 All right, Rochester Stockbridge Unified District Board of School Directors. Sorry, are you ready to record? Okay, good. Rochester Stockbridge Unified District Board of School Directors regular meeting Tuesday, February 1, 2022, 6.30 p.m. Rochester campus, boom, via Google Meet agenda. We have called to order. Do we have adjustments to the agenda? Oh, yeah, we. Oh, yes. Oh, okay, well, I have no one. You have one too. Yeah, communication from the Stockbridge Select Board. I like that. Should that go wherever you want it? Discussion, or just under? Probably. Yeah, let's put it under discussion, 9-6. Got it. 9-6, communication. Stockbridge Select, it's Thursday. Do we know what time? Time back then, right? We'll talk about that. Yeah, got you. No, no, no, you have to slap me silly. That's okay. Take me going. Okay, assigned time and time. No, I had another adjustment to the agenda. Oh, sorry, we haven't yet. At our last meeting, we had said that we were going to discuss reserve funds. Reserve funds, thank you. To bring us all up to speed about the information, what they are, what we have. Yep, yep, yep. That should be discussion as well, 9-7. How's the part of my business management report? Do you want to do it then? Let's do it then. Yeah, if it's already part of the report, that's fine. Yeah, let's do it. I just noticed it was not on the agenda and we had discussed it last. Fun, so let's make sure we get that. So we'll add a little bit more. 40 minutes for the whole group. Okay, well, yeah. Let's be real strict about that tonight. Do you want? You want me to be a time paper? Do you mind? Do you want me to be a time paper? That's the next thing we're doing. I just need the bottom half. I just need the bottom half. That's my voicemail. Gotcha. Let's just write it down over here. There you go, there you go. All right, thanks. Good, so we're adding that into business manager. Is everyone okay with these changes to the agenda? Yes. Thumbs up works for me from the visuals. Thank you, thank you. Good. All right, that's being said. Let us go to the consent agenda. 4.1 approved minutes of Tuesday, January 4th, 2022 regular. The only thing I saw was Donna Gallant's name. I believe there's a T at the end of that. It'd be nice to spell that correctly. That was in the attendees and 8.1. Yeah, 8.1 and in 8.1 where she presented. Wonderful. Yeah, that was great. Just to be Donna Gallant. That was the only thing I noticed, anybody else? We all okay with that correction? Entertain a motion to accept the minutes of Tuesday, January 4th. So moved by Bill, seconded by Justine. All in favor, signify by saying aye, or thumbs up. Thumbs up works good too. Good, moving on, public comment. Do we have any public comment? We have an unknown and we had Nancy. Nancy is not. But I think she's gone. She's not. Is she still there? She's the unknown. Oh, she's the unknown? Okay, good. If Nancy, if you have a public comment for us, if not, great. Thank you very much, Nancy. Board comment, I just wanted to always like to do these things. I heard from the contractors when I was over there, Alliance that Jesse, and I forgetting her last name, Jesse Potter was extremely useful to them and really was very helpful in their whole process of what they had to do. So I just always like to acknowledge people doing their job well. So thank you, Jesse. Any other board comment? Bill? Yeah, I want to commend you as our leader and chairman and your letter to the editor in the Herald last Thursday, I thought it was unbelievably articulate, well said, and I think overwhelmingly you reflected the views of this board succinctly and well. And I wanted to thank you for that. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Good. Other board comment? There being none, let's move on to this celebration. It almost seems like we should do this except for the teacher that's hanging out. We should do this between like 9 and 10. Is that what we need some pickup? I don't know, but it's a good way to start to, this is what we're, reason why we're here. It's doing the jobs because it makes us make all the right decisions. Exactly. Great. We are ready for a celebration of learning. Here we go. So Ms. Lauren and Mr. Burley, come here tonight because this is bedtime at their households, but they put together this great presentation on the happenings and the amazing learning that's going on in our Rochester preschool with our three and four year old. And just so folks are aware, she has 15 students in there, which is awesome. That's amazing. So it's great. And so here's kind of just some action shots and feel free to read. We start each year with the year with establishing rules and routines and investigating classroom materials. My favorite part of preschool, look at those blocks. The ones with the holes. It's just space in the middle. And then the items on the left are what's known as jumbo quiz and ear rods. And our older students use those as well to build their number sense. But we're starting in both preschools with those. So they're familiar with them, absolutely. What a great thing. What a great thing in seeing equivalencies. Exactly. How many colors make this color? Great. Great. We'll explore the school campus and build friendships throughout the year. I know I love using the river. That's great. We take our learning outside as much as possible. Yay. Numbers and practicing letters outside. Oh, it's announced. Sorry. Later. Yeah. Keep going. Great. Dramatic play allows the children to explore different roles. Why aren't we doing this in the whole elementary school? The theater man wonders. Sorry. It's just in a different way. Don't know where they get even. I know. No, it's just, you know, this is great. This is great. Great. We work with a variety of tools in preschool to support learning. And what are they doing, cutting with scissors on the left? Oh, are those x-rays? Yeah. That's amazing. What a great idea. What a great idea. Gosh. These guys are good. These people are good. They are. There we go. X, yeah. We work on gross motor skills daily. Oh, I like that. Like a little obstacle course. Oh, I know. I like that. And they are also involved preschools are participating in the implementation of our Bridges Math program. So we're starting all the way down at 3 and 4. Good. Who's this working for? That's great. Is that Play-Doh numbers on the right? That is Play-Doh numbers on the right, pattern blocks, and then UnifixQs. Oh, I love it. I thought it was about somebody's home. I was sitting there from hours. They're amazing. So they're part of their workplace station. So it's a lot of exploring to build their numbers and recognizing them. Oh, you like that. Are you kidding me? Good. Next, thank you. Here's a little video about working and writing our numbers. Yeah. Oh, that's great. Is this the four-year-old group? So they're intermixed. The four-year-olds are here five days a week, 15 to 245. And the three-year-olds are in two groups. OK, so this could be a four-year-old group. This particular student is a four-year-old. That's nice writing. Nice writing. Keep going. I went that the hard way. Sorry for the first. Nature in our classroom, we recently grew microgreens and mushrooms. The students loved eating the microgreens. Both preschools have received some pretty significant grant funds through some of this COVID relief money that's separate from the ESSER funds. And so they've used it in a variety of ways. And one way Lauren's group has chosen to use it is Ms. Braun introduced mushrooms during Outdoor Ed, and they wanted to grow their own mushrooms. So they've started their own microgreen mushroom farm. Potentially, we'll see where it goes. Hey, Justine, maybe they could come. I don't know, is Zach still doing that? They come visit his farm? Hey, Patrick. Hello. It's hard to believe. At celebration of learning, and this is the, they're showing preschool. What preschool is doing. Oh, great. They've gone through a bunch of different things, playing outside, playing with letters. And this is mushrooms and microgreens. They're growing through grant money. They're growing through it. Great. We build with many types of blocks. Wow. Look at that. That's amazing. I love this stuff. I love the creative mask, too. The green one with the teeth. We use hand writing tears. This is a really good format, by the way, for getting us engaged, too. Use handwriting without tears for handwriting instruction. Is this a program handwriting without tears? So handwriting without tears is a program that our primary grades teachers have been trained in starting in Rochester. And it will expand to Stockbridge. But yes, it's all about where you start, top to bottom versus top to page, clear page, and lots of arrows, and things like that, and pencil. Oh, yeah, yeah, I can see it in the book. You follow the line, and how you get there. Great. Next, volcano, snow, volcanoes stem with snow. Very much loved that. Yes. Good. That's a great way to bring outside. And they also go outside, both groups, with Ms. Braun. Once a week, lots of exploring. That left photograph is absolutely beautiful. It should be quite good as a web page photo. That's great. It's great. Yeah, we love our rotation with Mrs. Braun. Isn't it beautiful? Yoga class, I guess they all. Everybody does mindfulness yoga one time a month, preschool for sixth grade in both buildings. And it's been very popular, no matter what. Sixth grade more popular now that they're trying to learn how to balance, and they're very impressed. But my daughter's in kindergarten. She comes home and shows me. Yeah, she does. Yeah, she does. They do. Yeah, wildly too. Yeah. So it's pretty cool. So it's been great. She's Tian Meirich, is her name. And she is great with all age groups. And it's once a month? Once a month, yep. But that's really great. It's nice to have a variety of exposures and not one that's all the time. 30 minutes and it offsets well with mothers. Thanks for virtually visiting our preschool program. It was lovely. Oh, my God. Please send our congratulations. I was excited to share. Great. Thank you. That is wonderful. Thank you. That's some really wonderful things that are happening in there. Oh, it just looks fun and colorful. It's exciting. We found a way to get our four-year-old tier five days a week in Rochester. So that's great. Are they here for the full day? Or is it a pretty close? It's 8.15 to 2.45. Yeah, they leave a little error like so that the Boston traffic pattern. That's great. Traffic pattern, the whole day. No, that's wonderful. Excellent. Let's move on to reports to the board. 8.1 superintendent. That's a top act department. That was great. And thank you, Wendy, for piloting this. And this is the celebrations of learning are going to be happening across the SU now. So thanks for being the pilot district. So you have my report in hand. I'm referencing the report as you know that we, and it's on the agenda to give an update on the high school building. And so hopefully you had time to read the memo that Ethan and I put out in regards to the high school building when we had a heating issue a few weeks ago now. So and we'll talk about that more thoroughly under 9.3. But I know there's a great data presentation for us to get to as well. So I'll entertain any questions folks have. Thanks for giving me last month off. I did end up going home that night and testing positive for COVID. So I've had COVID and got through it. So I'm on the mend and moving forward. And I referenced in our report in regards to we did have our highest rates of positivity across the SU. The last few weeks, but I will tell you that our numbers are now projecting in a much more positive trend. And so I think that we're hopefully through Omicron in regards to our SU and I'm really looking forward to us once again returning to a little more normalcy than what we had in December and January. It's been pretty intense in the COVID world in those two months. And so as we're coming up to February break and then hopefully spring and our data will start to get better again in regards to COVID. And I'll take any questions folks have. I just wanted to say like, I think our schools have done such an amazing job. I've been watching the numbers the whole time and I'm watching them around the state and I friends all around the state who have kids in school. And I think our situation is just amazing how well we've handled it and how our numbers have remained pretty low compared to other districts. I think it's cool. Good, other questions for the superintendent. Robert, are you good? Good to have you with us. Yes, I'm fine. Great, thank you. Let's move on. And you can thank you again for the really kind words and the hero. Oh, you're welcome. No, but I also wanted to capture that here. I just, I really believe the last thing I said that, you know, it's always really good to thank the people who take such good care of our kids as often as possible. So thank you all. Great, principle. Including February academic data reports. All right, well, just in terms of the principles report you have it in front of me or in front of you. A couple of additions or just kind of updates that I would share since then. That's kind of gone on is, well, or highlights. Winter wellness is up and running again. And I think it's great. My son loves it. He's crazy about it. Going pretty smoothly, which is great. Comes with a little hiccups, but anytime you move that many kids one place, it happens. But everybody seems to be enjoying it. So that's been great. And is winter wellness happen as a joint? It does not happen. It does not happen. Or is there? No, I was gonna say it's. Because trying to coordinate everything. One of the pieces of feedback and why we chose to go somewhere different than Snow Bowl and Riker was that to go as such a large