 the meeting to order at 6.05. Anybody have any adjustments to the agenda? Because we have guests on Andrew, can we move the COVID-19 reopening plan to 8.3 and move the other two up so our guests can be first? Sure, that'd be fine. Just same order where we do the athletic supply agreement first and then audit. Your audit and then COVID-19 so that they can they can do their stuff. Sounds good. Do we want to do those before the reports to the board or do the reports to the board first? I think we can do the reports to the board first. Okay, all right, we'll do that. So we'll swap 8 or move 8-1 to 8-4 or 8-3 or whatever. Okay, and do we want to assign times and have a timekeeper? I think most of this will go pretty quickly so I think we can just do our best to stay on on time unless somebody wants to. Sounds good. Yeah, okay, do we have any public comment at this time? There's Rod. Okay, no public comments. We'll move on to the consent agenda of approving the minutes. So have people had a chance to review the minutes from the July 29 meeting? Have any adjustments to those or a motion to approve them? I'll move you. I'll second. Okay, so we have Bob's motion to approve them and Chris, second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, so we approved the minutes from July 29th. We'll move on to the board comment. Any board comment? So we're right on the number seven reports from board superintendent report. So you guys have my report in hand. I'll entertain any questions. The rest of my updates would come under the committee. The finance committee didn't meet yesterday and I can give a quick update with that with that member of that committee. The only other thing I'll mention is that we've been contacted by 60 minutes, CVS 60 minutes, and I've met with them a couple times. They're really interested in our SU's reopening plans and how we're approaching our reopening to use outdoor education and they've read through the materials we've provided. They feel like it's pretty thorough and so I'll get I've met with the producer and the executive producer twice now and we'll find out the first and next week whether or not 60 minutes 60 on 6 decides to send a crew up. There'd be two crews to tape schools throughout the SU and right now look at they would highlight run middle school, Tumbridge Central School, and Sharon Elementary School to give our perspective across the SU. So I just wanted to let you folks know that that may be occurring and that would be terrific. So we'll find out hopefully the first of next week. Otherwise I'll entertain any questions you have. It's been busy reopening plans are, you know, taking a big chunk of my time right now and in addition to, you know, just making certain that we are on good financial footing. So those two things tend to eat up, I would say, probably 90% of my time at the moment. All right. Well, sounds good. We'll move on to the business manager report. Report for you, Andrew. I just have the audit tonight. Right. Okay. So we'll move on to the principal's report then. I think it's the same thing. You have it in hand or digitally or virtually. And if you have questions for happy to answer. We also, as we talked about, we're outlining that with the three big goals that are strategic plan and our continuous improvement plan outline. And we just a quick little highlight we have met a couple times now with our leadership teams that you all are aware of that we set out last spring. And we've also embedded a few of the plans for how we're going to open and we're going to talk about those a little later in the in the meeting. And we have also put in some links to some stories about our school and outdoor education and opening up. It seems to be the suit to sure for people. And I would just add that the shared leadership team met this morning for three hours, our second meeting. And one of the main projects we're working on is putting together a COVID handbook to kind of outline how school will be different at the elementary, middle and high school levels that we can get out to parents and families, hopefully by the end of this week, if not sooner. All right. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions before we move on to the committee update? Well, Andrew, Bob or Rodney, you can jump in. The finance committee did meet. We set a regularly scheduled meeting for the first Thursday of the month at five. We reviewed a draft of how we want to go about proposing to the SU that we would budget for a calendar for this upcoming school year and discussed a kind of rotating agenda, what the finance committee will look like, look at monthly. I thought it was a productive meeting and certainly any members jump in if you want to add anything more. I have called both Bruce and Louise and they both will agree to be on the committee. So there'll be two other public members who both have a background in accounting serving on that committee as well. One from Deatho and one from Oilton. Yeah, I thought it was a good meeting and that we have a good roadmap for the work we're going to be doing going forward. What are Bruce's and Louise's full names just to get it on the minutes? Bruce Button and he owns property in South Royalton. He's marrying and Joe Button's son. He passed away. He went to school at South Royalton. He presently lives in Concord, Mass. But he's interested in helping with his accounting background with our budgeting problems. And Louise Burt is from Bethel and she's also an accountant and majored in finance. And I don't know a whole lot else about her, but she's involved with town business, I think. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I remember her from some meetings. So great, cool. And when is the facilities committee going to get meeting first? We're going to roll that one in, I believe in September. Does that sound right, principals? Okay, any other questions about the subcommittees? We'll move on to the Athletic Supply Agreement with Under Armour. I'm going to turn this over to our Athletic and Activities Director. Sorry, Heidi, I don't know if that's your official title. Heidi Wright. It's okay, it'll work. Um, thank you guys for having me tonight. Basically, Chris Cook is on the phone. I want to hear from graphic edge. One of the aspects of things that typically can be a little bit of a matter is that high schools are finding some problems with what it comes after that. Once I joined at Waiter Valley and talking to the kids and spending time with the athletes and the coaches and kind of learning and getting the lay of the land. The student athletes are very, very supportive to having the name brand uniforms. They very much so want to have Under Armour do that name brand uniform. And Chris is here to help answer questions about what that contract looks like for the school district to sign and become part of and kind of how that would work. It will, if we choose to do this, it's something that would save us money moving forward as we need to start creating some turnover in uniforms. We do technically have a uniform that is illegal. The varsity girls home soccer uniforms are not to the standard that they have to be. So in the event that we were able to host a home playoff game, the girls wouldn't be able to use those uniforms. So that is something that we're going to need to move forward and replace. And the reason that they're not legal is because they are not one primary color from start to finish. So I really tried to make this something that the kids were supportive to this isn't just my personal choice. This is absolutely something that's driven by the student athletes. And I support them and their desire to want to look good and look sharp and help that be something that they can move forward with. So you guys have access to the contracts and the specifics of how it works. And Chris is here. And he's happy to answer any questions that we have as we're forward and Chris can offer his experience with this as well. So before we jump in with Chris, I'll just add to the board that I did as a principal and turned to an agreement like this for paid Mountain School District schools both North Field and Williamstown. And it was successful and it was with graphic edge. It wasn't with Chris. It was with another rep from graphics edge. And Chris, you can probably remind me who that was. But yeah, it's a call. Yeah, so you guys so Northfield Williamstown did it with Carlton Laird. So what I can tell you about the UA deal is there's quite a few schools in the upper valley that have agreed to sign on to the deal or have done already done the deal. Hartford, Hartford and Oxbow being two close ones to you guys. I've found in talking to the 80s that have signed this deal that the kids really do like the basically the branding idea and being in one specific brand. You know, in this case, it's under armor. There's a lot of benefits to the plan as well too. As you guys can see in the contract under armor is going to give basically $1000 in promo money to start with. So basically you can take that $1000 and you can buy coaches apparel or you can buy t shirts for the kids or the staff or whatever you choose to do going forward. You also get 40% off full retail on everything except for footwear, 35% on footwear. And you also the more under armor that is purchased in the school district. You basically you earn more and more promo money to use in the future with the school as well too. They do they do have a they do have the custom uniforms we can match your school colors. I know when the White River Valley School was first opening, I went over and did a presentation because there were specific colors that were wanting so under armor is able to match your school colors as well to going forward. I think that's about it. If you guys need references, I'd be more than willing to give you some references, whether it be at Hartford or oxbow or st j academy or Windsor for that matter. All those schools have signed on deals with with the graphic edge and under armor as well too. Chris, what's the downside? So the downside is basically your uniforms. The uniforms all have to be under armor going forward. It's not you don't have to replace them all at once. As I have found out with any of the big three, whether it's under armor, Nike or Adidas, you do run into some like basically some back ordered situations. So that's the only downfall that I have found thus far with any of the contracts is just potential of back orders with items because under armor is is pretty big right now. So they they kind of run out of stuff rather quickly, but they also replenish it rather quickly as well too. But if you go to the custom uniform line, then you guys will never ever that that uniform will never ever run out either. We asked we asked that basically sideline apparel be under armor. So like if we so say at the Valley News as a picture of coach Godett on the sideline, we'd like him to be in an under armor polo or an under armor sweater or something like that. We can't there's no under armor police per se. Basically, I'm the only guy that's going to be looking around to see you know what kids are wearing. But there's like the kids like we can't force you guys to wear footwear. I know this isn't the contract that we would like to have you guys in under armor footwear, but we can't force that so the kids can wear whatever they're comfortable with. The basically the big thing is we just want your uniforms and we want your sideline apparel case. There's any any picture or TV potential to be all under armor. And some people some people like under armor. Some people don't. There's no real gray area. So if you have a coach that's not on board, that can be a downfall. But in working with different school districts. For for example, Hartford, the Hartford hockey coach does the men's coach does not like under armor at all. So we've just kind of said, Alright, can you can you at least wear an under armor jacket while you're on the sideline? Because he does not like the under armor uniforms and he's agreed to that. So there's there's some leniency in the contract in regards to you know if certain coaches are like dead set against under armor. But right now that the main downfall is just potential back orders. And you know if you have a coach that's dead set against wearing the under armor brand. So Chris, we are not obligated to purchase any type of uniform. Other than what we are normal rotation would be for uniforms. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And it basically it's and it starts basically from whenever the contract is signed, going forward, we would ask that your uniforms be under armor. So you don't have to you don't have to go all the way through like you don't have to replace every single uniform this year and they all have to be under armor. It's on your cycle as well. And we've been able to gradually, you know, with Hartford, we're able to gradually put them into all under armor uniforms except for the hockey program. Oxbow, we're able to gradually put them because they have a budget similar to what you guys are operating with over in White River. And then St. Jay, you know, I mean, St. Jay's got more money than God. So they kind of they kind of just went all full bore with it. But yeah, so whenever the site, whatever the new cycle is up, so if the contract is signed and Heidi needs to get new girls uniforms, then I would then we would recommend under armor going forward. Good, Rodney. Yeah, I just wonder, do the athletic boosters have to sell under armor products, like the t-shirts and stuff that they sell? No, you don't. You guys would still get the discount, Rodney, if you guys wanted to because it basically it can go, I have schools that will only do this at the high school level and then I have schools that will go the entire campus while like similar to like St. Jay. So it's totally up to what you guys feel comfortable with. So if the booster club does not feel comfortable selling under armor, that's totally fine. You know, we just ask that we get on a bid list that we can hopefully, you know, hopefully give you some apparel options. But yeah, you don't, you still you still have that discount opportunity, but you do not have to sell it if you don't if you don't want to. Rodney, I had a conversation with the high school booster club specifically the other night just because we had a standard meeting and the conversation that we basically had was that they would move to doing it through graphic edge if the contract was to be signed with the idea that they would offer an under armor version and some cheaper more or not cheaper, but more economical options so that we could keep the designs the same, make sure that the branding stays the same so that the colors are not slightly off. But with the point in that we could offer the under armor, but we'd be offering something that wasn't as costly as well to be able to cover everything for everybody. You also Rodney, you also get if the deal is signed, there's a there's a TGE agreement as well too and basically you would get better screen pricing on some of the more generic stuff too like a Gildan t-shirt or a Badger t-shirt or whatever you guys would want to do and we do offer that as well too. For example, not everything at Hartford is under armor. They do they do some shirts for the kids because obviously budget restraints they just do like a regular Badger or Gildan t-shirt so you wouldn't have to, we'll suggest under armor but if it's not doesn't make sense for your budget then we'll offer like two or three alternatives as well too and we'll get you better pricing on screening and embroidery as well. Are we sure that we don't have some kind of agreement with somebody already because I remember a presentation about under armor supporting doing our uniforms from a couple years ago from Sean. We had that discussion but we never executed the contract. We followed that up with student discussions and as we had brand new uniforms at that time there was no you know real impetus to engage in a contract so now they're starting to think about replacing the first set of uniforms and the issues come up. Have we priced out like this year's replacement uniforms and with the under armor contract you know fit within our budget sounds like you said it would but just want to confirm. It would come out earlier in the year for me if we signed the under armor contract and we were to do the nice supplemented uniforms that ended up being somewhere around $3,500 to do one set of uniforms for the home version for the varsity girls. And that fits within what we had budgeted for varsity girls or what you had in mind for varsity girls. It fits within the line item for the budget of uniforms for at the high school level. Okay are there any more questions on the uniform contract? This is Lisa, would it be a we'd have to have a five-year contract with this? This would be a five-year deal if we were to move forward is that correct? Yes, yes correct, yes. And we would have to be spending at least $15,000 a year? No that's basically that's what we budgeted we budgeted you guys for because we basically we took numbers from different like schools are based in division lower division three and division four and that's what we based it off of. If you there's a line in there that if you exceed a certain amount you'll get more money back from you'll get more formal money back from under armor but you do not need to spend you do not need to spend $15,000 with under armor that's just basically what we we annually thought that you guys would spend with the graphic edge and under armor. And the deal includes socks and everything but the shoes right? Do we normally provide socks for the for the athletes? Yes we provide their their socks one pair of socks a home pair and on a way pair for soccer and then for like baseball softball they get one pair they're typically green. And once again if it's with something like that something like socks you know obviously I put when I give a quote to Heidi I placed that under armor first and then I went to a generic sock. So the big thing is as long as it doesn't as long as the uniform doesn't have a Nike swoosh or the adidas three bars then it then will be fine. Basically they just under armor just wants under armor everywhere on the kids so in case like I said in case they're you guys are televised or make the the front page of the Valley news. Heidi are you recommending this? I am yes this is this is the direction the kids want to be going in they want to be wearing the U.A. logo from kids from you know that are participating in track and field to the the bowling team they want that name brand item and I know it's not right to say that you have to look good to be able to perform well but to some extent it's one of those things they need that swagger of hey I'm a cool school I wear a name brand my school supports me this is the backing that I get I get to wear this and you know I understand where they're coming from as high school athletes they want to look good and the UA uniforms are sharp and we can make them look sharp when Chris talks about being able to come up with the design and have sublimated uniforms we can make them look and match the colors just like we want and that's the very nice appeal of it I work really really hard to make sure that these kids look good in these uniforms and that these uniforms were going to last it's part of the reason that you know at the high school level I wash all the uniforms at the high school because I want to make them last ideally we have a uniform rotation that goes through and we're replacing them because they're in their rotation period but the uniforms that are hanging up on the racks still look great and now we've got alternate uniforms so we can do you know we can go with a gold shirt for the baseball team because that's what they wanted to do and we have a green and we have an alternate soccer uniform for home games because the product is a good product and it lasts and ideally that's where we want to get so that if in the event we have a uniform rip because the player gets cleated in the back I can just call Chris and be like I need you to replace number 30 for me because the shirt ripped I asked Jamie but I'd like to ask one more question is the vpa is okay with all this yes yeah they are we've we've done several contracts throughout the state whether it's through underarmor or adidas and we've had no no kickback from from the vpa in regards to any of these contracts okay do we need to make a motion or anything yep yep I'll move that we sign the agreement with underarmor I'll second it okay we have a motion to sign the agreement with underarmor is there any discussion all right all in favor hi hi any opposed I'll go ahead um question did I don't know the last time this topic came up it was probably the fall of 2018 Heidi was not working in her capacity and though I do appreciate what Reed represented I can't find the minutes from that meeting I tried I did find them there uh it's um November 20th 2018 and it does say that um the board would or the board asked or Sean to get student feedback and then come back to present to the board with findings and I didn't find anything else that happened after that so that sounds familiar I don't know if there's any way in the board would request from the um the boosters that was my only public comment Heidi you said that you'd discuss this with boosters already I spoke to Jen who's the president um of the high school booster club um and you know she's totally supportive to it this is what the kids want um and you know she was totally supportive to moving and them using graphics so that the designs the coloring everything would stay the same um and obviously and we spoke about them outsourcing for certain things if they needed to and my big thing is that we keep the brand the logo the same that it's the right colors so that it's not off that way