaborative time to work together not always departments, but collaborative teams and with special educators. And I think most excited about not besides those two things, but just would be working with staff on PD and differentiated instruction. And I think that we recognize that and we're putting that into our PD plan for the next year. Hi, I'll jump in from RVS. We are well aware of the 225 minutes that we have available for instructional time and trying to maximize the amount of time that we have as well as continuing to build on the collaborative relationships that our staff have developed this year. We've done a really good job of developing an all hands on deck approach. And so continuing to build on that next year, especially in relation to the rule change that'll allow us to offer more opportunities for more experienced staff, our highest quality staff to work with students that are most in need and really try to create partnerships of need and expertise and make it work for everyone given the time that we have allocated for instruction. It was kind of a quick logistical thing. I think it's great that the law is gonna open it up for more people being able to service these needs, but also the more people have doing it with different backgrounds, there can be some kind of consistency problems. Do you think you have the resources to make sure everyone is kind of trained and there is consistency and people aren't doing things that maybe they had their misunderstanding? To work with students with IEPs because then we're not doing the preventative work, right? So it definitely is gonna be a balance and I think initially it will mostly look like special educators and interventionists, which is, we're doing some of that now. The specialized inspection in a classroom setting is gonna be something that's gonna take a lot of training before we get there. So I don't see that as something that is gonna happen right off. I think as people get just more training, there's a good training happening next year around literacy. So as people get that, then there might be more opportunities for that. But it's hard to actually picture even how you would make those decisions, like sit in an IEP and be like, oh, so it really is gonna be around describing what are the students' needs? And then the more work we do as administrators and special educators to understand what are the resources in our building then being able to kind of after those meetings look and try to figure out is there somebody differently to do this without impacting our whole NCSS with them? And this is probably a question that you need to figure out. But like how might that look for a general educator? Does that mean that they might be kind of doing interventions earlier or being able to kind of do things and identify things that they aren't currently doing or does it look like extra work for them? I'm not sure that it's extra work, it's a different work I think. Okay, so you're with a former? Okay, you see where I'll jump in here. So thinking about the multi-tiered systems is worth that we've talked about in the past. What we know our general educators need work to build capacity on is their ability to intervene in the priority standards, that first instruction for all students. And so that might mean that our general education teachers need to learn how to better modify or better accommodate or better to how to reteach in a different way if a child didn't get it the first time. We know that that's a place, an area of growth for our general classroom educators with the idea that when a child, that would be tier two intervention, right? And when a child needs that tier three intervention and a universal skill, that's not necessarily what the general educator is going to be doing because we'll build, that's what we've been building over time for our remediation services and our interventionists. And we wanna build the capacity of some special educators in that area as well. Does that make sense, Jim? It totally makes sense. Sagey? So one result that really stood out to me was the question around cultural connections. And I was wondering if Kristen or Sarah, if you have anecdotes or examples from audits where the district really nailed that because it seems like a pretty daunting task to connect with each student on their culture and in a meaningful way. Yeah, I would say when that is done really well, it speaks and it actually is connected to even the concept of instruction. It's seeking to understand students, seeking to understand how they learn what their experiences are. I think about, I think about Zoretta Hammond, who's an expert in culturally responsive instruction. It's taking an approach that starts with what students bring to the education space, right? Understanding that students don't come as blank slate and seeking to understand what they're interested in, what their backgrounds are, what their experiences are, all those things and then how to leverage that and bring that into the classroom to help foster engagement in the instruction, help bring relevant materials in front of them and help them find connection to materials. So it's all wrapped up in there, but to me at the heart of it is really getting to know students for the purpose, like getting to know them, build those authentic relationships and make a more meaningful learning environment for them. That's what it looks like when it's done really well. And I think just like one of the things that really stood