group, it really became chaperones were teaching kids who truly needed lessons. Like if they had the ability to get up on skis their own, they were off and doing that. And so we tried to coordinate to a place that could support our need. And that meant they were trying to keep grouping numbers low as well. Because of COVID to make sure that they could still do the right amount of instruction. So this year it is separate, but we have talked with our contact about making it joint again in the future. Right. And probably COVID does have a big impact on it because of the numbers in the space. Right. And staffing. Just like everyone else, they're dealing with their own staffing rotations. So. And so we started that two weeks later. Right. And we did wait to start because they were having their own outbreak situation. So that's back up and running again. And I can't think of anything else. Other than we're almost at our 100th day of school. Which is exciting. We do school wide celebration around that. I have a few more M&M's to count out for the kids. But as each class has come up with some sort of goal or is in the process of coming up with a goal. So for example, four, five, six, is trying to come up with 100 combined minutes that include reading, working on math problems, mindfulness, and exercise. Well. So that's one example. kindergarten definitely has their own deal because this is truly a kindergarten experience. So we're excited about that. Whether permanent, it's next Wednesday. So those are kind of the big highlights. That's when we report. But then we have our data presentation too. Do we have questions on the report first from anybody? Yeah, I was just wondering how the teacher's holding up. This is, and you, just phenomenal. And I read your report. I just smile from year to year every single month. It's the highlight and what your team is doing together with the kids. And so how things going? Things are going well. We are definitely hopefully toward the end of some folks being out with either symptoms or some positivity, which will hopefully, you know, improve and they're feeling well and ready to come back. But we're here in in-person. I think we all kind of hit our fatigue point with it. It's hard not to at this point. But we're working on, and this is a lot of Jamie's support as well, that we're transitioning to this endemic and that it's not a need to like drop your whole world because something's happened positivity-wise. And there's plenty of time to make sure notification happens and things like that. And really kind of retraining folks that we're available, but there's healthy boundaries, which includes, you know, not being on your email at nine o'clock at night or on the weekend and just really trying to recharge. I'm trying to do that as much as encourage others to do that. Great, great. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Yeah. Further questions about the report? Nope. No, no, Patrick. Justine, Robert, you're good. Can't quite see you guys. I'm good. Good, thank you. All soon, she is. Great, WRVSU Roadmap 2 success. So I don't know if you guys all on that, Adams, our chief academic professor is here tonight to help with this presentation as well. She's the one in blue? Yes. Thank you, on that. That's DeTera. So I'll turn it over to her and Jamie to start and then we'll keep moving forward. So good evening. I don't know about the rest of you, but this is the type of presentation that certainly fills my bucket, along with when you can look at what we're doing in pre-K to set up those foundational skills, to set our kids up for success. In grades K through six, I think it's pretty special. So I think pre-K, celebration, Lindy, was the perfect pick to lead into this presentation. And so just not such an opportunity that occurred in it. And so what I would say also, I missed the opportunity to just remind the board, I don't know if you clicked on the link in my report and I know Lindy's sitting out later this evening. Please visit the new Rochester Stockbridge Unified District website. I think it's really impressive. Lindy and the staff were very hard. It became a claim to get that updated. And it's a website that I certainly am proud of. And hopefully that you share that sentiment too. So in the fall, the WRBSU board adopted academic indicators and around kind of our three overarching goals that you hear us talk about and report out on a monthly basis. The first one being forming and sustaining a comprehensive multi-tiered system of supports. And you know, the best way I think for us to summarize that quickly is the idea that we have a system that's flexible, that it ensures that students aren't labeled and or put into boxes and make certain that students receive responsive intervention. Not that we have to wait to get students intervention, but that we can respond swiftly and quickly to intervene academically or socially, emotionally, to best meet our student's needs. And so we have a goal there under that, which is by 2025, 80% of our students will engage in universal instruction for the majority of the school year, decreasing the number of students in long-term target and intensive intervention. Meeting 80% of our students are met through classroom universal instruction and not needing intervention. Our second goal is to implement a pre-K to 12 proficiency-based learning system. You heard us talk a lot about our continued focus around curriculum development, our focus on personalized learning pathways, and all that's encompassed under goal two. And so what we have here is by 2025, all of our grades assessed on the state summative assessments. And that's Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium. And so some of the data you're gonna receive tonight is in alignment around predictors to the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium. But a reminder that we only do SBAC, Smarter Balance, in the spring. That's a one-time annual summative assessment. That's aligned to the Common Core State Standards. And then finally, number three, is to improve student learning and increase equitable educational opportunities. And what we said here is by 2025, all students in the final grade in their school will complete a self-selected capstone project that showcases their knowledge, skills, and interests using their own voice. So what we're working toward is that all students will have an authentic assessment that's rigorous and relevant to their learning. And that will be on display for community engagement and feedback. So that's something that certainly I'm really excited about as we move to the future. The other thing was by 2025 under School II, that all students in grades K through two will acquire foundational skills in literacy and math that set them up for success in their later grades. We know that early intervention and strong universal instruction at the primary grades really is the most critical indicator for our students' trajectory and success as they move through their educational career. So tonight, the data reports that you're gonna receive on a universal assessment data hopefully you'll see how they align to these overarching goals. Next slide. I wanna turn it over to Honda to give some background in regards to our assessment framework. Great, thank you, Jamie. So you just saw the roadmap to success and both the goals and the indicators that we have that are aligned to that. This work today that we're gonna talk about is mostly sitting in that sort of second bucket and thinking about the academic achievement indicators. Everything is interconnected and certainly we saw in the preschool presentation sort of all different ways in which students are showcasing their own learning, ways in which they're working together, getting individualized attention. And so there is in some ways all the goals and indicators are connected but for today's presentation we were focusing really on those academic indicators that we have sort of identified within that second bucket. And I just wanted to sort of give us a little bit of a bigger picture and just remind of why we do a lot of assessments. And assessments sometimes gets focused on just that end of the year summative assessment. But really the assessment is what's happening in our classroom every day when we watch that preschool video where the teacher was doing the numbers and the student was writing out that was assessment. That's a format of assessment where right in the moment the teacher is getting, how is the student forming each of the numbers? And they even have to look up at her model or were they just going, you know, were they going from automaticity? We saw that sort of the number eight where the kid certainly had an idea of what it was gonna look like and then did it again. So all of that is assessment data that our teachers are using. And I think we will argue that that is actually the most valuable type of data and we got to see a window of it tonight. But it's not really the kind of data that we're able to look at across an entire SU or across an entire district in ways that we look at some of the other data. So we have to have kind of a balanced assessment system so that we are both looking at individual students figuring out where their needs are, where they've gotten their knowledge and skills of where they're growing and then where we are in the system and where we might have curricular gaps or we need more help with certain types of instruction. So that's sort of a balanced assessment system. Look at all the different kinds of ways that we can get information and make decisions based on that depending on where we are in the system. So I'd like to sort of just set why we do the assessing to sort of better understand where everyone is. The next slide, please. And this is just like a quick snapshot of what that balance system is. When we looked at academic team of data back in the fall, I think with that you were at the October meeting, we were looking at universal screening data. So kind of very similar to what we'll see tonight. But it is again, just getting that real baseline for the end of the year and we do all kids so we can see where are the kids that we might need and put some extra supports around where are kids that we need to stretch. And then we do sort of ongoing progress monitoring that formative assessment that happens sort of every day throughout the year. And then at the end, or at sort of check marks through the year, winter and spring, we do these benchmarks and then there's sort of the summative which is over the entire year, what have students learned, what we wear, where the system moves. So that all of that sort of sits together. So no one piece alone sort of decides what's working well, what's not. We'll be looking at all those pieces together. Next slide please. And then again, there's always a lot of lingo in education. And so just a quick view here of some of the common terms that we use in TLA is our short term for literacy, reading and writing. VAS is one of our assessments for literacy. It's the benchmark assessment system. PNOA is one of our math assessments. We use it primarily with our kindergarten but also with early elementary. SBAC and Jamie talked about is the summative at the end of the year, just done once in grade three through 10 for literacy and math and then five, eight and 11 for science. Star 360 and TMT or Track My Progress are both sort of computer adaptive tests that we use as both the universal screener and these benchmarks during the year. So to see how students are measuring sort of against what our expectations are at the state level for what they should know by sort of January of third grade, January of sixth grade and then again at the end of the year. So you'll see some of those terms come up in the rest of the presentation as well. The Rochester and Stockbridge schools are using Star 360 right now. And so that is the assessment for which we have the data for tonight. And I think if you'll go to the next slide, I'm remembering and next slide. So this is just a little bit of a deeper dive on those academic indicators for grades three through 10 and here in hearts of three through six on the annual state that we're using the annual state summative assessment for that indicator. We don't actually have that data tonight but we have things that we the benchmark monitoring that we do in the fall and the winter we believe is supposed to be predictive of performance on that summit. And so that is why we sort of we look at it and we'll look at performance and they'll give us an idea of how we think our students are gonna perform at the end of the year on the summative. And then the next slide for grades K two, we set a goal or an indicator around acquiring foundational skills of literacy and math. And this year we are highlighting some different assessment tools for measuring student progress. Those students are not assessed on the state test. We certainly wouldn't wait until third grade to figure out where students, what they know where their areas of growth are. But we are trying out some different assessment tools this year we plan to adopt and administer them next year as the benchmark tool that then we'll have a baseline at the end of next spring and then be able to finalize that goal. So that goal is the one that doesn't have the numbers associated with it yet but we are looking at some different tools to use to get a better understanding of what our students are with their literacy and math skills in those grades. And the next slide. Next we have just the graph, I'll hand it over to Wendy to talk about the progress here in the process or in the package. This is in our packets. Yeah, this is the beginning of what's in your packet as well as the summary. So before we go too far, I wanted to start