 So we left executive session at 4.43 with no action taken actually 4.42, but it's now 4.43. Next on our agenda is additional data reports for 2021. So in the past at the board retreat, we've compiled a list of data that we hope to have brought to us annually. Hey, Andrew. And so I think that that's the place that we're at again. I don't know if there are specific reports ready, but this is the place where we're looking for typically things like graduation rates, what students plans are after they graduate. And Jamie and I just thought we should revisit the data that we want to see collected. So we haven't always been successful in collecting all the data that we want. I just know that people get really busy, but it would be great if we could create a manageable list and then hold ourselves accountable to that. So Jamie, do you have any more you'd like to say about that? Yeah, I mean, I was thinking if you guys provided us with the type of information you're looking for like graduation day, post-secondary, secondary, I think it makes sense for us to be monitoring the percentage of our students engaging in pathways, the percentage of our students engaging in tech center, just those types of things. I think it'll also be useful as we go to plan the budget. I know Andrew, you gave me feedback on ADM and equalized two full course that I added to the overall SU because I thought that was important for all the local districts. But this would be an addendum to the SU-wide data report. And did you just put something up, Andrew? We I put up, I don't know if people can get in that link. It's the old metrics for success that we had done this a couple of times. I can't remember what iteration that was. It might have been a Todd Sears iteration. So if you can't open it, I can try to share it better. Try doing the link again. It looks like it's just a link to the drive folder. Open it in Google Docs and share it that way. I think that would be pretty nice. Well, I just emailed it to the board. Superintendent 15. So it should be in the board's email, but probably with that link. OK, thank you. No, I got a request to access. I'm sorry. It's probably not my job. I'm trying here. Why is it not Todd's? We're probably OK. Look it. Secret Ray and I are going to work behind the scenes and fix this. I'm sending it to Ray. Ray will fix it. It'll be happy to. I can't. It's working now to make a copy. And it worked. It worked at least here. OK. So the one metric that wasn't mentioned that I think is specific to our district is tuition students, like how are we doing on recruiting? Yes, mine's not loading yet, but. And it probably would be good to look at tuition students as a portion of the like total population of possible tuition students, you know. So that we have a high number or a low number. But the sending schools have higher low numbers of kids in those classes. Thanks, Ray. Yeah, I feel like tuition students as well as voucher students, because I know that we've had some students that actually come from communities with functioning high schools, but that have chosen White River Valley. So when you see that choice, yeah. Yes, yeah. So I think it's worth noting that as well. Ray, can you put that back up again? This it to a Google doc and update the title so it's just Bethel and add the things that we've been talking about. And then I'm curious whether that's a manageable level. Or a manageable amount of data points. The PBIS is already on. When you guys did the climate survey, was that a homemade survey? Or do you use the SES, Sandra? So when we did a climate survey, it was because we went through one of them, yeah, Center for what is it called? Oh, and I'm having a brain cramp of leadership. Yeah, and they did it for free. So that was the only thing I think about climate survey is to do it well, is to use the same one over and over and not create our own. I always saw the SES as kind of a climate survey. Could be. There was we had two surveys we did. There was the Center for Creative Leadership through the Waddington and we might be able to get that through the Vermont Principles Association. And we also did a separate one before we merged because there were some complaints about the leadership. And that was Meg Powden. So that's way back. But that was this super comprehensive and super ridiculously expensive one. Well, I'm happy to reach out to the VPA. I do think having an annual one can really inform your guys's work at the building levels. But I think it's important to share publicly, too. I agree. And I also the thing we did with we didn't survey parents, which I think is important. And we didn't survey students. It was really teachers only. But I think the three partners are essential. I agree. What I could do for the board is work on trying to secure some examples from my colleagues. And then we could add it to an agenda at some point, maybe in December or something and get feedback. And then we could launch, you know, we could do it. I think I like doing those surveys kind of get through February because it can form some of your work for June and the summer in the August. Like, do you think about professional development and things? Nice. But I'm happy to, you know, provide a few examples. And then we could discuss them at a board meeting about which one we liked. The delay. So I missed part of what you said. I'm sorry, Jamie. No, it's all right. I was just saying I'm happy to reach out to my colleagues because I'm, you know, I'm sure of several different issues and different climate surveys, get some feedback from them because they've already met them and then I could bring a couple for you guys to look through and make a decision, which metric we want to use because I'd like to stick with it, like Andrew said, you know, for a while so we can see if we're improving the things. Hey, Andrew, I just want to raise my hand. My only feedback is, is that bringing all of this, I know what the bottom is, is bring this to the annual retreat, all this information. That is hard and it feels much better to break it up throughout the year the way Jamie has. And I know it's not everything on this list, but much easier to do like, OK, I know I'm going to do this this month and it's not all at once. So if there's a way to do that, I'd prefer that. Andrew, I haven't looked at the form close enough to see that that's on there. I would agree with you that I'd like to break this up. At the bottom of the form, it says bring it to this retreat, which I didn't apply for. Right, well, I'm wondering if that's something once we agree on what the data is, if that's something we could request for the October meeting that you make a manageable timeline for when we get this data. Because I feel like we could sit here and debate this as a whole group, but it would be quicker, probably for you as an administrative team to break it down and bring it back. OK, Owen's ready to dance. Yeah, I think, too, like, I mean, on there, it says like for the you know, if the students are going on to a two-year or four-year program or what they're doing out of after they graduate, you know, that that surveys in April, you know, I don't think we would want to wait until now to hear about that. So so yeah, I think it makes sense to, you know, after, you know, after graduation or at the May meeting or the June meeting or whatever, that, you know, that's when that data would be presented. So yeah, I think as things come forward, it makes sense to present them while they're still sort of fresh rather than sitting on until months later. I'm also wondering, am I muted? No, OK, I'm also wondering about SBAC data, SAT, ACT, those sorts of measures. SBAC is on the overall SU one. OK. The SAT, ACT is not. I just think it would be useful in terms of knowing where our students go or what they're doing and their levels are. And since we do, back when this was made for Bethel, Bethel wasn't offering any AP courses. And I know that we do offer AP courses at this point in time, maybe not as robust this year as like they have been, just because this is such an atypical year. But I wonder out of the number of students who take part in those AP courses and take the tests, how many of them get scores high enough that potentially they're getting college credit for those classes? Great point. Lisa, also, if I may. Yeah. I think it's I think it's nice to have the data about the class that's graduating, the thing that we want to do is be looking at patterns and trends. And otherwise, we're looking at anecdotes of like 40 to 50 kids per year, right? And it's great to know that 70 percent of our kids were accepted to two year or four year colleges, and it's good to set those goals. But I think there's also we get to start seeing patterns and looking at oh, we had this many kids involved in co-curriculars and our numbers were here and we can start seeing correlation. Mm hmm. Yeah. That's where, like, I think if we get this stuff kind of reported out throughout the year, but then we put it all on places so that when we're out of our free, we can look at it all at once. Well, the nice thing is, I think the way we've been doing it is it'll be it'll be at least in those board folders so I could easily pull that all together. Yeah. Just before the retreat, because every all these reports now are being saved within your guys' board folder. So I know I wonder if separate from this data, we want sort of a senior report, maybe in in August, would that give people enough time to look at the SAT scores, the AP and the ACT scores? And what I'd be interested in seeing, similar to what Owen said, is that that group's growth over time, which I think we've been doing star 360 long enough now that potentially we could look at that for students that have been ours from seven through 12 or sorry, nine through 12 or potentially even six through 12. If we want to look at the whole system, because what I'd love to see is how we're moving students forward. That's forward growth. Right. Right. So so everybody in the room knows, since that's not something we usually talk about at the board level, decision was made 15 months ago or so to not test 11th and 12th graders with the star 360. So that's not data we've been collecting. OK, we could. I think it costs about three or four hundred dollars a grade level. No, Andrew, I can't hear you. I just don't think there's value in it. Also, I agree that there's enough other testing we do at that age level and enough other data, but that's me. So that's how I shake my head. You know, I mean, I guess I I'll speak as someone who was a high school principal, we also stopped at those grades for the same reason. And we started using some of this other data you were talking about in regards to AP, ACT, things of that nature. We felt like as back. Was a better measure at the high school level for growth. Yeah, I mean, I think that start I think testing for the sake of testing isn't necessary and kids just get super bitter about it. And why wouldn't they? So I think the SAT and the AP tests as students sit for them in the ACT are probably better measures. I'm wondering if at our high school, what the. What the expectations are for students sitting for those tests? Like, I know that some high schools require the PSAT at certain grade levels or require the ACT of all their seniors or juniors. So I guess I don't know enough right now to know what what's reasonable for us to expect and I'd like to know. We do not require that, but that's something we could put in our budget for next year if the board felt strongly about providing that to all students. That's one way to do get more testing of students is to pay for their exams and, you know, you'll get more scores and whatnot out of