out to both Kristen and myself in our data collection was when we asked students like, are your teachers asked you about your backgrounds? And the answers were basically no, they don't, right? And so there are some steps that we can take that are feel lower, like easier, right? Just ask, just operate, like just start with a sense of empathy to build those connections. I think there's also some much deeper, harder work. But that to me, that question and the answer that we got pretty much across the board from the students was quite interesting and sort of goes to sort of how we think about maybe some of the next steps there. Thank you. So I don't know how much longer I can claim to be the new guy, but context for me is important. So two questions just to get a better understanding of the situation in the process. One is why was the audit done in the first place? Is it best practice or is it required by the agency of Ed or something? So that's the first question. And then the second is about the responses in the methodology. So it's understandably 10 leaders were surveyed and that's probably the entire leadership team. But then if you look at number of students and number of parents, I don't know how many students are, like what's the total student population? And so what's the percent? What is 22 the percentage of? And then same thing with families. What's 34 the percentage of? So Scott, I can answer the first question for you. This was not required by anybody. We had, I asked the former director of student services to find a group to conduct an audit, last year, which he had started to do in the fall. And the reason why I wanted it was because it's, while I was a special educator for some time, that was a very specific role as a teacher. And I'm not an expert in systems of special education. And so I wanted outside eyes on our special education process to see where we can grow, where were our opportunities? Who were experts in systems of special education? So that's, he started, he tried to, he was this close to getting the audit started last year. And last year was it turned out to be an incredible stressful year for not just us, but also the folks at UVM who are gonna do it for us. And so some of the changes there required us to put a hold on that. And so when Peggy Sue came on, I said, we have, we did set aside money in the ARP IDA money that we received to conduct an audit so that we could move forward in a positive and intentional way. And so Peggy Sue got on it with these folks here. As far as some of the numbers in the other, Lena and Kristen and Sarah a little bit as well, our population of students is about 1250, 1,250. So 22 is not that many. And I know that that group of students was a diverse group of students that included students with named with different abilities. That there, it was a variety of students in those groups with differing abilities. And then the parent survey, well, these guys can answer that, but it was sent to all parents of families with students on IEPs, I believe. And that was the response rate that was received. Kristen and Sarah, you wanna add to that? Sure, I can add a B and then Sarah, feel free to fill in any blanks. Our goal when collecting data is to have a representative subset of a population. And so in doing the outreach and talking to folks, we give the guidance of for student interviews, we wanna have a range of grade levels, a range of just diversity across all some group types to help get a snapshot of what's happening in special education in the district. Because we know that trying to get like every single person to complete a survey or every single student to sit down is a daunting task. But we trust that you can get a good picture of what's happening if you talk to that representative subset of individuals. And again, like the students were amazing. We had across all grade levels, they were very insightful, very balanced in their perspectives. And same with the family surveys, it wasn't, we did not have evidence of like a single perspective. It wasn't like all the survey data sounded exactly the same. And to raise eyebrows or like make us question, there was a range of perspectives and insights that helped us pull out some trends. But Sarah, definitely add anything else. No, I think to go back to something Kristen said, our goal was to get a snapshot of what's happening right now. And so to do it in a way that's gonna be helpful and constructive and lead to some good changes, which I was very impressed by all of the things that you guys are saying you're working on, it sounds fantastic. And so, we were less concerned with making sure that we had like a statistically representative sample and more concerned with that diversity of viewpoints and trying to better understand sort of what is happening, what's the snapshot, what's going on? I do think, just as a parent, I think it was like 135, maybe that we sent out. We sent it out twice, said case people missed it, trying to get more people to do it. But that, it was, Libby is right, it was parents of students with IEPs. One really quick follow up. I can imagine it's not cheap to do this. And Sarah, you mentioned this being a snapshot and I see the value in this type of assessment is over time, what's your progress? And so is there an opportunity to do this same level of or similar level of deep dive down the road to then see where the progress is made on the action areas and then the different things that you mentioned, Libby. Yeah, that's