if somebody's out in public it's not a slightly different version of what the actual White Rural Valley logo is so um that was my only concern and they were supportive to doing that and following that so um they're excited and hopeful that this goes through and that we can move in this direction because they like the kids happy we can get a new time so all right why don't we take the vote one more time since we're kind of happy you know about all in favor hi hi hi uh christ i don't think you on me hi sorry hi all right any opposed motion passes okay let's see where's our have the uh we're up to the right okay move on to the audit run and josh from rhr smith who are our auditors are on the call with us tonight thank you both for being here to assist if there's any questions that you would like to ask i afforded the audit out to all of the board members for review in hopes that you will be able to accept it for final tonight do we have any questions for the auditors right now i have a question and that um you are you are uh paid another sixty thousand dollars on top of the audit now can you explain what happened or why you why you why that was is that correct that that comment being directed at me uh yeah yeah so so a couple of things we had a contract with uh with white river valley for the audit and then uh the books and many other assistance was needed by white river valley to basically help put the books together to put the financial statements in that draft that Tara has asked you to prove tonight those services were above and beyond the scope of the audit i don't know what the amount was billed but we'd be more than happy you know to uh to certainly send you you know a detailed invoice of of all the work that's been put in in addition to the audit yeah i know i um why was that i'm new to i'm new to the board so the best way i can explain it is is that there are a lot of reasons probably you know a lot three really at the top of the list you know the board went through the board the the supervisory in went through a new chart of accounts implementation that was set up and designed poorly there was just many accounting errors you know that led to a lot of struggles you know internally you know with the books and i would say that those were probably the first two biggest issues and then i would just say lack of attention internally you know this past year to to the books you know and uh and the information that was in there i mean there was a lot of errors there was a lot of things that weren't posted you know Tara's sitting there she can certainly uh go over what those were but the the way that those books were given us to audit back in you know i would argue september uh august september and when i sat with you guys all at halloween and went over those financial statements though those books look totally different you know than than they did when they were given to us on halloween and then somewhere around draft number one and two you know that you guys got in january to kind of you know summarize all the changes and edits that's the big reasons you know for sure the the the books were just in the horrible shape um i have you know i i've read through just part of the audit and um what if i have a couple of questions um you um you redid the books for uh 2018 is that right we redid the audits for 2019 we checked them yeah okay 2019 yeah correct but some place along the way you came up with some new numbers so 2018 you know based on the consolidation and based on rebuilds which is a whole separate conversation that we went in a great deal with special education costs back in 1819 based a lot based on a lot of information you know when you guys in 2019 which which kind of made a lot of the problems rise right to the top um yeah i mean there was a lot of reconstruction a lot of research you know uh you know with a lot of things special ed as i remember being the biggest one you know uh and a lot of it though was at the supervisory union level and a lot of the supervisory union level if those costs haven't been allocated or allocated correct as i recall you know with uh with the districts there was the the the number was remath you know and everything in 2019 and again Tara can step in here i believe all the remath was brought up current to 2019 you know based on information that we had in 2019 that is correct did you do in there were now meetings that where people thought that there was money transferred and in fact it didn't happen matter of fact it wasn't even voted on you know so there's been a lot of there's been a lot of work and a lot of i would say reconnaissance you know that's been done for the past two or three years as the as the su and the districts you know that merged you know including their books with a new chart of accounts you know you asked for the extra billings there was a lot of a lot of work that was done there that the business office just didn't have the resources to do you know and Bruce and Tara engaged us to do it did you do an audit of the supervisory union yes we did yes is that in here no no that's a separate audit not done yet wait me it's not done there we're still working on the finals for the su's audit that will go to the su board um do you feel that this deficit is accurate yes okay and and when we talked and i know you weren't at that meeting back in october we approximated the deficit to be about fifty thousand dollars depending on you know the the outcome of the final audit for the su you know and and and based on the books and based on things being posted where they shouldn't be all the remath you know makes me even more confident that that deficit as i said back in october was going to grow and obviously the unified district was going to be the biggest recipient of that deficit for special ed you know there was some i i believe hsa and fsa you know health benefits that weren't allocated you know that were sitting unallocated and and and that 350 we believe captures everything you know i i heard the comment that the su isn't done the su actually is done it's actually in your hands you know and i think Tara and her people are just working out the math on the numbers to give it another check but we're we're confident you know and and Tara i don't know what draft that is on the su i know i saw an email from you earlier you know to Kathy and her group and they're going to huddle up and just make sure that you know that we're all on the same page and you know and that all the math's been rechecked again and again and again we don't expect any big changes i think that we have exhausted the su and all the member districts to the point where we're at that deficit right now my concern you know as i've shared with uh Jamie and Tara is that numbers as of over a year ago i'd be more interested if i'm the respective boards on what it is today as we sit here and speak and that's really where the sense of urgency is for us and has been but really for the past three or four months i agree um and i think there's a lot of work and i Tara you can hop in here and i know rosa's done an admirable job really doing a lot of a lot of research and working with bill and kathy and jordan i just don't know where you're at in 1920 but i think that that's really where all the energy needs to be refocused on you all right now where are you today that was a year ago where are you today yes we are working through all of our f y 20 year end closures we are doing all the count reconciliations that you did on our behalf for f y 19 we are handling that all in house now and those have all been projects that we have been working on for the last several months and making sure that all of those things are where they need to be and all the allocations are done appropriately all the district billbacks are done appropriately so that is all part of the year end closure process that we're going through right now and and Tara my concern is and and josh you can weigh in here too my concern is is i just don't think you have the resources in house based on what we've seen so far in the pre-audit tear to get there as fast as you're going to need and i just know this board and all the other boards you know and jamie you know we made a conditional promise to jamie hey we're ready for december 1st you know but you guys got to be ready tear i think you guys really need some help you know in those reconciliations and i'll let you and jamie talk about how you huddle up in that i know josh and i have some concerns you know just as far as your readiness now you know and the fact that we there's there's no time to delay you know because the further you move you know from june 30th Tara i think it's going to be harder you know to really make business decisions so do you know what kind of help she's looking for i'd argue probably i i think that jamie Tara and uh um uh rose could huddle up on that one but i would argue similar help hopefully not the magnitude of the year before you know that we had but i would say pretty similar to the year before because there's probably six months into 2020 you know we're really Tara and the and rose didn't get their hands on and josh correct me if i'm wrong i know rose is still trying to to keep up with the pace and try to keep up with uh with with trying to get current you know so that we can actually you know be productive for 20 correct that's right they're working on the reconciliation now i spoke to her today tamie i want to mention i saw that that draft of the audit went to you it shouldn't have until the board approves that that's not for public you're still muted tamie thank you for responding ron is there anything in this like audit that i know there's a lot of things i you know there's a lot of things that stand out but is there anything that really stands out that we need to take care of so so so i'd say a couple of things and i'm just going to go back to october 31st and kind of you know be delicate what i say i i think there was some some personnel issues you know in the past and capacity issues you know with the personnel and clearly a lot of things happened in this audit right here that you guys all have in front of you now for 19 where like i say everything just floated to the top and just caused some huge challenges internally you know that that terra walked into you know having said that when i met back in october i think that the biggest challenge you know for that su and the districts was really getting some accounting help in there and i think rose was a great hire you know just seeing you know just seeing her ability and capabilities i think that that was absolutely a necessity for the district seeing what we've done now and just kind of the delays and the the research and time that's gone in with terror and her department i would add you probably i i think it's time for jamie and terra to to huddle up again and look at the business office and and i think that you guys definitely need some more accounting support net office uh can