it. But it also brings your average for the school down when you test everybody with, you know, folks who have no intention of going to college and don't care about sitting for a three-hour test. We see that with the SCAR 360, which only takes 25 minutes. You know, ninth graders that go into there, I don't care. And, you know, it's hard to hold them accountable for for trying. So. But don't we isn't there a way for us to create an aspirational goal of of having students want them to be do an assessment that also provides them an entry point to post-secondary engagement? I'll share my personal experience. My daughter just finished applying to colleges. And at the nine colleges she applied to, they only set fully to require the test. And so when we tried to push her to take the test again as a senior, she's like the colleges make it optional. And this was for the most selective elite colleges that she was applying to. So kids, you know, applying to state schools, there really is no expectation of testing at most schools anymore. I agree. Or that's why it's not for PSAT or for PSAT. Any tests? We still ask for ACT or SAT for high school grads. Yeah, I was going to say, I think the only one in state that doesn't require any form of test is CCB. Well, you know, the other thing I think we should look to do, I mean, I I wonder if we should be saying to students, if you demonstrate proficiency in these areas, then you're awarded proficiency. And I know we still call it credit, but that that I have a lot of success saying to students, if you demonstrate proficiency on SBAC, then that equates to these proficiencies for high school graduation because you demonstrated that within a proficiency based system. And so I think there's some areas that we look to leverage it that way, too. So that students understand this is another way I can demonstrate proficiency. This is another way potentially I could show. No, I have mastered this content. This is where I think the the concept of aspiration and personalized learning. So then students are preparing themselves for an something after secondary education. So it doesn't need to be an SAT or PSAT, but to document their learning and to measure it against other like students nationally or internationally, or even just to create their own, right, their own resume or their own like portfolio of learning. I think that is probably more valuable and more more engaging to students. The SBAC only goes as high as ninth grade, correct? Science is up to 10, right? Science is 11, 11, right? But it's only 11. That's not a ninth or tenth, right? So it's eight to the 11th. I mean, my data pool is pretty limited, but I just struggle with the idea that a student might change their decision at the last minute. And if we don't ask them to sit for a test like the ACT or SAT, that then we end up with a situation. And this literally happened two years ago to a student of mine. She decided she wanted to go into the nursing program at VTC and she hadn't taken any of those tests. And therefore they wouldn't even look at her application. And the score actually mattered less than having actually sat for the test. So I guess that's what I'm thinking about when Owen talks about being aspirational. I just struggle with the idea that we would function in a way that would close doors for students, potentially, because their frontal cortex isn't fully formed yet. And I think sometimes, you know, using the levers we have to help them leave doors open makes a lot of sense to me. Well, for what it's worth, two-thirds of the students with us in the building are sitting for the seniors are sitting for the SAT next to Wednesday. Nice. So that's good. How many students do we have? Many students that take the PSAT each year or how many do that? Is it I mean, I guess it sounds like it's optional for them. Do they have to like pursue it on their own to do that? Or how does that work? That's something we offer in the school for students. I don't know how many students took it last year. In the past, Chris, we have the whole sophomore class took it. I hate the I hate the ranking by grade, too, because we're moving away from that, like Jamie's point about proficiency. If you why couldn't we be taking PSATs in eighth grade? Or or whatever, right? Well, it's part of PSAT is how they identify like national merit scholars. Yeah, that's the path. But it's also we also know that there's a bias on the test. And we also know that it's an industry. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to put on the scales, I think. Yeah, I'm sure they could do it because I mean, I took the SAT when I was in the seventh grade. Yeah. So. Oh, now you're telling us you're a smarty. I know that's what I was just thinking. You're an egghead. I love meeting eggheads. I need to surround myself with smart people. Yeah, it was some program where that it was I forget what some seventh grade test, if you did well on that, then you got invited to Johns Hopkins. It was Duke that was running the program. Yeah, good for you. I'm in favor of giving the PSATs the PSATs sophomore year. I've always it's always been done in my in my schools. Yeah. Well, so for the purposes of this discussion, it seems like we're kind of getting into stuff that the administrators should basically be dealing with in my mind. Like what specific test people take. I can see Lisa's point where we want to make sure like maybe we do have a policy where we make sure they take a test whether they want to go to school, they can or they can't. But other than that, I think we should let the administrators decide, you know, what tests are appropriate. Or I think we should ask for a report that monitors cohort growth using whatever test, you know, seems appropriate for doing that and then let them decide the details and that's what we're paying for. But isn't there also a thing of we should be able to see where kids are on our proficiency scales and isn't that an indicator of growth? Yeah, I agree that that is an indicator of growth. Do you feel like we're at a place with our proficiency based grading that that level of data is being collected? At the middle school, we're just starting at this year, we're going to have all proficiency grading prepare for a backlash from parents. And a board member, it's happened in every town and you know this. I like I think that that's great. But we also should be making sure we're comparing ourselves on a, you know, more than just our school level. But if our proficiencies line up with everything else, so I think that would be helpful. Absolutely. And there every school has also been created needed to create a conversion for people that still have Carnegie mindsets. Mm hmm. So I do appreciate that. I wonder if that's a separate report. I don't know. I like the idea of of a senior report that could come to us and look at that group's growth over time. I feel like that could include qualitative data on meeting proficiencies. Yeah, and also maybe even interviews. I mean, and I like I think Andrew is right. This is our work. Yeah. But I think we need to request like I like the idea of a senior report, but it could also just be kind of a state of the school where you get the what the senior class did, but then kind of a look at the other. Great to to see, you know, how many of our kids are meeting proficiency. And that sort of stuff. Mm hmm. Yeah. We are students. The proficiency graded right now in high school and do they still receive a letter grade or a number grade? I don't know when, but South Royal can stop using letter grades a long time ago. They use a number grade. It's a number grade. We continue to use number grades. OK. The proficiencies or learning expectations are embedded within that curriculum. And depending on the class, the level to which the proficiency learning scales are used varies. So you you'll find some classes where every assignment graded on a proficiency based learning scale and some classes where they're still working towards having a learning scale for every major set for some of the assessment. But I don't want our kids to be hurt by the fact that we're not giving them a number grade or a letter grade. When it comes to college and press, you're right in the right in the college setting. I mean, they they look for a number grade, the letter grades, or what are they looking for now? I mean, our admissions department, when they look at stuff, yeah, you're looking at like, you know, when it comes to different things, they're looking at GPAs and class rank and then SAT, ACT and those types of things. Yeah, you still have to have a GPA and you have to have class rank and definitely those other tests. But the school profile is critical as well to make certain it explains the rigor of the program, being that you provide the different experiences students have and really articulates an overall, you know, course of studies. That's top notch. I mean, I found that the some schools miss the boat, I think, with their school profile and really do a disservice to their students if it doesn't communicate all the offerings the students have and the expectations. I just don't want us to give up a letter grade or a number grade until the colleges change your admission standards. I think a lot of colleges, as we've moved to, as different states have moved to proficiency-based grading, actually calculate their own scores for students because a couple years ago, I was at a meeting and learned that like Middlebury takes the student's transcript and they recalculate the GPA removing like band and PE and things that are considered less academically rigorous. So different schools have different metrics. I don't want to go to a proficiency-based report card completely without a letter grade, without a number grade until colleges are accepting that kind of information. Owen? Yeah, I'm going to post in their chat. There's 85 New England colleges now accept proficiency grading as a way to enter college and they do do a conversion. I also just said, do, do. So I think we are actually in a time period, I think, when we're in transition and I don't think we should ever throw out or put any barriers in front of our kids' success. But I think we need to be open to both ways of getting there. And my understanding, having worked in guidance for years, for 10 years was that it's really important how the student presents themselves, including their GPA, but who they are personally and what they bring to that school and what value they will bring to the school. And I also think that it's important that we teach kids to shop for schools because they're paying for it. I guess as a superintendent, what I've talked to with Reed, I'm less concerned about what the report card looks like. I'm more concerned about how the teaching instruction leads itself to proficiency-based learning. And right now the area that I'm concerned that we don't have is different modes toward graduation and that credits right now are still the way for students to graduate. And that's my concern. I'm with you. How we report it, it needs to be clear. I think it needs to communicate proficiency, right? And it's easy to understand. My worry is that we're still counting credits. And that's something I think, as we're in transition, that we need to move toward not saying you have to do school these ways. Like I said, in a proficiency-based system of a student's highly proficient on the SAT, there should be a way for us to demonstrate proficiency in that. I don't know if we award credits right now, Reed, or what we do, but that should be a mode that we can say, no, you did achieve something. And that's the area I'd like us to continue to focus our work on. But it's a state thing. Well, the credits have gone away. I mean, we shouldn't be counting credits without that lie. Yeah, that's the problem right now. Yeah, we are behind in that regard. That was last year, right? 