 We're going to call the meeting to order 618, I believe, 617 August 23rd, 2023. I'm so excited to have everybody here, especially we're going to be doing some interviews today to start our meeting and it's always exciting. I'm looking forward to, you know, to continue to move forward our system of schools into a unified system. And to do that, I am looking forward to continue to inspire each other, you know, because it's not just one person, but continue to inspire each other and trust each other to continue to do what's best for our kids. And it's a beautiful day outside, so let's make it beautiful in here however we can because I'm sure everybody's giving up some personal family time to be here so we really appreciate you all being here with us tonight. I wanted to go over quickly today because we have potential new board members with us just going quickly over our norms and also reminding everybody that we have public comments, time we try to restrict it to minutes, we have public comments at the beginning of the meeting that's been our procedure and it's worked really well. We try to have community involvement, especially when we know that there's issues that the community wants to participate on and give multiple times for them to give input. We do our best to stay on time and we all, you know, sort of help each other so that that's possible. We give voice to everybody and take turns for that. We have allowed time for reflection at the end of the meeting to see if anybody has any input or what went well or not went well for people at the meeting. In the announcements and reports, we have a really helpful little table that had added to our agenda and we have a key for new board members which just has some key information and description of what a report is, what a committee report is, what discussion items are. And then the role, you know, I already shared this. Oh, Jonathan is here. So the role of the board is really to set that culture that we want to see in our district to participate in that collaborative culture that we want to see all around to but be respectful and, you know, leadership starts from the top. So let's start the meeting and we're going to, I'm going to, is there any, let me see first, I already sort of thank the new board members, future potential board members for being here. Thank you, administrators for also taking the time to participate in this meeting tonight. And do we have any public comments in virtual? I don't see any hands up. So welcome everybody. Can we do a couple of adjustments to the agenda? So one is actually, it's just really one. Can we move the interviews to 3.0 and we'll start the meeting like that? If that's okay with everybody. Okay. So seeing all nodding heads, we're going to start with that. So I thought we would start with Berlin. Is that okay? Yeah, you can sit there, you can come up next to Lisa, but I think that might be better if you stay there. You can stand up however you feel. Because I think we can all see you. You're the awkward one. I shared the questions with all of the board members. I shared the questions with you. It's don't be intimidated. Nobody here knows at all. It doesn't matter how many years we've been a board member. We're learning every year. So don't be intimidated by any of us. And there's no wrong questions and not bad answers. We're here to serve our community. So do you want to introduce yourself and share with us what motivates you to want to become a school board member? Sure. Yeah, so my name's Keely Sloan. I live in Berlin and I have a four and a half year old and a two year old. Both boys, the four and a half year old was based starting his second year at Berlin Elementary this year. So he did pre-k layer last year. And then a two year old is home with an au pair. And so we live as a family with my husband in Berlin, kind of off of Route 12. Yeah, and I think I want to be part of the school board. I saw that there was an opening and talked to a couple of people about it. And I've always seen education as kind of the great potential equalizer for families with a diversity of resources and capacities. And so, yeah, I'd really like to be a part of the school board just to be part of shaping the school district's future to make sure that we can continue to meet the needs of all of our diverse children, their diverse needs of all the children in the community. Yeah, and I live in Berlin, but we quickly made friends with people in all of the communities that are within the school district in Montpelier. And so I am affiliated with the Berlin Elementary right now, but I really see the school district as one and see this as a service for all the children. Thank you. And then what particular skills or experiences are you hoping to share with us? Yeah, so I've always had an interest in education. I studied some international education in grad school and worked in international education a little bit. After grad school, I worked for a youth services organization that held a whole host of programs but worked in after-school programming and then also job development programming. And I did their monitoring and evaluation there and that's what my background is. It's what I still continue to do in part today. And monitoring and evaluation is in general taking a program, understanding how logically it's supposed to work and then understanding where those points are where you can measure and understand what's working well, what's not working well and why both for reporting impact but also for learning and improving a program. And so I do that, well first I'll say, when I was with the youth services organization it really drove home the impact that access to resources and access to loving adults could play in the life of a child or children and teenagers. And yeah, I saw a lot of children's lives really being changed there. So now I work more in the agricultural sphere and so I work with larger companies to help make their supply chains more sustainable by improving livelihoods of small family farmers, generally in coffee and cocoa so kind of tropical commodity crops. And so with that I continue to look at programs, help to understand what's working what's not, understand the challenges that small family farmers are facing and then I also help to set the strategy going forward to make sure that those needs are being addressed and understanding kind of at a systems level across geographies and even crops sometimes how a strategy can be set that is both all encompassing and then can go and be tailored to specific locations or crops or groups of people. And so I think that that's, you know, especially as we go into strategic planning I kind of have the practice and experience of looking at something as a whole big picture and then understanding how it will play out in specific instances. So those are kind of my main skills. I'm bringing, I'd also say that I'm just a pretty like practical and logical person and that's probably never a bad thing on this person. Thank you. And last, because you're already shared, are you willing to attend workshops or trainings to learn how to become an effective board member? Yeah, sure. I mean I have somewhat limited time with small kids and full-time jobs and I find life long learner and would love to learn more. Thank you. Any follow-up questions that you guys feel like we should ask? Thank you, Kelly. My name is Chris. Have you served on a board before? I have not served on a board before. Okay, thank you very much. Great. So we're going to interview East Montpellier candidates and then we're going to go quickly into mini executive session in the next room and we'll come right back. So you're welcome to stay with us and wait or I can call you whatever your timeframe is. Okay. I don't think you'll be very long. Yeah, I'm happy to stay for a little bit. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I don't know who wants to go next. Go first. I'm Amelia and this is Contrada at East Montpellier. I grew up in Vermont. I went to school in Vermont and went to Germany. Do you mind moving to the meadows? Okay, so that they're not always like trying to... Yeah, I'd be right here. Does anybody else have the questions in front of them? That would be... What? Do you have them? No. Okay. Chris, do you mind? And then so it's not just... Oh, yeah. Yeah. Amelia, thank you for coming tonight. And where did we choose to become a school board member? I started when I was in undergrad, living in Amherst and then I traveled and worked helping in grassroots community work through Mexico and Central America and came back and dedicated my time to continue education and my family. And so it feels like a good time to kind of reconnect to volunteering and being part of community and helping out. Can you tell us what particular skills or experiences you are hoping for before you can share with us? Yeah, so I think the skills and experiences that I have to offer are really rooted in three things about me. So my professional life, studying clinical psychology and being a clinical mental health counselor, having skills of communication interpersonal communication and mediation and thinking dialectically about sometimes contradicting issues and finding a middle ground and a volunteering aspect of reaching out to community members and collaborating, strategizing, making plans, executing plans. And then personally, I'm a second generation Brazilian American and so having the experience and bringing that multicultural perspective to the community and helping to raise and give attention and focus to marginalized groups and focusing on diversity and helping out in that area. How long have you lived in the district? Three years. Going on four actually, 2018. Are you willing to attend board transfer trainings and become an effective board member? Definitely. Thanks very much. Thank you. Move to Zach. Do you want to do the honors? Oh, you got them on? Yeah, I got them on. Hi Zach. Hello, nice to meet you. Do you want to tell us your board number? So the schools are sort of one of the really pragmatic but also really powerful ways we can affect the future and improve the future. The thing is what I've tried to do with my life. I sort of have a thread of that. I started out in action disaster response work, mostly with the Red Cross doing the sort of placements work after fires. And I sort of, if a lot of you bad things happen, go out and deal with it. Another bad thing happens, go out and deal with it. Always in the same neighborhood because it's the same crappy landlords and crappy wiring. And so I ended up going, I just kind of burnt down when I ended up going into, going back to the school of policy, really try to start focusing more towards the future. And I didn't really know what I wanted to do with that. And I think as I've, you know, since I've had kids, I have a four-year-old and a six-year-old. So Eric is just about to start first grade at BMES. He was in kindergarten last year. He's older than four now. What? Eric's older than four. Sorry, Vera's four. Eric is six, Vera is four. They would be upset if they knew how to get onto work. You know, as I sort of look at where I want to push that impulse, it's made me think much more about sort of looking at, to want to look at towards the schools. Also, my wife is a teacher. She's high school at Montpelier High School. And so I'm