you tell me whether or not there's a deficit in the central office i believe the answer to that when you say central office we're talking about the supervisor union correct right yeah well so so i believe the answer yes that yes there was and and again when we talked about the math and the remat that deficit what happens is it gets reallocated to all the districts so in theory that supervisor union should reset itself to zero on june 30th of every year the problem is this past year you were probably a year and a half behind in processing information and just now you're getting caught up to 19 and and we're concerned the further that you get away in 20 from from june 30th all that math has to be reassessed to the districts you know and i'm just not i'm not sure what those numbers are maybe terra has numbers but the concern is is is that we don't know what the numbers are and we really need to like like now yeah that we can reassess well i'm not done that all on 40 percent of that and that's like i say they were the biggest recipient of some of those unallocated expenses that we talked about at the supervisor union back in october you know 40 40 plus percent 42 percent i can't remember what the math worked out but as i said back in that meeting whatever that math is the unified district is the biggest recipient of a deficit and that's all we we have that now we just don't have it as a board but you've given it to the central office i do not care i think you've i don't have everything right ron the last draft i have was prior to all the changes we've made in the last couple of months that's what you know what i'm gonna say i think the question was asked though terra do you have all your drafts the answer is yes correct it's just nothing more than research that's going into these now correct i don't have a revised draft after the changes that we've made right but but my my my my you have your drafts though correct bearing the changes you've had drafts you know in the past that we're working on to make those edits too correct okay for all of them correct yes and now the su like i said the su really drives whoever's asking the questions the su is really the big driver because that's the math that needs to be reassessed i i think whatever the reassessment is now you know with with our people working with your people you know um you know i i think it's down to you know it's it's not down to thousands of dollars now folks it's down to hundreds of dollars so as far as if the um business office needs more accounting help that's something that'll have to be brought up at the su board level we've got a state of the state affairs and finance on the su agenda for monday good perfect do we have any more and listen if you all want me to participate in that and have a similar dialogue you know i i think terra wasn't that board wasn't weren't most of them at that meeting you know back in october on halloween was that the su board or executive committee i don't even remember now you met with the executive board and several of the full board members came to that meeting but we do have i think three or four new board members that joined in march at town meeting bob being one of them as he indicated throughout the su did you ron did you meet with the bethle south rotham board i don't believe so so let me tell you who bruce gave permission for at least three members and i don't even believe that they were that what they were board members at the time maybe they are now you know but back then that they weren't i've talked to a lot of people from there all with bruce's blessings you know with uh you know from them just to kind of give the state of the state of the district you know the unified district the su you know et cetera you know there were some you know there's some things that were discussed at meetings that i wasn't privy to that i wasn't asked to so they asked for some clarification i honestly don't know where those representatives were i can take a look at my emails and forward those to jamie and he can pass those on to you all i've asked ron to join us on monday evening as well yeah i think when we had one of the original drafts ron was on the phone with us explaining what some of the different lines were um but uh and that was all pre pre-covid so it was just over the phone versus like a google me like this special ed i recall was being the biggest one that needed to be reallocated and and the unified district took the big hit for that one ron are you available if i wanted to talk to you on the phone i'm gonna leave that up to you if if bruce if jamie has no problem you know as bruce didn't i'm more than happy to talk to anybody my hands extended to anybody so well i'd like to read through this complete um audit and uh i do a few questions maybe and i'd like to i'm more than happy to answer for you or anybody who wants to have a conversation for sure more than happy try not to take much of your time listen no no no worries i think it's important you know especially from you know from where this place has been and where it's trying to go and the work that it's trying to do to get there i think now there's no time like the present to do it so okay josh anything you want to add with the pre-audit and the works and conversations you've had with rose and tara uh no i don't think so not at this time i really think what we all ought to do you know and as i said this to jamie and tara we really you know and like i say i think it's actually important time we should be probably doing some kind of a monthly status check here and i think a five minute or a 10 minute you know phone calls we've done with some other supervisor unions that we do you know that have had some problems you know that that just a regular hey how we doing are we making any progress we're more josh and i'm more than happy to extend our hands to do that because i think that that needs to be done more frequent especially as you're coming in the budget season all over again well do we have any more questions about the audit specifically and do we want to try and accept it tonight anybody well i think there's a lot of work a lot of work that's gone into this this is just real that i suspect you've done the other districts too and uh you know i'm willing i'm willing to approve the audit i mean i haven't read it all the way through but it seems like a lot of work's gone into putting it together do we have a motion i'll move to accept the audit i'll second any discussion all right all in favor hi hi hi all right okay we've accepted the audit the motion passes thank you both for joining us thank you you're welcome everybody take care how's it going correct you on monday all right um so now we're on to what was eight dot one the covid 19 reopening plans so i'll i'll kick it off and then i'm going to turn it over the principles they've all been working incredibly hard at the building level um then with shane oaks to ensure that we have a safe and effective reopening of schools uh tomorrow there will be another updated communication coming up from the su that discusses expectations around students who are attending in-person instruction around wearing face masks and other and completing health screenings and we're going to ask that guardians and students sign an agreement that indicates that they understand that health screenings have to happen daily that face masks have to be worn at all time when they can't safely social distance outside um so that that there's no gray in that i when we're talking about safety i think that needs to be black and white and so that is going out and we're going to expect that that is signed and completed prior to students attending in-person instruction um in addition to we got some other updates that are coming out in regards to athletics and heidi is still on the call i think so she can give an update around that i met with shane and heidi um in regards to athletics earlier today we continue to feel good about our transportation plans i was in contact for the transportation company twice today i think we've got good plans in place to transport students across the su including to our tech centers and i know read and all that have been working on the crossover transportation as far as the virtual academy goes those numbers did creep up over the last few days although we're still um well under the k-8 level of the 20% that folks have been seeing and other su's i believe the high school may be at 20% virtual but the elementary schools are much lower than that across the su so i feel good about the fact that i think we can staff it creatively across the su and have teachers focused purely on virtual instruction in grades k through five and we've got oan and tracy thompson our meeting with lindy stetson to talk about how we can staff the middle school virtual academy i feel good about the kind of draft plans i worked out with lindy and tracy around that and as you know you just heard where our fiscal conditions not great and the carers of money we're trying to be very careful with so i'm really looking at how do we share resources across the su to tackle this and have two high quality programs both in person and virtual and i'm feeling confident that we're going to be able to do that we i will say that the rub faculty and staff are definitely reaching out in regards to utilizing the supervision that we're providing and so that's going to ensure that we're able to keep some of our highly qualified teachers in front of students and you know i just want to put a shout out to all the faculty staff administrators who have been working tirelessly over the summer as we get ready to open within service next thursday i'm able to sleep at night feeling like we're going to have a really safe and effective plan for reopening on the eighth and i'm going to turn it over to read and we're going to go down through each of the grade level clusters around what those specific plans are read you want to take it over i will yeah and i'll i'll re-emphasize what jamie just said is i i think there's a high degree of comfort with our staff with the plans we have in place the the types of stories you see on the news about teachers organizing protests and that sort of thing is not at all the case with our faculty some of the some of the tension with the high school staff is they're really concerned that they're not going to have as many minutes with our hybrid plan with their students as they would like to have so we you know it's an interesting conundrum to have with the the results of who's registered for the virtual academy we now know that at the high school 20 percent of our students will be learning all remotely through first semester of the coming year so that with one fifth of the students that looks like 10 ninth graders 10 11th graders and 11 11th and 12th graders because we have 10 ninth graders and 10 10th graders that gives us enough to cohort those students for their core academic classes so our plan is to create 