2020. One of the things that's not counted on this report, but that we also thought about on the WICUM side of things, which we said, we would revisit once we have a few years under our belt, and I feel like we do, is whether or not we should have any sort of capstone project. And I don't know if now is the time to start thinking. I mean, I feel like this school year is maybe a hard year to think about it, but at the same time, one of the things that I'm reading in literature about distance learning and remote learning is that students need, you know, the motivation of project based experience, which a capstone can expose kids to members of their community, peer readiness, all sorts of things. But I'm just wondering what the thinking is about that. Among board members and members of our administrative team. I'm in favor of that, Lisa. I have a strong opinion about that. And we, I'm proud of the work at WICUM before we marched where we created a gateway program. And we studied several programs around the state and nationally in that it wasn't just your senior year, it was every year. And like us, also like adults, we have to produce projects. We work on things and then we present them and then we get feedback. And it's not just good practice. It's also about teaching kids that they could work from their passion, but also how to organize their thinking and learning and how to present that. It can be group presented. It can be hands on. It could be all cognitive and intellectual. I think it does work with the flexible pathways model too, but no dioramas. Unless they're in a museum. Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen a diorama that's a capstone project for a senior. I mean, I'll just add, I think we have to trickle that up. I think we have to start that young and start working on those skill sets and then you move it up. I found that the quality of the work was much higher. If you start with students in like three, five. Yeah. And you teach students how to, you know, have a passion and have personalized learning. And it's a really authentic way to start to introduce that work. And you trick what up as you go and you increase the rigor as you go, like Owen was saying, I don't think it can be one stop shopping because I think if we, if we don't explicitly teach those skills, sometimes we set our seniors up and we say, oh, we have worked on those skills the whole time. And it's also really, truly work on those transferable skills. And I also find it increases the rigor in written expression and great deal. So are we thinking like capstones at the end of fifth and eighth grade and then finally phasing back in a senior project? I think it should be every grade starting in middle school. Okay. I think it should be through 12. I don't, I'm all for like pre K through five too. But I know that I could help trickle that up through the middle school. I had another thing on Andrew's list, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I think that we could start it like that and it could be, and I think we could really base it in the personalized learning model. But the way we did it in Whitcomb was those early grades, like seventh grade is where we started it. They, it was really, it was really hand holding. And, you know, it was also like really focused on writing and the transferable skills. And as they got older, it got more personal. And the expectations were much higher. And the critique was much more intense. I just noticed that Lisa was very unmuted. And I'm wondering if that's because she wanted to jump into this conversation. I had something a few, a few people ago, and I think I've forgotten what I was going to ask. That's all right. I'll, it'll come back to me, I suppose. If it does. Camera on. Okay. Well, as soon as I will try to be more watchful. Okay. So I've done some editing and I think maybe Andrew has two in this document and I just want to put it in our chat. So everybody can take a look and see if we're satisfied with the metrics that we have there. Or if there's anything we feel like we need to add. Oh, I was taking notes and was going to do it for you. Look at you guys. Okay. So if anybody wants to, I'm wondering if we want to mute our cameras, take like a five minute break. If anyone needs to refill their water or run to the bathroom. And then we'll have a discussion. Warm cool feedback about this list. Okay. Everybody's frozen on my screen. So I'm going to take that as affirmation. So five minutes. So just waiting for a couple more people to join us. Andrew, who's picture do you have on your sweater? That looks like you. It's me. It's me. We can't hear you. You're muted. We all are wearing our smiling faces so that kids can see our smiles even when we're wearing. That's an amazing idea. I can't take any credit. It was a hospital that did it first and, but we bought a button machine and made everyone's face. So they have the capacity to wear their face on their shirt. Board members could have their own buttons too. If you want your face on a button, I'm your girl. I also read went through an activity that people have been doing at some schools where they have teachers first model it and then have students follow through on like the reasons why they wear their masks. So they make a poster like the reason why I wear my mask. So people in your lives that you care about just so that if kids, like if it gets hard as it inevitably does to wear a mask all day, you know, you've got that reminder. I wear my mask for you. Right. I do. Yep. Plus I like the fashion. I know my husband works with a woman who's making masks and every time she makes one or that he thinks I'll like, I just have so many now. I'm getting people masks for their birthday. Feels like the right thing to do. So our break has gone a little longer waiting for a couple of people to come back. I'm hoping that maybe they can hear my voice. So in the interest of time, I'd like to move forward. I hope everybody had an opportunity to look at this document. And I'd like to do sort of a rapid fire tuning protocol. So maybe we'll look at it, ask any questions that we have about the document, make sure that it's giving us the information that we feel like we want to have. Then offer warm and cool feedback about this document. And then modify as needed. And then move on to the next part of our agenda. Does that make sense? As a way to proceed. Yes. Is it possible to have commentary put on the document so that it could be documented what people are saying? Would someone like to take notes? It just slows down my facilitation if I'm taking notes and trying to facilitate at the same time. Okay. I'm taking notes so far. You're my best to keep track of who says what. Okay. I think that what Owen was asking, it was for comments in the white river union district metrics for success document. Okay. If you, and did you, did you unmute specifically for that, Lisa? Because I saw that you unmuted earlier. I have. Yeah. Well, you know, my thoughts go through me. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. So if I have a comment and I lose it, then it's lost. Cause I'm. But so I do want to, I'll add. As far as looking at the metrics for success, the edited version. Oh, and you're wanting to make sure that if somebody has feedback that we're connecting that feedback to a name, is that correct? Well, there's actually a commentary. So if you want to do it, the person could make their own comment. Oh, okay. Perfect. Andrew, can you walk people through how to do that, please? Cause I forget. So you highlight it. Yep. After you show us. Yeah. So I already did it. So for example, I highlighted the words metrics for success and then a box pops up and then you just can say your notes in it. And if you want, you do the at side or the plus sign in front of somebody's name and you assign that to them. Anyways, I'm happy to mostly do this. It's fine. Let's just rock it out. And if we can help. All right. I'm just sending Jamie a quick message for the conference room in case they want to join us again. All right. So any questions of clarification or other questions about this document that people may have? What's the time on this? How much time do we want to spend on this? I don't, I. I'm terrible at that. How much time do you think it's appropriate to spend on questions? Related to this. Cool. And comments. Yep. So we'll start with questions. Let's say 15 minutes. Okay. Does anyone want to be the timekeeper? So if we're going to pay attention to time, Andrew, we'll do that as well. Okay. I'm going to multitask. I already put my thoughts on. Okay. I don't get that. So it would be awesome if you could share that with me. Okay. Okay. So for me. I would like to see something. And where they. And where they end up those population numbers, whether they're participating at a school degree or a larger. Or. Yeah. Become full-time students over time. Does that make sense? We broke up on that. All right. I guess I'd love to see. Some measurement or monitoring of homeschool families and. Yeah. I like it. Because there's some that become full-time students. There's some that continue to take one or two classes and we can't really. Students, but their involvement. You know, whether it's just. Through sports or whether. Drama or a couple. Elected. I'd love to see how. Nice. Happens over time. I also think it would be good to maybe even survey them. And. I'm wondering. I think we have the data, but. Data such as like students that. I don't know that attend. I don't know. Never mind. I haven't thought it through. Okay. Any other questions of either clarification or deeper questions about. This situation. Not situation. I'm sorry. About this document. Go ahead. So we're going to add a column. Another column that has dates. Oh, that. I don't know. I haven't thought it through. Okay. Any other questions of either clarification or deeper questions about. Another column that has dates that we can expect them to come to board meetings. Different things that makes better sense. And then are we agreeing though that there'll be a compilation at some point. Or. We already talked about this. I thought that you guys were going to give this to the admin group to put dates on. And then bring it back to you. And then the compilation. I can pull this data just from the monthly reports and put it into one folder. Okay. Okay. So the superintendent is in charge of that. I got it. Good. Who's in charge of it. A complete report will be prepared by the superintendent. All right. So my one question would be, you know, we had our. Racial equity statements. Do we want to have any racial equity. Metrics or like, I guess with all of these, we could be breaking them down by race. We could be breaking them down by race. We could be breaking them down by race. In addition to what we do, or like our population numbers to low to make it sense to do that. Or, you know, just how do we want to address that part of this? I'm thinking that that those two groups that are working. With the two facilitators, Andrew. As part of that policy that they're working on. I'm assuming that they're going to have some way for us to measure it. Every other policy I've seen that would that they produced. I just don't feel like I have enough expertise to add in a thing. To necessarily know how we should measure that. Although I think we need to. Okay. When that comes out, we should add it to this. Yeah. You feel about that. The work you've done. You know, in your professional life around this work. Or Owen, but I feel like that group should weigh