 All right, Lane just left for a minute. Why don't we call the meeting to order at 6.36? And I would like to have everyone who is on this call that's not a board member introduce themselves because there are some people I don't know. So if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself that would be helpful just as we would if you're in wherever we're supposed to be tonight. I'll go first since I'm not on mute. So I'm Teresa Kajensky. I'm from Father Gills, Seagalli and Valley and I'll be talking about your 2019 audit. Thank you. Lindsay Meyer, I'll put you at Randall Telemetry. Thanks. Norris, Julie, I know who's gonna go next. I'm Julie Hinman and I'm a teacher at Randall Telemetry. Thank you. Norris Skolmik, a teacher at Randall Telemetry and also the president of the association. And I'm Beverly Tass, I'm a school counselor at Randall High School. Hi, Beth. I'm Zoe Newmarker, I'm a reporter with the White River Valley Herald. Lane Millington, superintendent. Pietro Logden as well. Okay. Great, great. So, the focus of the meeting today, we're gonna meet with the auditor. We're gonna hear from the union and discuss the grievance and among many other things, we have a school choice discussion, teacher appreciation day discussion, et cetera. The first part of this meeting was going to be to meet with the auditor. So, Pietro, if you wanna wait until we're done with that, that would be fine. I would guess it would take, I don't know, 15 minutes. Do you think Theresa? At the most, depends how many questions you guys have. Okay, so that will be the first part of our meeting. I'm happy to jump out and come back in. Okay, thank you. All right, Theresa, do you wanna start then? Sure. I'm assuming that all of you guys have the audit or have seen it. It was issued on March 30th. So, I guess, a little while ago now, though that seems like that just happened. So, I don't know if you guys all have that electronically or the paper or how you have it, but I'll just talk about a couple of different things and some good things that happened. So, the first thing is that you guys received an unqualified audit opinion, which means we didn't find, in the auditor's opinion, that everything was materially stated. So, that's the good news. I wanna, does everybody have something in front of them or nothing on the audit? I did go out in the board packet. Okay. Oh, yeah. Findings. It's also in the shared drive for the board. Okay. That's all right. I'll talk about a couple of things. So, one thing I just wanna talk about is, and if you have the audit, it's on page 11 of the financial audit and it breaks out on page 11 what all the fund balances were at June 30th, 2019. Understanding that this was quite a while ago, considering it's May 11th, but at that point in the general fund, you had about $1.3 million in your fund balance, of which everything was spoken for, but that you had $42,000 assigned for legal. You had 130,000 that was assigned for special education, $515,338 assigned for the tech center, basically ever since the merging of the consolidation, we still track the tech center's fund balance separately, you guys do. 10,096 dollars assigned for dental use. 45,154 assigned for triple E and then the balance 600 in 10,642 dollars, which was assigned for future budgets. So, and then you can see in the other fund balances, you had stuff, money in the Medicaid fund that has to be obviously spent just for Medicaid reasons. You had two capital projects fund, one that's a transportation reserve fund that had about 1.3 million in it, and then the facilities maintenance reserve fund that had about 3.8 million. So, you guys have a lot of reserves, which is good, especially for this, what we're going through now. And I know there's some talk about how you guys are gonna budget in the future. I heard some questions for the governor last week when he spoke and so hopefully, this puts you guys in a good situation. In the packet, when I, when you guys used to get it in paper form, there was something that was loose and it's called the governance letter. And it's about four pages long and it's just stuff that I'm required to just make sure that you guys are aware of as being, as the governance of the school district. The first thing is that there's, in the financial statements, there are some estimates that are done. The biggest estimate that you guys use is a depreciation on, and we talked about this, I remember right last year, but is a depreciation on your buildings and the equipment. And as you know, that number is, you don't know how long everything's gonna last. So it's depreciated over what we believe is the correct useful life. We did not encounter any difficulties while performing the audit. We passed on a couple of adjustments that we found during the audit. These uncorrected misstatements were due to not recording a prepaid expense in the current and prior year and also not accruing compensated absences. These two things that we didn't, that weren't corrected were not material to the financial statements. And the other piece that I really wanna talk about is last year, as you guys might remember, you had a significant deficiency in your internal controls. Last year meaning 2018, so a couple of years ago. So this year, the district worked really hard and established more effective review and reconciliation policies and started, I think you ended up hiring somebody separate and the financial state, the cash was all reconciled. So I commend that for getting done and the finance office for making sure that that was done. So I just wanted to definitely point that out and there are no significant deficiencies in this year's audit. There's a couple other things I just kind of wanna mention and again, this could be solved by now. I haven't checked with Robin, but there were some still some checkings and savings accounts and investment accounts that were still in the merged entities names. And most of these still kind of had to do with the scholarship fund and some associated funds still not being turned over. So you just need to make sure that that happens going forward. I think it's just because it's kind of like they were separate, but they still need to have the EIN number of the district. And the fund balance policy, there's something that would be great if you guys could just adopt something that was GASB 34, which was basically how to apply some components of fund balances, not a huge issue, but would be good. That's really all I have, but I... Theresa, what does that mean when you say some fund policy? A fund policy, so GASB 54, which is a governmental accounting standards board a while ago in 2011 established this fund balance reporting and governmental fund type definitions. And it's just nothing that the board never adopted as policy, basically it says if you commit funds or if you do different ways of committing the fund balance. The problem with schools is that you're really governed by what the state of Vermont tells you to do. But it is possible that you could have a different, you could be able to commit some funds at a different level, either at the finance manager level or even at the board level. But again, most of what you guys have to do is commit funds based on voters. So it's just really establishing a policy that you're covering this according to the GASB. Are there any other questions for the auditors? Are there any concerns from your... It sounds like there's no other findings, so there are no other concerns from your vantage point. No, I think, you know, it's no other concerns. I think it's hard when the state makes you guys still like budget everything the way you're budgeting and then you have so many account numbers, but really I think that's out of your hands. I think that this year went much better than in the past and I'm hoping that as we get, you know, go forward. Although I think you're gonna have to change accounting software to the state software, which will be another big hurdle. I don't know, does that happen this July 1st? Are they moving it out now? Does anybody know? We are another year out, they pushed it for us. They've been having so many problems with it that they figured it was better off to delay it a little bit, which is important. On a couple of the pieces, just to make sure that we're talking the same language for the board since it was brought up. The policy review that the board that you guys are in the middle of right now, policies G1 and G2 relate exactly to what Teresa's talking about. So those were put in there. And you probably, we didn't understand why they hadn't been put in previously. I know that the previous superintendent had some concerns about that. I think you might have expressed that a little bit about the differentiation between the state policy and the, but I know that there was resistance to put those in, but when we checked it didn't seem like there was any conflict there. So yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah. Great. Good. Is there any other questions? So I just like to confirm each year that in terms of just making sure that there are a lot of eyes on things before everything, do we have structures in place that give you confidence that money's not being embezzled. It's being spent where it should be spent. And so I mean, our audit procedures, just to remind you again, our audit procedures are not designed for specific fraud, but they're designed to make sure that there's no fraud occurring. You know what I mean? Like we're not forensic auditors. We're overall to make sure the financial statements. We go through all the internal controls. We go through walkthroughs of expenses of payroll of deposits and make sure that you guys are complying with the policies that you have. If we felt like the policies weren't good internal control policies, we would report that to you. So to answer your question, we feel like, I can't say there's no fraud occurring because we're not testing for that, but I can say that our audit was designed to be aware of those, and we did not see any. Guess it's up to be clear. And we feel like your controls would find them if they were happening. Do board members have any other questions? Do you have any other comments, Theresa? No, but it was a, well, just one more. It's always a pleasure to come there. Everyone is very welcoming and eager to help us. So I appreciate that. Well, good. Thank you very much. We appreciate all the work. And are you showing up in a Monday evening as well? I don't know if you guys are getting snow, but I live in Williston and the ground is completely covered in snow right now. No idea where this covered came from. But I guess I'm glad I'm driving in it. Yeah, exactly. OK. All right. Thanks again. Yeah, bye-bye. OK. Next on our agenda is a public comment. We will have time for public comment later in the meeting. But does anyone who is currently on the call want to speak to the board? I would. Go ahead, Mara. OK. So I have written a letter that I would like to share with the board. I'm writing this letter and my role as the president of the local business association. As all of us are all too aware, life has changed dramatically for all of us over the last couple of months. To say that the teachers and other school employees jobs are different is a grand understatement. Every teacher and staff member that I know has been putting in the extra time and effort to make sure that the children in our community are having their needs met and continue to learn. This effort might be in developing, videotaping, or uploading lessons, talking with individual students who are having a difficult time, or making sure that our school buildings are safe for all those who still have to be working in them and that our students are fed. It is clear that our working conditions have changed drastically to make sure that our students continue their education in a safe manner. While we are doing what needs to be done, it is important for those of us who are on the front line to have a say in how to best meet the needs of our students in a way that is sustainable and fair to all. Part of the job of the association is to be that voice. To this end, we have asked to work together with the school board to make these decisions. We had hoped that the school board would see that it is in the best interest of our students and our community to come to the table and to work with us in making these critical decisions rather than deciding things unilaterally. We are extremely saddened and disappointed that the board has repeatedly refused to meet with us. Even after a petition requesting these negotiations was presented to the board with 83 signatures. And I want to clarify that the negotiations that we're asking for are different than the current ones to negotiate a new CBA agreement. The conditions we work under has a direct impact on the quality of education that we can provide the children of our community. That is something that we all agree should be our first priority during this time of remote learning. We hope that the board would reconsider its position and join with other districts throughout Vermont to open negotiations to sign an agreement about the current working conditions. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Any other public comment at this time? Okay, I guess not. So our next on the agenda is a hearing of the union grievance which has to do with all of us have gotten the materials on this, the briefing of the employee. So, Nora, as representing the union, you can get to present your case first. Then we'll hear from Lane Millington, a superintendent, and then you have another time to respond to him. After that, the board will go into executive session to discuss amongst ourselves what we want to move forward. So, I'm sorry to interrupt. Before you start, Nora, this is Pietro. Hi, how are you? So, because this is a grievance, if the board wishes, it can go into executive session to hear the grievance. And then when the presentations are done in executive session, the parties are excused and the board enters what is called deliberative session and it considers how best to decide the grievance outside the presence of the parties. Okay. I'm fine doing it either way. It's in your discretion. It's in our discretion as board members? It is. Okay. Since you're our lawyer, is it to our advantage, is there any sort of thinking whether this would be better in public session or executive session? Yeah, I think my default is because it is a contract administration issue, it is not a personnel issue that it is better done in open session if there are people who are interested. The only thing that I would ask is that you let me explain the process to the people who are here, both virtually and to the board members so that everybody is clear on what that process looks like. That sounds great. Okay. And my role just sort of how I typically help boards through this process is I will be the master of ceremonies to make sure people understand the explanation of process and to the extent that it's necessary to enforce process to make sure it's done properly by the parties that is the administration and the association. So what I contemplate and this is the way we do it all over the state is that one side will begin. It will explain why it believes that there has been a violation of the collective bargaining agreement. The parties must present evidence and arguments to the board. And at the end of the presentation, each individual presentation, the board may ask clarifying questions of the party. Now, in this case, because it is a contract administration issue, the union bears the burden of proof that has to go first. If it were a discipline matter, the roles would be reversed. So the union goes first, nor I presume you're going to be speaking for the association. All right. And so when Nora is done with her presentation, the board members may ask her questions. When those are answered to your satisfaction, Elaine will then speak for the administration. The same procedural occur for the administration. And then because the association bears the burden of proof, Nora gets her one last shot of rebuttal and she'll make whatever argument she can think of in the moment as to why Elaine got it all wrong. And then at that point, some more questions from the board of Nora and then we're finished. Nora and Lane will be excused from the process at that point and then board willing, all of us will go into executive session to deliberate to determine whether the board believes there was a violation of the collective bargaining agreement. And any questions on process? None. Okay. And so with your permission, then I would ask Nora to begin her presentation to the board. Okay. So I do have all of this written up and I'm happy to share the document. I wasn't sure if the best way of that's through email or putting it into the chat, I can attempt to do that. Hey, so Nora, I would start to interrupt. I would suggest happy to have you do it through the chat, but to the extent possible, it would not be a bad idea to email it to the board also so they can have those materials with them in executive session. Nora, I'll do that after my presentation then. Outstanding. Okay. So we are grieving the, as Pietro said, the riff of three employees. And these are employees who are currently that I know of that are paid with grant money. We have a special educator for the early education program and two patient language pathologists on therapist. So it's the union's position that article 7.2 of the CBA has been violated. And that reads, the administration or school board tell advise the staff of any contemplated reductions and the professional staff, in order for the association to be heard on the subject which is at a school board meeting before the final decision of specific reductions is made. Lane did notify the association about possible riffs for positions paid with grant money, but was not specific as to which those positions were referring to. And that I think is a really critical issue in our conversations before as he has presented, we did have discussions about title one, a title one position that was paid solely through grant money. And the context for those discussions was whether or not that position should be included in the CBA. And we had discussions around that and then came to the conclusion that they would be in the CBA. This was a interventionist, a math interventionist position and that they were in the CBA. And we talked about that the reasoning behind that was because they are a licensed professional and it was required that they have a license from the state of Vermont in order to have that position. So therefore they're covered under the CBA. That is different than these positions that were then ripped. So when I received that email, my assumption was that Lane was talking about title one position and interventionist position was not and was not talking or referring to these positions. So I did not was not informed about those specifically. The second reason that we feel the CBA has been violated was because of past practice. The past practice has never been that these three positions, even though in the past they were paid in whole or in part with grant money was included in the category that we had talked about in being ripped. As I explained earlier, that discussion was solely in regard to a position that was paid for title one and was a math interventionist position. Even after those discussions happened, the following year and that year as well, those positions, those three positions were, they were, those employees were given full contracts. They were not ripped and in the 2018 and 2019, both and in the 2019 and 2020 contracts, those positions were not ripped. And the funding for them has not changed in these years for it. The association also feels that the term riff means a reduction in force. It is used when a position is being eliminated or plans on being eliminated. These three positions are not being, are not planned on being eliminated. One, the grant money is being sought after and there is a plan in place that if the grant money does not come through to fund those positions. These are positions that are necessary in order for students IEPs needs to be met and for the early elementary program to exist. That you cannot have the preschool program without that educator who is certified for that age child. So the plan is not to eliminate these positions. These positions do need to exist in the district. The plan is that if the grant money does not come through that other funding would be looked at to fund it. I would also contend that it's not in the district's best interest to riff these positions. They do need to be filled. And now the board faces a very real risk of losing these valuable employees. They are free from their contract to look for work elsewhere. And while unemployment rates are indeed high given the current situation that we're in, there is a shortage of special educators and speech language therapists. The district faces the very real risk of losing highly qualified people who we have to fill them. In the document that I will send through email, I went into school spring today and looked up what positions are being sought for special educator and there were over 30 of them that were still posted in school spring and many of them for early childhood special educators. So we may very well lose that person. Many districts in the state fund positions with grant money. I would say that most of them do not rip their employees who are needed to fill them if the money is not locked in by the date that contracts need to be issued. I would ask, is that really the best practice? Is that really in the best interest of the district and our students? But I also just point out the teachers have been going above and beyond the call of duty during this difficult time with remote learning. And this has been especially true for those providing special education services. Is this how the district wants to repay that given that they're still going to need these employees? That's what I have. Thank you. So now it's time for the board to ask any clarifying questions of Nora that it may have. Ann, you look like you have a question, but yes, I'm muted. I just keep forgetting which microphone I've got to turn on or off. I keep going for the one on my picture, but anyway. So I just want to make sure I understand the three points. So you felt that the administration didn't specify which positions were being ripped. They clarify exactly which positions are being ripped. Your second argument, past practice, this hasn't been done in the past. And the funding hasn't really changed from the past as far as you know. Correct. These positions were always funded in part or solely through grant money. For many, many years, including the time. I know that there was some discrepancy and I think Lane had said something about before he became superintendent, but even after he became superintendent, these positions were funded in this manner and these people were not issued with notices. Okay. And then the third sort of argument is that you wouldn't riff. It's sort of a language argument that you wouldn't riff someone if you were planning on having that position anyway and funding it in some other way if grant funding down the line didn't come through. Right, you're not reduced. You're not getting rid of the position. You are simply, things are up in the air for a while as to how you're funding it, but the position is there and plans and the plan is to have it there. Okay. And those are your three main arguments. Yes. Okay, got it. Excellent. Thank you. Anybody else? So not seeing anybody else who wants to ask any questions with your permission, board chair, I will turn over the floor to Lane and let him argue why there was not a violation of the collective bargaining agreement. I'm here. I have a bunch of things that I'll email but I'm gonna try to put some of the evidence up in present view if it works great. If not, then you'll know what I'm referring to at least when you get the email that I feel bad on Nora's part and mine as well because this isn't the best way that I have a presentation like this. To start out adding a little bit of context, I think it's important for the board to understand why the decisions to RIF were made is the first piece. After that, I'll talk a little bit about the specific language of the contract and what we are obligated to do and what we are not obligated to do. Under the executive limitations policies, the superintendent myself is not allowed to place the district in a position of financial liability if those conditions can be foreseen. These staff members have a right under the collective bargaining agreement to receive a new contract by April 15th of each school year. If we provide them with a contract, we are obligated to pay the full value of their contracts. Since these positions are grant funded and the funds are not assured until well after the April 15th deadline, we cannot provide them with contracts without putting the district in a state of severe financial liability. Quite simply, if the grants do not come in, we'd still be obligated to pay the full value of their contracts. Notifying these members of a potential reduction in force each year removes the liability for both the employee and the district. It allows them, the employee, to seek alternative employment in case the funds do not materialize and it protects the district by not obligating us to expenditures we may not have the money to cover. So I'm gonna try to put the article that we're talking about, the first one that the union just stated, the district was out of compliance with. Let me see if I can get it into the presenter view. Let me just a second there. I don't know if you guys can see this or not. We can't, it's clear. 