13 to 15 virtual sections from our existing faculty we'll have two English teachers two math teachers two history teachers two science teachers all to teach their normal ninth or tenth grade class teach that virtually to the group of students in the virtual academy so i'm i'm feeling good that that's going to keep our costs for for run this virtual academy under control without having to really add much staff or for extra cost we're looking at having about five elective classes where we've had low enrolled electives say what's a good example we might take an art class one of the low enrolled art classes and try to create a virtual art program we haven't figured out what that's going to look like we think we can run maybe the health class which is a graduation requirement and offer that for a semester remotely so what we're doing right now we started work on it yesterday when we got our numbers and we'll continue tomorrow morning is take the master schedule and reallocate staff and staff to make sure that we're fulfilling all our contractual obligations with the association and trying to create the best schedule that that fulfills students choices for classes in order to make that happen with the virtual academy especially with 11th and 12th graders whose interests and course needs are going to be a little more diverse than 9th and 10th graders will rely on 25 slots we have at the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative and we're really going to encourage 11th and 12th graders to take advantage of the two college classes they can take through Vermont's dual enrollment program so hopefully that'll put a cap on the number of classes we might have to pay for intuition to get kids the classes that they wanted you know for example I was emailing a student who wants to take an AP English class we just got to figure out where that's going to be cost effective for her to enroll in that and Jamie suggested Brigham Young has some virtual classes that in some cases are less much less expensive than what Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative has so we'll probably look at some other online schools to provide some of the fill-in courses that we need to get kids exactly what they want for the high school classes is there going to be kind of flexible pathways options for students who want to do like independent studies or something like that absolutely so for some of the 11th and 12th graders I fully expect some of them may have some community-based work that they're doing and we'll have them hooked up with the work-based learning program and doing that remotely another example is we've decided with all the concerns about singing in person that chorus will be a virtual class this year and we've got a plan plan for that so students in the virtual academy will be able to take virtual chorus just like the in-person students will be in virtual chorus and the way that will look is that the chorus students will have a place to go and sit when they're in the building but they won't have chorus but when they're on their remote learning day they'll have a small kind of private group voice lesson with the chorus instructor Reid have we worked out all the details within the pathways program for them to be assigned core content area proficiencies we have not done that yet but that's in the works uh we actually we're we're talking with a student who's enrolled at Hartford tech center and we're working on that with an English teacher last night yeah codifying it into a system is and who's going to staff that is the it's important but it's probably not as important as getting kids into their schedules for the first day of school so there'll probably be more on a case-by-case basis to start all the kids scheduled Reid no what what we're having to do Bob is we're in order to create the online sections now that we know how many kids we have we we have to close down an equal number of second where we we're going to take faculty out of our in-person schedule so instead of having four freshman English classes we're going to have three in-person freshman English classes and a fourth virtual freshman English class but what that means is we have to take the students who are virtual and we have to take them out of the regular schedule and we have to create sections of virtual classes and move those students into those classes but to do that we have to go into each of those 30 students course requests and we have to then manually reprogram them into the courses that they want so we've got a lot of work to do I'd like to think we'll be done with it by the end of the week but I don't know that we have the capacity to do that that quickly Well Reed, I'm just going to jump in having been a high school principal recently and say I know how difficult building the master schedule is in general and the fact that you've been thrown this curve ball on how you and your staff have thought outside the box to make this possible just thank you Yeah, a lot of the work's going to fall on Hannah Romeo's shoulders is she tries to work this out and she's a little worried but I'm confident that we'll put it together and it's going to work out for the kids and the kids will feel good it's an interesting mix many of the kids who've signed up for the virtual academy were successful and really liked that model last spring then there are a lot of other kids who just don't like coming to school so much who are there and we're a little worried about how remote learning entirely virtually is going to work for them so we also are looking at using our student assistance program professional counselor as a virtual academy counselor to do some work with those kids to make sure they're staying motivated and organized with their online coursework so that's that's what I've gotten that you have any questions All right, your turn, Owen? Yep Good afternoon evening welcome I'll try to be as succinct as possible but I want to share something with you just to give you a sense of what we're doing Okay, so if you can see right here this is our draft of how we're going to do our mixed model at the middle school and we held a parent meeting the teachers are working on this and it will flip flop this might get you a little seasick so bear with me so this is our mighty oaks and if you look that they are remote learning the first three days of the week and they're on campus the Thursday and Friday the opposite team the Maples is are in person on campus the first two days of the week and they're remote the last three days of the week so that gives you a sense and it breaks down how we're going to be doing things and I'll let you know that we still have sixth seventh and eighth grade we have 128 students 14 students have signed up for the virtual academy we have great numbers which makes about 41 kids per grade level on average and we're going to use we're going to create pods when they're at school those pods will be we have nine of those and they'll average 13 to 14 right in their kids per group and two adults with each group those groups will be stay together when they're on campus intense and we've already the tents are in the queue to bring forward and we have those and we're going to have some other tents for the elementary which Andrew will address so when they're at school they'll be working outside and when they need to be in like out of the sun or out of the rain they'll be in these tents they'll also be using the woods and they'll on their off days they'll be doing the majority of their traditional learning air quotes where they'll be doing math English science social studies they'll also be doing the essential specials pieces each afternoon remotely and in the the program during the day when they're on campus they're going to do a couple things specifically they're going to be reading and writing but they're also going to work within the woods and learn about the woods and biology and they're also going to work on a passion project that the team develops so a big piece of this is about team work and team development and about their social emotional connection we've created the model so that they're in a group of students that is not their advisory they'll still be assigned to their advisory and they'll connect with the advisor on the remote days they'll be one full advisory meeting on Wednesdays so now they'll have two sets of kids they'll be connected with so we've we've almost doubled their time with different kids one in person one set in person and one online that they have relationships with already let's see I think that's probably enough right now and there may be some questions or comments we had a meeting the other night with parents and I think we had about 30 parents show up and we had I think a half dozen teachers and we're going to try to hold another one of those before we open questions comments yeah I was just wondering when you were talking before you said something about using the churches or the town hall and whatnot later on when the weather gets bad but why wouldn't they just be able to go back into classrooms at that time and then the other thing I was wondering is I know we're getting some federal money for COVID related projects and it would be possible to put like an air exchange system in the school building so those are two big questions and first the one about off-site or in building we've changed our thinking on off-site it's still an option that's available but we figured out how we can have people in the building if necessary okay we're also not doing Portalettes that was uh and there's a good lot of good reasons for that nice Tammy and we're gonna have we're gonna create a bathroom program yeah it's I mean there's a lot of operations with this and I'm sure you know that at all levels of how kids arrive at school how they leave at school how they get food how they move around the building there's a lot of logistics and that's all being figured out with the principals and teachers so as far as what was the other one that you asked about yeah we um I don't think that we we actually have reviewed had our all of our air handling reviewed at both buildings and we're putting in MIRB filters and I'm told these MIRB filters probably Chris knows about this a little bit these are like high-quality filters that filter out a lot of stuff we have had all of our HVAC cleaned and we're going we usually change those filters my understanding is once a year and we're going to change those three times a year this school year okay other questions or comments in the efficiency Ramon I've spoken to them I feel pretty confident that that that grant that came out is going to cover most of the upgrades that throughout the SU once that money's released so do we have the sorry one of the things we've been working with efficiency Vermont with and control technologies our HVAC vendor is what it would take to come up to that the full standards which is a MIRB 13 filtration system and currently our filters