in. Yeah, I feel like that makes a lot of sense. Right. Okay. Any other questions about this? Or thoughts on anything that we should add. Or that you wish you had. So. As long as the notes reflect the piece about equity. I'm happy to defer that. Until we hear from that group. I don't want to lose that thread that Andrew brought up though. The equity group is really just working from an interview process right now. So is it also a place where we would put our attendance. Data. Including like truancy. Letters like how many people we've moved to maybe the state. I don't know. It seems like it could all be part of your guys is comprehensive social emotion. Better at those good because the title is metrics for success. And I think that it's important to measure those things to move towards success, of course. Right. Good. One of the things that when I read this carefully when we took our break that I thought about. One of the things when we originally drafted this document that we were curious about, and I remain curious about this because I think one of the. One of the things that is most important about school for kids is connections with adults that care about them. And so the teacher attendance piece by like percentage rate. I don't want to necessarily know anyone's personnel file. But I think that it can be indicative of it being a hard place to work if you have a lot of people absent all the time. And it also reduces the quality of education that students are receiving when their teachers are absent and they're stopped by a sub regularly. So I just wanted to ask what the group thinks about leaving that in or is that an unreasonable request? I guess I would ask of the administration. I'd be comfortable doing it. I might do it in executive session under personnel. I mean, I guess like how if you have two teachers that have pregnancies with that show up under absences or is that different because that doesn't reflect on climate at all? You know, I think that that's kind of the sort of thing that if you have a serious illness or something like. Can you measure unexcused absences or something? I think it's the impact on the education in the classroom with the teacher missing. I wonder if we have an overall percentage, but then as a narrative portion of the report, Jamie or the building administrators, whoever presents it could say, but yes, we had three teachers have babies this year and one person battling cancer and that accounted for X percent. Nice. So I wonder if we have the raw data and then narrative information. I would like each principal report on their school culture because I think that that's key to how the faculty react and what they do. I don't know. In the schools that I've had, I've never felt that those days that are given in the contract for whatever were, I've never felt that a teacher was abusing them. And if I did, I'd go to the teacher and talk to them about it. Right. So where it says climate survey, would you feel better if we added culture and climate survey? And if there were some pieces about the building culture, I think that's often looped together, but we could be more explicit with that. Well, Is that something the association does every year, Jamie? Did they send some kind of survey or was that just last year that they did it? I think that was last year. Some schools have a culture committee that I know Stathrelton used to. I've never had one in my school, but I've always thought that was a good idea. But I think a principal should constantly be looking at the culture of his school. And I feel like the principals could report on that. I think they can explain what their culture is. I think that's good. Andrea, any other question? Just a comment. There is a climate group that works between both schools. They're actually working together, but it wouldn't say, I mean, they do like fantastically fun things and celebrate birthdays and it's, it's nice. And they're building, using traditions from both schools now going forward this year. They met this summer for the first time. So I know there's a Friday get together that was planned last week and they have other things they're trying to do given, given the global pandemic too. That makes it more challenging, no doubt. A little bit more, but I appreciate that they really took it upon themselves to try to bring the group together. Really, the teachers did. And the other thing, you know, I don't know, if I had teachers taken personal days at the same time and it was causing a problem in my school as far as coverage or I would talk to them. And I always found that a teacher would try to change their schedule to help out. And I, I think communication between the people, between the principal and his staff are really important. And if it's done right, you get all sorts of cooperation. Jamie. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I agree. Thank you. Okay. So other thoughts on this, we have. Extra curriculars, curriculum, climate, survey, needs to under extra curriculum. I would be very interested in us having quantitative data to that to about the percentage instead of participating. And I also would like to break that down by gender. Yes. I just think that that's a metric. I just think if you look at real genuine, you heard me say this before when I worked at Randolph, but I think those are some of the ways that you can create really authentic relationships between students and staff. And I also was thinking in that we should be measuring what percentage of our staff are engaged in extra curricular offerings in regards to offering clubs, offer, you know, coaching sports, doing the drama. I'd be really interested in seeing that percentage of our staff doing that because I do think you create some really long lasting authentic relationships when your staff and students are doing those common interests together. I think about the knitting club we started at Randolph and some of those types of groups where students in the future had great conversations, but they were doing something that they both enjoyed. Yeah. And those relationships can, I mean, they're so important. All right. Any other observations or our warm or cool feedback or things you feel need to be added that we as a board would like to, like to have information on. I think we've got a pretty comprehensive list so far. Yeah, it will keep me busy for going a while. It looks like. Okay. One feedback is that I found this list. We have to recreate it. Yes. That's wonderful. Thank you. Okay. The other feedback was to, would be to make sure that we follow through on it. Cause like we made this last year and then we didn't see much. I have a phone call from the superintendent. I wonder if we should have it make sure it's a standing thing on the board agenda. No, I'm going to add it to the calendar and you'll get an email from me monthly saying, don't forget you have to make sure it's in your report. Don't you worry. I won't forget. All right. So I appreciate that accountability measure being built in. Okay. Um, any other comments about this before we move on to, um, our literacy work report. We'll just begin to jump into that before we get to the financial piece. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So just a reminder, you got 14 minutes until you six o'clock. Right. That's what, that's what I meant by the financial piece. Thank you. So, um, we'll move it on to the literacy update. Um, I asked for this work or this report, um, based on the fact that we've been working on literacy in our schools for a couple of years. Um, data yet for this year, getting back in to see what sort of gaps we're facing as a result of remote learning last spring. Um, but I just was wondering if we could have an update about how that work is going in our schools. Yeah, I think it makes sense for us to start with Andra. Um, since a great deal of the work and the focus this so far has been on the primary grades. And I can, I can add some things as well, but the next phase to the literacy work too. You good, Andrew? So you just want me to say where we're at really? I'd like you to give them an overall update of what are you currently doing? What have you improved over the summer? What have you guys focused on? I know we did a bunch of professional development. Just kind of give them a sense of, you know, how we built. So I think that if we didn't have a global pandemic, we might be a little bit further ahead just to be clear. Um, we have been really focusing on the Fountas and Penel. Just format of all of our curriculum work. And so there's different pieces to, to what literacy, little different pieces. And this year right now we're working on the phonics piece and rolling that out. And so what we've done is taken each little piece of the Fountas and Penel framework and broken it down and gone really slow so that every piece we roll out, we do really well. I feel really confident that we are doing their assessments with fidelity and that we're getting a lot of knowledge about really like why kids are doing what they're doing with a reading and why they're not and what we need to work on. So that feels great. I know that we haven't, haven't able to sit with kids and listen to them read, you know, since March. So I know those assessments are happening right now and people are feeling, it's just good to see that there actually was some growth over the time that kids weren't in school. And just to see that some gains have been made. So we're working on a lot of what we're working on too is just relooking at how we're doing what we're doing, like word walls, making sure everybody has a word wall and just leveling the practice across all classrooms. At the same time, which is not what we had planned to do is how does this translate into doing this online and preparing for if and when we do go back online, how to do this and do this well, because that was a bit of a scramble. And we're used to teaching kids with real books and not necessarily with screens. And, you know, I know this was talked about a lot earlier, but like engaging a kid on a screen is just not easy. And it's a skill set that nobody went to school for here. I even say for me managing a staff meeting on a screen is a skill set I have been developing myself. So with literacy, we're just really working on those aspects. I would say there's a lot to learn still, but I think we've really focused on the Fountas and Penel. I do know there's some other reading instruction that's happening with our special educators. And I can't remember exactly what's called Jamie DI. The initials are. We don't have specific students. Not all students, but it is. Some of our identified students. So yeah, that's, I mean, I'm sorry. I wasn't like really super prepared to talk a lot about it, but I do feel like we're rolling it out. And I think not only are we rolling out this, we're figuring out how to roll it out in a virtual way when and if we have to go back. So I can jump in. And then the other two principals can jump in. In addition to that, some things that I've seen within our literacy work is we are rolling out the phonics and Fountas and Penel. I'm concerned still about our teacher's depth of knowledge in literacy. And what I mean by that is to truly teach students who have real hangups with decoding and encoding. And so one of the things I've been talking about with Mary Ellen and Amy Toth is that I think we do need to further leverage the Stern Center to provide additional professional development and phonics. I think that the Fountas and Penel phonics is great. I think again though, Fountas and Penel is an approach, but they have really great materials. I think we need to have greater depth of expertise to really make certain that we can reach