with some celebrations because there's actually quite a few celebrations. Some that you're gonna see here and some that are more individualized but starting with our reading data, so this is from the Star 360 and some of the bigger celebrations is if you look at that grade four and the grade five group and you look at their fall meeting proficiency and where they are now in the winter, they had some of the largest growth rates and really improvement and that means that many more students per this screen are now at that proficiency level or meeting the standard which is great to see. This is 80% over 80%. Yep, they were assessed second week of January to last week. Okay, okay. We'll try about 100 days. And this is combined? This is combined data, so it's not identifiable. Good, so January or September? We did the second week of September to the second week of January. It's about the same time frame from each. And so that other thing that I will say, so those are huge celebrations and really impressive, yeah, go for my next. That's awesome. That is fantastic. And I don't think celebration is too strong of a term. Did you change technique? Did you change focus? Did you, instructional material? What's, or the kids are just, thanks to their parents are rocking and rolling. So two approaches, some of the change in fourth and fifth grade is that specifically to Stockbridge is that Donna Gallant, who was here last time, she talked about how she was implementing some of the direct instruction skill sets in how she was delivering instruction and she was seeing great things and not. So we're seeing some of that. Also here in Rochester, what I'm seeing is a little bit more rigor and accountability and frequency in which students are being read with and questioned and ask some of the effective questioning strategies, which I helped them think critically, which is essentially what this test is asking them to do is read a passage. What did this vocabulary mean? What did, you know, what is summarized? So different strategies by both that's helped us make some gains. And we actually just talked about Friday about how to start aligning those strategies together. So, yeah. No, I'm just curious. So, you know, you notice on grade four or five, six, there's improvement, what, now what, why, why with grade three is it lower now in January? So I would say a couple of things, lots of absences in January. And our grade three group in both buildings, they're some of our smallest cohorts and there are some kids that were absent that doesn't account for all of it. I would say grade three and grade four are these huge pivot years where they're really supposed to like, where it just changes very quickly in what you're supposed to know and how you need to know it and how to be a successful learner. And we're really noticing this and trying to hone in on what has been happening and what hasn't been happening. It needs to happen. It's definitely a red flag for us because we want to see that growth rate up with where we see the other grades. So if you want to go to the next slide, one celebration I think that I would share. So the blue line, the district average scale score is the average scale score we're seeing in the winter by grade. So that's the solid blue line, okay? The like dash or the faded blue line that stars is what's meeting expectations based on scale score in the winter. And then the green is what's meeting state expectations for scale score in the spring. So you're already ahead. We're already ahead in grade five. Grade five. Almost there in grade four. And when we get to the next slide or you look at the chart at the bottom, you'll see this growth rate that we had which is the next celebration. We're growing two times this data expectation. So that means while we're not where we want to be with everybody meeting the standard, we are growing with the intent of closing the gap. Which don't forget, you're growing during COVID. That is an extraordinary thing where most schools are just barely trying to hold their head above if not falling behind. We're growing during COVID is a huge achievement. It bumps everything I think actually up virtually in some thinking. So if you look at that, for instance, grade three that group that was meeting, you know, we saw a decrease in who is meeting learning expectations for their grade level. If you look at their scale score as a group in the fall, it was 891. It's now jumped up to 937. They're still below where we want them to be in the winter as a group in the average. But that growth rate is one of the largest growth out of the group. So what it really tells us is that they potentially started as a group and they did knowing. And we want them talking about it. Below standard from the get go. And we're getting closer to closing those gaps. Still plenty of work to do. And then again, the other celebration when you kind of just look at this group as a whole is we are just exceeding that growth rate at least two times the state expectation. That's awesome. In a short period. We have plenty to do. We're gonna keep emphasizing that. But we have plenty to do. Yeah, Parker, if you could go to that next slide, it'll show it a little clearer. Sorry. Start talking. It's that right hand column. Yeah, that right hand column. That growth rate compared to state expectation. That's how you close gaps. You want to be two times, you know, two times the state expectation here. So we're really, we're good. That's exciting. It is exciting. I wanted to look at grade three in those terms as opposed to the bar graph. You know, it's just a different way of looking at it. It's great. So and it shows the investment we put in our literacy instruction. And that we still obviously have ways to go because in my book, everybody's got to meet this standard. I just change it forever, change is the kid's future. But and we're headed in the right direction. But like I said, grade three is that pivotal year that we really have to pay attention to and that's what we're in the process of doing right now. Excellent. If you want to go to math. So some celebrations here, I would say, is in second and third grade. If you just look at the number of students or the percentage of students that are meeting or exceeding expectations, you've got some big jumps there as well. And we can jump right, I just like the next slide better. If we go to the next slide. Because it just really shows that improvement level. We are definitely, you know, grade one, not as many students were meeting or exceeding the expectations at this particular benchmark. But I do want to draw out and point to your attention that if you look at that, again, that solid gold line for where we were in the fall, our scale score above state of expectations as an average, we were exceeding. We're still exceeding that point right now in first grade. It's just not quite as much growth as we would like. And what you're gonna notice is we've made improvements and we're growing, but not at the rate we need to be growing. We're seeing some great things coming with the implementation of our new math programs. And that's great. We're also learning how to teach these math programs within a multi-age math class, which requires a little more finesse and is gonna take some time. And we're not even six months into, we're six months into it. I was gonna say, don't forget, we've got two, almost three years of reading curriculum going. And this is just starting to turn the battleship. And so what I will say, again, is some of our lower third performer students have the largest growth. Let's go around in mathematics. I don't need to read. What we need to add to the ongoing list of things to work on is how to make sure the highest third is being challenged. And that comes in some differentiation in our instruction and other strategies. It's kind of why you see some of that, five, six is pretty even with each other. And we, sixth grade math curriculum or program that we're using is called connected math. And it's very different than Bridges mathematics. And it took us about two months to figure out how to run a five, six multi-age with two different programs for mathematics. Oh, wow. So we finally implemented that. There's still lots of rooms for improvement on how we do that. And it's one of those things that unfortunately you have to figure out like what's working right now and what will strengthen that next year. I mean, you can't just stick with one. Bridges does not go to sixth grade. Our math teacher did do an inventory of it. And what you'll find with the Bridges curriculum is it meets the five, six standards mathematically. And the connected math meets the sixth and seventh grade standards mathematically. So there's some material that they probably just haven't gotten to, but we still need to keep going. Great. You have that little, this turn? Right, so if we go to the next slide. So again, we wanna be like our growth rate compared to the state expectations. We want our growth rate to be two times or more because that means we're gaining ground and we're doing that in second grade, which is awesome. We're very close to that in fourth grade and we've got room to grow in fifth and sixth and first grade. And I say all this and they're an awesome group but I also have to remind myself that in Rochester it's an all new staff in the classroom. So not only are they implementing a new program, but for some of them is their first go at teaching. And then in Stockbridge we have a new second and third grade teacher too. So, and math is kind of the ultimate equalizer because they're all learning new together. I have a question now. For state sixth grade, do you think it's comparative that we try to up that? Like do you see that these students moving into middle school, it's gonna be a hard transition because it's not two times? I think it's one of those areas where it is gonna be a hard transition. And the reason I say that is I think they just, and I can speak specifically to Stockbridge and then also in Rochester where it's different. Stockbridge has not used a consistent mathematics program for a couple of years now. I believe the reason the program was picked was because it was free, that was for me. And then Stockbridge and Rochester people were using bridges and some folks really well and some folks didn't have the training. So, I think they're making great strides and we're seeing individual successes in certain parts of that area, but they definitely, if you look at how an individual did in the fall and how they did in the winter, there's a lot of growth, but where they started at in the fall, which is where they're behind. So, we're starting to see kids meet those expectations and it's potentially the first time some of them have ever met even the right grade level expectations in their academic career. Josh, Amy? Has these state expectations been adjusted for what's happened with COVID or no, it hasn't. I don't believe so, right, Jamie? I don't think so, yeah. Right, so this is in a normal year when kids have been able to go to school for multiple years and not miss so much. So, with all that into taking into account and as long as we're continued to be working in the right direction, which it really sounds like we've got the programs there, where the bus is rolling. Great. Is there such a thing as direct instruction and is this what Bonnie's doing for mathematics? So, direct instruction is an instructional tool, right? For reading, particularly. Well, there's seven effective strategies within it that can be used in any setting. So, are we doing any direct instruction for mathematics? We have been trained, as we, the collective, we have trained in the universal strategies to use and people are beginning to implement those strategies in terms of a program that's different. What Bonnie is doing is she is in coaching folks at how to look to their data. So, at an individual unit assessment, you look at it, like the pre-assessment and the post-assessment. You look at that data and it can tell you where a kid isn't meeting expectations and how to go back and re-teach or what supports those students might need. And she's working with folks on how to read that and where to go back and how to. I feel like we're really, I'm looking to next fall. You know, what are our tests in this in mathematics next fall? Let's see where we are there. I mean, I think this is fine, we'll overhead it. But I think by then, you'll have full year of belt with a lot of these people, hopefully with little turnover, you know, we'll get a lot of the same people back and it feels confident. I feel confident that we're gonna, you know, I also, the math is always a bigger challenge than reading. I think- For some? No, not for you, not for you, for a lot. I would say, and I don't know if I'm, maybe I'm generalizing, but I think that's my understanding is that it is a bigger challenge for a lot than reading. So, I don't know, I think this is, I think this is good. I would always, if you're gonna present this in a public or in a school board meeting, or reverse your graphics, don't bury the lead. The lead is this, this thing. We want to know when everybody is gonna be looking at the growth rate. And then you show the charts and the charts support sense. Yeah, yeah, this is, this is the good news is right here, is your last chart. And I think you wanna put it first. Because it's growth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's not a negative number on that side. Because we see a, you know, we see a bar and that just- You think negative, right? And it drills into our head and we go, wait, wait, look at that, no, look at that bar there. Whereas we see this growth rate and if you can get that growth rate in a bar, then you're really, really gonna be able to sell people