only our our vents only have the capacity to run MIRB 8 filters and what that means is taking standalone HVAC units that are built into the walls of each classroom and there are 13 of these on the South Royalton campus we would see grant money to try to replace those with the same computerized system that can do higher capacity room turnover and handle tighter filters but that you know that'll be a six-figure grant item probably in the $120,000 to $140,000 range so who knows if the state's put aside enough money for all those projects I'll be not do we have statistics for how often the room air gets changed for the current system I don't know that you're muted you're muted for the new parts of the South Royalton system they've been programmed to I believe it's eight room circulations an hour because we have the capacity to do that so it's up to the COVID regulations that's the main entrance the office spaces the gyms locker rooms but the the older parts of the buildings we don't we don't have that and the in classroom vents manage air change over a percentage of outside temperature and trying to use outside air efficiently to heat or cool the rooms so it it kind of depends on the time of day and we don't really have the manual control to control room turnover so I think that the plan is to have windows and doors open and and use fans to change the air over more than it would otherwise that is the plan it's not systematized how we're going to best do that but Andrews turn so I feel like we sort of presented the last board meeting with this the day would look like for elementary students and so I'll just do a brief recap but we've been working really hard about what it's going to look like as kids arrive we did a lot of standing in the parking lot today talking about entrances and and how we're going to quickly health check people to get them in so kids will arrive between eight and eight 30 on buses and by cars we'll be health checking them the first half hour of the day all elementary classrooms are going to participate in a morning meeting where we're going to really focus on second step which is a program that the Royal Town Elementary has been using we're also going to be using some some materials that we've borrowed from Mr. Canardies previous schools that are based on Michelle Garcia Winters work on not missing it but but it's all about social social monitoring work Andrew I didn't know you were doing that yeah cat's out of the bag we're doing that on both campuses so we're really going to be working on building our community even though we're going to be very separate so through this morning meeting we're going to launch into academics as much as we can so focusing on literacy and the processes we've been using in literacy and math we're piloting a new program on the Royal Town Campus this year which is exciting so all classes will be using iReady math which is new and we'll be doing as much as we can outside and the Bethel Campus we're lucky because we have the overhangs we're going to utilize that is more than tense we do have retained one tent for the playing at the in the field and having separate spaces in Royalton we're getting a bunch of tents so that we have shade in the ability to be outside more as well so academics they're going to wrap up at one thirty and then we're going to move into an enrichment afternoon into three it's going to be in conjunction with some of the one planet staff and we're trying to tease out exactly what that's going to look like I know a lot of parents have more questions about that right now and we have had a meeting this past week and having another meeting tomorrow Thursday morning rather to finalize information about that we're hoping that welcome back letters are going to be going home Monday with something that tells talks about what that enrichment block will look like also we will still have one planet at three o'clock so parents have the option to pick up their kids at one thirty before the enrichment block and then we'll have also another option to pick up their kids at three o'clock or they can sign them send them home on the bus or they can sign them up for one planet all classrooms have a partner teacher or a buddy teacher as a backup plan what else do I want to say we're scheduling virtual parent meetings for next week so on the twenty fifth will be for grades three four and five on the twenty six will be for pre-k and on the twenty seventh will be for grades k one two we also are going to schedule some classroom tour nights which will be really brief some very socially distanced ten minute walks through the room with the teacher those will be and we're also going to go through the temperature dry runs and so parents can also see like how they're going to have to pull into each campus to drop off their kids so those will be the evenings of September 2nd for the grades three four five and evening of September 3rd for pre-k k one and two so there'll be more information coming out about all of that but that's what we've been working on we are wrapping up our work on the COVID handbook that we're going to get out to parents right now I just sent it to the staff today to poke holes in it to make sure it's ready to go we're making designated bathrooms welcome signs on all that exterior doors just everything you can think of we're trying to think of how to socially distance little people who don't always say separate happy to entertain any questions this is Lisa I'm just wondering what kind of are there going to be chairs out in the tinted areas or the outdoor areas obviously kids aren't going to be wanting to stand all the time and how are you going to be doing that so it depends I think on the teacher we've talked some teachers really are more comfortable with kids having chairs and a desk like area to sit and right at I know some teachers have already purchased some stump like pillows for kids to sit on and Bethel again it's concrete around most of the building that we will have access to for sitting on if it's nice obviously there's some grass too and Royalton it's a more of a grassy terrain so we're being really flexible and I think I'm going to work with teachers on what their preferences to have if they need things we're trying to meet them with their needs in the most economical way and be flexible so it's not a straight up answer I feel like this is really silly but we've even had this detailed conversation about pencil boxes just because everybody can't share anymore right there's no bucket of crayons for everybody to reach into so we're just trying to do what's comfortable for teachers and what they think is going to function the easiest I also can address the middle school part of that and currently and I need to be clear and I think you probably know this things are changing rapidly so what we present with you these are the details that we as administrators and teachers this is our business right but it's a good heads up for you we're talking about creating through the shop with Miss Brainard creating kits that students would put together seats that would be part of their some of their first work at school and these chairs would also have little storage space in them so they could put their daily stuff in that chair and also some something flat to write on so this is all part of the building into the process of how to be a team and also how to do things together and it's embedded math if you will I mean I know anybody that does any will be working at measure twice cut once or I always do the cut twice measure once thing and get it wrong but so that's how we're going to address that right now Lisa but that could change if we find that there's a different better way to do this it sounds like everybody's about one step away from each child having their own little chalkboard to write on well that may happen still and you know a lot of times in classrooms they have white boards little personal white boards so a great way for a lot of things including communicating with your teacher so that might be something that comes along here so we heard briefly about chorus in the high school is there any instrumental music plans for this year yeah Andrew Josh Pauley has been been reviewing the National Music Association's guidance and reading every piece of data from research that he can on how COVID spreading and how musicians are dealing with it and he wants to give it a shot so we are we are keeping concert band in the high school schedule it will at the very least will start outside on the soccer field with kids at least 10 feet apart and we have we're in the process of ordering I think they're called instrument socks so they're cloth covers to put over the openings of the instruments so the aerosols in particulates can't travel or they're you know cuts down on them the other thing that they're using for music is split face mask so a mouthpiece can go to the face mask and when air is sucked in by musicians which is where some of the danger comes from is when they take a big abnormally large inhalation they can pull in particulates from farther away than a kid just sitting in a classroom so by having that mask around the mouthpiece will cut down on some of what they're able to inhale and exhale too when when they don't have the mouthpiece in so we're going to give it a shot if if it doesn't feel safe we've got a backup plan of turning everyone into percussionists and having just a huge drum line with the kids on field drums and all sorts of percussion instruments so we're going to see what we can do another piece to be aware of is we're trying to limit the interaction of people so part of this some of this will be virtual and some of it because moving people between campuses becomes an issue for a lot of reasons there will be some of course and moving people around the building so we're being really thoughtful about that and we haven't figured out the details I don't know if you're familiar with John Cage and his music that has silence in it we're going to try to do a lot of that in the middle school at the elementary level that's when they you know first get introduced to instruments and I know probably doing group things is probably isn't in the cards but it might still be a good idea to facilitate getting the kids instruments so they can start working individually on things just so that they're not completely missing a year our teachers are all over this I imagine as the experts can Heidi jump in and just give a quick overview of how we're approaching fall athletics and she's stuck on for me we met today we did a brief overview Heidi yep so the VPA passed out their recommendations last week on Tuesday and then we had 24 hours to kind of go through that before all the athletic directors jumped on from the state to do a conference call um basically we just kind of reviewed what the VPA's direction was given from the AOE the state department of resources and all of the input that came about from the state level