all students universally. And so we are going to be looking as we're budgeting, moving forward on leveraging some of our title funds for that type of professional development next school year through the Stern Center for Language and Learning. One of the things too that Don and I have noticed in regards to when we were talking about interventions and supports, the menu's not as deep as we need it to be. We have level literacy intervention right now, but beyond that, we don't have. All of our special educators trained up in an approach like Wilson or Orton-Gillingham. And so DI is one of the things that we did do prior to my tenure. So we are using that for some of our struggling readers and progress monitoring that data, but we definitely need to increase the depth in regards to our menu of interventions for literacy. I think that one of the things I talked to Amy about too is yes, we have to address reading. Yes, we have to make certain our third graders can start to learn that they can read to learn. I think third grade is that transition year where you're reading to learn. And that's a way for us to measure whether or not we're having success. Then I think we have to increase our explicit instruction in writing because my sense is we're probably a little bit all over the board in regards to how we're approaching writing. And I think we need a systematic way to approach writing just like we are reading. So when we think about literacy in general, I would see that as being the next step after we will focus on the phonics work this year and into next. But we also need to make sure we're keeping our eye on how we approach and writing instruction. Can you talk about the, is there a reading teacher? Or I mean, understand each one of the teachers being trained, but is there a reading teacher? You want to talk about your reading interventionist, Andrew? We have reading interventionists. Yeah. So we have reading interventionists in each school. And I would say, I agree with Jamie that they have lots of different levels of knowledge. And so I wouldn't say that every kid has access to the same interventions because some people on one campus are trained in Oregon-Gillingham, some on the other campus are trained in Wilson. It'd be great to have all those same resources on every campus. Are they interventionists? Are they certified reading teachers? Absolutely. They are. Otherwise, the federal government eventually is working. Okay. So they're trained in Oregon-Gillingham. So that's where it's a mixed bag. So they do all have reading certification, but I know on one campus one has Oregon-Gillingham and on other campus a few have Wilson, but they don't all have the same skill sets. Okay. And I think that one of the differences of opinion is, Bob, Oregon-Gillingham is an approach to teaching. There's a great deal of depth and certification that goes into that. Wilson, you go through training, but it is a program. Yeah. It's a scope and sequence that you follow with a program. My worry about programs is that you can implement it, but I worry about you have the expertise to be prescriptive and adjust if a student's still struggling. And that's the level and depth of expertise that I'm still concerned we don't have. And so that's why I'm looking at how do we increase professional development through the Stern Center, because I found that their training really provides teachers with a depth of knowledge and understanding so that when a student's hung up, they understand exactly where they're hung up. And I think it's really important for all of our elementary teachers to be teaching and understand the scope and sequence around the different syllable types. And I have a sense right now that some of our teachers wouldn't be proficient in that. And that's just teacher training programs and that we don't go to that level of depth. That's nothing that's not critical about our teachers. They haven't been taught it. I do think one of our benefits, though, is having Mindy Beth Pike in that MTSSA position. She is a certified reading teacher. She does have a really great depth of knowledge and she's a wonderful coach who's going into classrooms and it doesn't feel threatening. It's different than maybe me coming in and giving some cool feedback. So I think that's a plus. And I think she is really working hard to level the playing field of knowledge with what we have learned and what we do have for now. And I think she does a great job of pushing people too. I definitely agree with you and me as far as the Stern Center goes. I think that's important. Yeah. Yeah, the Stern Center usually gets really good results. Owen raised his hand and I think he'll probably will have time for his comments before he transitioned to our 6 p.m. meeting. I'm just posting that Google Meet in our comments thread so that I won't distract anybody from what Owen has to share. I just would share that this summer we had some of our English Language Arts teachers created a model to write, to create a paragraph writing exercise where students in the middle school will learn how to write a very powerful paragraph and keep adding to that and that it will be universal in our middle school so teachers will be using it all throughout the curriculum in all areas including art, math, wherever it is that the writing standard will be the same. And they also vetted that with all those other 3,000 middle school educators and those folks at UVM, those experts and we're rolling that out this year. I would also echo Andrew's piece about Mindy Beth. Mindy Beth is not only a reading specialist she's also a secondary social studies teacher so she really understands the entire span of learning. The end. What do we do for reading? Yeah, I asked to read what what the reading experience is in the high school. So we have we have one special ed case manager for 27 kids on IEPs she is Wilson reading certified but because she spends so much of her time doing cases she has very little time to get out of the paperwork and all the meetings that she has to do. But we just hired a second specialist. We just hired a second one who's not certified as a special educator yet and has no experience. So I think we're going to be slowing down in special education over the next couple months in order to speed up in the future. We're also down to one parent educator for special education. We've had the position posted for three or four months and had zero applicants. We had a very qualified math para last year and now we're short of money that can't provide services that are written into IEPs. That's the extent of our reading teaching. We do have a high school English teacher who teaches a literacy lab so for ninth graders who are struggling readers or writers they have a small an off schedule off requirement course that they take where they can get help but I'm not aware that my English teachers have any reading any special reading training that they can provide for students. Do you have a resource room for all students? No, we do not. One of the things I think we'll look to do as we move forward is I think it's really important that we have our teachers trained up at interventions all the way through 12 and LLI goes all the way up now and so one of the things Reid and I started talking about as we build our MTSS is how do we have courses of study that have proficiencies tied in so students don't feel like that they're just going to this extra thing that yes, you're working on gap filling but yes, you're also working on proficiency toward graduation. And LLI, can you just I'm sorry. It's essentially what it is so folks know when you talk about small kids reading it is an approach to having a really strong literacy group or a small group the text is at your level there's written components to it so that you write about the text and it's a pretty thick sequential approach to teaching and reading. I find that it worked well for comprehension and it can strengthen fluency but when we think about the younger levels at times students really just still struggle with basic phonics and how to decode words and that's where I think we need to make sure we have something more than just level literacy intervention. Hi. Thank you, Jamie. I think we should transition into our next meeting. I'm going to leave this window open and simply mute my mic and my camera so that we keep the comments going so I'll see you all in our next screen. Okay, bye. Gotta go to this one. Thank you all. Was there more to discuss in our literacy discussion or are we moving forward in our agenda to our final agenda item which is our 2021-2022 budget goals. Let's talk about that. The budget goals, yeah. Okay, so Jamie I know that you have thoughts in terms of the budget really being a policy statement from the board. First, Lisa. Okay, great. Thank you. So I feel like he should really lead this discussion is where I was going with that. We did have a little bit of discussion at the finance committee about this and he was kind of looking for a direction on where the board wanted the budget to go like what we want to have happen with taxes. I kind of feel like it's going to be impossible to really know given the state of the Ed fund and just the state of everything like what we have no idea what's going to happen with the state yield so it's hard to know what we need to do with our budget in order to kind of do taxes and stuff. The approach this year is going to be to do the zero level budgeting where we start from zero, add things then as that's what the administration is going to do, so they come to us with what they think is necessary and then we go from there. So I think that that's a better approach than us trying to come up with some like we wanted to go up or down when we really don't have any way of knowing right now how that's going to translate to tax rate. I agree with Andrew. Andrew was just sharing that he felt it would be difficult to as a board say we want the budget to go up or down because we just don't know the state of the fairs with the yield and with the Ed fund but that starting at gun zero and working our way up in the budget will help them understand what we need. I think it would be great if you guys could tell us where you think we should be and then we'll go from there. I'm looking for if the board has any like priorities we'd like you to prioritize math intervention because we don't have math intervention right now as a targeted intervention in support. It would just be good to hear some things that you'd like us potentially to focus on. We want you to focus on you know creating capstone projects and doing more personalized learning. I think that this is your policy document and that will help inform what we want to prioritize and how we're going to trade things as we move forward. I mean I'm all about you trade things to increase offerings in other places so it would be I'm looking for in this discussion just to hear you guys talk about some priorities for the budget some overarching board. Yeah I feel like if you feel like we're at a place where math intervention needs to be focused on that's really important. We've been really focused on literacy and hoping that improving literacy would improve math just because math is more text heavy than I think a lot of people give it credit for. In my mind having capstone projects beginning to roll those up through our younger grades not necessarily starting with 12th grade but getting our students in the practice of working on projects that are meaningful to them and then being able to share about those projects and document that in writing is really important I'm just throwing my own thoughts out there and I look forward to hearing from the rest of the board I also feel