7.2? Yes. All right. So, what the union contention is, there's actually two things that they are contending is that the OSSD violated the collective bargaining agreement specifically that it did not follow the requirements of article seven, section two, which outlines the process for notifying staff of a contemplated reduction in force. Secondly, that it violated past practice in providing RIF notification to grant-funded employees other than those funded under title grants. On the first contention, I think it's important that we read through what this provision actually says. 7.2, the administration or school board shall advise the staff of any contemplated reductions in the professional staff in order for the association to be heard on the subject. If it wishes at a school board meeting before the final decision of specific reductions is made. It is important that we understand what this provision is telling us. First, there is no need to notify Nora or the union leadership, even though I did on April 8th. My responsibility was to notify the staff, which I did and I'll explain that in a little while. The other piece that Nora stated was that the union's position was that a RIF notice is an elimination. It is not by the very wording of this contract. It's a contemplation that we might eliminate. The word contemplate is a verb that means to think about or to have in mind as probable, but not certain. It is important to recognize that a RIF letter does not mean for certain that the position has been cut. They are just notifications that such a cut may happen. The RIF letter provided to employees, and I will email you a sample copy of one, actually of one of the three people that we're talking about makes this plain in the last line that the district is seeking these funds. The provision also clearly implies that all professional staff may be subject to a RIF. There is no ambiguity in this. Professional staff are those that are covered by the CBA and those that are covered by the CBA are considered professional staff. This will be important when we consider the past practice claim. Last thing that this provision requires us to do is to advise the staff. The staff must be advised in time to attend a board meeting to comment on the matter before a final decision to the positions are made. The staff were notified verbally in early April that the RIF notifications were coming by their direct supervisors. The direct supervisors did this to ensure that the staff knew we would still be seeking funding on their behalf and that the funding was fairly certain to come but not 100% assured. That notification happened in early April, well before the April 13th board meeting. The staff were then notified in writing with letters being sent to their homes prior to the April 13th board meeting which they could attend to be heard in front of the board had they chosen to do so. In addition, and this was not required, the union leadership was notified of the RIFs as well on April 8th and this was to ensure that everyone in the association was in the loop and had the notification required to attend a board meeting before a final decision was reached. Nora was sent an email which she referred to and the way that this was referred to in the email to the union leadership was grant funded positions. It was not title funded positions and I'll provide a copy of that email to you when I email all these documents over. Lastly and probably most importantly a final decision has not yet been reached. It will be at least another month before we know if these grants have been secured and if we can offer these positions. So we haven't reached any decision at all yet and whether or not these positions are going to be cut. We've just simply notified the staff that it's a possibility. In summary, the district met all the requirements of 7.2. It notified all affected staff and the union leadership that it was contemplating a reduction in force and did so in a timeframe that allowed those members to ask questions or to be heard at the April 13th board meeting if they so desired. All faculty who received a RIF notification were professional staff under the CBA definition. Given this, the district's actions were wholly in line with our contractual obligations. There have been no violations of article 7.2. Before we go on to the second contention, are there any questions on what's been said so far? So, Lane, I think it's better for you to finish and then the board can ask all the questions they want. Okay, second contention is that because the district provided RIF notifications to more than just those funded under the title grants, it violated past practice. The three members, this grievance is funded under the individuals with disabilities and Education Act grant and the Medicaid grant. While there are rare occasions that past practice claims have merit, past practice is usually the equivalent of the Hail Mary pass in football. These claims are often made when no part of a collective bargaining agreement clearly supports the assertions being made. Past practice only comes into play when there is ambiguity in a contract. As an example, let us pretend that our contract stated that some professional staff could be subject to a RIF. This wording would be ambiguous because the word some does not tell us who amongst the professional staff. In this case, we would look to the past to see who had been RIFed without contention. If that pattern was consistent over a long period of time, both sides could make the argument that a de facto agreement had been reached on who could be RIFed. Hence, the sum would be defined by the practices of the past. In our case, there is no ambiguity in the language because notification of a reduction in force under article 7.2 must be provided to any affected professional staff member. This means that any professional staff member may be subject to a reduction in force. And I'm gonna read that again because it's important. In article 7.2, right? What it's saying is that we must provide notification to any affected professional staff member. This means that any professional staff member may be subject to a reduction in force. Since these grant funded positions are covered under the CBA, these faculty members by definition are professional staff and therefore subject to being RIFed. In summary, past practice can come into play when there's ambiguity in a contract because our contract contains no ambiguity on this issue. There can be no past practice and therefore this claim by the union is baseless. And that's all I've got. Okay, well, Lane, thank you. And board members, any question for the administration? I have a question. They mentioned to more point that these faculty members are required, they're special educations, these pathologists, each pathologist, et cetera, that we are going to need no matter what. Is that true in your? The, these positions, we will need people to provide those services, but there may potentially be other ways of finding funding. We would have to cut somewhere else. And so right now we're in the middle of this waiting game. We have money that is geared towards other purposes and other visions within the district, which we can tap if we absolutely have to, but I don't want to divert that money until we know whether or not these grants are coming in. They come in every year. There hasn't been a year that they haven't, but we are in an unusual year with coronavirus. And so we don't want to put the district into a position of liability where I'm signing people to contracts that I may not have the money to pay for. And again, we don't know if the state government, because it can't, it doesn't have all the resources from taxes that they're predicting. We don't know what the response is gonna be. They may very well claw back some of the money that we are supposed to get in our budget. We don't know. So I don't feel that it's putting the district in a good position under the executive limitations if we are giving folks contracts with money we may not have. So do we need to provide services for these students? Yes, we do. There are other ways of doing it besides with fully these folks. Lane, which is, are you looking at, are you referring to EL 2.3 financial conditions and activities? Is that the one that you're referring to for? I can go back and get it to you if you want. There's about three of them that prevent me from putting the district in a position of financial liability, especially if I can foresee it. And this is one that's potentially foreseen, right? We're not sure if that grant money is available until after we are required to put a contract in people's hands if we're gonna put contracts in their hands. Lane, if I understood Nora correctly, she said that she made the assumption that when they were notified, there was gonna be Title I reductions and not the three positions that were grant. So when you notified the staff, you said you notified them in early April. Did you notify the individuals in particular individuals or was it just a blanket to the staff? There's gonna be three reductions. No, there was more than three reductions because the title staff were a part of this as well. They were told individually by their supervisors, and I have an email from Steve. I can dig up the confirms that he did because it names these people by name. I also notified them individually in writing and they got that prior to that board meeting, that final board meeting on, I think it was April 13th. And so I'll give you a copy of what one of the letters said. No, actually I can read it to you. I've got it open in front of me right now. This is to one of these three people because part of your position is paid for by the IDEAB grant and the fact that these funds are not guaranteed. This letter is to notify you that the portion of your position funded by the grant is subject to a reduction in force. We will once again attempt to fund your position through the grant process, but it is not guaranteed. In other words, we're notifying you that we're contemplating this, but we're still trying to fund your position and as soon as we've got the money here, we're gonna get you your contract in your hand. Thank you. Any other questions for Lane? I had one more comment on Paul's question. I think I may have missed the second, answering the second half of it. These folks are all professional staff, right? They all have contracts under the CBA, Nora said that in her presentation. That means based upon 7.2, they are all subject to RIF with no restrictions. Again, we followed what we were required to do and what we're obligated to do. To Lane's last comments, trigger any questions? I have just one in regard to, so Lane, part of this, well, part of the reason why you're riffing is because of this 7.2 and it says, if you're contemplating this, you need to notify and you're trying to make sure that you're protecting the district from an unpaid liability if those grants don't come in. Normally, those positions would eventually get paid. Is it just because of these current economic conditions that this is coming up? So there's a little bit of a history here and guide me back. In most districts, because we are required to put a contract in a person's hand before the money is assured, in most districts, rifts go out. It's happened in every district that I've been a part of, even though I wasn't in control of rifts in those districts. So this is not an unusual circumstance. The previous administration, and I sent this out in the history behind this a little earlier, I think this morning, the previous administration, their way around this issue, which brought up the contention with the union at the time, was to not allow these people to be a part of the CBA. They were being signed up as under special contracts, and that way they felt that if they're under special contract, they're not under the CBA, they don't have the protections of the union, so they can be let go at will. The folks that Nora is specifically talking about these three individuals that are being paid out of by grants, by different grants than title, they had always been under the CBA. They had always received a contract, but if you look back at those previous contracts, the previous superintendent slipped some wording in there, and the wording under the notes in those contracts said something along the lines is that, you know, 30% of your position is grant funded and these funds