on this. That's great though. Because I really think this is, this is something I don't remember ever talking about this before, what the growth rate is. And I think it's extremely useful. Both for us and for communicating with our public. And that's the chart right before, I think, is very nice, because it really shows. Yeah. Yeah, I think those are the bar graphs. I don't know that they're hopeful, in some ways. Because you get there and you just go, one, one, one. Yeah, you go immediately to the- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you see the discrepancy and that's not the story. Whereas if you go over to the first- But it's an important part of the story. It is important. Yeah, it is important. I would rather you have to fill it in after than fill it in before. Make your apologies after then make your- I think, I mean, you know, somebody in public relations like Bill, what do you got to say? I know you've got something. Two questions for Lendi. One is, your team confidence in the programs that you, the tools that you're using and utilizing and learning about and fine-tuning everything else and reading and math are the ones that are going to lead you feel have confidence in to get us where we need to bring our students. That's the first question. Yeah. And that's wonderful because it seems like there's turmoil over time finding those right programs. Right, right. And it's pretty hard for a teacher, I don't care how talented it is, he or she is, if the tool isn't up to the task. And so that's very hard, Nina. The second question is could you give us a little more flavor of how you take the data to your teachers, to individual students? I read in your report, I was just really excited about how your teacher teams and you're talking, really getting down there, each student, what is this telling us about the student? What do we need to change and emphasize or redirect? And can you give a little more flavor on that? Because I just think that was just so- Yeah. That's really where it's going to happen. So just fill us in a little bit if you would, or tell us a story. The first answer is blindly, if that makes sense. We take the student name off of it, so it doesn't, you don't explain the student, you let the data tell the story. And we really focused in, and this has been a shift in thinking in looking at something like this growth rate, the one that you have, to see the growth a student has made over a significant period of time. Because what was previously happening is there's this report, you can run it, it tells you who's meeting and who's not meeting the expectations. And you just get fixated on that one piece, instead of seeing the student has high growth rate individually and high proficiency, meaning they have a good knowledge of what's going on. So we look at this report that tells us that students' growth from last spring, actually, all the way to this winter, and it tells each test date in it, helps you do that. And then from there, the other strategy that we've taken is we look at a group as a whole, a cohort of kids as a whole, and see it can break it down for you by mastery skills or standards. And where are they not meeting? So it's color coded, red means for danger, you know? Yellow is we're getting there, blue is we're meeting and green is we're exceeding. And those standards that we're really in the red on and you wanna see growth. And so we're not just looking at how a student grows over time, but we should see those skills grow over time too. So the percentage we should start to see. And that's where we're looking. So Tuesday and Friday next week, we have a half day, Friday next week. We are looking in great light teams with the specific direction of here are the two areas, skills that we are in the red on by a great cohort. We're gonna make goals around those and how we're going to meet those instructionally. Cause we constantly tell teachers that they're the first level of intervention, but we don't really take the time to implement it. And so we're trying to flip the switch. And one of the pieces of feedback when we originally looked at data as a group is, we went down a rabbit hole. It was not, it was a learning experience for all of myself included about like, we're fixated on the wrong thing, we're messing them up. You got to pull it back in and look at it. And so what should have come out of that conversation is our students struggle with place value and the understanding of place value. That was the area that was glaring across the board, no matter what grade level we looked at. Which is in like a thousand. Right, like a thousand. What does each money, 1,110, is it ones? And if you don't understand place value, you can't do multi-digit addition, subtraction, multiplication. The list goes on and on. We went down the road of how, what, who's teaching time and money and when are they teaching it? So we had to rein it back in and look. And so now the feedback has been, we like to look at it, but be really specific with us. Where do we need to focus our interaction? And so that is, we're gonna talk about our celebrations and that and then they're gonna break in teams. Grade of like teams, they like to work together. One of the parts the staff do not like about being in a small school is that there's only one of them at their grade level. So they like to be in these cohorts and they're gonna set some pretty specific goals with the idea that these goals, these action steps in our instruction should move our student's success as a cohort in those standards or skills. Thank you. Yeah. That's great. I would love to sit in on a meeting. I mean, I know it's not our place, but in some ways I'd love to see. Fly on the wall. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. We are at 41 for board, not for, yeah, for a court to the court. I think he's going for a laugh. Thank you very much. This has been, you know, I don't want to shut you down right now. I think we need to, I think that's great. I know if you can save for the questions for after, but this is. It's fun to talk about. Like Jamie said, we're not talking about COVID. It's very exciting. This is the stuff we want to be talking about. Exactly, exactly. This is the celebrations of learning and then we could go home. Yeah. Okay, well, we can't quite yet. Comment. Very good. Let's move on. Business manager, please. Tara, thank you. Good evening, everyone. You have my report. Just a few highlights to point out before we get to the discussion items at the bottom. We did apply for the local food service grant and hopefully we will be recipients of that. And then we will start purchasing more local produce throughout the state of Vermont. We also effective January one, got notification from the USDA that they've increased the reimbursement rates for meals. So we'll get about an extra 25 cents per lunch for the remainder of the school year. So that was some good news. And then on the discussion items, we'll talk about the budget later on your quarter two projections. So in quarter two, Parker, if you want to put that up on the screen, please. We continue to look at what we had already looked at the first time around your salaries, budget versus contracted. We have a projected savings right now of $79,250. Health insurance, budget versus enrollment. And this is updated based on after open enrollment happened in January. We'll have about $17,895 savings there. And then the tuition I've added for this quarter, your budget versus invoiced to date. And it looks like we'll have a savings of about $216,934 there. I'm giving us a projected expenditure savings of $314,079. And then Parker, if you can go to the second page. That tuition can come in, because that just means that I have an invoice. Doesn't mean we don't know that they're a kid in a school that hasn't been paid for yet. This is the revenue side. We have on the tuition, this is what we have invoiced for students attending Rochester Stockbridge. So we have about a $16,950 difference there. We've got in more pre-K tuition at $14,144. Interest income, we're getting more than we budgeted for. We've gotten a little bit additional miscellaneous income that has come in from some donations. We have rental that came in. And we have the forestry grant, another $342 for donations. We'll expect to get the $9,000 from the trustees of public funds. And then the next section is what we get from the state based on property taxes, the ed fund, the state tech ed funding, that's what they pay on our behalf. And then the transportation aid. And then the next section down is our grants and our title one in Medicaid. I've adjusted based on what the actual allocations were and our most recent consolidated federal grant amendment. So you can see in the next section, we are protecting right now a $300,881 surplus at the close of second quarter. And then the next section down is your summary of financial operations. I updated this based on the FY21 final audit. So we just, again, we review the fund balances from 1920 and 21. And then the next section down is the surplus that you used in each year to offset revenue. And then the last section is your capital project fund for the reserve fund balance, which is $109,572. Any questions on the quarter two projections? No, we'll be talking about the general fund balance a little bit later, right? Okay. Yeah, and how you guys, yeah, how to use that revenue to put money away in a reserve fund versus offsetting expenditures. Is that what you're talking about, Amy, and next year's budget process? Yeah, that and just understanding, exactly where we are, what number it is we're looking at for that general fund surplus. So when we get to that, that's fine. I just didn't know it was the time to clear it up. Wait. I'm sorry, I'm confused about your question. Okay, I'm... Because we said we were gonna talk about funds. Right, funds, okay, so we're gonna talk about funds and maybe... Is that the time to do it now, Tara? Are you done with the report? It's the next section of my report, but I just, I need to make sure I understand what general fund balance, Amy, are you specifically talking about? Are you talking about FY21 or this is FY22 projection? Right, I'm just... I was wondering about, stay, I get confused at the years, but it's the money that if we want to put it, the money that if we wanna put it into a fund that we are able to do at this time. What, you know, the calculation of all that. From that surplus? No, it wouldn't be like, right, it's what's the bottom line that we're talking about to put into a reserve fund? That's, I guess, the question. I think it's in the column on your budget. Okay, so yes, that is in the FY23 budget discussion. Okay. What your FY21 general fund surplus is that you can utilize to put into additional reserve funds. Yes. We're on the same page. So the next two attachments that I sent to you with my report is right out of your FY21 audit. Excellent. The first one is the permanent fund balances. All right, where are we? Next back to... It's the ARSUD Permanent Fund Balances Sheet. The page after where it starts. Yeah, that's okay. Sorry, yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. These are the specific reserve, actual permanent funds, how they are recorded in your audit. So it's your Caldery Fund, your Wing Fund, the Kirkpatrick Fund, and the Rochester School Fund for Excellence. So you can see that last line, the fund balances as of June 30th. That's the balance that's currently in each of those funds. And this is the research that Amy, I believe you can fill the board in on what each of these funds can be utilized for. And I think you touched on it briefly before. Yeah, each fund does have some specific language in it for what it can be used for. And without going into big details, I don't wanna, now I would maybe be able to present it better next meeting. But the Caldery Fund is not accessible to us yet. It needs to have a specific balance before we're allowed to use any of the money. The Wing Fund is a specific Rochester Scholarship Fund. So that is specifically for graduates for scholarships. The Rochester School Fund for Excellence is kind of a principal's discretion kind of a fund, but there is some specific requirements on that. And it was, there's a lot of language in it for student activities and for sports, the type stuff. So that's kind of just an overview. I would be happy to next meeting or even before that put together a better and more specific description for each of them. And the Kirkpatrick. The Kirkpatrick was, is not a very restricted fund. It's quite open. So first time. So these funds, you do not interview to. These are investments that were set up previously. So this, you don't have any contributions into these funds that are available to you based on how the programs and the funds were set up. Right and along with that, I'm sorry to, I should say, there is specifics of how much money from each fund can be taken each year. So, whether it was just the amount of interest income that happened throughout the course of the year, which often it is. So along with what they can be used for, there's a specific amount that can be used. So I can get that, we can meet and get that all together. I would love to download that up. Like it's, when I worked with the Stafford's trustee, is there's a process? Phil and I go, okay, together. Right. Well, it would be, yes, let's definitely have a play schedule meeting about that. So that there's no money in the total expenditures means we've taken no money out of this for how many years, right? Expenditures would have been if we'd used some of this money. That is correct. So we have not used any of it. If each fund is taken from the fund, that's where they would show in the year. So we have not taken any, is this, and