like having students have access to a lot of different pathways which I know that they do but to the degree possible starting more of that earlier and I also don't want to go back in terms of outdoor education I think that's something that's so important and valued by our community that I it's a lot I think that we're expecting but at the same time I don't want our outdoor focus to suddenly be detracted from as we shift to other priorities I would second that the other one that I would say would be you know I would say something similar about music where that's always been a strength of somewhere other schools and that's important to the community and so I know we are not filling the music position currently but I think long term we should be looking to make sure that we have a very strong music program as far as the math intervention goes I'm going to let the professionals tell me what sort of things we need to be doing for best results for our students one other thing I would mention would be we were kind of talking before COVID and all this about trying to set up like a full day preschool with kind of aftercare options where we would charge tuition or not tuition but you know kind of have daycare option so that it would be a full business day offering for families in order to try and get our preschool enrollments up and you know hopefully that sort of thing would pay for itself by increased enrollment whatever tuition we were able to so I would like to be able to continue looking to build something like that and that would be in the budget that we would be building and I know that that's not really possible with the current you know COVID stuff but long term I think we should still be doing that. I'd like to hear from all the, I'd like to hear from each individual principal about what they think we should be looking at as we build this budget and I think I agree with you Bob I'm wondering if we can hear from the remaining three board members and then we'll check in with all the administrators I'd just like to hear from everybody who's on this call and then we can discuss what's out there. Yeah well that would be my suggestion when we're building the budget to listen to each principal about their goals what they'd like to do with the school and what you know what their interests are or what their interest in building that would be something that I would like to see as we build the budget. Thank you. I would I like the, I mean I agree with the math and the capstone projects the outdoor education. And so far I'm I'm definitely on board with I would also to build on the outdoor education I really think we need to do more ag in the classroom and the school I'd love to see the school more involved with growing food for the school and turning those into teaching moments so I'd love to see that expand. Yeah thank you Chris. For me in terms of the budget the budget process I think you know the idea of starting with you know sort of zero base budgeting would be good in building the budget from there and you know and with that having the discussion about you know we know we know what salary is going to go to we know what you know a lot of the different identified spending is going to go to but again yeah what what goals of the school when we look at the controllable budget in terms of things that we have control over what are we putting the money towards and why and being able to you know for us turn around and present that to the community as well I think sometimes you know with everything that's going on the budget process sometimes you know we get up against the wall and we can't give as much thought to it as we would like to all the time of you know we have our eye on that in number but sometimes we lose the the wise while we're going through it you know what are the purposes that this budget is going to serve and we try to flesh that out for the you know the community but you know I think if we can talk about that more and focus on that at the beginning that will help us out too and then yeah in terms of other things I think you know what the administrators and teachers you know express or their areas of concern and need and where they need support you know so if it is math intervention you know that's one from the community we have heard things about you know people's need for for daycare and you know and I think you know we've seen the model be successful in our neighboring town of Sharon and I think that's something that we were hoping to try to replicate so you know who knows what the and people and populations going to look like post COVID depending on you know how things go and how long it drags on and stuff but I think that is one of the more you know immediate goals that we had for you know the new things so Thank you Would any of the administrators like to jump in and share your perspective on what are what our focus should be for the budget as we rebuild it not overspending well right but focus on our kids that piece I think we haven't planned to do this this is sort of putting us on the spot a little so we're not coordinated which is one thing making me a little uncomfortable and we haven't talked to our boss about this at all either I can you are such a good man I think it is a little bit of a setup and I want to be careful What I would say to the board is our plan is to roll out our priorities to you month by month and we're going to tell you a narrative in the why and what we need in student support in October and then we're going to do universal instruction in November what I was looking at is I wanted to get a few one up from the board so that we can take that into account when we're meeting and discussing and the budgeting process is going to be such that these three are going to be in a room with Tara myself Don McMahon and Mary Ellen next Wednesday for three hours to work on student support and so it will be a very collaborative process and so what I was looking to do is get a sense from the board about some priorities you had because we could use that when we were going into that budget process to provide a budget to you that also hit your priorities as well as the idea of the three overarching goals of MTSS personalized learning and increase interdependence and more community connection Lisa Yes My my intent is not to have administrators say right now what their goals are because they need to think about that but during the budget process we need to hear from we need to hear from the principals in their buildings and maybe that's after they have the conversation with Jamie but about what we need to make what they would like to see in the budget during next year so it's not what I want to know right now I'd like during the process the budget process to hear what the individual principals are supporting in their schools or would like to support their schools I appreciate that and I think I also appreciate Owen pushing back to give more time to that conversation it's important that the administrators work with their teachers and work with Jamie and that we come up with something cohesive that represents our values I guess is what I'm trying to say so I appreciate that we were asked as a board and I think that also the metrics metrics for success that we worked on also represent those values I think a lot of the things that we care about are represented in that document so I appreciate that maybe since if we're kind of trying to use this this retreat as kind of an annual look at whatever you want to why don't we try and both come prepared next year's retreat with kind of the overall priorities so we can like not on the like this what we need in the budget just you guys couldn't talk about it at the time I like the idea of presenting sort of an overview of data to think about how our money has been spent and then creating the outlook for where our needs may be looking forward at building the budget for the upcoming year so I think that could be really powerful other thoughts no that makes a ton of sense okay do you feel like you have what you were looking for from us to move forward with this yeah I think we got to start I mean it sounds like I mean what I'm hearing and I'm going to try to paraphrase and you guys can correct this is I'm hearing that do you want to increase personalized learning through things like capstone projects you want to make certain that experiential learning and outdoor education continues to be a priority you want to ensure that the performing arts is strong you want to look at us having a robust pre-k offering an after-school program that looks similar to Sharon and you know I threw out the math so I don't know do I just I want to I've heard in the past you want to continue the momentum in literacy but I also think we also do have to look at mathematics and my concern is is really automaticity of facts and students having strong number sense and place value I think when you have those core concepts down through the primary grades you can do a lot as you move up through those foundational skills strong in mathematics it's a long haul I'm very concerned right now that was more of an SU statement we don't have any type of math intervention across the supervisory union and that's a concern for me it's very limited anyways and I'd like us to build up a student support system that as a student needs intervention they can get I agree with that but it would be great to have that I do want to make sure though that if it's an SU-wide program that the primary cost and drivers aren't necessarily white river union district I'm not talking about an SU-wide program even you know I'm thinking that we have an SU-wide approach to mathematics instruction and how we go about it and the tools we use could differ um I'm guessing the title funds could likely be used for this yes it's what I was discussing at the SU level when we did some restructuring is that part of that restructuring was to leverage our title funds back into the schools more and not have our title funds sit as much at the SU level so our title funds right now are funding several positions at the supervised reunion office and I'd like to leverage and push those back out into the buildings as much as possible so we've kind of talked about overall educational goals it seems like the other piece that we should probably figure out is what the plan is for that are we going to go to the voters for try and spread it out over three years and we're going to try and get rid of it here what's our what's our what's their legal opinion on Monday I got an email from some of the attorneys today that I've been working with that they're researching some additional statute and options to make sure we have a clear understanding of the regulations around what we're trying to do so I will have some more information on those options for you at our next meeting just to give you a heads up is it something that we can discuss now or should do I think it's time to discuss it but the opinion would be that we should go to the voters and try and get a three year note and spread it out over three years and probably be around two or three cents added to the tax rate a year for the next three years and then the nice thing about that is that once that's done we can have that kind of cushion built into the budget for building up reserve funds like that I agree as well if we're able to do that that makes a lot of sense to me I think it is important Andrew when we go to the community we talk about the changes we've made to ensure we don't get in this place again but I also think your idea of if we're able to set this money aside for the next three years how crucial it is for us to start to have reserve accounts and one of the things I'd be interested to I know