going to have this a little bit of separation. I'm not, you know, I wouldn't actually be on, you know, both on management. I mean, how's it be on management and, you know, the worker side, but I also get a little bit of perspective of, you know, both from what's coming up through elementary school and being very focused on what these schools are going to be like. Great kids come through, but also getting that view of what are things like for older kids right now. Thank you. You touched on this, but what other skills or experiences are you hoping to share with the board and help you serve us? So I think a few things. So I've been, I've worked for a few different organizations that have been going through some pretty significant changes. So I think particularly as you look at, you know, this new configuration, I've been in situations where it's really been handled poorly, where it's handled largely through marketing. And I've been in situations where the organization found ways to give people who were, you know, experiencing what they thought of as a loss, something real and substantive and valuable. So they could say, yes, we actually, I can point to this, and this is a real game. You know, if I was just talking to a friend, it is, you know, it goes to Dodie and saying, oh, I would love to have eco. You know, so they're thinking about things like, oh, what are the things we can add when we think about configuration? I think that impulses something out of the ring. In my work for the hospital system, I've done, I've been the analyst assigned to a lot of their DEI work. As we look at quality initiatives, as we look at disparities, and we start to look at some, probably, some really small numbers because this district is so wide. I sort of bring some of these skills of, how do you think about statistical work with really small numbers? And how do you say, how do you sort of say, we, you know, this is, we need to get more data or we're not going to get more data and we need to make a decision based on it. You know, even if we're not, you know, if something isn't significant because we're never going to get to statistical significance and we can't hide behind that. Thank you. How long have you lived in the district? I've been here just over nine years since 2014. And also, are you willing to attend workshops and learn to? Yes. To really work on that. Great. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. So I wonder if we could have a motion to go into executive session. I'll move to the executive session with the person deliberating. Yeah. A second. Second. To all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Go in your post. Okay. I move that we appoint Healey Sloan from Berlin to serve on the school board. And I move that we appoint Amelia Mendez-Contrando from East Montpelier to serve on the board. I move that we appoint Zach Sullivan from East Montpelier to serve on the school board. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? Thank you. We're excited. Yeah. Thank you. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Hearing none, the motion carries unanimously. Congratulations, everybody. Thank you for your looks. It's super. Yeah, so yeah. Oh yeah, you were a little later. I just explained it to them. But yeah, so Eric Anderson, for personal reasons our work can be signed. You don't need to get into it. No, no, it's okay. It's public. You send an email today. So we have to open seats. And just a reminder that the appointment is from now until March. And in March, well actually in January 25th, you have to decide if you want to run and keep your paperwork. But we will coach you through that. And after the meeting, I'll reach out to you guys. We have email with more information about the board. You're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting. You're welcome to go home. Because I don't know what your expectation of today was. Like I say in my email, you're happy for you to stay tonight or happy for you to go home, whatever works best. But we'll be seeing you our next meeting is the third week of September. Is it worth pointing out that you're not actually voting members until you've been sworn in? That's true. Yeah, that's true. So if you could, if you could all vote, you know, I'll be sending you, that's what I, I was sending you in the email some instructions. You just have to go to the town clerk and get your oath. And then before our next meeting. But you'll have plenty of time. But I'll send you that information I've written and I've written an email and congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Okay. Stay for the rest of the night. I know. Go ahead and put in the pressure on. You don't get any pressure on your view. Okay. Let's, okay. Men again. Do you want me to pass this to you? That sounds good. And then we're going to get into the approaches for the configuration study. Okay. I'm going to share my screen. So I'll just start. We've talked about this idea of configuration restructuring sort of insert word here a number of times. We talked about the, how does this intersect with our strategic planning? The core question really for this board is how are we best configured in order to achieve what we want for all of our kids? And we know there's a lot of questions around how does, how is this related to our strategic planning process? Last year when we kicked off that process, we did that because it was really important to ground this conversation in what is it we want and expect for our kids. So tonight is really about how do we now pick up this study of how we approach that configuration? How do we merge our structure with the vision that we're creating? And so our goal is we want to connect the work of configuration with strategic planning. Those members of the board that are on the strategic planning steering committee know that it's sort of a question that lots of people have. How are these two things related? Strategic planning isn't the study of configuration, but it's also not distinct from. So the goal is to connect that. I am going to show the board some information about how districts have approached this work in Vermont. And what's involved, what has worked, what are some pitfalls that others have learned. And I'm going to talk a little bit about community engagement since that's such a critical part of this process. That will be the report part. I'll pause and we'll move on to the rest of the reports. And then during our board operations, we will talk about identifying a timeline and study method. And the reason why is to leave tonight with a picture of how we're approaching the work. So you've seen this visual a lot of times. This is our strategic planning timeline. The reason why now I think is the right time for the board to have this conversation is we are entering a phase where we're solidifying the vision and core beliefs. And the vision and core beliefs is what we want to ground our configuration in. As we study the issue of configuration, we have a pretty good sense of what our communities want at a really high level for our kids. And while we continue to study, we will also be taking those core beliefs and bringing them more specifically into goals and action steps. So this is the, I remember talking last year about sort of this process starting with strategic planning and then picking this up and that's sort of where we are now. This is just a visual way of saying really we have to, the foundation of this is our vision and core beliefs. What is it we want for the students in our communities? How do we organize ourselves to implement that vision? And then really importantly, how do we engage the community about what our options are? You've seen this slide lots of times. I won't read it to you, but just a reminder, we do have a district mission. We have a set of priorities that has guided our work for the past number of years and we'll continue to do that. And so now I'm going to share a lot of information. There will be time at the end to answer questions, but obviously if you're really stuck feel free to jump in and ask the question. So a little bit of Vermont learning. Spend some time with other systems who have gone through the process of studying configuration and kind of gleaned some themes from districts with successful configuration processes. And the way that I've defined success is not that they achieved any one end. It's that the board landed with a decision that they were unanimously comfortable with. Some of those people determined not to reconfigure. Some did at various different scales. So a success isn't that they changed. A success is that they landed somewhere they were comfortable with. So things that they all unanimously agreed is that board-led processes have the most success because you are the representatives of the community and your voice is what takes the voice of the community and lands it. The process needed clear goals, really clear data, transparency, and a really concrete timeline. This is not new to folks because you all have talked about this before, but I do think it's reinforcing. Schools talked a lot about having really strong support from administration but that the work is really led by the board. So there's a lot of information that this, our leadership team and others in the organization will need to give you, but it's really a collaboration and it's, you know, your job is to give us direction about where we should be. Cannot say enough, the districts that did not feel like they had a successful process, it's... when they didn't have good community engagement. I mean that's obvious, seems obvious, but that's really clear engagement with the community is helpful. This is something that is actually on both lists. Some really felt it was important to have consultants as neutral facilitators. I'll talk about that on the other end in a second. Some of the things that were challenges, communication and engagement, so being really clear, if the process was unclear or if the board seemed disconnected from the process, there are some districts that really the administration came forward with a recommendation and that was more challenging. And then on the pitfall side, some communities really didn't want consultants. They really felt like it should be driven by someone within the community. So that's something that kind of lands on both sides. When we talked about this at the finance committee, we thought it made sense to actually have a real example like a case study. So I'll read it actually. I'm not going to ask you if everyone can see that. So I'm just going to read this. It's a little bit of a summary. Megan, do you not want to name which... I don't only because they... I'll say it's in the Northeast Kingdom. Okay, thank you. They did not... I didn't ask them if I could. Of course this is all public. They could probably find it, but yeah, good question I thought about that before. So in the Northeast Kingdom, rural... I tried to... I tried to... Of the stories that I was hearing, I tried to pick one that had some parallels to us, although there's some differences here. So a rural, multi-town, unified union school district studied the configuration of their smallest elementary schools. They charged a subcommittee strongly supported by the superintendent and administration to study the current realities of their system for them. Things relative