are not guaranteed. Assuming my assumption is that the past administration felt that having that in there would allow them to riff these folks at will if the grant funding didn't come through. So again, I'm not gonna assert that that's the case. I don't believe that to be the case, but the folks that Nora are asserting, they have always been under the CBA, that is correct. Because they are under the CBA, they are subject to rifts. That's what 7.2 says. All professional staff must be notified of a rift, which implies that all professional staff can be rift. These are professional staff, they can be rift, no other arguments matter in this presentation. Lane, I have a follow-up to that. I think if I understood Nora correctly, she was implying that the three positions had not been notified of a rift previous, and that was the past practices. I think that's what she was getting at. So what's different from this year than last year? So last year, I don't recall them getting, at least I don't know of it, because there was no complaint. So I assume last year they were not notified that they were gonna be rift. So what's different from last year to this year that this year we decided to riff? Is there a difference? Or I may be wrong, that's my assumption of what Nora was implying when she said that the past practice was being violated. So you have two important pieces there. You've got the past practice piece and why this year and not last year. Remember, two and a half years ago when I came in, things had been done using either special contracts or putting that line in these folks' contracts. Nora and the union did the correct thing in bringing this up that this doesn't look like it's appropriate, and these folks have all been considered under the CBA ever since. And we spoke at that time and told Nora, hey, this just means that they're gonna have to be rift every year because the funding's not guaranteed until after the money comes in. What I didn't realize last year was that we had folks under Medicare and IDEA. Remember, we did a lot of work removing people from title funding and putting them into the regular budget. So don't quote me, but I think there was only one rift notification that went out last year because there was only one person that was still scheduled as far as I could tell to be paid for under the grants. In terms of these employees, they were paid for partially under IDEA and partially under Medicare. I was not aware of it. Steve brought it to my attention this year when we were getting the rift notifications together. And that was when I made sure that those notices went out. But again, it's irrelevant. These folks are professional staff and there is no ambiguity in 7.2. Professional staff must be notified if they're gonna be rift. Therefore, professional staff are those that can be rift. These are professional staff, they can be rift. There's no ambiguity in that, so there's no past practice. Thank you. Yeah. I feel like an auctioneer, right? Going once, going twice, going three times. So with that, we'll talk to you later. Can I just get the opportunity, so basically, I mean, what I'm hearing you say, Lee, is the reason you have to do these rifts is written right in that 7.2 language that you're bound by the language of 7.2 to send out those notices. I'm bound by the executive limitations to not put the district in a state of financial liability. 7.2 is defining who can be rift. Who can be rift? Professional staff can be rift. Professional staff are those that are covered under the CBA. These positions that Nora is speaking of are professional staff. They've always had a contract under the CBA. Therefore, there is nothing restricting us as long as we follow the notification protocols. There is nothing restricting us from rifting them. Okay, so this brings me back to then what's driving this is your interpretation of our executive limitations on you in terms of making a commitment to fund a position without knowing for sure that you're gonna have those grant dollars coming in. And your interpretation is that's too risky given the parameters that we've given you to work with them. And you're saying you still can't do that. You wouldn't do it anyway even if those executive limitations weren't there. I have to because they are. But even if they weren't there it wouldn't be sound financial policy because you would be putting a district in a state of liability. These folks combined together were probably talking on the order of half a million to $600,000. Imagine if those grants didn't come through especially this year in terms of coronavirus and we still had to pay them and didn't have the money to do it. So this has nothing to do with not respecting employees or being harsh to them in the terms of the coronavirus. It's required for basic financial responsibility. No, I feel horrible. Believe me, it was the worst thing in the world in the middle of the coronavirus to have to send out something like this but this is what is required. If we're gonna protect and it doesn't just protect us it wouldn't be in good faith for us to offer a contract to an individual if we don't have the money to pay them. That's not gonna end, that would end well for either side. And giving them the RIF notification allows them the freedom to go off and to look for a position until we notify them that, hey, yeah, we can give you a contract. Here it is. Do you want a sign? Yeah, so. Okay, I mean it this time. Nora, you get to do your rebuttal. Okay, boy, who knew that my mom's child in high school was gonna come into play here? I'm gonna trust you that I am not a lawyer but I do have a few things I wanna comment on. So Lane's first argument was about the financial liability and my question is how do other districts do this because asking around most of the districts don't risk these people who are paid with grants money. They do use them for contracts in central Vermont and don't give them RIF notices. So I don't, I would assume are under the same obligations in terms of financial liability at other districts yet we are able to do this. So I would love to know how they do that. Secondly, I wanted to say the need to notify the association. On this association is legally bound, is my understanding is legally bound to negotiate and to represent all staff members, whether they are union members or not union members. We have to represent them and we negotiate on their behalf. So when you're notifying the staff, part of that is, it's been my understanding that the requirement is to notify the association as well of those risks. That has always been the practice and as far as I know has been decided by other people that that is a necessity to have that be a part of things. I would also say that the title staff, people who, as far as I know, and maybe I'm not aware of all of them, but that those positions were indeed eliminated. There's one in Randolph Elementary School, there was a title one interventionist, map interventionist, actually I don't think it was just map interventionist, played with title one money and was given a RIF notice and that position is no longer there. So it follows that that position was eliminated. And again, I would say these positions that are not positions that are really being eliminated. But there would need to be other ways to provide those services. And you can't have these programs legally without these services being provided. These are legal requirements that the district has to provide those speech and language services to those children on IEPs, students in IEPs and to provide the special education services needed for the early ed program. So I don't think we're in disagreement at all that these people are under the CBA. I don't think that there's any contention or disagreement on that. And therefore, yes, if they were being retro-porsed, if they are being, those positions are eliminated, they do need to be informed under 7.2 and that is part of it. So I'm a little confused by that because I don't think we're in any disagreements there. And I would say that past practice, my last point is that past practice is not only used when there's ambiguity in the contract because I know that there have been cases where past practice has been used when working conditions have changed and if it is not green, if it is not brought to the attention that those working conditions were changed, that then becomes past practice and become accepted working conditions. And that has happened in our district as well as in other districts. So there are other situations where past practice does come into play on both sides of things. Nora, have we got your rebuttal? I think you have my rebuttal. Thank you. And I don't mean to rush you. I'm sorry, if it appears that way, I just want to make sure that it's medium that we got everything. Yeah, I'm just looking through my notes. While Nora looks through her notes, do any board members have questions on the rebuttal? Yes. Nora, you said that your understanding was that at least one of the three positions was actually eliminated? No. There was a title position that was eliminated. Oh, title. OK, gotcha. And that person was riffed. They were given their notice, their riff notification, and that position has indeed been eliminated. OK, so that doesn't pertain to these three grant positions. OK. So I want clarification. So the one thing you're arguing in terms of notification, Nora, is that the union wasn't notified? The union was notified. Lane did send that email. He's going to share it with you. I have the same email. I don't think there's any argument that on April 8th, he told me that there was the possibility of grant funding positions being a limit, being riffed, that there would be riff notices. My assumption was, because of our prior conversations, that that was those title positions that we had talked about before. I had no knowledge that these other positions were even being contemplated and being thought about in terms of possible risks. So that wasn't clear in his notification to you, which position to you is actually talking about. Right. Maybe it's communication error. Right. Others? OK. Nora, well done. Thank you. Pedro, it looks like Katia actually has a question. She's trying to answer that question. And now I'm forgetting my train of thought. So Nora, is it, and Lane, I guess it's kind of, was Lane required to notify you which positions, title versus grant funded? I believe so. I believe it needed to be specific, yeah, which positions were being contemplated and being eliminated or riffed. This is to the union, the letter at the union. OK. Thank you for clarifying that. One more thing. So it's your understanding, Nora, that these services that these positions provide, those services are required in order for the district to be meeting the letter of the law in terms of what the students need. Correct. Yes. You have students who are on IEPs, who are in the preschool programs, and they have to have those IEPs requirements being met. And services have to be provided to them. And in order to do that, you have to have a special educator who has a license for that age, files. So you'd need somebody within those positions. Correct. And the speech and language services are also, those are required under students IEP. And it has to be, it has to be that position, that person or that qualification, that qualification. And they have to have that license in order to legally provide those services. Of course, supervise those services as it's also sometimes how it is done. OK. It depends on how the IEP is written. OK. Not seeing any more questions. I think that is the end of the presentation by the parties. And now the board needs to vote to go into deliberative session slash executive session. I would like to make the motion that we go into deliberative session slash executive session. Is there a second? I second that. That's OK. Ashley's happened it. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. So it is seven forty five and we will be going into executive session without laying for Linda. So you know, Nora. Right. I don't know anyone except the board. Yes, exactly. And all right. Did you get a chance to email your I emailed my stuff over. So I emailed it to Laura. So hopefully you have that, Laura. I can check. So we will be. We will be using a separate link for executive session. Is that right, Linda? Yeah, I think Lane emailed that out to you guys. You have it. He did. And so, Lane, we should just use that link and go into executive session that way. Yeah. OK. Thank you. I think, Lane, don't you have to let us in? Because we don't have district emails. I can. What I can do is you guys don't talk. I'll go over in case somebody needs access. I can give it and then I'll get out. OK, I need to do not talk to me. All right. Thank you. Think I know where to do this. OK. I think all the board members are here now. So we did make the decision in the executive session and we will be emailing both Lane and Laura on our decision in the next day or two. Rachel is going to draft the decision for us. And we did find out from them that we did not need to let you know of our decision right now. You will hear it when that decision is written. So it should be probably two days from now. Thank you very much. And both of you. All right. The next thing on our agenda is another perhaps interesting conversation about school choice. And this came up when in Brookfield, a couple of family has reached out to me to discuss their concern that several families, well, two staff members who live in Brookfield but work in Braintree have chosen to send their kids to Braintree Elementary School. So the question is really a couple of things. First of all, is this a policy that we have open school choice? Is this a benefit really for employees of the district that they are able to take their kids or move their kids to a different school from the town where they reside? And what are the financial implications or equity implications for the elementary school that it involves? For instance, not only does the money go with the student, so Brookfield Elementary School, in this case, would be losing the money for those children, but also equity as far as transportation. Is this equally available to all kids? Transportation, education. The claim that perhaps these teachers at Braintree feel that that teaching and learning situation is better there, either as a quality thing for all children or specifically for their own children. So it sort of opens this can of worms just, is this something that we as a board want to weigh in on? I know that under Brent, so maybe three years ago, when we verged the district and all the elementary schools, the whole subject of possible elementary school choice came up. We disgusted at length and decided that it was, for many reasons, just something we were not going to do, mostly for equity reasons, just because it would be impossible to avail all children of the possibility to transport them and care for them after school, et cetera. So at that point, we sort of pushed it aside and said that was not something we were going to take up. So this question came up. I hadn't realized that it was happening at all, but so where do we stand on this? Or are we going to make a stance on this? Or what's our next step moving forward? So I emailed all of you a couple of days ago parts of the email that this family had sent me, just so that you have some background material for what I learned. And then Lane subsequently also emailed you some, I guess it was a document of how many kids right now are going to schools in towns where they do not reside. So this really is just a discussion because it's not a policy we're going to decide tonight, but it is something that I think is worth sort of having. In our minds is something that's happening now. People are concerned about, at least people in Brookfield. And where do we go from here? We were talking about all coming in as a whole district that it might allow us to be more flexible. But I do also remember the previous superintendent saying, that's a whole can of worms. We don't want to open it. Don't go there. I'm curious what Lane thinks about it. Do you think it could be something that you could manage? Because there would be all sorts of, and I don't know what the legal aspect sort of, except that we are all one district now, but then the funding is still separate sort of. Now, so maybe you can explain a little bit just what might it look like. So I got a couple of comments first off, is that a lot of the assertions, at least that we're in the email from the anonymous person, they are not correct. I went back and we looked at all the students that we had allowed to change schools and for a variety of reasons, but all for hardship reasons. So there is no school choice. If you look at the list, you'll see that there is only one family that is going from Brookfield to Brainfree. Brainfree, yes, it is a teacher, but it wasn't granted because the person was a teacher. It was a Brookfield parent as well, and that's what it was considered under, who had acclaimed hardship that the principal confirmed. So I want to make that clear. I mean, we've got a lot of cases probably just so that we're clear on what's happening before we even talk about whether we should do anything. There were five exchanges between RES and Brainfree. That was almost even. It was two one-way and three the other way. There was one from Brookfield to Brainfree. Three of the six were due to housing changes as well as some trauma background. So in other words, the students got started in one district. We're there for a few years. The parents lost their apartment in the town that they were in, moved to the next town, and said, hey, can my kids stay where they're already established? So those were typically yeses when the parent asked. And we didn't solicit this from the parents. The parents all came forward and asked this of us under hardship. So I think it's kind of important to take a look at the reasons and the rationales in there. In terms of funding, we are all one district. Everybody pays into the same pot, and that money is used to fund everybody. So I don't think that's a concern. The school buses go to all three elementary schools each morning, so I don't think there would be an additional transportation cost. I am not for a wide open school choice, not because it isn't appropriate. It probably is under this new system that we're under where we are one district. But just because of the risk that it could potentially put on the small schools, we've done a very good job of getting the enrollments up there and making them viable. So if we put something into place and people decided that that's what we wanted to do, I would just recommend that we be very kind of thoughtful about how the process would work. I mean, we could use it to potentially funnel students into the smaller schools to make sure that their populations stay up. It all would go down in terms of the policy wording. But again, I'm not for it. These were all hardship cases. Again, the parents came uninvited with problems that they were seeking solutions toward, which is the only reason that they were there. There is no program. I'm not sure who may be saying that in and around Brookfield for teachers to have access either. So I'll leave it at that. Again, I'm not really for it. I could see some benefit to it, though, if it was done well, if it was used to maintain the sizes of the small schools. And I'll leave it at that. Any other questions or statements that anyone wants to make, anything you're thinking about as we look at this? Laura, did you respond to the family or tell them to come to this meeting? Or what was the follow-up communication? I reached out to Lane. Lane suggested that they contact him directly, which they decided they would rather not do, just for some personal reasons, I guess. But then I talked about it with Rachel and Lane at our agenda planning meeting. And because Rachel was aware of the situation also at Braintree, we decided it'd be worth just acknowledging that this is happening and that people might be concerned, or at least in Brookfield seem to know about it because it involves a few children. So we just decided we ought to bring it to the board and figure out, are we just going to let it rest? Are we going to encourage the family or the families of those concerned to talk with Lane about this? The question there was because two Brookfield families, I guess, are both staff members, whether this was something that was being sort of presented or allowed by staff, should we acknowledge that, yes, people who are interested or experienced in the hardship can go and ask to avail themselves of school choice? Or are we just going to not do anything and see what happens? I think so that's what I did. I just figured after, because this seemed to be something that at least people in my community know about, and Rachel and Braintree also know about, and maybe it was something we needed to talk about as a larger process. There's a kind of how I want to go ahead. I'm going to say that there's another piece that may be coming into play here that didn't exist before, and that's the actual preschools. Remember that Braintree started up with the full day preschool first, and so we had a lot of students that were going to that Braintree preschool that weren't Braintree families. They were from Randolph or they were from Brookfield. Some of them spent two years in that preschool, and some of those children were identified with some severe needs in terms of IEPs. And so the team had talked a little bit about the fact was that it'd be very traumatic now that a therapeutic relationship has been established with this child to have them move back to their home district. So the very simple fact that we have preschools, kind of an unintended consequence, may be pushing a little bit of the requests that we're getting. So just add some more context to things. Yeah, thank you. That's interesting. So one concern that I have is that it looks like a factor in making the decision whether to grant a family's request has a lot to do with whether the principals support it. And the teachers are always going to have an advantage in that, because it behooves the principals to make their people happy. And they know them very well. So they have an advantage when it comes to making an argument for changing schools for their children. And I think that's something that needs to be considered. The other comment I have is that this seems to be, as far as what the board's responsibility is, this seems to be a management issue and not a governance issue, so maybe not ours to get into. And yet I think it needs to be clear to our communities that there is a policy in place so that it doesn't feel like favoritism or a benefit that we're offering, but not to everyone, particularly all the taxpayers. Yeah, it would be a policy decision by the board to decide to do this or not at all, or for hardship considerations. Only that would be a board policy. Under what policy? Which of our policies says that we should be deciding who goes to which school? So you have two sets of policy. You have your governance policies. And then you have kind of your more global, usually mandated by the state or federal government policies that you have to follow. But the board's purview is the general policy. The superintendent's purview and the administration's purview is interpreting that policy and finding the best way to put it into practice based upon the context of the schools or the district. So something that's global across the district that, yeah, we're going to do this or no, we're not, that's a global decision that would fall under the board's purview. And the waters get muddy sometimes, for sure. I don't see that as one of our, I mean, you could choose to do that. There's nothing in our policies that say you can't do that, as long as you're following state and federal policies and you're keeping us informed. So if you've decided that that was something that you and the administration wanted to put into place and you wanted to put some procedures up and some reasons for why you're doing it, you have the leeway to do that. Unless we decide to say, no, you can't do that. But you don't, we're not telling you, you can't do that. You have the right, like if you're not comfortable with us considering the hardship cases, you have the right to adjust the policy governance pieces to make it a little bit more strict so that it can't be done or has to be done in a certain way. That is the board's privilege purview. But right now you're right, there's nothing that prevents me from doing what's been happening. Under the board's governance. Boy, did I make it awkward? So maybe what we could, I mean, this comes under treatment of students' parents' guardians under allow students' parents' guardians and community to be unaware of what may be expected and what may not be expected from the district. So maybe part of what we need to do in looking at your interpretation of 2.1 or the EL 2.1 is to have you state what is your procedure for deciding whether or not you're gonna, and that's, do you have, I mean, maybe part of what we need to look at is do you have a written procedure? Is there something in place so that it's fair and that there isn't this interpretation or that parents are aware that that's there? And I can't remember when you did 2.1, but maybe there needs to be something in 2.1 that covers this. But people are aware of how