it's a tough year to do this but at least start putting a little bit away so that you get our communities kind of in a sense of this is important we're planning ahead and it's just a part of how we do business and run so I'd like to hear your thoughts about that too yeah I think I like the idea and concept but I think we'd need to see what all this turns into tax rate wise if it's really hard to say right now I think if it's possible we should definitely do it if we already have a 4 cent tax hike or who knows yeah one other thing that I've been thinking about as part of the budget discussion and I think I probably should have thought about it back in our metrics for success discussion is I know we've made a lot of shifts in what was formerly the restorative classroom and I love that we aren't calling it that anymore I always struggled with that name but anyway I am wondering how we're going to measure the success of that program both from an efficiency standpoint but more importantly in my mind from returning students to our core academics standpoint I do think that's important but I think that's probably a few discussion right well it is an SU discussion and it's also a red discussion because we house the programs at this particular point in time and we also have had at times the highest percentage of students in those programs and I want those kids to be able to go to our middle school and go to our high school so I think it fits in both places but given the struggle we had just to get people to help us pay for the renovation by percentage of students there this was before Jamie's time but literally are said their percentage of the renovation was $7,000 and if they sent the students that we were educating to alternative programs it would have cost them $150,000 and we had lengthy discussion at the full board meeting about how they could defend those $7,000 to their taxpayers and so I guess I just feel like we've had to fight to be reimbursed at times for portions that made total sense by percentage to have it reversed I guess I feel greater ownership over it than maybe I have a right to but from the standpoint of doing what's right for students I think we need to find some way to measure that program yeah I would agree fully I mean that's something that is going to come up at the full SU board when we talk about that budget and it's going to come up in student support budgets because you guys are going to see your percentage out of special ed at each district level because I think it's important that you guys still see that even though it's an SU expense so we are going to break it out and then we'll pull it back in the overall SU budget proposal but something that I've talked to your principles about and Don and the SU principles in general is whether or not it's the best approach to have an RC classroom or an alternative placement for students in grades K through 2 and one of the things we're talking about is maybe taking some of those resources and leverage them more up to the high school to increase different pathway offerings and programings there that right now we don't have for students who are struggling in the more traditional factory model and the good news is the space is already there so that's important the other thing is when I go to the full SU what about this we'll have the numbers to talk to them about how many students right now we currently have in out of district placements not just at RUD but across the entire SU that we could be taking care of their needs here through RUD and through the WRVSU programming and so the other thing is too really shows that most students that drop out of high school make that decision by fourth grade more and more that's what the research is speaking to and I'm very concerned about taking students out of their home schools and placing them in a different setting and what that communicates as a 5 or a 6 year old so we're talking about maybe going with a team approach of experts that really strong social emotional interventionist that we build up our own BI's that work under the umbrella of that program but we push those out into the schools and they would support the school team with executing a behavior plan there instead of actually taking the student out and so that's going to be part of the proposal we run by the full board but you also hear about that in your local board meetings in October one of the things that I am concerned about is the right now the cost per pupil in those programs it was in Don's report in July right now we're spending about 37 and change per student and so there's not really any difference between that and setting a student to EVA and so that's well EVA you get reimbursed EVA is tuition just enough for that if you grant today right and if the students are not on an IEP right and if the students not on an IEP then you don't get reimbursed correct yeah no if we are sending students out of district requirements that are not serviced via IEP you're covering that entire cost and you know what I say to folks all the time is you know we say I've heard folks say before when I used to do a lot of consulting work well that's special ed we can't ever think about the budget that's so not true we need to look at how are we building program to meet students needs and there's not this endless pot of money and the other thing the board has to think about is the ed funding could change soon it's going to do at some point the block grants going to come in the SU will get a one sum of money to support students and that funding won't be tied to IEPs right there is more leeway there about how we support our students and there's more flexibility I think that's important yeah I think when we first started the restorative classroom that we were sending quite a few students who were not on IEPs to even to choice to the new school to EVA so I think that program allowed us to save a lot of money in those ways but the $30,000 as compared to some of those is pocket changed and also if you're able to return them to the classroom like that was the initial goal if you're able to do that then you save a lot in the lifetime of the student compared to sending something I'm very in support of this I'm just saying that you're spending a lot right now the percentage the number of students you have in K2 is very small and you have a full-fledged staff I think if you use those resources at the high school you could pull back a lot more students that's the point I'm trying to make yeah but if you are spending we spent more per student than we would sending out but we're actually able to return them to the school we'd still spend less I wouldn't want to decrease funding for K2 but then those kids aren't getting the services that they need to kind of get back mainstream we're not even going to take them out of their school okay I appreciate that and this is a philosophical thing as your superintendent I have a really hard time taking a six year old out of this school yeah yeah I think there's a case once in a while you have to do it I think there's a way you could be strategic about it I just think right now we I think there's been times we've seen we've had students in that program that I think we didn't exhaust all the interventions and supports we could have prior to removing them from their home school okay any other thoughts on budget priorities from the board so that we can give the administrators as much to think about or as much of a read on our thoughts as possible any other because it feels like we've cruised through our agenda for this evening is there anything else that's on people's minds I have something I'd like to make a motion okay because of the work that the Tara and the business office have done and the work that the principals have done to control the budget I'd like to make a motion to authorize the superintendent to spend money as long as he stays within the budget and the budget lines whatever they may be um therefore that would that's the motion and I'd like to say that makes it easier on Rodney because the central office is making sure that we're not overspending the budget when Rodney signs those warrants he can feel confident that everything's okay right is there any second for this and then we'll have discussion can I just get some clarification on the wording of the motion because that was a long sentence yes sir I make a motion that the superintendent would authorize the superintendent to spend money and stay within the budget as long as the budget lines let's do that again I would make a motion to authorize the superintendent to spend money as long as he stays within the budget and budget lines change but he knows what I'm talking about so when Rodney signs the warrants he doesn't have to worry that we're overspending do we have a second for that also I guess okay any discussion I feel like this is pretty consistent with the practice that we outlined as an expectation since Jamie's been with us so I'd be curious to hear their thoughts if this seems consistent with the direction we've been moving I think this makes a great deal of sense I think you have it then it's been moved it's on the record and I would say that there's some accountability to that which I appreciate and it certainly aligns with your guys job description and the ad you put out when you hired me any other discussion all in favor I guess I just don't understand what the difference is between what we're doing now basically the superintendent approved spending it goes through a warrant Rodney signs it we spend the money after this the superintendent will approve spending Rodney will sign it the money gets spent so I'm okay doing it I just don't know what the practice is like a kind of message if you looked at the warrant yeah I know what you said at the beginning where he's signing that it's within the budget something like that would you be would you want to make a motion to change the wording on that no I just want to give the superintendent the authority to make sure it doesn't happen you know nowhere is spending happens or else he has to come to the board if he's going to overspend the budget okay basically right now he has a freedom I say he his office he has a freedom to make up a warrant and give it to us for our signature Rodney is one person on the board and you know if a line's overdrawn he has no idea so all I'm saying now is that he has to stay within the budget and he can't overspend any lines you'll have to come to the board for approval other than that he can they can produce the warrant and Rodney can sign it feeling confident that it is what it is okay I think if that's the goal then we probably should state that something like an emotion of the overspending expenditure of lines and I will tell you there's going to be lines that will be overspent and then we'll reconcile balance the lines the the motion as I understand it and as I believe it was recorded is that the budget would not be overspend because we understand that the lines may need to be shifted we've been through previously where certain lines haven't been budgeted at all but we actually need to spend money in those areas so as we go through a process of correctly coding things and getting our books back in order I would personally feel uncomfortable if we said that lines couldn't be shifted however I'm fully in support of the budget not being overspent you know I'm not I'm not referring to the lines because he has the ability to change those you know to change money on lines but he's going to stay within the budget that's all I'm saying right but the way that it's worded is that you authorize and spend money and as long as it's within the budget I wonder if it would be better to word it like if