and basically we're going to move forward with fall athletics they will look different you know face masks will be worn we've made Jamie Shane and I met today with some other members of the SU who were involved in athletics and basically kind of took the guidance from the VPA and the state and added our additional things to it that our SU is going to require so face coverings will need to be to apply and I pushed really really hard that we limit the amount of people that will be able to be in attendance for athletic events to two people per athlete for a number of different reasons and one of them is that you know we also have to kind of look at special events I understand we're in COVID and we need to do everything to remain safe as much as possible but you know when the senior games roll around for these senior athletes if we get to that point I want to be able for them to have additional family members there because these are you know once in a lifetime moments that are important that we honor and we try to keep as intact as we possibly can how we attempt to make this all work from what time you need to be at practice so that kids can go home to change so they're not clogging up the or having multiple people in the locker room at the same time and just putting in those different safety precautions so ideally what I'm proposing to do and I'm in the process of finalizing everything from an SU athletic COVID standpoint with the help of Shane to get out to families so that people know so that they can make their informed decisions on if they want their student to participate in athletics but basically practices will start no earlier than 3.30 in the afternoon so kids have the opportunity to go home and change if they can and they have to be masked up the entire time the only athletes that don't keep a mask on during competition are cross country runners cross country is going to look different how the starts are going to happen hasn't been released yet from the cross country committee once all that stuff comes into play it will absolutely pass it along ideally we're going to start in step two which means basically we're going to have five days at step two where we can practice if and when we move to step three you'll get an additional five days to practice where you can potentially scrimmage other schools once we move past that you know 10th practice we'll be able to start competing we'll pick up the schedule where we are based on the date they're extending soccer season by one week with the idea that if everything goes well we would play the September 15th week schedule in October just picking up those games realistically I think best case scenario the high school is going to look at somewhere between eight to nine games middle school my proposal was to have four games middle school schedule is usually shorter than the high school schedule and ideally we would spend a majority of the time at the middle school level focusing on practice and learning the skills and doing drills to get better we'd play a few games we'd keep those local ideally the high school schedule because we're part of the Southern Vermont League we will still remain relatively local you know and make that work out obviously if a school has an outbreak and we were scheduled to play a game with them we're not going to go play a game with them you know kids that are remote on the day of practice you know they'll have to go through the health screening either myself or the coach will be doing that um and we're going to try to make sure there are no gaps in you know when you come to school you're going to have that same health protocol that you have to go through to come to participate in athletics for that day the hope is that the decision about anything moving further for winter sports will come out somewhere around October 15th you know but bass fishing is ago cross country is ago and soccer is ago and those are the programs that we offer I've had parents reaching out asking questions wanting to know if teams are going to happen I have been telling them to register because I can't make decisions you know and make my recommendation to the school unless I have concrete numbers and I can't get those concrete numbers unless people register as I know you know so we're following the guidelines we've added some a few stricter ones ourselves just to keep our kids safe and I think they're all well warranted and good safe protocols to put them what about transportation so you can theoretically you can get 23 kids on a bus and do so safely as always if a parent chooses to transport their child to an athletic event they've always reached out and said hey can I take my kid for whatever reason that's something that likely when Shane and I sit down and kind of continue finishing up this athletic handbook for the SU that's something that's going to be encouraged if a parent wants to transport their child to an athletic event ideally that would be you know probably the safest way for them to get there the big push to why I want to have two spectators per student because as a parent if I drive my kid to an athletic event I'm going to expect to be able to get in and watch my child especially because I've driven them there there are some schools that are choosing to not allow spectators at this time all of that information will get conveyed to parents once everybody all the schools have everything finalized and everything in place I will be posting it on the school's websites the SU website putting it in team snap so everybody kind of knows what's going on so that they know you know Mill River is not allowing spectators at this time so that parents know that ahead of time because that might change their opinions about things so will there be any effort to like stream games online or anything so that community members or other family members would be able to watch I would love to say yes but that's finding additional people to come in and that it would be willing and want to do and help do that I have no problem doing that I would love to be able to record games and and have this stuff done and and taking care of it they're great tools for coaches to be able to use are great for your student athletes to be able to see but again it boils down to I need to have a volunteer that's willing to come in and do that and and then we can post it out ideally I don't want to share those publicly because I don't want some other team to gain advantage on our teams but you know we've set up YouTube channel for athletics and we would post in quarters of basketball games for kids to be able to share out and basically I told the kids that if their grandmother wanted to be able to watch that they were okay to share the link with them so you know those are special accommodations that I absolutely supportive to doing especially because we're going to restrict who can come and who can't be there so Reed there's a great pathway ah yeah well Heidi had a couple students who worked with her last year and there's a long history of students supporting the athletic program right yep oh and I also just thinking about our community volunteers that reached out today yeah and Ray's got nothing better to do now we're gonna have under armor face masks for the students um I actually finalized the order this afternoon for the two ply face masks they are sublimated they are not specifically under armor face masks because that it wasn't the economical option um and it also was not what Chris recommended so we went with what he recommended um based on you know how quickly we can get it here um and for the fact that it's also meeting the two ply recommendation that we're putting forth so are you trying to like enforce colors and stuff like that or is it just the VPA hasn't hasn't said the VPA is not requiring that they match the uniform they can be whatever color we bought gators because they're the the easiest thing for the athletes to keep up but if a student athlete came up and said hey I'd rather wear a fast face mask that goes behind my ears we're absolutely going to accommodate that so it just has to be two ply all right do we have any other questions about any of the COVID 19 reopening plans because how I guess the main way we'll know if there's an outbreak at our school or any other school is just going to be through the standard health screening right where they're going to be checking for temperature and things like that right so now I mean so the way that this would work due to FERPA is that if a student has a temperature they'll go home and then the nurse team is setting up procedures around you know how we will work with local medical professionals around that that doesn't mean that we have an outbreak because the student has a temperature students have had temperatures forever so if there was a student who was to test positive or staff remember to test positive that wouldn't get reported here and then the superintendent would work with the department of health around a notification and then there'd be a determination what we would do and so whether that means closing a cluster whether that means closing a classroom or whether that means closing a building and then that notification would come out from the superintendent's office is there anything though that ever kicks in I mean I don't think I've seen it in anything but just to double check where there be any type of case where a student is required to get a COVID test or is it always going to be sort of optional or up to the the student or the family so that's all about placing work with the department of health and yes the department of health can require folks to get COVID tested okay and then for the for the virtual academy the conversation is pretty amazing at this point yeah I mean I know you know I know that the governor's recommendations for higher education are a little bit different than the school's so it's yeah the requirements are actually very different yeah yeah for the virtual academy I know we get our sort of update to do the boards from the principals when the virtual academy starts up is there going to be some sort of regular update from the virtual academy that'll go out to all the boards since this is yeah I think the DSU is my plan is that lindy would do a monthly report to DSU cool and not COVID related but I guess Tammy had a question earlier that I don't think got answered on the and the notes about now that we've approved the the audit can she then can she now include it yeah so we will Tammy the way this works is the draft was approved so then we will just post that on the SE website a final copy yeah the final audit gets posted to the SU and then there's hard copies that are available at the central office that's required by statute I don't mean to be direct but I am being direct do I include the link in the minutes or not no thank you okay any other questions okay we'll move on and go ahead oh sorry it's after it's after a public comment I have something I want to