to their situation were aging infrastructure, declining enrollment, and concerns about quality of services available to students in the smallest schools. The board leaned heavily on the administration to identify the data and study the configurations, but broadly owned the decision. The result for this board was a reconfiguration, so moving students around. They moved middle school students to a single building, and one of their smallest elementary schools became a pre-K. Two years in, the community is largely positive about the change. Now, obviously, I'm sure there are some in the community that aren't, I don't mean to paint that overly rosy, but that's the perspective of them. So they felt the key takeaways for them is that it was a really collaborative process, and what won the board over to make the decision was the amount of research and study behind it. So, been using the word study a lot, because that is what I think this board needs to do is study this issue, and I don't necessarily mean produce a written report, although you could have it in a report, but really, what's all the information you need to know? These were some components of the studies that other districts have done, that it's really grounded in either your mission or vision. For us, it's our vision and core beliefs. It really has to include an in-depth analysis of the system. So your enrollment, historic, current, projected, it was really important that people cite the source, which I think is relevant for us. We've heard some comments from people about, is our enrollment really declining, and where did that information come from? I think we have to be really clear about where it comes from. An analysis of the quality of student experience was really important. So, yes, that involves outcomes, meaning student performance, but it's also, what do kids have access to across the system? We've talked about word language in our system. We've talked about access to counseling and nursing, arts. But it also involves class size. And then, in addition to the quality of student experiences, what are the costs to provide those at different scales so that that all is part of what you would then look at? There needs to be a facilities analysis. Thankfully, we have a really good comprehensive facilities plan. We have a lot of this information at our fingertips. And then a cost analysis. What's the per pupil cost in each one of the configurations that are being studied, including the current one? I should have actually said that. One of the things that was really important is when you're studying the configuration, you also study what exists currently so that you have that to compare. I should also just add, we have a lot of this data. So when we get to a conversation about timeline, obviously, there's a lot of pulling together. There's a lot of filling in some holes. But largely, we have this data. You've seen a lot of this data as part of the budget process. So then, the studies really had what are the different configuration options? What's the pro con analysis? And that includes quality of student experience. It includes kind of all those elements. And then, what's the revised costs associated with each model? And then, the study should also specifically outline how you will communicate and engage with the community around it. So those are study announcements. I'll just skip some slides. Oh, no. So here's the different ways that districts have chosen to do the study. So we just talked about the content of the study. Really, what you're going to talk about later is how you will address that. One of the ways that a number of districts chose to do this was to charge a committee of the board. Some of them charged an existing committee. Some of them created a standalone committee to conduct the study. Those subcommittees had non-board members on it, particularly heavy involvement of the superintendent and administration. But there may be others as well. The board could choose to have community members outside of the board be part of that. So you would charge a committee. That committee really needs a clear charge and timeline. You're going to hear that often. And then really active board participation. This is at this committee in particular has a lot of work behind it, right, to be able to do that. Some districts, and I put this on here in interest of full disclosure, but some districts did choose to charge administration to bring back a recommendation. And I can tell you right now that's not my first recommendation to you. But it is something that others have done. And some districts chose to sort of contract out for the entire study. So in this example, the consultant is not just a facilitator. This would be someone to do the study. So that is something that other districts have done. There may be other things. I think when the board comes back to think about this, you may have other ideas about how to approach this work. But those top three are what other districts in Vermont have done. And then just a little bit about community engagement. We're learning a lot about this from the strategic planning process. We're learning what works. And we're also learning how hard this is. This is, that's not a news flash to this board either. Community engagement is hard. And it's especially hard when what you're engaging on is really abstract. So hopes and dreams and, you know, what do we want for our kids? That feels like something really easy to engage with, but it's actually kind of hard. We also know that people come out when something is important to them. We've had our most attendance in this, since I've been here, is when we were talking about mascots, when we were having difficult budget discussions. And configuration will be one of these. We will have lots of engagement. The other thing we know is the board has to be able to engage the community and still preserve your ability to make a decision based on all of the information, of which community opinion is one piece. So one thing for you to consider, especially knowing that one of our agenda items tonight is to affirm the work plan. Is there some board learning or other work that the board needs to do in order to expand on this community engagement? Frankly, knowing we were doing this work is part of why we asked Great Schools Partnership to come to the retreat, to sort of lay some baseline information around community engagement. But you may want to think about some other things. So that's the report part. I'm happy to answer questions clarifying or otherwise that you might need. In terms of a community or facilitator, you said some communities didn't want to outside them to open. How about using community facilitators, folks who have been moderators? I know we have a handful across the district who, is that still a helpful role? I think at least one, actually two districts, one did have their town moderator, a town moderator, it was a big district, because the person was just facilitating. So yes, I do think that's an option. I think the board would decide what is it we want the consultant to do. If they're there to help facilitate, that's a certain skill set. If they're there to do facilitation and any part of the study, then you want to look for someone with that skill set. Here for my example, how long did their study take? Good question. Two years. Two years for that district. Like the process of reconfiguration was two years or the study itself was two years? The study and decision. And then after that two years is when then they, so that's a great question because there's three things involved. There's the study, there's the decision making, and then there's the implementation. And in that district it was two years for the study and the decision. And then they kicked off the implementation process. Now I did not ask exactly how long the implementation was. I don't know if that was the third year. So that I can follow up with. But I think this first step is study and decision. It's that timeline. Because honestly the implementation depends on what you choose. If it's a big reconfiguration, then it might include lots of things. If it's a smaller scale configuration. That's a good question. Maybe we don't have this information to the extent that this configuration study committees had outside membership. Like I'm thinking beyond central office staff. Were there examples of participants and was there any correlation with like successful configuration studies versus unsuccessful depending on who they included? Good question. None of the superintendents, but this does not mean the groups didn't have that. None of the superintendents mentioned committee members aside from board and administration. A couple of them did get into some detail about school community members were part of the engagement process. So that when they were saying here are a couple of options, that part was deeply involved or deeply involved engagement, but I don't believe on the study committee itself. And as a board we're going to have a chance to discuss through board operations. We will get right into right now. It was meant to be more of a report and we would have those conversations and there's some questions that you kind of saw in the packet. We will get into those well when we get into our actions. Is that any other questions? Just in the report. In the Vermont example study you noted that a collaborative, it was a collaborative process. Collaborative amongst what entities? Just now I've narrowed the field. I just eluded that the superintendent is a sheet. She said that in her mind it was board administration and the communities. That if the communities themselves didn't support this idea she doesn't think it would have gone anywhere. Is there's no other questions? We'll move into our next central office team cult report. So that's me again given the time of year. So I would just highlight the substance of the cult report really is a strategic planning update. You'll see in there we are in phase two which is really looking at we have a draft vision and core beliefs. We want to see if we got it right so we are doing some more engagement. I would highlight it's a different type of engagement. It's really meant to be much more targeted. We're looking at focus groups and so the steering committee, strategic planning steering committee is in the process of defining the questions that'll be asked who we might bring in how we're going to recruit them, things like that. The other thing that I would say along with kind of a plea is we pushed out our first thought exchange which is another way to get input on the draft. I'm excited to see it checked today. We have quite a bit of engagement with the platform. So to the extent that you are able to push out those links that I even put a QR code in there if that's helpful it might not be to your own social media or just pushing it out that way that would be great. The more engagement we have with the platform the better. Yeah. So when I went to the link the vision and core beliefs weren't available just the question set. Which link? The link that says please share why there's two links. One is the hub and one is the hub. Yeah. It brought me right to the thought exchange because I wanted to try it before we came in but the actual vision and core beliefs were not there to reference to then answer the question. Well let's