those decisions are being made or what procedures you're following. Yeah, no, I'm quite happy to do that. Sorry about that, I cut somebody off. So you will add to the board policy then, did you say 2.1 and about treatment of parents and students? Well, he's not adding to our policy, he's just, when he does his report to us. Reinterpret. He's gonna clarify, he's gonna reinterpret in and give us some clarification on how that, how he lets people know if, because if you're a teacher in the district, the other thing you know is you know, oh, well, hey, this is going on. How do parents know what's available to them within the district? And here, he could say, we let them know about this and this and maybe part of that is, and we let them know about district changes or not district changes, school changes. And that would go under this policy he would have, that's where he would report on that or give us an idea of what he's put together and how he gets it out to the public and parents. Just a thought, because I could use a little help maybe with the wording. I can provide a little context to this. This isn't something that's advertised. These parents come in, see if I can do an analogy here. You know, I'll have a parent come in and say, hey, you know, my kid, my kid's having a real tough time. Managing on Monday morning is getting back and forth between his mom's house and my house because we don't live together anymore. Is it okay that he not, you know, have to always suffer detentions if he's late on a Monday because of that transfer. You know, those are hardship cases. They come in front of us all the time and there's not often a set of rules to follow so you do what seems to be fair and just and you know, through a good heart, which is what most of these were done for. I mean, people came with the hardships. We checked them out. Part of the reason for talking with the principals was just to confirm that what they were telling me was true. That's what I meant by, you know, supported by the principals before making a decision. They were well investigated. So I'm just trying to, I'm trying to wrap my head around what a possible wording might be or if there's a board, some board ideas or suggestions that would be palatable because these aren't, this isn't like advertised. This isn't like what we do. These aren't our normal operating procedures. These are people coming in saying, hey, I had this horrible thing happen or I'm afraid this horrible thing's gonna happen if we do this. Can you help us with a solution? If that makes sense. It does. I mean, it seems like we don't wanna spell out the process for applying. Because they're gonna attract everybody. Yeah. Right. But it seems like where it belongs is saying, okay, we don't allow schools or we don't, you know, subscribe to school choice except in, you know, in frequent exceptions and they must be approved by the superintendent. I mean, it seems like that's where the tag goes with our policies, not school choice, then acknowledge there are exceptions and that's made on a case by case basis on a decision by the superintendent. But again, yeah, I agree. We do, there's no, we don't wanna make it seem like there's this application process because the policy is we don't have school choice. But acknowledging that there are exceptions, I think is important. I agree with that. I got a call from probably the same Brookfield resident. He had called me and I told him just what we were talking about that. It's not policy, but call Lane, talk to Lane. If it's a hardship case, the board is, you know, Lane and the board are willing to listen. But my feeling was that it was a lot to do with that. It was staff getting this benefit and not necessarily everybody else. So I think that's what, you know, what the feeling that I got from the complaint was, it was, you know, is it a staff benefit or is it for everybody? So it seems like that's what we need to do. Yeah, we need to clear up is that it's, it's not a staff benefit. Yes, I think it's really important to hear. Hardship benefit. But that's why it's important for that person to talk with me because it's real easy to kind of sit down and, you know, not get into the details of all the names, but, you know, I can say, hey, there've been six. You know, only one of them is a staff member, but they weren't considered because they were a staff member. They were considered because they were a Brookfield resident claiming a hardship. And so that may be helpful, but yeah, that may be the easiest way, but I will put some sort of clarifying language out there that on the case-by-case basis for, you know, reasonable hardship. Because I think we've got times when we've got a special education student or a trauma-based student who the services for that student are best provided by a different school than the one that they're in. You know, the RISE program being a perfect example of that. So, you know, there are cases where, you know, there's a good reason and good things for kids that don't apply to everybody. I'm just thinking through. That sounds like a good way to move forward. I think, you know, that would be helpful to everyone involved. And yeah, I think we'll just sort of clarify the situation too, which would be good. I'm sorry to cut that discussion off, but we have a lot more business to do. So I think we really need to keep on moving here. So if you don't mind, let's move along on our agenda. All right, so, next we have to discuss negotiations with unions. That's your lead, Lane. Woo-hoo! So we have been meeting in the time of coronavirus, which is actually, it hasn't been too bad given that the sessions have been remote. And the folks that are on those teams for negotiations can speak up anytime they want to. In terms of the support staff, pretty much they're asking for their school year and part-time staff to have vacation time. They're looking for up to three days of vacation time each year, depending upon years of service. We are currently in the process of calculating the cost of those additional days so that we can consider, you know, that cost as we try to settle in on what a reasonable pay increase would be. They're currently asking for 5.5% of a pay increase each year for both years of the contract. So 5.5% in year one and another 5.5% in year two. We have offered 1.2% in year one and 1% in year two, given the fact that they were all brought up to the high end of the comparable ranges last year. We actually gave them more than they asked for to get them there. In addition to that, they also received a significant amount of benefits in terms of the healthcare overhaul that happened, depending upon who the person is, you know, anywhere from 4,000 to about $19,000 in additional health benefits per person. So it seemed appropriate to keep the numbers, you know, relatively low to try to manage that. We did agree, I give them a lot of credit on a lot of the needed minor language changes. There were a lot of things that were holdovers from back before we were consolidated and they allowed us to make all those changes. And so in terms of the support staff, we've got another round of negotiations set up. I don't know how difficult the negotiations on the salaries will be, that'll be telling. The teachers, we have a tentative agreement in place right now that PHO is putting the wording on. With them giving up two sick leave days and two emergency leave days, as well as equalizing the grievance process in exchange for a sick bank. And they did adopt a lot of the wording that we wanted in their definition of the sick bank and how it would work. There was little other progress in those negotiations. There was one other area where we were trying to exchange some significant contract language that kind of fell apart and we're far apart in terms of salary. They had offered to come down on salary, but it was in combination with us accepting other provisions which we wouldn't accept. So my understanding is that we're still at their initial offer. Their initial offer for salary is they are seeking a 10% increase next year and a 7% increase the year after that. We offered a 1.6 into 1.6% increase. And that is where things stand at this point in time. We did that because that was the cost of living increase calculated by the federal government in October. That actually has changed a lot. Now that coronavirus is here, they're actually calculating something less because inflation has gone down in the time of coronavirus. So those are the big kind of overview pieces where we're at in union negotiations. As far as the teachers are concerned, we have agreed with them that it would be good to get a different set of eyes in on these more difficult issues that we're trying to work out with each other. And so we'll be moving into mediation at the next meeting for that. So unless there's questions. So if we're on like the support staff negotiation committee, are we supposed to be at these meetings? Because I have not gotten any invitations to any meetings. I'm wondering, because you only have a single email with me and that's how the invitations are set out. Let's do this. Do you have my email, Katya? I do, and I do check my orange Southwest email. Yeah, do me a favor, send me, just shoot me a blank email a test and I'll check with Tina to make sure because I do send you out, but I only have one option that comes up when I send you an email. Some people, you know, I was joking with Paul, he's got three different emails, so I ended up sending them to all three. Yeah, I mean, I get most of your emails, so I just have not seen any invitations. So if I was supposed to be at a meeting, I'm sorry, I missed it. That's okay. If you, again, if you shoot me a test email with the, from the address you wanna use, I'll make sure that's the one where we're sending the invites to. Okay, thank you. Okay, moving on, we've got the second reading and perhaps the approval of the revised board policies. This was a very lengthy document that we probably received. Was it in the February meeting or in the March? I think it was the, it was in the March because that was the first reading. And so Linda sent out the copy of these again with this agenda. So hopefully people have had a time to look over it. I know that Ashley and Rachel, I guess, were working with the VSBA and Lane too to help draft these things. And then Lane did a tremendous amount of work revising them. And those were all updated, almost verbatim from the VSBA, the Vermont School Boards Association suggestions. They had a lawyer come in and vet all of them. They do a very good job of that. And so it was just a matter of either updating the language because the laws changed that they're based off of to make sure that they're in alignment with the law. In some cases, we added some that were missing that should have been there. And I gave a little kind of color-coded cover sheet that said, okay, this one was just adjusted. These were added, these were removed. But to go back to the audit that we spoke of, G1 and G2 represent those policies that they were looking for, that they had kind of recommended that we have in there. And so those are a part of this package at this point in time. Are there any questions or clarifications from anyone? Does anyone need something to ask Lane for any clarifications on this? Are we ready for a vote or is there, anything else anyone wants to add or discuss? Do I have a motion to approve the revised board policy draft? Is there a motion to approve them? I make the motion that we approve the board policies as presented. I second. Any further discussion? All right, all those willing to approve the motion, please raise your hand. All right, thank you very much. Looks like we're in unanimous. I am. Okay, moving on. We've got the federally funded employee policy. What is that about? That was also in our packet I saw, but do you want to add anything to that? This is, and I have it somewhere. I'm trying to actually find it. I can throw it up if people need it. Basically, it's in the time of coronavirus, we had as a district, we had said, we're going to pay all our staff, regardless. And then the governor came along and said, yeah, that's what you should be doing. So in support of that, as well as the AOE did. But the problem that comes up is that we have these folks that we were talking about with agreements that are paid for under federal grant monies. The rules for those federal grant monies are different. So in other words, they don't necessarily have to allow those folks to be paid during this time of coronavirus, like we're doing with our regular employees. But if you put that policy into place, that's a temporary policy, stays in existence until the governor's directive on coronavirus goes away, what it will allow is it's just guaranteeing that regardless of the source of funding, people will continue to get paid as they always do. And so if we put this into place, it guarantees that those folks that are being paid for under federal funds can continue to get that money under federal funds and continue to get paid. They're all doing work anyway, remotely. So they're putting in their hours whether this is in place or not. But it would be nice to have it there as a catch-all. So where would those funds come from then? So these are funds that we receive. Some of them are the title funds from the federal government to help us work with students that are in poverty to help them keep up with the regular population. Some of the funds are in IDEAB to help out the students with disabilities. And so since those are federal funds and are controlled by the rules of federal funds, the only way we can 100% guarantee that they're gonna get paid during this time is to put this wording in there. I'm not worried about it either way, but it would be nice to have that temporary wording just to know they're covered. So this sounds like something we need to vote on and approve if you wanna go ahead and do that. Yeah, and the wording's there. So it's just, it's a quick vote of approval for the COVID. It's called paying payments during COVID-19 policy. I wish I could find the darn thing to throw it up here, but it's here. I move to accept the payment of federal employees during the COVID policy that Lincoln has. I'll second it. That's Anne. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please raise your hand. Any opposed? No, okay, great. Thank you. All right, next we have the continuous improvement plan. This is also in our packet. This looked like something that the school administrators and teachers put together. So the continuous improvement plans, these are the school ones at this point in time. These go into determinations for that federal funding, right? They're used, we have to identify what our needs are, in this case at the school level. And once we identify specifically what those needs are, we can apply to use the federal funds to address those needs. It is not required that the board approve these, but it's suggested it just looks good to be able to check that box when we're applying for the federal fund, that yes, the board looked these over and approved them. But it is, it comes out of all the data analysis. They go in, they take a look at the data, their own internal data, the SBAC data, and either the standardized testing, the national data, they use that to find where their weaknesses are specifically in ELA math and science. They describe what their plan is to address those weaknesses. And once that's in place, we use that information to create what are called investments. Investments are basically applications to receive the grant money to put it to that specific purpose. Does anyone have a question for Lane on this? And can I have a motion to approve the continuous improvement plan? I make the motion to approve the continuous improvement plan. I second. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Any opposed? Okay, great. No opposed, Linda. Next. So to discuss the summer day long board retreat. So back in our policy governance training, I guess back in November, we had two wholesome of the VSBA come in one evening and work with us on just on some of our own, improving our own performances of board. She strongly suggested that we have a retreat sometime in the summer for a better part of the day to focus on strategic planning for ourselves, something we've never done. I think it's a great idea. I reached out to VSBA, I've not heard back from them. I'm sure they're very busy. I don't know that she still lists herself as doing this training. So I just wanted to check in with the rest of you, whether you think that's something you'd be willing to put your time in. We may have to do it remotely. We would not do a full day, certainly. But is that something that, you know, as a board, we would be willing and able to commit to sometime, probably in late July, just to do some strategic planning for ourselves in the district. Yes. Is it worth hiring a facilitator to do this with us? Yes, I think so. As a board, we've never, I've never done it as a board. So I think it would be helpful. I would like to make sure that we get someone who's familiar with policy governance, just because those are the policies we're governing ourselves under currently. I think strategic planning would be less, sort of focus necessarily on the policies. It would be, I think they would be important, but not necessarily, you know, we wouldn't necessarily be revising policies, I don't think. But, you know, then I would probably have to go somewhere beyond the SBA, wouldn't you think? They don't seem to have people who are specialized in policy governance. Well, they were talking about getting some people who are a little bit more versed in it. Yeah. I don't know what that's happened, and they're probably dealing with other things at this point, but. Any other thoughts? I'd be more concerned about the situation, what the school board association has to say about strategic planning and less about policy governance for this meeting. I would, I'd much rather have to make from vis-a-vis or somebody that's much more knowledgeable about what the school board is doing, what we could be doing. I'd be more worried about that and less worried about policy governance. I agree with what Paul said, because at that one, that last training we had, it was, I think, very obvious that we probably should have been doing strategic planning all along, and it seemed like it was a real important thing. So if we could do a retreat, kind of just focused on that, and then if we can work in some policy governance, fine, but really focus on the strategic planning. Okay. I agree, I think it's been a weakness for a while, and I certainly could use some guidance with it. So, you know, is anyone disagree and say no, they really don't wanna commit to being part of this? All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and try to schedule. Rachel? I don't wanna do it on July 25th. Okay. It's a birthday in my house. I don't wanna do it all day on my child's birthday. And that's Saturday and July, so. It won't be a Saturday. It won't be a Saturday. All right, next is discuss a superintendent's review by the VSBA. This is something we did last year. We contracted with Nicole Mace, who was the head of the VSBA, and she came and met with Paul and Lane and I, and we drafted up sort of questions she did. And for all the administrators, there were 17 or 19 direct reports to Lane who received this evaluation. We all received a copy of the evaluation. And then using those sort of the feedback we received from those, Lane drafted three or four year-long goals for improving his performance and the district. So it was something sort of that we arrived at collaboratively. And I mean, from my point of view, it really helped me feel that, yes, there was quite a lot of comfort and conviction on the administrator's part that they thought Lane was doing a good job guiding the district, that they felt comfortable, talking with him and working with him. And it seemed like a generally positive process, I thought. And I thought we came up with some valuable goals. So anyway, it was meant to be a yearly process. So that means that we'd be coming up against that right now. VSBA still offers that service. Is that something, is that the same direction you would like to take Lane? Was that sufficiently helpful to you to do that sort of a very similar process, but with a different VSBA facilitator? Yeah, I found value in it. I mean, a lot of it was really self-explanation, which is always a good process. I'm not sure what it means in the context for our current world right now, but it may help also if we engage in strategic planning together in July because some ideas may flow out of there that may flow into the strategic planning piece. That would mean, I think it would mean voting something like $1,000 to the VSBA for that facilitation, which to me last year seemed well worth it. So if there's no objection, I will go ahead and contract with them to do that evaluation again before the end of the year. Rachel would probably involve you and I sitting down with Lane and the VSBA one morning sort of work that out. Alrighty, next is we need to review EL report 2.7 which is the first read of that EL report in our agenda. Would you just want to speak to that, Lane? Yeah, this is actually, luckily this is one of the shorter ones. This one is really geared towards providing provisions, limitations that are geared towards making sure the superintendent isn't putting the district at financial risk, but only in certain circumstances. So not putting the district in financial risk when entering into contracts with professionals whose roles exist outside of the bargaining unit. So these are for the non-union contracts that we have. It's also about making sure I'm protecting our interests by not signing folks into lifetime contracts that I'm not overcompensating these folks relative to the market or changing my own compensation package. And so I report compliance on all the provisions and therefore the policy as a whole. I'm not sure if Robin's, because Robin does a lot of checking on this stuff behind the scenes to kind of confirm it. She has a letter that she usually includes. I'm not sure if that was included yet or not, but it is there, I do have it. And I will make sure that the board gets it. So if there's questions on anything, I'm happy to talk about. And usually it's a first read. It's an opportunity for the board to kind of look it over. And then if there's real, real, you know, in-depth questions for the second read. Did anyone have any questions for Lane at this point? You guys have a lot. We will, we will look for Robin's letter. Yep. Okay, so we'll do a second read next month. So if you get time, read that over. So you have, you know, it's actually what we're looking for. Okay, next is advocacy. Do you have a legislative update? Yeah, how much you want to hear about. So I think that if I were to sum up everything that's going on in the legislature right now, we're all just waiting on a lot of decisions that need to be made given, you know, the environment that we're currently in. There's a tremendous amount of discussion going on about what to do in some of the areas that they're having these discussions about are pretty big. The budget is probably the biggest concern right now. They know in terms of, you know, the tax revenues that are not rolling in because of the coronavirus that they're looking to have to deal with a $54 million shortfall to the education fund. And so they've been talking about ways of mitigating that. They've talked about forcing changes in employee wages or forcing layoffs. They could set things up to claw back money. You know, yeah, we'll give you what you asked for in the budget but you're giving us a million dollars to that back over the course of the year. Similar to what they did with healthcare. On the more positive side, they did receive $1.25 billion as part of the care package from the federal government. And some of that could be allocated to help this. It's money that has to be used to pay for expenses that were incurred because of COVID. And so there's gonna probably be spending most of their time trying to figure out how to divvy up that money. We're also waiting to hear if there's gonna be any kind of flexibility in the use of surpluses. I've already got the plan in place with Robin that, you know, if we have to come to March vote is we will ask the board to create an operational, a general operation surplus reserve fund and then put this year's surplus into that. And then if we need even more money than that, we've got quite a bit as the auditor told you, set aside in the other reserve funds, the transportation reserve fund, the facilities reserve fund. And with a vote on March 2nd by the town, we could ask them to transfer some of that money into the operations fund to cover any shortfall that we might encounter if the government decides to claw back some of the tax money. So again, there's no clear answers yet on that. A lot of discussions, a lot of good discussions. Some of it is actually hopeful and positive, which is nice. Another big issue that they're wrestling with is trying to figure out if schools are gonna open in the fall. And if they decide that they will, what restrictions are gonna be in place, how we're gonna pay for any additional costs that that may incur, right? If we're supplying every student with masks or PPE equipment or having to separate them or split days so that half the students