the same question I have, Scott, of how can we connect back in a way that makes sense in a time period that makes sense because building capacity takes time and we have lots of opportunities to do so as the audit pointed out. So what might be a good way to go about that, Sarah and Kristen have promised us that they're not going away. And we have, as Peggy Sue builds our grant for special education that she's doing currently, we are including a lot of their services in that grant as well as other types of services for our special educators in particular around specialized instruction. So we do have like those immediate plans and I'm looking forward to continue our relationship with Kristen and Sarah so that I can ask just that question, like when might be a good time to redo this work to get more information so we can continue to get better. But Scott, I'm right there with you, asking the same question. I'll also point out that like some are the, one of the bonuses of the way we did the review is that we have a lot of tools that we can use sort of in a more ongoing way. So something like the IEP audit, right? We can just pull that out and we can start right away doing a lot more work on something like that that gets to data and gets to helpful insights around changes but maybe isn't quite as expansive as what we did just now. Emma, let's see your hands up on the screen. Yes, thank you. Thank you so much, Kristen and Sarah for the presentation and for the audit. And I really appreciate that the whole, pretty much the whole admin team is here. So thank you so much for coming and helping present this. We've been hearing from a lot of parents who are struggling with their experience with special education in our district. And I just wanted to take a second to honor that this is a very emotional topic, particularly with kids, families and caregivers who receive special education services in our district. And I wanna thank all of those families for staying involved, paying attention, providing feedback to us and working with this audit and for coming tonight. So for that reason, because of what we've been hearing, I've been paying a little closer attention to the survey data that came from families and just had a follow-up question from Scott's question. Did you try to engage families with any other methodology besides the electronic survey for feedback? We did not. And I will say, we wanted to make sure that we were providing sort of an equitable opportunity to provide feedback. And short of talking to everyone who wanted to talk to us, like there, we couldn't, there was not really a way to get like elevated just a few people, right? And so we made a call that we provided a open text box in the survey and we said, give us your feedback. And we read through every single one of those very carefully. And so that was our way of gathering the data, but we did not do interviews. Okay, thank you. And another quick follow-up. Libby, you said there's 1,250 students, but that's all students. Was this survey sent out to all students or just students receiving special ed services? The students didn't receive a survey, the students were interviewed. Okay, so like were interviews extended to all students? Or was that offer extended to all students or just students within the special education system in our school district? No, leaders chose students who were both, who both have IEPs and those who did not. No, we got parent consent, don't worry. What was that? Sorry. We got parent consent. We got parent consent before they did that, yeah. Okay. Okay, and another question was, I know that the field of education, special education has seen a huge, I guess education in general, but in particularly special education has seen a huge staffing and licensure shortage recently. And there's also the new laws, as you mentioned, that will come into effect this summer. So it feels like a complicated time in special ed. I know every school is struggling to get it right and maybe always will, but I'm wondering if there's any way, like how many other audits have you done? And is there any sort of sense of like how we're sort of measuring up to other school districts in the audit? It's kind of hard to look at these numbers and see a lot of like fair emerging, which is like a two something and feel like that's good news. It's just hard for me as a layperson to relate to what the numbers mean. Well, I can take a start to that question. And I think, I mean, I think this goes back to the point that I can't, somebody else said around like the openness of the folks in the district office to sharing the results. There are some things in there that are probably look as though they're hard to read. And I think one of the most important things that we try to do is frame it in a way that brings out the opportunities to do more for folks. In terms of like comparing to other districts or other assessments that we've done, like we try not to do that. We try to really take a look at what's happening with each partner in sort of an independent way because it's very easy to just look at that number and exactly what you're saying, right? Like try to benchmark you against others. And so we don't really do that very often. And it's also like each state is very different in terms of the way in which special ed gets implemented, the resources, the regulations that are applied. And so it's also really hard to compare across like geographies. So that's like, it's probably