the superintendent must come to the board if there's any spending anticipated spending that will cause the budget to be overspend or something like that so rather than saying what would exceed the approved budget right and I think you need to have wording in there so that it's like when you are doing some spending that you know will exceed the budget to be overspend because it's not like when you have your encumbered money it's not until you actually get to that point spend some of this other money that you actually exceed the budget but it's some decision back in October that was when you knew you were spending over in some category and not able to make it up somewhere else you know what I mean is that it's saying that if he knows he's going to overspend the budget he comes to the board for it does that make sense? yeah I think it says the same thing that I want to say so it sounds like an extra line would be added then so to authorize the superintendent to spend money as long as he stays within the approved budget however if what did you say Andrew would replace instead of authorizing the spending up until the budget I think the focus would be on like I make a motion that the superintendent requiring the superintendent to get board approval for any spending that would be over the approved budget I would draw my motion you know I think Andrew's saying the same thing I am in a different way but I would draw my motion okay just I'm sorry I don't have my book of Robert's Rules of Order I don't know if we need a second to withdraw a motion because somebody just has to withdraw a second okay alright so Andrew are you making a motion um sure go ahead Andrew so the motion is the superintendent will come before the board to authorize any spending that will be an excess of the budget approved budget I guess do we have a second for that motion I'll second that perfect any discussion alright all in favor of Andrew's motion that indicates that the superintendent will come before the board if he is overspending the budget the annual budget please say aye aye aye any opposed any abstentions I'm wondering how you voted you can put it in the chat I said aye okay thank you alright and the motion carries yeah I guess maybe it's a little after the fact now that we've carried the motion but let's say we get into a situation where the superintendent we're already over the budget do we expect the superintendent to come back with every single expenditure that happens after that or I guess it would just be the one expenditure that he knows is going to be well I think at that point we're in trouble right I think the hope is that we don't have to have that conversation but if we do I'm pretty hopeful as an accountability piece I do think what's that right I think is an accountability piece the board does need to have a discussion of how it happened I appreciate that we've been doing since Jamie took things over so thank you I guess the other part of that would be when it's the SU budget I guess we just need to be notified that the SU budget is going to be we're going to be keeping close dibs on both all year I'm going to have monthly reports so if we're projecting that the SU budget is going to run over and affect your budget you will know as soon as we know that yeah the motion just said that we have to authorize that like I don't know that there's we really have a discretion not to authorize that but I guess if you come and tell us that well I think the SU budget is running your budget over right which it has the last two years then I would not be spending your local money unless you authorize me to do that you know I'm saying like I think you know the idea would be that you guys control that local budget and so if the SU is what's running over you need to know that you're projecting that you're going in the red and then make some decisions based off of that but the hope is is that we've got things in order so that we're not running over in the SU and causing you guys trouble okay so what are the what are the pieces that we can put in place as a full board I feel like I mean I wasn't at the full board meeting so maybe this is a discussion that's already begun but I feel like putting measures in place at that level is also really important well Lisa I mean I brought it up I mean Harold's going to have an article next week that talks about Special Ed has run over about 250,000 a year the biggest thing we have to do is monitor how we're supporting students and ensure that we have tight reins on the Special Ed budget now Tara did a great job of using the service plan last fall to build the Special Ed budget so I feel confident that Special Ed budget is real and that we're not going to have that type of run over this year and I know Don is monitoring it very closely and we've made some decisions at management not to replace some personnel to ensure that we don't overrun it all good news I mean we've also frozen central the SU spending I mean coming out of this office significantly and we did a lot of changes with our grants to ensure that both Tara and I are both monitoring those in conjunction with Cynthia and even Mary Ellen to make certain that nothing's being spent out of the federal grants that don't tie back and you know to ensure that we're not incurring any unanticipated costs there because we didn't actually get the money that was spent in full disclosure our only scenario right now where that is happening is in our CRF and our SR funds for COVID related expenditures so we are banking that we are going to get money but we may not get as much money as we've had to spend in order to accommodate the rules and regulations for COVID-19 so I just I don't want that to be forgotten that's a good point and I will say the good news there with your group the superintendent's organization was notified yesterday that it does look like they're going to contribute another $88 million for CARES money which should be helpful right yep it doesn't look like we're going to be penalized for ADM drops for students that chose homeschooling this year they're going to hold us harmless your ADM will be able to go lower than the 19-20 school year all this I do worry about my pillar is going to have some work to do because I do worry about the ed fund and what that could do to taxes in the spring yep that's great for now that's great for now I'm just I think this money is going to come from somewhere at some point and I just it just makes me nervous that's all I agree do we need to authorize Lisa do we need to authorize you to be able to sign a note for the loan or line of credit whatever for the board yeah I feel like that happens when we reorganize that I automatically get that honor which it makes my stomach hurt every time I have to do it but as long as as long as the board has voted to give you that right and then it's okay so Tara do you need any additional authorization from your perspective for me to do that the bank did not tell me I needed anything additional so I will have to go back to you on that I don't want to miss speak all right do we get it now why don't we just do it because I don't want to do an emergency meeting authorize Lisa Floyd to sign on the board's behalf for any loan procured for the district or line of credit or a line of credit from the community national bank from the community thank you not to exceed $20,000 we're getting punchy all right would anybody second that motion second okay all in favor of approving giving Lisa Floyd a board chair the opportunity to sign or the right to sign the now I can't remember it community national bank line of credit not to exceed $600,000 please say aye aye aye all right any opposed any abstentions right thank you so I'll do that that I need to thank you I do need you to sign Lisa the sub grant agreement between the SU and red so at some point when you are available you could come visit me or I can email it to you if you prefer to sign electronically yeah email might be easier because I just find them at work late a lot of days I will scan them and get them emailed to you perfectly standard sub grant agreement that we do every year yep I remember those all right any other that we should talk about or anything that we want to add to our October board meeting I would like to bring up I have now been approached by two other solar companies who would like to provide presentations to the boards I don't we haven't really had a chance to debrief after Encore made their presentation to you all to know to get your pulse as clear if you're interested or not and then these two other companies that have now come to the surface and wanting to present so I just need some guidance or feedback on where you're all at and what you would like me to do with the direction as far as that's concerned so is that for the October meeting we're just going to let you know in October you have all your star 360 data for reading and math and you're going to get your student support budget okay those presentations tend to last at least 15 minutes to a half an hour so you know just take that time into account if that's the case then I would say that's all you have on your budget are those items can you just get whatever details they have to send and email them to us and then like I don't know that we need to have another presentation please I don't think so I would ask the superintendent to review everything and make a recommendation and we could go from there yeah and then our I think just for this presentation this was before Jamie was on board but I think with Encore I think it would be our concern with any other one too is depending on how it's set up is is it flexible or not I think the thing with Encore was we could save money based on our current electrical consumption but if our consumption goes down say we do any energy efficiency projects like replace lighting replace HVAC equipment and now we're more energy efficient we were still going to be on the hook for what we committed to that was based on what our current consumption at the time was for the next what was it 20 years I had the same worries when I reviewed it I do get a lot of great answers when I talked to them I think it was them pushed on a little more about true savings yeah so I think if it's a plan that can be flexible with us as we hopefully shrink any electrical consumption that we have because I think we're not we don't have any plans to add on to our buildings or do anything like that so if anything happens to our electrical uses it should be that we're doing improvements to our building where our uses goes down and we need something that's going to be flexible with us and not pigeonhole us into a certain profile I agree thank you thank you and if we could previous to that meeting get that data so that I just feel like if I can review the data before I come to the meeting then I can ask better questions I'll be in your principal's report perfect thank you alright any other other okay we are about 52 minutes ahead of schedule so if that's not problematic for anyone I would entertain a motion to adjourn early I'm going to be adjourned okay I've planned my whole evening around this I mean I can hang out in the grid with you Owen I'll go make another cup of coffee be right back there's one of your love signs in the back I'm still waiting on them there's a whole bunch of them and let me just say the board members haven't gotten them either okay well they'll be for sale starting tomorrow okay we have teachers masks and onesies Jamie I have an email I want to run by you can I send it to you and you give me feedback I want to send it out tonight yeah I'll send it to you right now okay I have a second what's that goodnight thank you all so much thank you