come in, for the first half of the day and then half the students come in for the second half of the day, there would be additional transportation costs with that because we have to run another bus run. So who would pay for that? There's also, it's been heavily recommended that if kids are back in session, they come back to school regularly in the fall that every building has its own full-time nurse. There's one of the requirements that they're talking about and so then it would be how do we pay for that? And I'm not even sure we'd be able, especially if all the districts need to add one or two nurses, if there's enough in the state to cover us all because we have trouble finding it when there's just one or two of those positions open in a year. The other question is that if we're in remote session again in the fall, is the mandate gonna stay in place that we continue to pay everyone, regardless of their ability to work or not? And then probably the one that's a little farther out, but it's gonna be important is they do have a Senate act on the floor trying to modify Act 173. Act 173 was the law that was passed that was changing special education from being funded through reimbursements to being funded through a block grant. We are gonna have an extreme need to provide what are called compensatory services for students. So any student that's on an education plan when schools go back into regular session, they all have to meet with their education teams and decide if because of their disability, they fell behind their peers during this time of remote sessions and then determine what additional resources we have to provide to them to catch them up. And that may be significant. So they have to do some consideration of Act 173 and some consideration about special education funding because it most assuredly will rise dramatically at least for a year or two while those compensatory services are provided to students. And so those are the biggies. There's about the Vermont Superintendent's Association got together and I think they had 20 other questions that needed to be answered by the legislature. And so they have forwarded that to them. These were just the biggest ones I'm concerned. I don't know if there's any questions on that. Wow, there's a lot in flux for sure. Yeah, it's interesting. I really meant the superintendent's report the first, the opening part, wasn't meant to be a complaint or whining, but just so those people really knew. I think that people look in from the outside and things for the most part appear to be running like they always do fairly smoothly, but that's not the case. I, you know, Nora hit it on the head. It's happened for all of us. Even simple things take three to five times longer. And I mean this, you know, myself, the other administrators, some of the teachers, you know, we get 30 hours of work dropped in our lap every day and we're able to do 10 to 15 to 16 hours of it. We're getting further behind every day with all the changes that keep popping up with COVID. So we're hoping there's a light at the end of the tunnel and the kids are back, you know, in the fall. It'll take a lot of this extra burden off. Okay, let's move on to the consent agenda, which I'd like to approve as one. So we've got minutes from the meeting in March and the meeting in April and from the special meeting the day after on in April, we've got to approve professional contracts, more new hires and administrator contracts. What were you gonna say about those? The administrator contract is the, is a Felicia Allard's, the new RTCC director that we're recommending. Okay. And Lane, it's the regular administrators too. It's all the administrators, all the principals. We have to approve the supervisor manager agreement. What is that? So there are master agreements for three categories. There's a level one administrator or level two administrator. And then there's also what are called supervisors. They needed to be updated. Basically I went in, did the more routine formatting, you know, changed it to the new dates. They're two year master agreements. The only substantive change that has been put in there for approval was that all these administrators and supervisors are now bound by the new healthcare agreement. So I changed the wording on the healthcare agreement to basically say that, yes, you know, beginning on January 1st, your old healthcare agreement fades away and you are now bound by the state determined healthcare. So that was the only change that was put into those master agreements. Okay. And there were copies of those in our agenda packet as well. Yeah. Everything else remains the same on them. Yeah. And then we have also a revision to the maternity leave request that we approved a few months ago. And lastly we have an unpaid sabbatical leave request. So there's two there. I'm going to make a recommendation. The first one on the maternity leave, she just, they were trying to plan out the pregnancy and they missed the date they wanted. So they're just adjusting when it starts, when it ends. So I highly recommend that one. The second one is a little more problematic and it's something that we should discuss in executive session. Okay. Well, let's not approve the unpaid leave request. You'll discuss it in executive session, but the rest of the content agenda, I would like to discuss and approve as one. So are there questions, concerns, substitutions on any of the minutes or any questions about anything else that was just listed? I did have one thing. I just wanted to show on the Monday, April 13th meeting, I'm just not listed as present, but I was present at that meeting as a board member. Okay. I've told Linda. Thank you. Linda, you, we could, I'll add her, yep. I think I was doing that meeting by phone. So I probably didn't see anybody. Were there any other sections or substitutions? Well, I just had a quick question. I know we're concerned about getting our math scores up and I noticed there was a new math, seventh or middle school math teacher. Who did you elude? Did we elude somebody? Yeah, Allison Burns, which he was exceptional, took a position closer to home. This person that they are replacing her with was a person that they highly thought to come in and be our math interventionist, but she is so qualified that they want to move her into the regular position. She will be an incredible replacement for Allison. Okay. We should talk a little bit on the math piece and executive session as well because it pertains to personnel. Okay. Are we ready to approve the consent agenda? Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Ben? I make the motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of the unpaid leave request. Second. Second. This is Cachan. All those in favor, please raise your hand. All right, motion carries. Great. Reports and incidental information. So next, Lane, we have your superintendent report. Is there anything you want to highlight, add, or? No, not unless there's any questions. Any questions from anyone? Okay. We've got directors and principals reports. Financial update. How are we doing? Anything we should? Sorry, Ty, I talked with Robin today. She is quite happy with where we are right now in terms of spending. We're hoping to have a very large surplus. We did go into a freeze to try to maximize that surplus. Plus, there are things that we budgeted for that just can't happen under coronavirus like the entire spring sports season that should save a significant amount of money. So she's going to be, she said she'll start on May 15th. She'll have what she needs to start trying to calculate what the surplus is actually going to be. The only thing to really note in terms of the financials is potentially the food service. It is a little bit more expensive how we've been providing food to the families that need during the time of school closure. We serve probably about 280 meals a day which is pretty good size for our district. We do get reimbursed for a lot of it from the federal government, but not all of it. So it is possible that they will have a larger deficit than they normally do. But we have more than enough in the overall budget to cover it. We will be well in the black at the end of the year. We're also still trying to figure out if the government had made some agreements that it would be reimbursing us for a lot of these costs. So we've been tracking them separately under what we call a COVID-19 line in the hopes that they actually come through and reimburse us for this. But we also gotta find out if that food service is supposed to run through the summer or not. That's one of the pieces of guidance that we're waiting on from the legislature and from the AOE. So that's about it. The financials are good. There's no concerns, no issues there. All right. Any other incidental information that we should be made aware of? So go ahead. No, I was just gonna say, we also do have the staff appreciation to talk about as well. Yeah, so we'll talk on the staff appreciation. The only other piece is that we waited until May 8th to get guidance from the AOE. We're trying to do things like graduation and end of year ceremony. They didn't give us much guidance. Basically what they said is that whatever restrictions are in place right here and now, which are pretty restrictive, need to be in place for any of these events that you run, even if the governor loosens them between now and then. So right now our restrictions are we can have 10 people together in one place as long as they're wearing their PPE and their masks. And if they're in an enclosed space, all the windows are open and they're set in six feet apart. So given that, the biggest challenge right now is coordinating with the elementary schools and with the high school and the tech center about how these end of year ceremonies are gonna run. So they're generating ideas and that's gonna be the big discussion at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday. In terms of the staff appreciation, I did send a nice thank you out to the faculty and let them know that the board luncheon wasn't gonna be possible given the fact that we can't congregate and that we would be talking about it in the board meeting a possible alternative. What the cabinet suggested is that we take the money that's set aside for the luncheon and we divvy it up into gift cards for the faculty because the odds of us being able to get together to share a meal before or next fall and possibly even further away than that are highly unlikely. So that was the one idea that they gave. I did check with the HR to make sure that that was legal and ethical and there's no problems at all if the board should decide to do that. But if there are other ideas on what the board can do, I'm happy to support in any way possible. My only question is, when you say gift card to where? We could do just like a generic Visa card. You can, it's got 10 or $12 loaded on it, they can use it anywhere that accepts a Visa. Is that the amount of money that would be available to the faculty member? Off the cuff estimate is probably between $10 and $15 per person is what the range would be somewhere in there. Any thoughts on that proposal? I would be for the generic Visa over in Amazon or tying people into some particular corporation. Yeah, I'm with the animal. If not the generic Visa, then a local business not someplace outside of the area. So supporting a local, I don't know, restaurant or something like that I'm okay with, but I think the generic Visa over, yeah, in Amazon, Descartes or Walmart or something. So shall we get a flame to go ahead to go, you know, figure that out, get a sort of gift card for everyone? Okay, looks like that's a positive. All right, so are there, is there anything else, Lane, that you want to discuss before we move into executive session? No, I think that's it. That was quite a meeting. Yeah, action pack. So we will be moving into executive sessions to talk about personnel issues and negotiation issues and I think that's it. All right, thank you. Thank you, Linda. Where are we gonna find that meeting? Link, right. What I'll do is when I get in there, I can invite you directly from there, you'll get an email. Okay. If I don't see, I'll send you an invite. Okay, my orange, Southwest one. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Hey, question for you guys. I sent some forms for executive session. Does somebody have that so they can take some minutes? Who's our clerk? Who's our clerk? Oh, it's Ashley. I'm sorry, technology is not my friend tonight. That's me and I will do that for you, Linda. Okay, I don't know if you've got the form. I sent forms with the packet, but. I did not. Do the best you can, no worries. All right, thanks. That's what I'm doing. See you guys. Have a good night.