this is just this year, or has it been since the disillusionment of the high school? We have not drawn on these funds since the disillusionment of the high school. There is the wing fund specifically, we need to change the language and we need to actually go to probate to be able to access that. But, right, we had not because... It took some time. It took time to figure it all out and work it all out. Well, that's fine. I just wanted to... Unfortunately, this was not something that anybody really had and handed over to any one of us or to anyone it was... So thank you. Thank you very much. But I definitely am excited to be able to... Yes. Pass this on to them. To use these funds. Yeah, it means that it kind of worked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, through these. I mean, I remember... You just wanted to speak to me. So she had to jump in and hit for this. So you did a great job. Well, we were talking about this four years ago. I mean, I remember when you first sort of were raising your hand about it, saying, what about this? So I'm so glad that you've stuck with this and gotten some clear answers. So thank you. Yeah. That's really, really great work. Yeah, it's Ethan, one of the terms he uses, transparency, and we need the information. With the information, we can be transparent. And you've done that both. And yeah, I think this is dynamite. I think we certainly have information that we can share. And this, I think this format's a good one for the stock bridge funds that are independent from the schools, but some of them directly support the schools and other ones can indirectly, depending on the situation. So I think this school board needs to be aware of this. And certainly our principal does to be able to tap it the right way. I think that that is very true. And I like us to try to work towards it. This transparency comes from a lack of information being passed on to new members. It's not a specific like trying not, it's that nobody knows. And so if we could set something up so that the next people who stepped into these roles know what we have, what we're doing, what's supposed to be done. Right on, right on. Thank you for doing this. Then your only actual reserve fund that exists right now is the construction reserve fund. And that's the one I just had at the bottom of the quarter two projection and the second attachment is the ARSA construction projects fund. So the balance on that one is $109,572. And I made a note on this one that you'll see. We did use some of those funds this year, as you recall, for the Stockbridge Generator Project. So we've used $44,552.57, leaving a current balance of $65,019.43. Right, and this fund is the Rochester Stockbridge Unified District Fund, but it is specific to the Stockbridge campus, correct? Well, it got rolled over that way. It got merged when you merged the district, yes. It was what the fund balance was in Stockbridge prior to the merger. This one, correct. And what the, okay, I understand. But it can be used on either campus now that it's rolled over. I have a feeling though that we need to move this into the Stockbridge specific reserve fund, because this was Stockbridge, this is building fund. And so it can be part of our conversation for funds. Okay. Does the fund conversation- So the fund fund. Fund, fund, conversation. Does the fund conversation need to happen before the budget? I mean, in terms of getting the voted on, or can we? Yeah, we need to do it at, it has to be voted on by the, by the, right? So if we decide to put another fund or to redo a fund, it needs to be voted on by May. It has to be an article on your warning. Yeah. To make, when you want to create a fund or you want to move surplus funds into a reserve fund, it has to be an article on your warning. So the- Once the fund is established, it is the directive of the board to use the funds. So we could, we can move surplus money into existing funds without the, the vote of the electorate. No. Oh, okay. If we have existing funds. So you can ask me an article on your warning that says, to allow the board to move X number of dollars from the X year surplus to this reserve fund. Your voters have to vote and approve that. They have to, and then once it's done and they've approved that, you have to go back to the voters to use the money. You as a board can decide to use the money just like you did on the Stockbridge generator. But you have to specifically call it out in your warning, creation of funds or moving surplus to funds. Okay, then I would, I'm very interested as to the creation and the movement of this money into a general construction fund because I believe that the funds that were set up were campus specific. Is there a campus specific fund for Rochester and not just like, now this is bold, but it started the Stockbridge. Is there one that was specific to Rochester? So this is kind of just the question to clarify because in our May 22nd, 2018 meeting, annual meeting, we had articles that were voted on to set up reserve funds to put money for future capital improvements and to maintenance of the district's facilities in Stockbridge in such amounts as the Board of Directors determines appropriate. Article III, Article IV was the same thing for Rochester. Article V was for secondary tuition expenses. So we in theory have three funds set up already. And so what fund is this in? Good question. So the way this was set up was just a capital project fund. This was not specific to a campus. So if this fund needs to be renamed, I can do that in our financials. But I would go back to the FY17 audit. Right. Are each individual district to verify what the balance was if there was said balance at either building. Right. Okay. Yeah. So. Yeah. Let's do that. So, because by the vote, there's three funds but we're seeing the results of just one fund, a combined fund. I'm just trying to understand this. All right. And just from my historical knowledge, this is Stockbridge's construction fund that they've brought into our merger. And we set it up to make sure that Stockbridge, it was campus specific because, you know, that was just. That was important. Important. So I want to make sure that that continues. Well, we have, I guess the question is, we have by this vote, the funds were established. And so where are they? Okay. So looking at your 18 audit for Rochester, there is no construction fund. I know the end of 18. I know that there's no, there was no fund. Right. We created it. There's no actual money. There was no monies. And we established looking at Stockbridge at the end of the 18 audit. Their construction fund had $44 in it. Okay. I think we need to do a little investigating on that. This is not something we can resolve now. Yeah. I would don't mind helping you dive into this. I was there. So I'm sure I have notes on it. No, I appreciate you bringing up. Absolutely. If it's voted on and exists. Yeah, we just need to know where it is and where this, what we're looking at here came from. Great. Ethan, can I say something to the board? Up to me. I think that, you know, moving forward is as a district, if you have a surplus that, and again, we don't have to decide this tonight, by the way, if you approve the budget, you can decide how much you want to set aside to put in reserve funds. And then when we do the warning, you can decide how much we're going to put into each, you know, that we're going to recommend you put in front of the voters to put forward for a vote for each reserve fund. And if that's voted down, then what the default is, that really goes back to the taxpayers' revenue, just so folks know. So if the voters vote down, putting a general fund surplus into a special reserve fund, then by statute, it goes toward revenue to offset expenditures in the following year budget. So that's one. Two, I really think this concept of having reserve funds that are district reserve funds moving forward could serve you really well. And I think we should do our research to see if that, you know, where did this current R-sub money come from? So far we've used it to pay for the Stockbridge Generator and make certain that we have that accounted for, Amy. But I do think the board should think about the idea moving forward if the unified district has a general fund surplus that you set up some reserve funds that can be used across the unified district. I think I would say with, I think we have a lot more political capital to do that kind of thing now than we did two years ago or even a year ago. So I think that's part of this tussle that we're dealing with right now is the feeling of, but I think it's also something very worthwhile to put in front of the voters and say, separate, we're together, but we need to know first what the paper trail is for, what's in front of us and what got voted on first. Yeah. Can we move on from here? Can we feel like we're ready? Oh yeah, that's a bit of a manager's report. Yeah, are you all done, Terry? Yeah, for an hour. This is, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just one note, this is important stuff. The reason we had money for the stock regenerator is because we had a capital reserve fund. And one reason we have a capital reserve fund is to have when we have unanticipated costs or opportunities, we have the financial ability to act. And so it's a very crude and a very strong and these monies can sit there, build up and tell in such time they're needed. But the concept is very sound, I agree with Jamie and I have been Amy, this is important and we should consider that if we have a projected surplus, how much goes to reducing the tax burden and how much needs to be set aside for capital infrastructure needs in the future. We know we're gonna have them. But at the same time, if we're putting that money into the infrastructure, that can help the burden of the tax burden. So we can. We can, we can, you know. That's the question of what it is. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Good. Moving on, 8.4 to our VSU negotiations committee. Not me. Not you. Well, it's Bill and I and Bill fill in any gap I miss, but I would just say that they've been really productive conversations, tomorrow night we'll have our, or sorry, Thursday night, we have our third sit down with the teachers. And I would say that, you know, we've already approved ground rules. We've been able to do some tentative agreements already. It's just, it's been, I think, a really productive and positive negotiations thus far. Is that fair, Bill? I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you. Good. Thank you. The tenor, just the reports, both at the SU meetings in here, the tenor of the talks, the mood of them just seems so good. And I appreciate, I applaud you for that. It's always the way we want to negotiate the people I hope. Good. Thank you. WRVSU energy committee. So the energy committee met with EEI services last month. They have another meeting next week. And just so the board knows, you're gonna get your initial presentation from EEI next month. The rest of the boards will receive them this month. You're early in the month. So I said I would let them roll with you in March, just so they felt like they were well-prepared. So they're gonna give you their initial thoughts and sentiments in regards to the audits that they did at Rochester Elementary and Stockbridge Elementary. And just to reinforce what you said at the SU meeting, they're giving us a three, right? They're giving us three possible scenarios. Yep. Plate, basic, and then best possible, we get to choose. And then they give us the tax benefit or the payoff benefit of that. I didn't use the correct terms there, but just- No, you're right, Ethan. I think this first initial proposal will be just a little more of an overview of what they're finding. And kind of project the baseline of what that might be. And get just a sense from the board about what direction they might want folks to go, want them to go from there. And then they'll have a more full report the following month. Okay. Good, any questions on that? Let us get to 9.1 discussion items, draft four of the 22-23 budget and corresponding revenue and tax sheet, possible action. I cannot believe how much the tax rate changed by changing the pure pupil by a point something. Yeah, crazy. That's why we always talk about those equalized pupils, Amy. Point, now it's point 95 and it changed the tax rate by like a cent. I mean, it is unbelievable or a whole percentage or something. Yeah. So I did not make any changes to the expenditure budget. It is what it, the same that we presented last month. So the overall increase again is 101,633 dollars or 2.35%. And again, there was a reminder we had a reduction in the budget. Sorry, not a reduction in the budget. Yes, we did, $43,999. There we go, I can get my words out. On the revenue side, Parker, if you wanna switch over to the revenue one, sorry, I'm moving fast on you tonight. So the top note right there is specific to the surplus. This is your unassigned fund balance that you can use to offset revenue or present to your voters to put into a reserve fund. We're using 150,000 of that 284,554 dollars as offsetting revenue. So the remaining balance is what you can request from the voters to move to reserve funds. And you can do that. Can you give me that? Particles. And you can decide which reserve funds you want to use it for. If there's, I know there was talk in the past about creating another reserve fund. So this would be the time that you would want to do those things and have those conversations so that you know what you want on your warning for this meeting. It's 284,554 minus 150. Yes. Come out. Please, I still have a calculator. 234,554. Once again, Jamie. 134. One at a time. Get Jamie. 