not as comprehensive of an answer as you're looking for, but I don't know, Kristen, if you have anything to add. I echo everything Sarah said, which I get can also feel like a non-answer answer, but it's the realities of the world, especially education especially. What I will highlight is that given the rule changes, all the shifts that have happened with the timeline over the past year, this is an area that across the state, folks are grappling with around how do we meet the moment of our staffing limitations and the rule changers that are calling on us to really ramp up how we use data when it comes to how we determine students eligibility. It's requiring the real shift in the data that's used. How are we ensuring that that instruction, that first instruction or that core instruction is sound and is not contributing to the impact that a student is having in the classroom. So this is in terms of like the topic in the areas, it's statewide and it's being really, really highlighted due to those rule changes and folks trying to get their bearings around how they sure up systems to be ready for that to go into effect. Kristen. Yep, hi, I just had, I wanna appreciate just, yeah, all the significant effort put in by all parties and producing something that is just so robust and comprehensive and really gives us a lot of context about existing conditions and opportunities in special ed. And so I wanted to, and this is maybe a question or a suggestion, but just in terms of how the board is going to be able to revisit this with admin and leadership to kind of just, I know Scott's question was a bit about like, what does the progression of this look like? And then I would also love for us to maybe discuss that the retreat given a bunch of our work and our focus in the next couple of years is gonna be on achievement and opportunity gap. And this has very direct ties to our efforts in equity, just how the board will stay apprised of the district's progress in implementing recommendations. Actually, my questions are pretty good follow up from Kristen's, which is, and it's for Kristen and Sarah, which is, our role as a board, and I don't know how much you all get involved with the boards when you do audits or get involved with districts, but our role is within policy, making big financial decisions like setting the budget, holding the superintendent accountable and community engagement. And I'm wondering within that context, what is it that the board should be paying attention to that will help us know our system is doing well? Like what are the things that we could be looking for? So as Kristen said, we're at the, well, I'll just build a little on what Kristen said. We're at the tail end of establishing priorities for the district based on a lot of community input that we got over the last year plus on what our vision should be for what high quality education looks like in the district. And one of the priority themes that we've identified is closing the academic gap, obviously ensuring that all of our kiddos who are receiving special education services are actually achieving what is expected of them and what the outcomes they need in order to succeed is a piece of that. And so I know that this board will want to be able to know how are we doing it that as time goes on? So what are the things that we should be paying attention to that will help us know whether or not progress is happening? It's going to live in that vision and action plan. Okay. So making sure that in the development of that, and again, it's really pulling all the pieces together that are already there, making sure that all parties are clear on what the goal is that we're working towards, what our metrics for success are, how are we determining if we've hit those goals and when are we going to check in on progress to those goals? And grounding everybody in that and then making sure that it lives, right? It's really easy to set these lofty action plan and then it's like, oh yeah, that's the thing we'll look at once a year, making sure that it actually lives, setting whether it be quarterly check-ins or what have you. That said, let's go back to those goals and metrics and benchmarks and see how we're doing, what's working, what's not, what can we tighten up, what do we need to revisit, et cetera. That would be the, and this is coming as like having sat on a board, that would be the greatest piece of advice or recommendation that I would offer. Thank you. Other questions for Sarah Kristen or our administrative folks? No, thanks again, this is just very helpful and also, yeah, thanks to the administration for doing this. I agree with Emma that not everything in here was glowing, but I think the only way to, you know, to get better is to do a deep dive like this and figure out what you're doing well, what your, the improvement areas are. And I really commend you both for doing it and for being willing to share it and be transparent with it. And we look forward to seeing this be a building block and making our special education services be our goals in the future. The last thing from our team that we wanted to share is just a sincere thanks. Your district leadership team, Peggy Sue, every building leader for building schedules upon schedule for us and inviting us into your buildings, families, staff, everyone who participated in the interviewer survey, the students who were so open to talking to us. We thank you for just trusting us with this process and we are excited for the potential for continuing to support you all. So thank you. Great, thanks. Now we really appreciate the work. And yeah, again, we are really concerned about social education and improving, you know, as Mia said, close to the achievement gap and special education is a huge piece of that. So thank you. So the next item on our agenda is... Committee updates. And I know, Kristen, you are remote out in Afghanistan to the net zero resolution, but... I am happy to. Apologies, I'm not there in person tonight. I also just have family logistics to manage. So, yeah, facilities and energy are putting this before the board for a second look and with the opportunity to approve the resolution on net zero facilities and to establish a decarbonization roadmap. I did make a change that reflected feedback received from RET about making mention that the board would be looking for and just actively seeking out financial incentives and other grant funding opportunities, realizing that changes in facilities and operations oftentimes require capital and that this, you know, we are bound by tax capacity. And so that given that the funding landscape currently in information that we've gotten from Sam Lash and from Tim Favorite, both Tim of Montpelier Energy Advisory Council and Sam from Central Vermont, planning that there are several funding streams that are significant and unprecedented and that we, you know, would be looking out for those to support this work and effectively achieving net zero. So that change has been made and that's in green. I think you all have access and can see the suggested changes. And other than that, there was just a couple minor more kind of grammatical changes, but content-wise that was the most significant. So I think tonight, if there is anything additional, we would love to hear that. We could possibly make the change in, you know, this evening, otherwise we would like to see it go before the board for a vote. So I actually have, I'm sorry, I wasn't at the last meeting. I should have a question slash substantive issue with defining net zero as the elimination of fossil fuels because you can replace fossil fuels with carbon emitting other fuels, including some, you know, biomass fuels that emit at higher levels in certain fossil fuels do, including certain woods and other biomasses and also like, you know, biogas from a cow digesters, et cetera. So why elimination of fossil fuels and not a kind of decarbonization which would give more flexibility or elimination of carbon emitting fuels which would ensure that we don't replace, say, a, you know, oil burner with a wood burner that sourced in a way that might actually increase the district's carbon emissions, which I don't think is either net zero or the goal of the district. Yeah, Jim, thanks for that comment. We also received some similar feedback from another Montpelier resident that we had taken into consideration in I suppose, I mean, that's not explicitly, you know, named within the resolution. So are you suggesting that if we were to do some wording change within that first part of the resolution, just scrolling down, eliminating the usage of fossil fuels for heating and transportation. So are you suggesting that we change that language or add to that something in the vein of, sorry, I'm going with elimination, elimination of carbon emitting fuels? Yeah, I think that's the easiest. And I know I wasn't deeply involved in the discussion. Yeah, there's kind of two ways to do it. I mean, you could just go with like, you know, decarbonization, but that gets you into a place where you could, you know, use offsets and it becomes fuzzy math. And I think with a district like that it might be, it might be hard to manage. I think if you just changed elimination of fossil fuels to elimination of carbon emitting fuels, it would ensure that you don't swap out, you know, a fossil fuel for a biofuel that has equal or greater emissions. Because I think the idea here is to, you know, to decarbonize and then you're really just looking at your fuel source, which I think is easy for a district like this or easier than trying to get into some sort of decarbonization scheme that can be tricky and hard to account for and require perhaps a level of expertise to do right that is just hard for a district this size. Does that make sense? It does. So I did go ahead and change that language in the first, you know, therefore be it resolved to reflect carbon emitting fuels. Okay, awesome. Yeah. And thank you for that. And yeah, just to double back, we did the community member that did reach out to us, you know, raise these very kind of near your concerns and comments exactly and, you know, as we move forward and think about, you know, pulling together a stakeholder group to kind of help push this ahead. You know, those are the kinds of folks that will be reaching out to see if they want to kind of join us in doing this work around implementation. Yeah, it looks like you had your head up. I was just wondering, Kristen, are you editing the one that is named second draft MRPS net zero and decarbonization? Yeah, she edited the first resolution, but I think we need to also edit the first whereas statement. Yeah, okay, I see that. Right, because that's where it defines. Right. Yeah, it was twice. So that was the... And which section of the resolution did you make the edit that reflects what Rhett's feedback was around seeking grant funding sources? Yeah, sorry if you're not able to see it in kind of the suggest mode, but it's the second be it further resolved. And yes, that's also shown in that second draft and it reads be it further resolved that the MRPS Board of School Directors will seek financial incentive and grant funding opportunities to minimize budgetary impacts of the transition to net zero facilities and operations. I think the burden we have might not match that. It doesn't have that. Huh. But it does have the edits you just made in real time. Well, that's, yeah, that's interesting because I see you all in the same document. However, I think it might be because we don't have edit access. Crystal, you can't see suggested changes. Why don't you resolve your change and see if it shows up for us? Thank you. Let's see if that, oh, magic. Excellent. Good job. Thank you for the guidance. Yeah, I'm also just in a situation where I need to help my child. So I'm gonna do best to double time, but if Emma, I don't turn up when there's a request or Seiji if you could help me out. So there's been an important action. Do we feel without changes is something we can approve? Do we wanna share screen to make sure that we're all? Well, Emma could, she's on Zoom. She could bring the Google doc up on her screen potentially or Libby could. I just wanted to double check the, I understand what you're saying, Jim, on the elimination of carbon emitting fuels. And it was my understanding that one of the reasons we said elimination of fossil fuels was that was to be aligned with what the Montpelier Climate Action Plan or I'm forgetting the Montpelier Net Zero Plan, right? So this doesn't really throw us off. Does it throw us off from that? If we've tweaked our definition of net zero then. Carbon emitting fuels is a larger umbrella than fossil fuels. So I'm fine with that. I think it's still, and also admittedly, you know, Tim and the MEAC representatives said it's a very nebulous term right now. Net zero has many definitions. I think ours is good as it is. Carbon emitting fuels. Okay, yeah. And that's one of the things that I find to be a real benefit of the resolution is that it is clearly stating what we mean by net zero so that we have a foundation to come back to every time we need to make decisions. And we're not constantly asking ourselves, well, what do we mean by net zero? Yeah, and I think carbon emitting is great because what it avoids, which I'm fearful of, is that we spend $3 million to swap out an oil boiler system for like a wood one. And we basically don't invent our carbon fuels and that's our like 30, 40 year investment in our heating system. Yeah. Which would be a tragedy. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, awesome. I mean, thanks for all the great work on this. Chris, I know you had to run, but thanks facilities committee. This is fantastic. And I know, I know we've been talking about moving on net zero for a while and it's really great to see some action and excited for the audit to follow and excited to, I know that, yeah, I know Andrew has been thinking about ways to be more efficient as the facilities upgrades have been made and I think that's fantastic, but action at this level is really important. And I like that definition of the tweak. I think it's for us district this size, it avoids. It's very clear and it avoids accounting or the other temptation, which I'm fearful of a decarbonization is we just spend some money to buy fuzzy offsets somewhere and don't do anything. Thanks. That's not real. I'd like to make a motion to approve the resolution to set goals for net zero facilities and operations and establish a deep access roadmap. Do you want to just do as part of the discussions act or we can get a second and then you can add that in? What do you, because we need to have, we need to have a discussion. Okay, perfect. Do you have a second? I'll second it. All right, discussion, Zach? Uh-oh. Uh-oh, you, there you go, we heard something. Okay, can you hear me now? Yes. Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, awesome. For a while too. Awesome. Guess the headphones are the problem. I was just curious, like relating to the conversation we were just having about defining as carbon emitting fuels versus fossil fuels. There are a few other places in the resolution that mentioned fossil fuels specifically that I don't know if we'd want to edit those to say carbon fuels or just like for continuity or if that's unnecessary, if we've defined it as one thing. I know one place where we should do it and the purse now therefore be a resolve. I would, I would switch out carbon fuels for fossil fuels for carbon emitting. If Libby wants to give me sharing permissions, I can share my screen so that the draft is presented to those viewing from home. You should be good Emma. I don't have anything other than the PDF that I can pull up. So I looked. Okay, thank you. But you should be good to share them. Is this right? Can people see the draft now? Yep, yep. Good idea. Jim, you just said now the first, now therefore be a resolve. Yeah, that was okay. That one has been updated. Okay, that one has been updated. And is the one that updated the first whereas clause? First, square, it's the very first. Yeah. That's a second where I close. Although it does help. Can I ask a clarifying question? I'm sorry. It's hard for me to know when a good time to jump in when I'm on Zoom. Go for it. Go for it. So I think, when we talked about using the language of emitting fossil fuels and how do we define net zero and Kristen and Seja, you can sort of correct me. I think we wanted to give ourselves flexibility because in the recommendations that came from the city of Montpelier, what was that energy review or net zero audit? In those recommendations, it recommended wood chips to us. And while there are, you know, some people sort of like walking back from that recommendation now and asking more questions about what would be the best heat source suited for our district. I'm not sure that we want to take wood completely off the table right now in this resolution. And I don't know if where Kristen and Seji stand on that, but I do believe that district heat is currently wood. It is currently wood, as is my understanding. Yeah. I just think we need to know what we're getting into if we're eliminating the possibility of district heat or just deciding now that wood chips would be a hard no for us moving forward. And it's my sense that there's like too many questions right now about the alternative energy sources to eliminate that as a possibility, but I could be wrong. He's mentioned that district heat is not been as economically beneficial as it was first pitched. So that could be another reason to stay away from that. But we've also made sure that there's language in here that gives Andrew flexibility to do his job and not really be handcuffed by the policy, but more be guidelines to help make decisions that are more in line with the net zero goals. So I'd rather keep it a little bit restrictive because it's not a mandate. Could we change it to define net zero as the elimination of thought fuels with an aspiration to eliminate or reduce all carbon producing fuels? That sounds more in line with the types of conversations we were having in facilities and energies, but I want to defer to the other members of the facilities and energy committee as well. Because we can update the wording. Do you want to play, I mean, because I think putting that caveat may make sense, but I also think that that requires reading all three pages and making sure it's in there when it makes sense. And I think we can wait another meeting to do that where it's more thing get it right. Yeah. Do you want to, does that make sense to folks? And thanks for pointing that out, Zach. And Emma. And Emma. It might be that the second whereas holds good sample language for us because it is, it reads in part, eliminate fossil fuel combustion in and minimize carbon emissions from school district buildings, dah, dah, dah, dah. So anyway, that could be a good model for how to phrase that. Since I made the motion, I'm happy tabling it or I guess I withdraw it. I will withdraw it because we might be seeing a different resolution next time. I am withdrawing my motion. Yeah, excellent. Motion withdrawing it. I'm not sure there's a way to do that. I don't care if you became close. You did, I don't care. As the parliamentarian. All right, excellent. Okay, I'm psyched we're close on this and I think with that little tweak, we can approve that next time. Finance committee update, do we have a... That's just me. Brett. So the audit was successful. It took a little longer than was expected because we have a new audit firm and the relationships and the knowledge, the prior knowledge wasn't there. So it just took a little bit more time. But the fund balance is exactly where we expected it to be based on the audit and there were no findings or misstatements. Excellent, good news. Yeah. Any questions for Brett or the finance committee? Thank you. Libby, I'm guessing this goes back to you for the action two. I'm guessing that's approved, not improved, 8.5. Oh, that's a typo that was missed. Yeah, appropriately based on this question. Only so vast. Yes, about the board's role. There you go. Yes, it's approved. So we have some students who will most likely qualify once the evaluations are done at RBS that would increase our special education needs at Roxbury Village School. And so we did not put that into our budget this year. So we are requesting the board to approve a 0.5 increased in FTE for special education services at Roxbury Village School because of student needs. The cost would be approximately $35,000 to do so. Should we move to approve and then we'll discuss or should we ask questions? No. I think we can do it either way. Okay, Libby, how many, can you remind us how many special educators are at Roxbury Village School now? Yeah, we currently have 0.5 FTE, so a half-time special educator. That's a full, yes, one-to-one full, okay. I'll move that we approve a 0.5 FTE increase in special education at Roxbury Village School. Second. Any discussion? If this change influences any other positions or any of the other dynamics at the school, would any other affected positions be posted? Yes. Yes, okay. Other questions or discussion? All is it there? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. Thank you. And then we have two policy monitoring reports, policy B7, tobacco prohibition, and policy C9, the Federal Child Nutrition Act wellness policy. Do I have a motion to approve the two policy monitoring reports for B7 and C9? I'll move. Do you have a second? Second. Okay. Two seconds. Any discussion or questions about those policy monitoring reports? I have a couple of questions. Libby, on the child nutrition one, I'm just curious why Jess Murray wrote it instead of you. Sorry, couldn't find my mute button because this is part of Jess's job description and she's closer to it than I am. So there are a few policies that you'd see monitored by somebody else. So for instance, next board meeting or the board meeting after that is Title I Comparability. Mike Berry would do that policy monitoring. So it's done by a district employee with my oversight, but I want the person who's closest to it. Christina does a few policy monitorings with budget and that kind of thing. Okay. I want you to have the closest information. And then it was interesting to me that at the end it was we are nearing compliance. It would be a little, and I couldn't glean, it was a lot of information. It was very helpful, thorough report, but I also had a hard time gleaning like, what would get us from where we are to being compliant? Like, can you speak to that? Or is that something we could just ask Jess to follow up with us? It would definitely be better for Jess, but I know that policy is a federal policy and it's a really complicated one, but there are some very specific pieces in the policy that we simply haven't done this school year yet. So I'm thinking particularly about family nutrition nights, nights dedicated to talking to families about wellness and nutrition and activity and things like that. Well, you know, MHS with MRPS PI just screen the screenagers piece, which may be a stretch into fitting into this wellness policy, but it's really about nutritional activities. We simply haven't done that. It hasn't, we haven't prioritized that as we've come out of the pandemic. So we are doing a lot of the work within that, especially Jim with his food services and getting really healthy foods for kids and that kind of thing. But there are some components to the federal policy that we simply haven't done. So it would not be fair to say that we're totally in compliance with it. Other questions for Libby on the closing of the report? All is a favor. Aye. Any opposed, great. And just a couple of quick things before we move to adjourn. I was able to talk quickly, a couple of questions that wanted me to run by Pietro, our attorney, if two members of a committee are meeting and they are not meeting on committee business, this actually came up because me and I meet with Libby to set the agenda, et cetera. We're both, we're two members of a particular committee. No need to warn, it's not a committee meeting, there's no issue there. So no need to worry there. The second, we asked about kind of how information could be shared about certain matters that were going on with a student and family that had FERPA or other protections, kind of sharing that with the board. We can not go into executive session to share that and we obviously cannot share it publicly. If a board member needs to know, a board member can know. And the best way to do that is to ask Libby. He was pretty adamant that unless it invokes policy or something specific to the board, that the board really should not know that this is, these are matters that are for Libby's purview and that they should stay there to the extent possible. Obviously, once something becomes public, things that are public, any publicly filed litigation is public. It's a little trickier or something like the Human Rights Commission. The Human Rights Commission is actually private unless they make a finding. And if they make a finding on an allocated dispute, that would become public and the contents of that could be discussed. So it's a little tricky. I know it's not as transparent as some folks would want, but he was pretty adamant that that is the best way to make sure we're in compliance with the law. And if it is something that has direct policy impacts, the board can know the way to do that is private conversations with Libby. Emma. Yeah, so I just wanted to follow up that. I don't know if this came from a question that I had asked about, but if it did, the clarification I would provide is that I'm not interested in any personal data or even specific data that could be tracked back to a family, but just sort of more in a general sense of whether you and Mia and Libby or one of you is hearing feedback on our policies that we're not hearing. So if people are sort of generally unhappy, if you're getting, have you received five emails that I haven't seen, have you received 10 phone calls that I don't know about? So it's more like that and I do believe that that impacts the work that the policy committee does, knowing where people are sort of generally satisfied with how they interface with the policy or generally dissatisfied with how they interface. And so it was just me wanting to know very general information. Yeah, and that can be provided. I mean, for instance, if any board member or if Libby gets an email that would be subject to public records, that information can definitely be shared. What we're talking about is a private, there's a formal process that has proper protectings and that's different. And obviously, if someone's accessing one of those, it could be very well that they've got data complaint. I mean, that's what those are for, but they're protected. So yeah, so general buzz, general emails, things are here at the co-op. Yes, we can absolutely share that. Great, other questions on that? Otherwise, we can entertain a motion for spring break. How about is that an old hand? Okay, I know the bees, et cetera. Yes, old hand, sorry about that. You can just move to adjourn while you're at it. Yeah. I move to adjourn. Just a second. All those in favor? Aye. Great, have a wonderful spring break everyone and we'll be back in May.