look at it together because they are there when I check the links. It's the first thing that I see. Oh you have the same experience? Uh-oh. Because I'm on a phone. Yeah. It shouldn't be. It's supposed to be optimized to a phone. To carry out the distribute but I wanted to see first and it wasn't user friendly for me. We can look at it together. Yeah. I double checked it on Facebook too because it was posted on Facebook and the links work there so I don't know yet. Yeah. I have not had that experience so we'll take a look. We'll take a look. Thank you for pointing that out. Yeah. You know directions on how to find the actual draft to then answer the questions. Maggie I'm seeing the vision and core beliefs document right in the introduction. This is the dial in the same place just in the QR code. If you just scroll right down it's right there. Yeah it's right there. Okay. So you can log in because you have to scroll down to then see it. Well there's a button that says get started and then a button that says next and then it's right there. Any other highlights? Any questions? Any questions? Yeah. Core report. Just the phone that I didn't see those because I went through several steps. Any questions on the call report from board members? No. Okay let's move right along. Thank you. It was very thorough. So thank you for both the presentation and the call report. Moving into the central Vermont Career Center just that you know we're getting ready to go back to school too at the Career Center. One highlight that I wanted to share is that Jodi just came back from with Christina Currier who is a cosmetology person. She's great too. Actually three of our students are working with her up at Berlin. If you guys want to get your hair done there's three of our students working up there at Martha's M&H. Check them out. They're really great. I just got my hair done by them. So they went to Orlando, Florida to a conference and the highlight that I wanted to share that was really exciting from Jodi was like she got the perspective from other, it was a conference for just technical and career centers and they were talking a lot about how they engage starting in first grade. Not necessarily going to the technical center but starting to have those conversations and then again in sixth and seventh grade having the opportunity to actually tour the, so starting a little bit earlier so I just thought we were excited about that. We just had our first meeting last week and we as our board starting the budget process and looking at our review policies which is the thing that we had, we had just adopted the policies from Barry last year and just like because there was too much to do otherwise and this year we're going through a policy review for the first time for the district which is also exciting. Any questions on the career center? We got our Perkins grant authorized which allows us to keep our design and fabrication program going which is super exciting. On other committee reports we don't have any other committee reports today because quality has been met. I do have and I didn't put it here just a BSBA quick question. When we had our retreat we talked about I haven't heard from anybody else but Ursula yet on who wants to go to the conference so it's October 26th and 27th. You could attend just Thursday if you want or you can attend both Thursday and Friday. So let us know we're hoping to have more people join us. New board members you are welcome to and that's the annual conference and it takes place in Lake Maury so it is a drive and you can attend just Thursday or you can attend both Thursday and Friday but boards from across the state come together. Moving right along into the finance committee report because we're a little tight on time everybody had the financial report on their packet so I'm just going to ask are there any questions on the financial report? The finance committee met yesterday so we're fresh. Any news? Yeah pretty exciting yeah pretty exciting. The parking lot looks amazing. Yeah we're going to get into that. Just don't get into the projects yet but if I had No that's okay. All the savings on expenses is that due to our staffing situation? Yeah Do you want to share a little bit on that understand? Yeah just a little bit of instruction in special education again it's super similar to last year's report where those are significantly under budget and it's related to not being able to fill positions and so getting creative about how we provide services to students and creativity is wonderful and great but it isn't what we had planned and so it's not necessarily the best thing that we wanted in that moment it just means that our administrators are very good at thinking creatively. So Megan is there any sense that because of the vacancies and like the staff that our students are suffering academically or in achievement ways? It's a great question. I feel confident that the amount of creativity that Suzanne is referencing is meaning that what we prioritize with the vacancies is student instruction what we are recognizing and in fact the board may hear about this at a September meeting is the creativity to prioritize instruction is causing some challenges on case management and kind of paperwork and we may need some relief around that area. I don't want to pretend that there are no impacts because if I there were no impacts then it might mean we don't need those staff that's not at all what we're saying but I do feel good about it. That's the reason I'm asking. No, I feel good about the creativity and it's not sustainable for a very long time. And Stephen I don't feel put off that I didn't ask you that question but I was looking at the birds argue from the superintendent rather than Stephen can you tell me where it was? Because you were following your roles and responsibilities and you were asking for superintendent because you've been working so hard in governance. Great. I'm perfectly comfortable if you ask Stephen that question also. You can get an idea of that. Okay, thank you. So just one observation that this is probably not a big insight but given that the staffing is not a temporary situation as the new normal seems that that becomes a driver in our configuration study. Absolutely. How do we optimize the way it's available? Yes, exactly. Because that helps make it more manageable so we keep the people we have. And get the best outcomes. Exactly, yep. Any other questions on that? Otherwise I was going to move into the capital improvement and seeing that Chris is here we get to congratulate him and Bill and everybody and Suzanne too and the amazing work at the parking lot looks like night and day. And it's not just the parking lot, we had all those great pictures in our work from all of our schools and so Chris do you want to highlight a couple of things? We actually had three fairly big projects. The parking lot being one, the energy recovery that's on the roof here being two with a boiler project to a palace. Everything is at this point on time, on budget and we're hoping that's part of what will be done here at the end of next week whether they're contracted to have it done by the 15th but you know the amount of work that that crew has put in J.A. McDonald and IMS that did all the concrete work with the weather that we've had this summer and throw a flood in the mix and it's pretty amazing that we are where we are so it looks really good hopefully we get it finished next week but everything's on time and on budget so it's been a crazy summer but we're getting to the end of it and the figure we throw some pictures and they kind of show like the parking lot wasn't just a repay if there's a lot of excavation and storm water structures and piping and sub base material and so it was kind of it shows the whole picture so so is it this one? or the crank? that's the crank I was on the roof when I took that oh wait maybe I'd be really impressed okay you look good modeling for your new thank you well thank you very much I'm just going to call it future proofing the extra car charger stations to the grants so we don't have the chargers but we have the the infrastructure so we don't have to dig back up the parking lot that's really cool and we are chasing down some we sort of found there are some new funding opportunities that can perhaps fund up to 95% of that potential project which would be a really good thing to take advantage of so we we're sort of in the process of investigating what that what does that actually mean is that just a sound bite or is that real? on that same note there was some really fantastic planning while we implemented all of the projects we wanted to add to that with that conduit we're also going to plan ahead for cameras that we want to install in the parking lot so each of the projects I think one thing Bill and Chris are really good at is thinking ahead like how not just in this moment what should this look like but how is it going to impact us a few years down the road five or ten years down the road so cool okay thank you everybody and please thank Bill and the crew now let's move I'm looking for a motion to approve the EMS walking refrigerator please sir yes are we looking into possibly getting FEMA a name for that at all I know there have been talks about I'm just looking at you Billy and I'm not excited to answer the question there have been talks about maybe getting it later and maybe pairing with getting funding from FEMA is one of our priorities so the town has is going to do that type of grant application and they're going to give us money towards the generator or that's what the discussions are I shouldn't make promises out of them but that's the discussions right now we've put you all have approved 95 in your capital budget and so Chris and Bill are doing the planning and meeting with engineers to do an RFP scope budget all of that for the project and then future discussions are coming with the town and they're going to do that application is what they've indicated and yes they've also indicated that they would like that as a an emergency management site thank you thank you okay now I'm looking for a motion to approve the EMS walking refrigerator please sir to approve the use of food service fund balance to pay for a new walk-in refrigerator freezer and the installation of the equipment for an amount not to exceed $31,264 thank you Ursula could I have a second seconds thank you Jonas discussion do you have any questions we'll go ahead then yeah so I was just reading so I apologize that I missed the finance community meeting yesterday so there was a plan to use $262,005 of the fund balance for new equipment was that assuming the $5,000 cost for the fridge and it's now gone up so we're going to use more of it than anticipated if you approve this yes yep and who's Todd Hill he is the lead maintenance gentleman at East Montpelier elementary school thank you he's been there for really really long not but he's been there 15 years almost the fund balance for food service seems very high to me how's it getting that high I would say that the federal reimbursement rates and the universal meals for the state have contributed to that is it would it be fair to say that we budgeted not anticipating that there would be universal meals yes because it would be silly not to yep so part of that is the transfer that the board sends in but I don't know if you all remember but a couple of years ago we actually had to cut that because we were putting too much in because the state said you can't have too much in there so we've actually cut back the transfer from the general budget into it just I think we've got good cost control measures in place where costs stay at a reasonable place and then we get our reimbursements from the federal and the state government so any other questions hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed any abstain to none so let's move back so let's move into policy today the policy committee didn't had a meeting yet but we wanted to reaffirm the adoption of the policy F3 and F4 we did it at our last meeting but if you remember our lawyer recommended that we reaffirm them because we hadn't warned them for the 10 days so I could have a motion for the second reading and policy F3 and F4 thank you a second thank you Ursula any discussion seeing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed any abstain the motion carries thank you everybody alright now moving to the real deal the discussion the board operation part does anybody need three minutes to use the bathroom or we just carry through and maybe we can get done a little early today so timing and approach for the configuration study I'm happy to over read this but finance committee members please weigh in finance committee has had a little bit of a conversation and is offering a possible timeline starting with that part of the conversation so what that recommendation is is that September to December would be the doing of the study the conducting of it the pulling all the information together again as I said earlier largely we have this information this is not so yes there's some work involved so I don't want to pretend there isn't but we have it that in the middle of that time span our presentations would include a status report to the extent that it informs budget discussions the reality is we won't know the answer to this in time for this budget but to the extent that we can have a status report and understand at least a little bit how it informs budget discussions that we would present the study group would present in December to the board January and February would be the board's opportunity to react, discuss engage among itself what did the study miss is there information that needs to be added and sort of make sure that it's ready March to May would be community engagement and action in June and I would say that this timeline you all had a conversation at the board retreat and you sort of acknowledge that this is the bulk of the work for this year so this timeline fits into your board work plan and gives you adequate time for the whole board to engage in this and it was if you guys had a chance to review your work plan it was infused in the work plan we had it in green and now it was just like blocked there and there's some spaces there that were blank in anticipation that we might have a little more work and gives us flexibility to have more meetings if needed and just to add to this the finance committee also agreed to have a month instead of just instead of just one so who is the finance committee volunteering so that was one of the conversations that was one of the conversations we have we have the do you want to go to the next slide before you do it seems to me that that timeline does not put community engagement in the mix between September and December I think it really should be rather than just present something to the community and then say we're going to engage you now between March and May unless we're just developing options which would be then responsive to community engagement because if it's not that then I think we've run into a difficulty offering this is a clarifying answer to that question September to December would be the study the pulling the data the gathering of the various different possible configurations the engagement would be on multiple it's input opportunities on actual options I think that would be part of the planning of the study too like what level of engagement needs to be had to generate the options then study the options and March to May is engaging on options and the foundation of this is the strategic plan so the engagement we're asking the community to focus on between now and February to January is around the plan I think this is about developing options that we then turn around and say we have this plan you're some options what do you think but this reconfiguration part has very direct impact on potentially very direct impact on certain communities who should be engaged early on and particularly since our articles of agreement give communities that may be impacted depending upon definition of what we're doing but I think that is going to be information that comes to us in the study right now there's a study like you're going to go out and gather data which is not necessarily community input it's data like actual hard facts what are our student enrollment community input isn't going to be helpful there can I just clarify one thing that I think might be helpful it's like we go even back to that slide that Megan showed so what we're trying to do right now is get that foundation like you said so if we get the foundation of the core beliefs in the meantime we're going to be all this information is there sort of scattered right now in different places we have looked at it at different points in the last sitting season and it's budgeting part it allows us to preserve the integrity of the strategic planning and then just think about that don't worry about the but the finance committee is going to have to be integrating the information that they're getting for the next budget but this is not something that we're going to automatically have done by next March this is a systems approach to becoming sort of more unified it'll be multi-year it's not going to be like you know by next March we're going to close a school or something like that right it's like we it's so it's not like magically by you know March or May we are going to the action doesn't come as you see there until June and it's on the options that we'll have and those options might be a multi-year approach it doesn't mean that it's all just going to happen right away right if you're developing options for an action to be taken getting the community input at that point you're developing the options is helpful because you'll find out what's palatable and what is not palatable correct and then we but we will be doing that through January and February with the community there will also be lots of budget conversations community engagement there that I'm sure will involve this as well and like Kari said I mean during the strategic plan we will just have completed in September we will have completed phase two of the strategic planning which gathered core beliefs core beliefs from our community and what they care what is important to them and so then we can take some of that information and other things that Florida has said that we'll gather along the way I don't think we're we're not not getting community input right we've been gathering it and what are people care about I think just I mean more broadly I think it's important to engage and encourage engagement from the community at every possible level of this process that's what I think every possible level of the process in part of what we have heard is part of the presentation is that community turnout it sounds like for the strategic planning has not been great because it hasn't involved a mascot or a budget cut and am I incorrect on that? So you know having something like reconfiguring a school where your kids are going to be whatever it means that's when the community will come out and having that upfront and early I think we'll get better feedback from the community rather than saying we have a strategic planning not many people showed up but this is what we think you said and using that as the basis for our options I think is a mistake I was just going to say I think prior to the presentation in December we're not really even as a board going to be having the internal dialogue about it we're coalescing around a few scenarios the generally understood advantages and disadvantages of each as I understand it and then beginning in January and February we're going to be deliberating an open session I think community engagement is unavoidable at that point so maybe it's incorrect to just call March to May community engagement but maybe it's a different phase of community engagement where it's more intentional outreach but people are going to come to us with reactions as soon as that presentation in December is sort of what I am to say and I'm looking forward to that I'm sorry I was just curious Chris what community input are you looking for that would impact or add to the study information well since we don't you know we're not us and we're not the all-powerful us we would hear from community members if they see a configuration and go that just doesn't work for me because this is the other thing who knows because we don't have any models on the board that's why we have to do the models how are we going to create those models by that's a good question Ursula so we may be able to gather data about our buildings and our enrollment and future enrollment and budget impacts equity social and emotional learning impacts and the potential options would come from that information yes but but you don't want to have community input on what those potential options are going to be what's really important to a community let me finish putting it out there this may involve a closure or this may involve moving students from the fifth grade from the sixth grade over to U32 and grade sixth grade up here things like that that so in September maybe next month you would like to go to the community and say we're going to look at configuration we don't have any options for you it could include any number of these wild suppositions we have no data please give us your input no if if we're having options in December we should put them out there in December and wait let me finish engage the community rather than what this is saying you're engaging the community between March and May so I think we're talking similar to just to try to we're going at it from different point of view so what the conductive study gathers the data that some are talking about so it's just gathering the data and the information that we need at the same time in November where we're doing that budget presentation reporting back on how that is going for the budget discussion with the data that it's going to be helpful for our budget discussion and then once we have that they're able to generate some options because what we do know is that our communities are better at sort of reacting that back and forth with us so even if we put out the press and cons of possible just think about the budget process last year that we were thinking about it we will be able to hear back and forth oh yes, no, whatever these are the questions, these are the press and cons this is what it's going to cost so we would be better informed as a board to be able to have a conversation with the community as opposed to just have some speculation the options will be based on that core strategic plan I don't know how else to because I think what will help is if we move into the night besides the timeline which anything including the work plan that we have here is that working document even though it looks linear it's not linear we're always going around asking questions are we doing what we need to do are we engaging what we need to do if we need to inform it differently and if some dates need to change some dates need to change but right now to with our administrators and be realistic about when we could have the study put together the December timeline felt like it would be fit really good into our work plan after we had our retreat the other day and it would be give time enough for our administrators to gather the information that is scattered for better work it's not scattered so we kind of all know it I had a question on does that timeline feel okay to the administration like do you guys think that it's doable I don't yes because the information really is at our fingertips in various presentations we have learned even just from engagement planning that people have a couple questions they would like to add to it that's why I gave that example of where did we get our enrollment data so other than adding things like that I do think it's reasonable can I ask another I don't know what it is but it depends do what it's based on information to include in the study if it's on information to include in the study we listed a lot of things equity effects we're not interested can I like to know those can I just I think I share some of Chris's concerns in terms of if you were going to design it in the ideal state probably give yourself more time and have some input in an earlier phase I think and it also seems like a very big lift for us and for you but it's designed to get us to a place by next summer that we can start to prepare for the next budget cycle I think that's to me a key consideration if we wait to start the study until after the strategic planning we'll miss another year and we're already committed to getting as much community engagement I don't think we've emphasized that enough with the board we want the strategic planning we want all hands on deck to get community input into these next three phases and to ask people to also participate in configuration study input at the same time and budgeting process I think that's too much we have to sort of decide do we want to sequence this in this way I'm comfortable with it myself thank you Carrie let's look at this for a minute so that I don't know if you'll help clarify and we can go back into the timeline is that okay with this yeah okay do you want to summarize sure and you probably there were probably hinted at this several times in the presentation I think the recommendation of the finance committee is that there be a committee charged a smaller committee charged to conduct the study just from a management of 15 people versus a smaller group who can really go in depth the board would want to talk about is that an existing committee is that the finance committee is it the steering committee is it a different committee altogether we've already talked about the administrative involvement it's come up here is there other involvement I think that's worth you talking about but that committee's job is the work around the study everything then gets presented to the board and any discussion decision making and engagement planning is done by the full board so I think it's an open if the study committee says we need more time to study or we need more engagement on the first draft of options all any and all of those things can happen and would all be done as part of the full board and then I think it is a worthwhile question for the board around this consultant slash facilitator piece and would that be helpful to the board to a couple of to add to what Megan said from our finance meeting the finance committee felt like you know if the finance committee was charged with it they were already meeting twice a month to just keep it going it directly affects the budget in the future and the finance committee meetings are open to everybody and that is just the study part it's not deciding completely on consideration it's just the study part and then the second part of that is that the steering committee is already charged with the superintendent evaluation rate there is already a job and that's one of the most important jobs that we have so just highlight that when we are making that decision and I had another thing and I can the facilitator another thought to consider between an outside facilitator and in-house facilitator or we're already working right now grade school's partnership and we have a facilitator that is informed in where the strategic plan and the core believes so that's another I just wanted to throw that there too there's another possibility for facilitation right not a person deciding on what we're doing that would be in form of what the core believes sort of that foundation to help us keep those what I call it is like when you're bowling and just have the guards up so not necessarily controlling but just not letting us go in the yes okay questions I'm going to that you I know you had your hand up but I'm going to Maggie go first you need to make a decision on the consultant slash facilitator I think the trick is to try to they book pretty quickly so at least you know sort of save time or give indication to a couple of people that we will be running a facilitator they've you know so I would say this better meetings and personally feel like it's critical that it's a community member and not someone from an paid private organization outside the community despite all of the knowledge that person has about the strategic plan that's important because I think it's going to be that there's a real need for community trust and that's going to come from somebody that is a known person who they have confidence in even though I love what I enjoyed meeting the person that we're working with I'm sorry Jenny and Ursula and then Kari mine was sort of on the question of a consultant facilitator for community engagement because I was out of something finance committee because I was lacking that meeting had come to the idea that maybe we only needed a facilitator consultant for the community engagement and designing community engagement which I feel like designing community engagement falls into life what greater schools is doing with us I think there's a difference between facilitating the meetings and the discussions getting the information out there and then having somebody who facilitates the conversations that was the point I wanted to make and you made it much better than I would but I would also say in terms of I would not suggest we create a new committee it's just who wants to do a new committee and I think the finance committee makes some sense they deal with money they deal with data how did the rest of the finance committee feel about that idea we would be adding one member to the finance committee at least so you can all think about who would want to join the finance committee that is already on another committee but we don't have to decide that today we haven't warned but that's something to keep in mind and Chris you had a question what if we created a finance ad hoc committee so that unless this is going to be up at every finance committee every finance committee meeting that occurs but you'd have a finance ad hoc committee and folks who are just going to work on this showed up for the meetings with that but if it's going to be every finance committee meeting that you're working on this then that doesn't make sense the other thing before I want to clarify something I think you said that the up until December that the study committee would just be studying it without but I understood that they're going to be presenting options too of reconfiguration you'd say finance committee would be studying the study and then we move into configuration well I think the study committee would study configurations but after we do the first part gathering all the data I think December would be showing configurations and third time sorry for the confusion I was just going to observe that the finance committee is a small committee and I would think that we should invite more than one additional member we lost one member and I think anyone who's able to join should join particularly if this is added to our scope it would be awesome to see any of you there I'm looking right at you also I think just based on what you just said Chris I wanted to reiterate I feel like it's the work of the study committee is very value neutral it's developing what's sort of mathematically feasible it's not saying what it has to be the job of the full board community to say what is aligned with our core beliefs and our vision you can say it's value neutral you can say it's value neutral and that's what I was it's a unless we're non-humans involved in this committee we open whatever and maybe we have to keep the book open to the possibility that someone brings an option from that field yeah and what I was going to say is that ultimately the finance committee is not like everything else we're going to be doing the work but the decision is all of us you know that we just bring recommendations to you right we're not going to make a decision on behalf of the board with that community input and I see you're I'm not going to say still what is the question that's for me well I guess I think maybe it was already answered but it seems to me that the finance committee already has quite a big job in terms of budgeting and everything so the current committee feels that it can also take this on to the addition of a second meeting a month we already meet twice a month when we do budgeting and it's just it's very hard to separate this too from budgeting the numbers of each town on the finance committee yeah right now we have can you guys raise your hand so yeah kind of we are just missing one from Berlin so we'll start we'll start yeah so we we talked about that so we could have so volunteer I feel strongly it's important that at every stage of the process each town is represented and I know that you can say you know all you want but it's going to be objective and it's just you know laying out the options but you know in reality we all bring our biases and emotions into things knowing how some of the communities might be affected I think it's important that from the beginning each one have representation and yeah I think that so we could add two people we could add Dori Wooster board member and Berlin board member to the committee and they you know however many we are would be representing all of the students right Maggie and Ben Choshua and clarifying question as collective board members general board members are we not participating in any so there's your core membership expectation but we're welcome to be participating in any of these not necessarily as voting members of the committee it was not the impression I was given when I stumbled into the finance meeting the first time yeah it's a little different that when you're doing negotiations right because yeah so I think that it would be hard I'm not trying to contradict you Jonas I think it's easier if we just have the members doing the being the ones voting but I think every this is a bigger issue so it's okay to have everybody voting I know it's fine I also think I wonder mechanically the finance committee won't really even necessarily be voting so much on this particular issue they'll be generating well I don't even know that they'll be recommending but that's true here's all the ones we thought of here's how we study them so in some ways are we going to be examining the data that's brought to us and go this is what we think is missing and there would need to be a core group of people it feels a lot like what we do with a quality way in general those reports and look at them and say what we like and what maybe we don't need to bring to the board so whoever wants to come that diversity of thought when we are having the conversations what we can do is try to schedule for a time that works for everybody is just the finance committee meets Tuesdays at 8 in the morning and that's just the reality of it for right now Joshua yeah I appreciate McKellen's point and I think I think you could dovetail nicely with a consultant slash facilitator not a part of the community I mean after all we are part of the community I hope we're trusted to bring information and ideas to the community I'm not saying we shouldn't choose a person as a facilitator if we go that way as a who's already a member of the community but if we can't get that I think the fact that if there was representation from all the towns on the committee that would be important that could be that could help the process is there a possibility that meeting being moved to a time that might be more conducive to the schedules I would imagine if you were I need to remember we would have to look at the schedule because I think that could increase participation for some of us who may not perceive ourselves having that level to participate in an 8 a.m. meeting so it sounds like three meetings a month for the finance committee two meetings a month for the finance committee there's two now no we just when we start budgeting season we move into two that's why we are having two so you start off with when this starts it'd be two starting with two it's Tuesdays Tuesdays at 8 we'll meet remotely yeah there's also we could also suggest that the town members on the finance committee serve as sort of the liaison to the town's whole delegation of the school board and make sure that the other Calis members the other Worcester members the other Middlesex members and so on are sort of fully up to speed with what's going on out of the loop that's a great idea I have a question about data collection Arsala mentioned earlier that she wanted another measure included and I was wondering is there a list of the measures that are being considered and we were just talking about this I don't think it was a list so much whoops this one there's probably the study committee would add to what's in the parentheses what's in the parentheses are just examples so one that isn't finance related but I'm wondering if we can get is like student climate survey so I've seen a lot of like financial and cold numbers but where is the information about student and staff perceptions of their school climate and we have that I'm assuming we still have all that data like we collect that well we have a consistent climate survey in a while that's what is going to be launched consistently starting this year individual schools do but they're not always the same tool and so there is some data but historically looking back won't be a ton but there is a metric moving forward that said climate survey is not the only way to gather student feedback either about their experiences or whatever the study committee could say we want to figure out how students are involved in this let's talk about metrics so this is just meant to say these are a list of things that other folks have studied it's a good starting point the study committee would want to be adding to that list for sure I didn't realize there was a universal tool being used across the district there will be now there will be starting this year we have been talking about doing that it's been an innovation so last year we said we couldn't develop it last year they've been working on the questions so they can launch it this year and you said in parallel to help us I thought there was something associated with PBIS that perhaps is being used at the school level individual schools some do and in fact the PBIS survey was part of one of the spring Colt reports there's a summary of the design team of the survey and PBIS was one of the surveys that they looked at to create the internal one so it's consistent with the district exactly thank you everybody feeling comfortable with the discussion as we are right now and it's an evolving plan we're agreeing that the finance committee our next meeting will appoint two other members to the finance committee okay there's no need for action and right now it's just like we would trust each other and continue this conversation and evolve the plan as needed moving into 6.2 I would love a motion to affirm the board work plan and we can still have discussion I move to affirm the 2023-24 board work plan thank you Jonas second any questions you just infused what we talked about and Magnus infused what we talked about at our retreat seeing none all those in favor do we want to just talk about September 6th that's what I was saying before without showing the candor that in September 6th we don't because we won't be ready for a community engage we're leaving it sort of flexible right now because we are also maybe that would be a great day for having focus groups we don't know that yet so instead of feeling that slot we're leaving it flexible your calendars are still marked with possible work but there might not be anything on September 6th we probably want to decide that tonight we wanted to illustrate for the board that it doesn't appear that you have action or things for September 6th so it's worth asking if you need a meeting on September 6th that's really the question it opens up a date for the strategic planning steering committee to use for its work but we should probably be really clear and take it off the work plan just so we're not confusing anything yeah so we didn't put anything in there what I don't want the board members to do is to like just completely clear your calendar because the strategic planning committee went full full participation of you guys so if we're going to have focus groups it doesn't mean that you guys are going to be there but you might be facilitating something or if you're available at least right now this is being yeah the strategic planning is already like we said in Facebook and Front Forge Forum if you could send it to your friends email lists that would be helpful but yes Megan you're right let's take it out take it out it would not affect the Ed Quality meeting Ed Quality would still meet it's right on the side that's a good question I'm just going to say no meeting is the thought to use that for a community engagement on September 6th not an event so the strategic planning steering committee work has been on populate what are the different focus groups they want who needs to sit on them they're now working on a who are we inviting it's a placeholder date that if they're going to hold a focus group in the evening with a group or two this may end up being an option the steering committee also depending on who the groups are evening might be a great time or it's a terrible time so I think it's more just conceptually holding the date as opposed to like we're holding an event I don't think the steering committee intends to hold an event partially because in this phase that's not the best way to gather the input I actually asked because September 6th is very early in the beginning of the school year I think it's incredibly overwhelming for the majority of at least elementary age families kind of would not just doesn't seem like those who can do so to involve them so all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed any abstain school board district clerk vacancy we still continue to to look for a district clerk if you guys could ask your friends everybody in some other districts has shared that it's retired board members sometimes that can assume that position not to worry we've been following every step of the duties of a clerk and we've notified our select boards of the meeting today we've let the clerks know when we had the vacancy but as we get closer to election in March it would be really nice to have district clerk have we asked the other town clerks in the district and they've all explicitly talked about it we have begged the other asked is a loose word in multiple in different ways I would just add that one of the reasons to highlight that it's been done by former board members is it is not as complicated as being a town clerk right there's learning involved but Rosie's been wonderful she is willing to train and so if you do know someone who's I'm not sure I want to join the board but I want to be involved there's a little bit of a lift certainly around election time but it is a learnable job it's a job we can teach you Chris you're volunteer no I'm just kidding and remind us does it pay yes it has a stipend it's pretty small we could you know yes and if someone's interested who do they contact floor yes it's 500 the board they did when you up to the board stipends you didn't at the time up increase that one it doesn't mean you can't but yeah yeah okay increase that put it on the agenda take vote but then it has to bring it to the steering committee we'll put it in the agenda so it goes on the ballot in March yeah and so far it doesn't seem to be the reason people don't want to do it it was more about the logistic and adding work a lot of our clerks right now don't have assistance and there's been a lot of assistant clerks right and some some do and some been through higher you know there's been a lot but if you know of anybody please send it our way now let's move into a point in a proxy for the this bit annual meeting I'm looking for a motion okay oops sorry is this for this bit okay so I think traditionally that's the superintendent so I'll make a motion that we appoint to be our proxy second moved by Kari and second by Chris any discussion seeing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye any opposed any non-demotion carries okay moving right into our consent agenda looking for a motion to approve our minutes June 21st thank you Jonas second thank you Ursula any discussion amendments they look good all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed any abstain seeing none the motion carries thank you the board orders which we got to pass them around does I know Linda is not here but I'm going to give it to Kari I'm going to pass it to him and then a pen yes that's why I'm giving it to you just because my arm could reach that way there's two here yes are you ready for the board orders number so I will make a motion to approve the July board orders total of $1,147,436 in 29 cents I'll walk over and show you the numbers in just a moment $1,147,436 in 29 cents okay thank you Kari second second thank you Ursula any discussion or questions you've got them in the email the folder is going to go around please make sure to sign all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed any abstain hearing none the motion carries and I would like to make a motion to approve the June orders in a total of $10,990,392 in 57 cents seconds thank you Kari, thank you Chris any questions all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed carries I'm just going to give them a minute and then we'll move into personnel I'm going to make the candy open because we don't taste them so much Ursula is going to take them on unless you want to take them on you have them right there actually you can do it one of them caught in my home town okay but not when I lived there because he would have been retired then okay all set so let's move into approve new teachers and Chris yeah, but let's just do okay Chris is willing to take this on so I move that we approve the following new hires Kirby Wisman special educator Berlin Herbert Perez social studies teacher at U32 middle school social teacher Daniel Velez interventionist at Berlin Catherine McCauley Flippen educational support at Berlin Ruth Friesenden school counselor at Catalyst Elizabeth Bevin's instructional interventionist slash kindergarten at East Montpelier elementary school Samantha Mischkitt science teacher at U32 Elizabeth Semmler work based learning coordinator at U32 Jennifer Pelletier school counselor at U32 and Carla Erbilene at an intensive needs special educator at East Montpelier elementary school great, thank you Chris second thank you Daniel any questions shout out to Jennifer Pelletier former Vermont Arts Councilwoman Rick congratulations to the staff if you read the highlights from finance there's been a lot of work that Carolina Central Office have been doing in order to have as many hires so a shout out to all Central Office staff for the hard work through the summer they've been putting a lot of extra hours to make this possible so thank you and it's exciting to see the labor staff being able to have this many hires I don't think we had this many hires in our first meeting last year so it's exciting so all those in favor please signify by saying aye any opposed abstain none the motion carries we don't have any retirements but rehires who's going to take this I move that we approve the rehire of Mary Ellen Monday schoolwide student support at Romney School second I'm going to give it to Ursula Ursula second all those in favor any questions all those in favor please signify by saying aye any opposed abstain hearing none the motion carries resignations and we sadly accept the resignations of Lindsay Wright middle school studies teacher U32 Michael Abadi special educator teacher at U32 Tess Nepp science teacher U32 and Shannon McKinnon special educator elementary school second second thank you all any questions all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye hearing none the motion carries and that's it for that part of the agenda yes go ahead would it be possible to speak briefly to the qualifications for a provisional licenture in general yeah please stop it may not be so a provisional teaching license is a teaching license so if you have one you are fully licensed to teach it's not it's not considered anything other than a full license it is a process that the superintendent applies for on behalf of an employee so when we hire someone with this is a period of time where we hire people who are coming to education from different pathways and so the licensing department of the agency of ed accepts the application that we submit on the person's behalf the tenets of it depending on the license there's different requirements for what the person has to meet but the biggest thing to remember is the person has to make a plan to achieve the what's needed for the license whether that's a worker internship or whatever within two years and so a provisional license is good for two years if they meet their requirement it moves into a level one teaching license the it is the superintendent's license that those are work under essentially so it's my job to make sure that they're working toward their license and that we're supporting them they receive a mentor just like our others and for special educators who have a provisional license because the state two years ago a year ago because of the extreme shortage in special education they've actually modified the requirements for a provisional in special education and therefore they've increased the support requirements that we have to provide there's some state level oversight to the mentoring and things like that so it's our job to make sure that that is all happening for our provisionally licensed folks it's a process we're used to we just have many more of them at the same time than we have in the past the rest of the state so that leads us right into an update in vacancies we are in better shape than we were in last year I know we just had a financial report that talks about being chronically understaffed and that is still true we are still the positions we are most in need of continue to be paraprofessionals and custodians we have two special educator vacancies currently one of our elementary schools and one at the high school we continue to work to fill those positions we will probably be coming to you with an update about how we are looking to fill those two vacant positions probably at the September board meeting but the good news is it's better than it's been it is still really difficult to find special educators I would just add though we've had great summer applicants we've had people who move into the system miraculously found housing I'm not sure how so that's exciting we've had really interesting people come in excited to get into education and so there's a lot to be happy about and it's really difficult our support staff vacancies are really hard still all right thank you thank you Megan so with that we can look at our future agenda items we usually put our work plan up oh I can do it again do you mind nope sorry I just took it down that's just our practice for our new board members you will have access to this work plan and you can get to see at the end of help us organize and then the steering committee meets in between you know right to Wednesdays before the board meeting and just work on the agenda so this is our next meeting so on the 20th one of the highlights will be as part of the strategic planning process you are one of the focus groups so Jeannie Phillips will come to the board to get your input on the draft vision as an entity so that will be the kind of presentation topic you'll have sort of the normal September actions one of the things you will look at is the budget development timeline draft to just take your first look at that actually you will also approve that timeline I should read all the way over and we already approved the proxy for visbed but we would be appointing a voting member for the resolutions for VSBA at our September meeting will we be rating any of the resolutions at that point we remember winning there's a webinar on September 7th at noon if you guys want to attend and then we can talk about them on September 20th and depending on our workload we can take more time on that but the webinar will be recorded too so if you can be there at noon just sign up you get all the emails from the VSBA sign up to be part of the webinar and then you will get the information to you they'll send you a link and any support documents from the webinar if you sign up and end up not being able to attend happy to it already went out and the regional meetings is September 14th for like a weekly or whatever newsletter that they send out there was a there was an update just this week and I think that leads us to our executive sessions after the executive sessions so we've written the newspaper that does come with orders mentioned about potential consolidation with Montpelier and so I was just asking if there's been any contact any discussion, any whatever with Montpelier I can tell you that my counterpart in Montpelier forwarded me the front porch forum thread so that I'm aware of the well then I read the Titans August yes I read the thread first I mean my thought about that is we are studying configuration options one of the things that you could study is the concept of a broader consolidation obviously what you really be studying for that option is how to start that study because that is not a small lift and I mean I've heard from a couple of people formally nothing formal yet but I wouldn't be surprised if they reach out to us and I think the main thing to consider for us would be like how do we like Megan said how do we weave that into our strategic planning and our configuration planning so we have a meaningful conversation without trying to bring together two communities at the same time that we're doing this so there's more to come and I think that would be that when we see it coming our way we'll add it to our agenda. Do we want to reach out and see if that's even feasible because it would seem that if it is and there's any interest in that that we'd want to do it before we do it reconfiguration because that would certainly have an impact I assume on how we reconfigure. Yeah we definitely as a finance committee we can look at that and integrate it into our one of the options that informs our thinking but yeah because we're going to go into an executive session and just from one of them we probably have some action I also don't want to keep everybody here we usually typically have a public comments at the end of the meeting so if there's anybody in the public that would like to have a public comment right now or from administrators who have any reflection on the meeting please you're welcome Good one to ask me about that high school thing there Chris High school How's your vacation? Okay any reflections for board members and I'm going to let Orca and everybody go I was thinking I dropped a summary for from board form sharing with the steering committee That would be wonderful Any other reflections from board members? It's exciting we have a full board It is super exciting super exciting that we have exciting staff this year this week We welcome new teachers back on Tuesday The kids are coming next Wednesday and it's I forgot to mention at the beginning but just thinking about our surrounding towns both Barry and Montpelier have been going for a lot of recovery and I'm just putting resources we keep thinking of them Montpelier is opening they have hot water they have what they need and we'll be hosting some of their sports team so it's been great to see the community come together So with that I'm going to call for a month of executive session to force a change of residency to include we'll wait for that while we're waiting for that call and we're all done with that call and I just wanted to share this as a point of privilege I don't usually take that but if you haven't checked out the elections in Guatemala look is that I could start crying right now it's a huge deal just think about how lucky we are here it's really me as in Guatemala right now you're leaving a historic moment for that we most of us take for granted it's really so check it out so with that a motion to go in the executive session I'm going to enter executive session discussing student enrollment exceptions to include Megan Roy I think that's it that's it thank you Chris thank you Jonas and then we're going to go to the room next door because we don't have anybody thank you both for staying through yeah