134,554 dollars. Good. All right, so Drew. I want to go through that now then. So let's finish your budget first, okay? I like that. Let's do one thing at a time. Otherwise, I'm going to get all confused. So if you could go to the tax sheet, Parker. Yup, so that's at the end of the budget. I just found that. The most change I made, we received another round of equalized pupil from the agency of education. So the new number for you is that 175.95, which was an increase from the 175.14. So where you stand now, all the other factors remain the same. You have a 0.0268 reduction in Rochester and a 0.0436 increase in Stockbridge, solely based on the CLA in each town. Right. So did that change our equalized tax rate? Yes. Yes, so your equalized tax rate is at 1.4935. Which is now compared to the current year. I had less last one was 13 cents lower. The current year, oh, it's right above it, isn't it? Yeah. The equalized tax rate at FY22 was $1.6359 after the two set merger incentive. Now it is 1.4935. I mean, that's a huge decrease in your tax rate. That's, unfortunately, it doesn't show in once the CLA gets factored in there, but... It's just a shame. Five, nine. I just found a calculator, 1.4935. Yes, that's 14 cents lower. We've lowered the tax rate. You've lowered the tax rate, 14 cents. That's right, the equalized tax rate. The equalized tax rate. We talked about this last time. No, no, no, it's good. There was the letter that came out from the state, though we were talking about it earlier in our meeting or midday today, that something was coming up. Jamie, yeah, please address this. It's about the yield and we're using, they gave us two yield numbers. We're using the more conservative yield. If, for example, the governor, he has requested that the legislature use half of the current surplus in the Ed fund for a one-time expenses, specifically capital improvements. So we're using the yield if that is supported by the legislature. I think it's the wise yield to use. I don't foresee them giving back the whole $80 million surplus that was realized in the Ed fund. And a big part of that, just so folks know, is that we had significant revenue come in from federal monies due to COVID-19 relief, both here at the local level, but also at the state level. And so we're using a more conservative yield figure. And I would strongly suggest that we do that because all it means is that your tax rate could get better if the legislature votes on a yield that's higher. Well, what I would not wanna do is have us use the other yield and then have the legislature decide that they're gonna use some of that surplus for one-time money and have taxes end up being higher than we're projecting. Good, so, well, so where does that leave us? Is what we're looking at likely possibly to get worse? No, I would say that this, I feel like this is where we're gonna be based on the info we have. And if anything, it could get better. It won't get worse. And when will that news use a forecast or tar forecast? It tends to happen toward the end of the legislative session, Bill. And sometimes we know it actually before your voters go to vote and we're able to provide that at the informational meeting because you do vote in May, but it's to be determined. Typically it's one of the last things that they actually set because they'll wait to see what, how they decide to utilize different surplus funds. Sort of like what we're talking about for you guys in regards to revenue and verses putting it away and reserve funds. Hence they gave us two figures in why we're using the more conservative figure. So I guess a lot of this we talked about last meeting, just in terms of tax rates and the different stream, Raj. Are we ready to move this? I feel, I feel good. I think let's, yeah. Things we can talk about how we sell it as a whole different matter. But I think, I think somebody want to. I just put the motion language in comments. Thank you very much. Somebody got, it disappeared from us. Everybody got comments? It's got to be somebody who's virtual. Robert, you want to do it for us? I'm sorry. I didn't, since here what you asked. The move is in the text. So here we go. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I will entertain a motion to accept this budget using the language presented there. I hear my move to accept the 22, 23 budget and the amount of 4,430,385 with an estimated per pupil cost of $19,321 and 11 cents. So we have that is moved by Amy Wilt. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded by Bill Edgerton. Any discussion? And I'll do a roll call. Patrick Hudson. All right. All right. Amy Wilt. Aye. Justine Kivakis. Aye. Robert Mayer. Aye. Ethan Bowen. Aye. We get a budget. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any more complicated than any? Well, this isn't nice one to have after that. Nine four Rochester High School Building use request possible action. Is this the code? You're jumping. I'm jumping. I always jump it. Any meeting logistics and mail or that's different. Okay. Good. Just, I know we want to continue to move forward but we do have that reserve fund money of 134.554. And so it sounds like you have a tuition reserve fund setup. I heard that. Is that accurate? Yes. Yes, I do. I mean, I would strongly think that we might want to consider at least putting what we would project a couple tuition students in that to try to start building that up in the event that you have a sudden influx of tuition students. That's what we've been doing in other standing districts choice districts. And it's, I think it's served those boards well. And then the other thing is certainly the more you can put in a capital improvement fund as we're trying to do this work with EI it makes great sense. So I really think it's thinking about do you want to contribute to the tuition reserve in addition to the capital improvement just because I really do believe you need to put some money away for this upcoming work. This needs to be decided on before we put our warning together for annual meeting, correct? So we can just make it be decided on right tonight. It doesn't need to be decided tonight although we will bring you draft warnings next meeting, correct Tara? So we'll be ready to have some ballpark numbers. I mean, we can change them that meeting but we'll at least have your drafts put together. So if you go by like your most expensive tuition student at 19 and change per half. 19,000, 20,000, that would be nice to put a couple in there. So 20, you know, 2040. That you have 1034. Can I ask that, that's a chairman that we ask staff Jamie to give us a recommendation for our next meeting on the capital side and reserve and maybe we can do this here but I like to keep moving on and then we'll have their input and why. And then we- And we all agree that we should contribute to full type of, we should put some in a- It'd be nice to match. I mean, let's- Let's put them to the generator. So we're back to- Yeah, that's a good idea. We're a rat. So that's 10. Two tuition is 40. Okay. And then- Well, I do agree that we should let them come on. Yeah, it doesn't hurt to throw numbers out. So we have some idea of what you're gonna be talking about. So- I'm just, sorry, I'm ready. I'm not seeing if we could get in the habit of putting away for a couple of tuition students every year if we have the opportunity and then in putting other in capital improvement. And my goal would be that we start to dwindle down what we have to use in revenue, right? Like I'd like to start decreasing how much money we're using as offsetting revenue from potential surplus money. So know that going in- As we move forward, that 150 you just saw, I'd like to get that down over time. So- Put them with brain just 20. What do you mind? It'll come out to me. I mean, put a- I'm hearing a recommendation that we come forward to you with some reasoning around why we're recommending a certain amount in tuition reserve and in your capital improvement. Are we, should we agree that we wanna use all of it or just some of it? We really need to use all of it. You have an audited surplus now. And you can, basically the way the warning, the article reads on the warning is up to the total surplus amount what's available after you take off that 150. So what you had that 134, 554, the actual article will read that we're gonna move X dollars of the FY21 audited surplus of 134, blah, blah, blah. It will read that in your actual warning. So- At the end of the day, yes, you have to use up that 200. Right. So by not putting, by not having money to carry over into revenue for the next year, what does that do for us? Cause I mean that $150,000 is quite a bit of revenue that we're putting into our budget. Does that mean we're gonna need to decrease our budget by- We're projecting a surplus again this year. So that's why we're working hard to have a surplus. And then again, Amy, what we'll do is hopefully go from 150 down to 100. And it will start to dwindle that down, would be the goal. So you're not relying on a surplus every year as an offsetting revenue. Should we be conservative, right? You know what I mean. Should we be conservative in how much money we've put into these funds? What do you mean by conservative? Well, We have to either give it all back or you put it in the fund. You don't get to hold it. Well, how? Oh, okay. So we're gonna get the kick. No. We just put 150 into revenue to decrease your tax rate. And because we used 173 last year. So we just started dwindling it down. And what we're saying is that if it gets, if the voters say no, we don't want to put this money in the reserve fund, this is the voters money. So what that means is they're saying, no, we want it all for revenue. And then at that point, Amy, then that's why we have to educate them about why we're not putting an old toward revenue because that would create an even bigger hole for us for next year. In some ways the terminology I think is misleading. We talk about surplus, but any organization that has a capital plant has a depreciation fund. That's expensed out in public financing. We don't have a depreciation fund. And that depreciation fund is monies that are set aside for capital improvements. Rainier, whatever you want to say it. So we don't really have a surplus, but we don't have a depreciation fund. How are we gonna be prepared if we've got an extraordinary this, that, what? So prude management says that part of our budgeting, we have an operating budget, which we just passed, and we have a capital budget. And we should be looking at them to combine. And the net result is zero. Right now we say we have a surplus. Let's, but we don't have a capital budget right now. What should our capital budget be moving forward for this next year? And we talked about the tuition set aside. That's real. And, but we know we're gonna have capital needs. And prude management says we need to have money set aside to be able to do that wisely and prudently. So I'd like to encourage us on our going forward. And Jamie, you talked about your concern about the condition of our buildings and the need for a capital program. Do we have a budget that's both operating and capital? And we decide how much goes into both. What's the tax impact? And we decide. And so we have a great opportunity now to set that up and going forward. And I, I look forward to getting the recommendation from the superintendent. Oh, I think we understand that now. Good. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Sorry. Here we go. This is all exciting talk, by the way, versus how are we gonna pay off debt? We don't have to. Yes, it is. We don't have to write that one. Thank you for reminding us of that. This is actually a good decision to make. It's a good problem. It's a good problem to have. Right. Just surfwalk. You don't want to spend money, you don't have. Try not to. Okay. Are we ready for a nine two? Nine two. Annual meeting, logistics and... 10 minutes. I'm gonna keep you on 10 minutes. Good luck. Okay. Tara did forward me the cost of our last budget, which I thought I brought. So if you look at, but I guess not, what was color and how big it was. And we got 1,135 of them and it cost us just shy of $3,000. So it was not too bad for how big of a publication it was and how much color we had in it. Just to put it out there, when you're comparing what we want to do this year, take a look at what we did last year and how much it cost. And as far as getting... Can I make a suggestion? Yes. Can I take our... I do not connect with Jenny. We've connected about a lot of things, but not about this. Can I take our example from last year in our draft? Like, you know, I have all the stuff in it. Share them with our communications first and Kate McLean who was willing, you know, who would work on it. And Kate and I work on it together to put forward a draft for you guys for next time. To you, Ty. A lot of it's all there. It's about compiling the right information. And we can at least get a jumping off point versus there's a lot of other things on here. I don't want to rush anyone through, but I feel like we now have a really good foundation of what's laid out and explained. And we're going to at least just jump forward and have a draft. And if you guys have comments, then you can bring it back. I think that's what was kind of the purpose of doing such an in-depth wanted so that hopefully it could be a template that just the new information could be put on. Exactly. And if we need to do additions, we have some time. Yeah. We like pie charts. And... And it is. There are very light pie charts and great pie charts. They're just really important to be in color. And just from assembling it, it is done in, you have to think of this page and this page are getting printed together. So that means this page and this page are getting printed together, which means all the way down. So if this one's color, then I try to make that one color because you're paying for it anyway. Yeah, yeah. And after working with Kate on the website, this is her real house. Okay. So yeah, I think that'd be great. You guys have made the template. Yeah, we've definitely got a clear idea. I think what would be, who all of us is to take a look at last year or flip through it and just see if there's anything that jumps out at you. They're like, hey, I remember now, I wish we'd explained this better. Because I think that's really, the numbers, the budgets set right now. The SU budget and all that, that's set. But explanations is always what we want. Again, the transparency. We always want to increase our ability to communicate what we're doing and what these numbers need. One of the things I felt like we still didn't quite get fully to is the annotation of the budget and a way to really put almost, not line by line, but at least maybe a third and the extra column that allowed for real. This means the language that explains the numbers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or just, this section, notice that, and things that like, one of the things I think you'll see the same codes with different prefixes, you'll see the same code in a bunch of different places and explaining what that means. We want an educated electorate. We have been doing such wonderful celebrations of learning. I think it's really important that we pop those. I'm gonna go. Uh-oh. Yeah, 53 seconds. Keep going. I think that it's important that we have some celebrations of learning in there and not just the letter from the principal. I think those things can be shorter. They're still there, good, good. Right, but you know, whatever it is, the pitchers, the free school pitchers, talking about math, I don't know what it is. Just put that back on. We also put the, I don't know if you remember, we put it out there and we wanted to put it out to the teachers. A little more healing. But then we put it out to the teachers of what they thought the, and maybe the students too, the student council, what they thought the cover should be. Okay, thank you for that one. Yes. I mean, I've had some fun playing with that, but also if your person wants to work on that, that's fine. Okay. I like that. I think if we have time for that, I mean, I don't want to put more. Well, no, I think if you don't mind the liaison, I mean, and let us know, because let's say I'm thrilled that I didn't, because two years ago, last year and two years ago, pretty much Jenny and I would, Jenny, I don't know, it doesn't matter. We did a lot on it. And it's nice not to have to worry about it. Okay. And so the other one, I'm sorry, that line item, the discussion item also says annual meeting logistics, not just the mail. Yeah. Yeah, so these are actually important things. So, well, not that the mail wasn't, but I need motions on certain things to speak to how we're going to move forward in your warnings. And so one is whether or not you plan to still move forward with an in-person meeting or not. So the legislature provide you two provisions, actually three. One was you could move to, you can move your in-person meeting to a later date to try to make it so that folks could access an in-person meeting more safely, like maybe outside. Two, it would allow you to hold your meeting via Australian ballot like you did last year. And then three, they provided the provision for you to hold an informational meeting virtually. If you felt like that's the route you wanted to go. And then four, if you do vote Australian ballot, they'll allow you to not have to commingle the ballots. So that they can count in each town and then report them out as a whole. So that's all been taken up and signed by the governor. And so I've got three districts that are holding their meetings at their normal times but via Australian ballot. And I've got one district that's gonna delay till May and hold it in-person. And I believe Granville Hancock's gonna hold theirs at their normal meeting date via Australian ballot in May. And then we haven't really discussed that part, I don't think. So those are some of the logistics that we need. You don't actually have to decide that tonight but you definitely would prior to adopting the warning next month. So those are just some things I wanted to put out there and just see where folks are at around it. And you may say you wanna wait till next month to see what the date is doing. And I don't know what your towns are planning on doing. I haven't heard. Stockbridge, you haven't there. Town Reading, Australian ballot is pushed back to March, 22nd, rather than the first Tuesday. Virtual as well. Virtual, yeah. Yeah, probably. I don't know what we got. Do you have a? I mean, probably is the best way to get the most attendance, honestly. Virtual, no live. Justine, what's your take? I feel the same way as Amy. I think it's the best way to get the most attendance and just, I think it would be best. We're talking about then an informational meeting. Well, that's what it would be. It's an informational meeting and then we would have Australia. Instead of a meeting at both, right? Yeah, you buy by statute, we would have to have a virtual informational meeting within 10 days of the Australian ballot vote. And so you could have it any time within that 10 day period. And what we've done in the past, of course, is record them and then push them out as well. See, that's nice as well. If that gives access to people, if it's recorded as well, to be able to. Yeah. That would be my thought at this point, but. Good, Robert, you got anything to say about this? I know I agree. Good. Bill? I'm kind of out of the air. I do like the idea of pushing it back to me. We're good. We're already made. We're already made. You're in me already. Yeah. I was just complimenting the decision-makers. Oh. That's a lot of data. Patrick? No, I think it's great. Virtual, virtual and, yeah. Okay, informational meeting. So it sounds like we're going to think about going. Let's put that on our warning. We may have a little more, may have more discussion about it. So we'll come with those motions, Tara, next meeting and we'll have the warning set up based on what they discussed. Like we have that. Anybody? Yeah, if anybody has a problem. Or suddenly the COVID numbers drop out of sight. And the sun breaks through the clouds and the dogs fly out. Yes. Okay, thank you. You can move on if I'm saying things like that. Rochester High School, right, Jamie, just to confirm, we've covered all the important things. Yeah, those are the things we needed. Yeah. Let's take it. Yes. Let's get on to the last important one. Rochester High School building update. So you had the memo, the building got below freezing and one wing. Oh, I see that. I had a T, a pipe, a cast iron pipe T, a half of it, half of one. They were all over the floor, all over the floor in the tech room in the maker space. Ching, Ching, Ching, the ice just blew them up. So the, I would say the frustrating thing for us was, is that we had worked to get heat sensors installed. And they were wireless and they malfunctioned. Invisibles aware of that, because we purchased that from them. So that's good. That's our Vermont School Board Insurance Trust. That's our carrier. So they knew that we had installed them, which is what they asked, and then they malfunctioned. So it was limited to that southern wing. The good news is it didn't impact the auditorium, which is exciting. It did impact the bathrooms near the auditorium. So we've had temporary heat in the building as backup to just be safe until the new heat monitors are hardwired. And so in Vermont School Board Insurance Trust appreciates that. And GW Savage has been checking those on a weekly basis. Most of the damage as far as water damage was limited to ceiling tiles. So that's good. We've got some new piping to run. And while we're doing it and the insurance carrier is aware of this, we also plan to change some of the piping for the heat system to better insulate it in that wing while we're at it. And so this work has been underway, but will be completed in the spring. And we're also, we've got a quote for $9,000. Again, this will be covered via insurance to replace the sprinkler system in that wing. And that was a $9,000 cost. And so we did have, as I said in the memo, a $2,500 deductible that we'll need to cover. And otherwise we expect the rest of this to be covered by our insurance carrier. And they're investigating why the heat sensors didn't work. We actually discovered this because we were still doing regular walkthroughs on top of the heat sensors. That's how we discovered the issue. Actually on a holiday was on MLK day. And what we are going to do though is vis-bit is supporting us in hard wiring heat sensors to hopefully make certain that we don't have an issue around wireless malfunctioning again. And so that's the updates that I have in regards to the high school building. I wanna put a shout out to like, Lindy, our maintenance and facility folks, and certainly a vis-bit for working with us quickly and swiftly, GW Savage. And so that we could start to get it taken care of right off. And as you saw in the memo, I did alert the Rochester Select Board of this as well. Okay, any questions? Thank you, Jamie. Rochester High School Building Use Request, possible action. Yes, I had a local community member reach out and asked to be able to utilize the walkthrough space. What I call the lobby, but people here call the locker in the high school. I call the lobby. And the school locker. And then, exactly, O-State's name in it. And what would be the administrative office to be able to run COVID testing for the area three days a week for ongoing purposes? That would be Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I did try and offer, I'll be using the side door gym access instead because they just, it's a big ask, in my opinion, to keep going for a while. I understand the need and the lack of testing completely. But, and why the lobby and why not the FCS room and just... It was Bill Cattel, I think the name, right? Yeah, Bill Cattel. And that was the area that he picked because he felt like they could hand something, somebody could test and hand it back through. That's my understanding. So it's for people to receive COVID, to just come and get a COVID test. Take it and administer it and then hand it back and then it would be sent off. I think that there would be other locations in that building that would be better if it is something we are interested in doing at all. Lindy, can you, why don't you mention this to me? She has an opinion. So my opinion is two things. One, like, right now everything's functional and it's one wing and I hope this continues. I would hate for something to happen. Other folks are in there because we're not really maintaining that. Like we're checking temperatures and we're making sure doors are locked and secured but we're not maintaining or cleaning that particular building. And I just, we're spread thin staffing-wise. We have what we need. It's not that we're short of folks but that's one big ask for three days a week continuously. As opposed to like a player's event which is a discrete thing that's done and we do it. And probably what they would have to pay for rent to be able to do that for us to be able to heat and clean is this a program that has federal funds that is attached to it? I know, I don't know. Other thoughts on this or other questions? Anybody? Lindy, I know we discussed this before but I think it's important to the board here. You did offer space up in the elementary school, correct? I offered access through the gym because the bill explained that no one's gonna be coming in to do the testing and do like a handoff the person's gonna go and test and then bring the test back. And I offered up that we could set something up so they could use that side door out the gym and not entrance. And his point, and I understand his concern is that but it could be someone who's symptomatic at least coming to the door. Right, that's, yeah, that's a problem too. Well, they would be kind of... Inside, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But still kind of too, we could have figured out and dropped, was trying to, because I understand the need. Right, well that's why I was wondering, there's a lot of individual rooms that are in that high school that it just seemed to have outside access that just would seem like you could, or smaller, you could use just a small heater in, it's not, you know. I guess the other question and you guys need to grapple with this as the board, but this would be my thought and this is something I shared with Ethan, is that like, what are your, you've approved one time uses of one specific space in the high school building with local community groups who are great about taking care of it and probably know more about the building than I do, very easily, no doubt in my mind. What, like, is this a role you wanna take on where you're a spot to offer things like this for the community, because that starts to become a different ballaxe. Does my question make sense? Yes, yeah, absolutely. And I think it's straight to the point of it. And I think we've made it clear that the building is not to be used well, educational purposes, but basically not to be used. And we've made some specific isolated exceptions, only a few. I believe that's been our policy sort of across the board. And this does seem like, as you say, I feel like this feels like a change in how we're utilizing the building for a very good purpose. But I, you know, and I'd be happy to offer them a tent, you know, one of our, you know, once the weather gets better. But I agree with you. I just don't know that we're in set up, especially if they're expecting cleaning and stuff like that, and we just can't do that. We clearly can't do that. And you don't have a name of an organization that's doing this? It's, it's how I didn't catch. He just, It was more an offhand ask, kind of like, do you think you could do this? He was, my understanding is that he reached out to the select board and Dune recommended he contact school. That's my understanding of the ask. I did not catch what organization, and I understood, trust me, that anyone gets the lack of testing situation in our communities. I completely understand that concern. Right. That when, that when help with, are in school testing at all, by having a clinic that close. Knock on wood, we're in a good spot with that. We have access for what we need for our students. I mean, the building shut down kind of in a way. So it's, Especially as far as a building safety aspect too. I mean, is it, is it safe enough to have, it's, you know, we just had a problem with pipes and everything, ceiling tiles, falling, whatever. I, you know, you can agree that I feel like we've been clear on this. Yeah. I think we've, the board's been quite clear on this before, that we're just not in the business of managing that building for use, except for discreet one-off, occurrences. So I, you know, but I think, I think we need to take the pulse. Do we allow this or not? Does it need to be a, it needs to be a motion probably. And I think we should vote it up or down. So move to a, well, the thing is about this, I also feel like I want more information. Yeah, that's what I meant. I feel like, I think, I think we, I think you go back and say, before we can decide this, we need to know what the organization is, where your funding is, what your intent is, as far as cleaning. But I don't want to put this on you. Right, I think it's kind of like, we're kind of not in on this, but we're willing to hear some more information, kind of thing. Like this is not what we're, we really want to do, but, you know, do you have more information that. Yeah, do us a proper presentation. Yeah. Have us a piece of paper at least. The players handed us a sheet with dates, times, places, what they wanted to use, and what they were willing to do. I think that's. Exactly. For the most part, the answer is really no, but we're willing to, we're willing to. Yeah. Yeah. Good. So Robert, Justine, I don't want to speak for you, because I feel reasonable. I'm sorry. Yeah. Repeat what we said was that we wanted more information that we didn't feel this was a concrete proposal yet. We don't know who the organization is. We don't know anything. We don't know. And we're basically, the answer is no, unless you give us a little more information and understanding what you're doing. That sound good, Robert? Good. Thank you. I agree that the building is essentially a bit fragile right now. Yeah. Especially in the season. So we have to have good reasons for to make the exception. Yeah. And come the spring. Who knows? Good. All right. Nine five. You're good. That's just great. Nine five, board goal setting and mission vision. We had a good meeting again. It took us, at least me the first 15 minutes to just remember what we were doing. And then we, once we did, we really did some, really I think wonderful work. I've read a lot of mission statements and for schools before. And I feel like this one's going in a different direction and is actually usable as opposed to just education speak. So we have, and we had, I asked Ray to have this available just to put up sort of where we are. Just to say, we're going in two different directions. Or sort of simultaneous things. One, we're talking about this, a vision statement and a mission statement. And that, then we're also talking about some specific goals that we think are important to, to address as the board. I have to say, at 830, I'm a little worried about approaching goals, specific goal work right tonight. But do you have this? And this is working. And now we don't have, you know, action on this. Is it just one, two, three? It's that one, two, well, it's, let me see. I know I asked Ray to have it ready to put up. Here, just Dean. No, okay. I guess it's not there. Let me see. Well, no, it's, I was hoping that, I'll show you what I have. Yeah, this is it. Short and sweet, as Bill said. And you want it, you want it to, so rigorous creative education. This is the vision, is rigorous creative education. And then, which provides for a comfortable space for uncomfortable learning, and using existing resources to the extent of their creative potential, and a platform rooted in transparency by maintaining the confidence and trust of the community. We were going to extend community out to being administration, staff, community, you know, towns people, you know, students, that's our definition of community. There are some things where we're not sure that we've got platform out yet. One of the things we like about this is that it actually is about both education, and also financial, fiscal responsibility. Comfortable space for uncomfortable learning, both talks about how you're teaching, and that the roof's not pouring in water on top of it. So that it gives you, the goal of this for us, we feel is literally, it's something that the board has in front of it to help it make decisions. Like we know, like I remember institutional knowledge, we made a clear decision about the high school about how we were going to not use it, and maintain it. So I think once you remember those things, it makes decision making much easier. So that this is where we're headed with these. Using existing resources to the extent of their creative potential is really about who have we got here to do this thing that we want. So we don't have to create a whole new program for it. It's also about finding that the talent that a teacher, administrator, or the community has that we aren't tapping into. That that's the best educational facility and institution that is always looking for what the creative potential of everybody is. And then this last one really, and this was the one we were working on the most right when we had to be done, a platform rooted in transparency, is this that was all, the word confidence, built brought up the word confidence. And that I think right now we're experiencing that is that I think people are paying less attention basically because they feel confident in the decisions of the board and of the administration and of the supervisor union. And I think that that wasn't by accident. We worked very hard to regain that confidence. And this third sort of thing is getting at that that maintaining establishing and maintaining confidence relies on transparency. So that's where we're at. We're gonna meet again. We've got another meeting. Justine's about to go into wonderful, crazy study time. And we're gonna meet again the day of our next meeting. And I feel like we're doing good work. I think we could, in the less packed meeting, we could talk about some of the specific goals that we wanna get to. So maybe we up those up towards the top of the agenda for our March meeting. March meeting, let's do that. We could carve out some time. Yeah, I think it could be, Jamie, that's the one wasn't bound. Yes. What were the two top ones we came up with that we thought were? We were talking about three. One is academic achievement. We've spent a lot of time on our winter snapshot of how we're doing. The SU has passed basically same adopted goals that were academic achievement goals presented by Jamie and Honda. And it seemed to be appropriate that this board consider adopting those goals as well as an important, absolutely one of the most important things. We also talked about transparency and confidence of the community. And one way we do that is by strengthening the connection and communication with the community and parents. And how do we do that? And should that be something that this board works on with staff? Yeah, that was a timely one being that we're gonna talk about how we're gonna sell our budget, communicate our budget to our community. And the third one is we passed our government's principles and board operating protocols. And we think it's important not only to do it once a year but to build that into kind of our thinking. How are we doing? Is there other things that we can do to be more effective board? And organizing our time or our focus or bringing in resources? So those are kind of the general things. And I think we can provide you specific language for your consideration of the full board for our March meeting. Yeah, you did get a ton of logistics done tonight with your budget and things. So I think that your agenda will be such that you can prioritize this a lot more. Excellent. I'm gonna bump it up to a nine one or nine two. That'd be nice. Great. Any further questions on that? Good, thank you to the committee for showing up. Nine six. I don't remember what I wrote. That was the select board communication for the film. Oh, thank you, thank you. The stock board select board invited this board to meet with them. They apologize for the short notice but they're having a meeting this Thursday. They've got a town meeting, of course for the regular town meeting on March 22nd but they'd like to meet with, this would be virtually with the board or representatives of the board just as a way to kind of communicate what's going on, what's important, where are we? And I can't make that because we've got a teacher negotiation session this Thursday. What do we know at time? Their meetings are usually are seven to nine. So I would thank whoever could represent us and to speak with them. I am encouraged that they're interested in us and remember they're the ones that came out first strongly to keep the unification of Stockbridge Rochester. So I take this as a real plus. I would be happy to make that if they can try and squeeze it at the beginning because around 7.30 is bedtime, not for me. So I'd like it to be. But for Wilder, and we've done this before too, we should have really. And I would encourage, it's always nice too if some of the Stockbridge reps can. Yeah, I apologize if I don't. But I'm happy to be the Rochester representative there and fill their questions and hopefully not say something really wrong. Well, I can't say yes yet, but I think I did. Okay, that'd be great. But Ethan, I want to correct you, I'm sorry. You're our representative, we're a unified. I know. And I don't think our geography is worth it. Do they hold a meeting at the? They normally have it at the Stockbridge town office, but because of this they're gonna have the weather and it was just gonna adapt to everything else. It's gonna be a virtual Zoom or Google Meet meeting. Yeah, it's not supposed to be great to meet whether that night is true. Okay, I'll give that back to the timing. Thank you very much. Yeah. All right, good discretion. Look at us at only 8.45. Do we have, we've taken action on all these? Yeah. Do we have no hires or regulations? Yes, I love that. Do we have any public, no, I just, you know, we've got to. Yes, we have, you're right. Those of us who've been here for four years, every, almost every item on this agenda was tricky. And now it's not, it's just really, it makes me feel so far, it makes me feel very proud of what we've done. Is there any public comment at this time? No public. There's no public. Excellent. Our next future agenda items, we've already talked about, we want goals up high. We need to warn our, our warning, take a look at our warning and make a final decision on reserve funds. Which is all part of that warning. Yeah, yeah, great. And also energy committee audit presentation is going to be on there. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Great. We will. Can you look at some information on the COVID testing thing with Bill? The next slide? Oh, yeah. Yeah. We'll see if he has something to present. Only if he gets back to us. Yeah, if it's, if there's a reply. So hopefully. Right, right. And then also we will, there was another thing that just went up. We were going to talk about. Oh, we'll have another goals and vision update before you. And maybe a, maybe a mission statement for you to accept or at least take in. Great. Okay. So the meeting date is Tuesday, March 1st, 2022. Sorry. I interrupt. I'm so sorry. Real quick. Just shocking. Yes. Let's go. Go. All right. No, no, no. I'm just giving up. Your mind of the ARSA board, the full board is having a retreat Saturday. That's right. Oh, thank you so much. And for that, that is getting more. 9 to 11. Virtual. 9 to 11, virtual board retreat. If you can make even. 9 to 11, virtually. And we would certainly love to have any. You can make a half hour. I mean, half the board was talking about coming in for a half an hour, so I'm, but yes, if you can be there for just a little bit, it's just really I, for all of us, just get to know this district. I think we've done a lot of work since I've been chairman on getting to know the boards and getting to feel working, you know, that we're a district. I mean, we're not, we're a supervisory union. We're an entity. Collaborative effort. Yeah, we're collaborative. And I think you can see that in how we're working as a board. And I just think those of you who haven't been to board meetings, it would be an easy way to just come in and see some faces and get a sense. Cause I think we're going to be talking about some nice broad topics of what the future of the SU is. Good. So thank you. Thank you, Jamie, for that very much a good, a good, a good. I will entertain. Oh, next meeting is Tuesday, March 1st, 2022, 6.30 PM at Stockbridge campus and Google Meet. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Second. Amy, Phil, all in favor. Aye. Aye, aye, aye. Good night. Good night. Thank you all.