bring up to the board okay was there anything in new hires I don't see anything under that nope okay so we're on to public comment is there any public comment hi yes go ahead Alexis Alexis totally young south virgin resident I would just like to know I feel like I got a good sense from the middle school level and the elementary level but what is the high school doing to faster good mental health for students and also good social engagement well Alexis the the high school is in a very different place than the elementary school in the middle school because students in the high school are going to be going to school with 65 to 70 other students that they'll be seeing in the hallways and have the chance to wave to and change classes with whereas in the middle school and the elementary school those students are going to be in much smaller pods and they won't have the chance during recess or lunch to mingle with other students what that exactly looks like at the high school I'm trying to wrap my head around a socially distanced mask break for high school students is one idea how we make that happen might not be something until we figure out after the first week of school and we we see how everyone moves around we are also planning to do weekly morning meeting videos which were we got a lot of positive feedback from students on last year so since we can't have morning meetings to build student community and have student announcements and celebrations we'll do that from classrooms and everybody will just you know we'll put that on the projector in each classroom and people will kind of virtually participate in morning meeting so those are some of the ideas that we plan to do we know we need to do more but those are all in the works I'm so sorry I have to ask a clarifying question here because I don't think I followed you right are you saying that students are going to be in the hallway like they would in a normal school year yeah so the the high school because in high school students have to take English and math and Spanish they can't be with the same teacher all day so in the middle school in the elementary school those students will be with the same two teachers for their whole academic part of the day in the high school students will go to four different classes just like they do in last year's schedule so there's a lot more exposure for high school students in terms of the numbers of contacts we're not going to be able to to send a pod home and quarantine them if the high school has some an outbreak we're going to have to shut the whole high school down okay adding to that you didn't really answer my question about mental health support so what are you doing for that because I know that was not touched last year mental what do you mean by that we have several counselors on on site that work with students all the time but what do you mean making sure that students be all supported and that they know how to reach and get access and also this is a traumatizing moment psychologists have literally called this situation a traumatic situation these kids have PTSD sure what are you doing to support them so Alexis one of the things we did last year and maybe this this didn't apply to you but as we became aware of student issues either because a student reached out to a teacher or a parent reached out to staff we had staff who met twice a week and we ran through our whole student body list to talk about student mental health and when we had concerns we devoted resources to helping them so we had five or six staff members who who regularly made phone calls or emails or even use social media in some cases to reach out with students just to check on their mental well-being when they hadn't been heard from but especially to provide support when they were in crisis and we we dealt with a number of crisis last last spring and I'm extremely proud of how our MTSS team handled those okay do we have any other public comment okay we'll move on to other so Jamie you said you had something yeah so I've been under other bringing up to each board whether or not they want to pilot the board getting together for an in-person meeting in September you have two member boards of the SU that have chosen to do that it'll be a hybrid meeting it'll be virtual for public but the board would meet at location a worn location and we've tried to choose settings either outside or indoor that would also allow the public to come in social distance if they choose the idea behind it is that there was information from the VSBA that came out and said that to boards that you might want to not consider getting back to in person but as your superintendent and the fact that we're moving back and you've got faculty coming back to the buildings next week and students I think that you might want to consider whether or not moving to at least pilot an in-person meeting would make some sense speaking for myself I'm not I would prefer to stay virtual just because like the best thing that we can do to keep the schools safe is by keeping the transmission in the community down low and so anytime that we can avoid in-person contact that helps that goal so I feel like these meetings have been fairly productive and I don't feel like the online format is particularly I don't know detrimental to our discussions I don't know what other people think and I certainly would be fine if a hybrid format would let people go if they feel comfortable well yeah the other board that said that board members didn't feel comfortable they didn't have to attend and this is not something I'm trying to push the boards on but it's something I think that it warrants a conversation of each board just to talk about I could go either way with this I mean I think that the in-person meetings offer a little more of a community sense and a feel sometimes meeting through these platforms can be it's hard to give it a hundred percent of my attention you know there's distractions happening within the household kind of thing but I also understand you know I guess like I said I could I'd be happy to show up in person if that's where our energy went but I feel like these in-home virtual meetings have been productive I like seeing all the the fact that our meetings are recorded I mean they always are but they seem to be running pretty well if yeah if we went to a hybrid meeting I mean I would probably still continue to connect remotely just to keep contact down for me Vermont Tech will be teaching remotely for lecture but then we'll have lab weeks and so I'll have to be getting tested the week before I have a lab week with students and so probably just to keep contact down and and make sure that I don't impact my my daily job you know I'll probably still try to isolate as much as I can you know I feel comfortable going out in public and stuff but you know just to go to the grocery store and then come back home but yeah I think just for me and my family I would probably still connect remotely I don't have I just don't meet in person if it's outside that'd be great in a tent and or you know why we can socially distance but either way it's fine but I don't have a problem meeting in person I'm a face-to-face person I suppose one advantage to getting together in person would be being able to see some of the like if we met at one of the schools with some of the outdoor facilities that they have might be useful to be able to see that do it but you could teach you how to make a fire but yeah I mean it seems like if we're going with the hybrid I mean we'd be going with the hybrid anyway because public would be remote so you know if we want to change the central meeting location from the central office to one of the an outdoor location or something else then you know as far as like practically it would be about the same like a bobbin person right now anyway and yeah just a matter of who's comfortable going I guess yeah I guess we're just gonna make sure a decent wi-fi signal outside for hosting the meeting you think we're good right do you think we'd be good well we're gonna test this in uh Chelsea coming up yep we're good in Bethel outside so is it the board I mean do you guys is it your desire that I you know warn the agenda moving forward Google Meet and that we'd be hosting outside at a Bethel campus to begin with yeah in the past we've swapped back and forth between Bethel and Marielton yeah we could just continue doing that unless there's a specific reason to just be at Bethel I was just gonna just so I know which one I'm warning I'm just making myself yep ask a question I just assumed that if we start board meetings on our campus that other community groups are going to ask if they can access the school so I'm assuming that that isn't going to shift yet but I'll wait for more information on that yeah oh yeah no yeah no yeah I do think philosophically personally I think it's better to keep things remote at least for the first little while as school's picking up you know I think the most important thing is having the kids have the option to be in school and the safest way we do that is by yeah keeping the community as you know remote as possible but anyway that's just my my personal preference great um do we have any other discussion on this or should we move on to future agenda items no I think it's good I get okay so do we have future agenda items anybody wants to add well uh by the time we meet next we'll have accomplished one week of school so I guess I guess that's not an agenda item I that'll just be part of the agenda just letting us know how everything went and but uh we do have I'm looking at the next meeting date and I thought we had a a retreat scheduled for September as well like the 18th is it two in the same week do we really need to have a board meeting and a retreat oh did we talked about that too didn't we we decided we were both yeah yeah I think the idea was that the board meeting will be for yeah regular current events and the retreats more for overall planning purposes we're we're going to get an update of course um we did this became and had to reviewed your guys's grounds um and that's something that I'd like to get on the future agenda it could help inform the facilities committee too and just so you know I said the board is if you have agenda items that come up between now and about a week and a half before your next meeting and I I plan these meetings with your board chair so if you have an agenda items then Lisa and I can talk about them and then get them on the agenda all right it's probably on Jamie's radar already but uh going forward we'll have facilities and but finance or budget reports to present at the board going forward yeah and you guys have your September the SU agreed to your September data point is social emotional data so the principals will have that report in September as well good all right well our next meeting will be Tuesday September 15th there's nothing else so entertain a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn