 We'll call the meeting to order at 7.06. Do we have any adjustments to the agenda? Adjust the policy if possible. We're not taking action and I've received some feedback. I just need to, they're not significant changes, but I need to get it back in front of the full board. Okay. We'll take action on these next part, but. Okay. All right, anything else? I'm going to, the consent agenda to approve the minutes of Tuesday, June 20th, 2023. Move to approve. We have a second. Second. I didn't get it in the packet, sorry. All right, that's moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, the minutes are approved. We got paid now. Yeah. Looks like we got everybody. Okay, now on to public comments. Do we have any public that would like to speak at this time? All right, we'll move to board comments. Any board members want to say anything? So I guess board slash public comment, as a parent maybe, how do we feel the process with the e-forms are going to go this year? I know. As a parent, I would say they went smashingly well this year for myself going them out. Because I haven't done it yet, but. So much better. I just remember last year I really took my time and filled them all out and then all of a sudden became. You're going to love it. You're going to say this is the best thing I do all night. I think we've worked to try to improve the experience. It's so, I'm not being, it's so much better. It was all in one place, you don't have to click other places. I'm looking at Parker because he's worked on this too. It was so much better, Parker. Thank you. Is it better for multiple children? Yes. Okay, awesome. Especially, I even had a kid transition from a different school, right? So Jordan's coming here from Rochester. Her stuff was all there. Good. Awesome. We'll try it. Well, thanks. Until you've done one, like last year it was. Last year was a different story. Last year was a different story. Yeah, oh good. That's good to hear. Let's do it all. Great. Shout out to Parker. Yeah, look forward to that. Amazing. So much better. We'll have a lot of happy parents, that's for sure. I'm glad to hear that they experienced it. Glad I did it ahead of time so I could report on it. I'm doing like, oh no. Now I'm going to feel better tonight. Okay. We don't have a celebration of learning pretty much. So I'll go to the superintendent before. So you have a report again. I just really wanted to highlight a few things. One is just the incredible amount of work that our staff does over the summer months. Like, it hits me more and more every year. Like, schools really are opening year-round. We ran six weeks of summer camp this summer, which was an additional week than we have in the past. We offered some middle school programming to kids. We've had teams of teachers working almost every week, I would say, other than the 4th of July. Some group of teachers have been engaging in other professional development they were, posting in the SU and we're meeting and teaching teams. We had, your district had vertical alignment with English department yesterday at central office. Today we have training happening in regards to direct instruction for some of our reading intervention. It's like, there's just a lot happening and it's a huge shout out to the staff for all their efforts that they're putting in over these summer months. A lot of teacher leadership, sorry to put it. What's that? A lot of teacher leadership. A ton of teacher leadership. I do worry a little bit about just fatigue. It's always something I worry about. We have a lot of exciting great things happening over the summer, but like, that idea of like, pausing and refreshing worries me. So it's something that I just wanted to mention. One, twofold. One, thank you. Two, to the board to just say, I just think it's in my radar to monitor. Like, I think there's a lot of good work happening which is pushing us forward into the summer. I worry, well, what that means in regards to fatigue come next year. That's all. We're gonna talk about it. Some of the summer work that's happening in buildings and grounds, a huge shout out to our custodial and maintenance team working around EI. I am really excited about the summer capital improvement projects that we've been putting in place, including having a painting team that's been overseen by Mike Ballu, who's a teacher down at Hartford who has been painting in the past, who's overseeing a team of some of our White River Valley High School students. I don't know if you've noticed, they've done a ton of painting at the Royalton campus and we've done some, we've freshened up the front up here already. And so that's been a great project and approach, I think, to get that work done internally and in-house without having to contract it. And then know that John Rhodes has been working hard with our long-care contracted service, and I'm flanking on this name right now, so I apologize. Jacob. Jacob, but also the rec group in town to get the beffle fields back up from the flooding, that's really the part where we get hit was at our back home. And then just, you know, new teacher orientation happens next Wednesday and teachers are back in the buildings next Friday. That's a complete day for room setup for teachers and support staff will be coming in too. They may have a little work that they're doing in regards to some specialized training around social-emotional work and de-escalation with Claire Martin, but also helping teachers with room setup. We do expect that teachers will be able to access room still next Wednesday, even in, like, the example on this campus in Beffle, at that middle school where they haven't had access due to work around our HVAC and heating system. And I'll take any questions folks may have. Did we end up with any vacancies going into the school year? Do you think it would be the campus? We're looking for a couple paraprofessional staff and we'd love to have one more. One more, Interventionist. And we're a language here at the middle school. Yeah. Okay. So really not that bad. We're in pretty good place. No, I feel pretty good about hiring, you know. I had them all, right? That's all. Yeah. I was driving back from the Lakes region. I think we passed four schools that had paraprofessionals needed. That's not bad, you're right. The good news is that we're still hiring, right? I just interviewed. We needed a food nutrition assistant for our lunch service program here on the Beffle campus. We just completed a hire today for that. I've interviewed some paraprofessionals and special ed pairs for across the district. So we're still getting hires, they're still happening. One of the things that we're looking to do that I think that will be finalized this week and I'll put it in my full board report is we are gonna set up a table at the Termers Fair this year for the four days for WRBSU that will have information about our community school work, pathways, any job openings we may have, our strategic plan, opportunity to just engage with the community. And so I will be looking for board members and administrators to consider volunteering a couple of hours at the fair to do the table. So I'm hoping that is another way to generate just interest in the work that's happening, but also I think there's folks that sometimes think I can't be a substitute teacher but actually they have a lot of the skill set that they could be a really great substitute teacher. So I think there's just opportunity to engage with the community there. And bus routes are totally bus drivers because I heard Chris mention that. We are down two bus drivers in the SU, SUY right now that we're still looking for, but STA has been able to cover the route. Actually we're gonna be partnering one of the routes that we're having trouble with is up over from Rochester over here to Bepple. They've reached out with Randolph, I think Randolph's gonna partner with us so we have to utilize their bus to get our students over here to Bepple. Just as they're coming over the hill they're willing to help us up. We finished a driver and they were still down one driver in Royalton, but Stacey Emerson, the general manager there has a plan so it shouldn't result in late routes or anything. Otherwise we're staffed across the SU drivers. And I'm having a, we're hosting an SUY bus driver meet and greet and lunch in next Tuesday at the Royalton campus. All right, thanks, Jimmy. Principal's support. Welcome, thank you. Is that what you just introduced yourself? Yeah. It seems more appropriate than long term. I met some of you, I'm Pierre LaFlamme, the middle school principal here on this campus. I'm glad to have you here initially now. Thank you. That's great. Now that you're here you get to go first now. Sure. So it's great. I know you folks have gone through this packet, I just wanna point out a couple of the highlights of things that are going on. Keeping an eye on the work we're doing in terms of identifying, clarifying, supporting our systems, MTSS systems of support around here. There's been a lot of professional development both with the admin team and teacher leaders at the Best Institute. We continued some of that work and discussion at the VPA conference in our admin retreat with teacher groups that were coming in. And today I joined some other administrators working with the state and an outside agency who are providing an entire slate of trainings that go throughout the entire year all the way to next August. All designed to strengthen how we use data, how we bolster our universal supports and universal academics. What we typically might call tier one. While also finding ways to identify a phrase that's new to me, teaching and planning to the edges. Making sure that all students are included in how we use data and meet their educational needs. So I just wanna kind of echo what our superintendent said. There's been a lot of professional development over the summer, a lot of our teachers engaged in collaborating across the hall with partners in different content areas and it's actually quite exciting. So although the board packet may have a thin blurb, there's an awful lot going on. Yeah, I think that both Jamie and Pierre have covered it all. I would also just say we're kicking off with some open houses and our ice cream socials are coming up, so we're excited to have that. In addition to some of the PD that Jamie mentioned, we have another optional math training for our new teachers which is gonna be happening the day before our mandatory newbie trainings. And I think the feedback I'm hearing from our new hires is like, thank you, because it feels like a lot of preparation. So that feels good right now. Yeah, and so the professional development started at the Maker School program that Jeff Clayton and I went with the middle school staff that was outstanding and the best conference. And one of the things about best, sometimes when you go to conferences, it reinforces what you're already doing which is really awesome. And the first conference we went to the thread there, the lady spoke about meeting students at the door which was one of our non-negotiables this year that we had last year I should say. And teachers are doing that and it builds community but it also builds your culture of the school. The hallways were a lot cleaner. I mean, kids were more engaged and they were in the class on time. So that was kind of good. So we're gonna continue with meeting students at the door. Having learning targets on the board was another one that they mentioned that we talked about that we're gonna direct with. We also had procedures in the classroom that we're gonna go over. So a lot of that stuff was really interesting. It reinforces what we've been doing and will continue to do. I don't know how I can talk, not talk about the storm of July 10th. We were at school and all of a sudden Paul Brock comes in and says, route 14's flooding, you gotta go. And all the way and I could think about was just like too late to put sandbags up because of Irene. We know how bad we took it for Irene. So the next day, I mean, I was getting reports from Paul all night long about the water and it hasn't reached the field yet. And then John came down to pictures of Bethel's fields and I just, and then somebody took some of carpenter. So I just figured we were gonna get it. And I don't know how we escaped that in our, but fortunately we did. So Broadbrook where I live right up there, road and south road is still closed. We'll be closed I think for a year. So I'll be taking a long way to school. I've taken my bike a few times this year, but it seems like it rains every day. So Jamie mentioned this, but the work that would been done, I can't thank Bruce Tibbetts enough for all the work that he's done. He's amazing in his work that he does. The bridge is a great idea because we were having issues with the support of the bridge. Some of the boards had gone. One of the steps at the end had broken away and one of our faculty members slipped on it. And it's always snowy and covered in freezing rain and whatnot. So I'm really excited to have the covered bridge there. Lori, Tammy and Colleen have done amazing this summer. I know that school's been a lot of traffic coming and going and they're doing an amazing job and it looks like they'll be finished right on time. It seems like a short summer. They keep talking about, seems like school went a week longer than they were used to in staff stayed in to clean up the rooms and get organized for the ready start of summer. And then the one planet went a week longer than normal. So Lori is just like, ah, so I talked her off the shelf today. So she's good. And then our community barbecue which we had last year which I think was a great hit is Thursday, August 24th at five o'clock. So we'll continue with that. So invite all your friends. I'll make sure there's more signs out. We put a couple out and across and in the town but now we're gonna spread out to the other towns. That bridge looks real nice. There's some ambient lighting coming. Oh, we just put some lights in there. Oh, really? Yeah. If you go at night, there's some safety. I didn't even think of that. That's the only thing you probably could do to make it better is make sure that it's lit so that I don't fall on my buck when I'm going to watch a theater presentation. Yeah. We got it covered. Yeah. Anything else for the principles? Tara. So you all have my report. It outlines what we're working on in the business office during the month of August. It's a very busy time for us. We are closing out and wrapping out fiscal year 23 and at the same time gearing up and making sure everything is ready to go for fiscal year 24. All stat books were due today and they have all been submitted. So that is huge. Other than that, the only thing on my report is the discussion items later on your agenda. Thanks, Tara. So policy committee, there's these two, the access control and visitor management policy and the emergency preparedness drill policy. Which I didn't print off either. Sorry. They're from Strafford today. I'm sorry. So they were included in the email if people had a chance to read them ahead of time. This is a good amount of time. So there's a few typos in there that I need to clean up. And in general, I think we'll be ready to take action on this next month on all of our local district boards and in the full board at the end of the month. Typically we do the full board first, but I really need to get it back in front of the policy committee just to help folks wrap their heads around. There's been just been some questions at some boards around what does it mean in regards to have optional scenarios in regards to our emergency drill preparedness. And what that means is that, within our structures now that in the event that there was a concern around a threat on the school campus, we have options-based decision-making, right? It used to be we would lock our doors and we would go into lockdown. We are moving toward a system that buys by the Homeland Security Run High Fight model where folks have tactical decisions in regards to where an intruder could be within the building, the approaches that we would announce where the intruder was in the building, and then other folks within the building would have choices in regards to whether you would run, whether you would hide and lock down within the school building. So, but this is getting at, this policy when it talks about that is the fact that that's the work that we're doing in making those changes. And so, schools are starting to do tabletop exercises, the staff to give drill scenarios around if this was to happen, how would we handle it? So, know that that is going to be occurring. And then the access control and visitor management policy isn't really gonna change much of anything for what you do currently as schools. We've already had our doors locked down. You buzz in, you have to come in and sign in. You need to have a visitor badge. That was never in law or policy. It's just schools started doing that procedurally. So, this is really to implement that in policy. The big change now in the law and policy is, is that the SU needs to be doing that now as well. Which is a big change for our practice of how we handle ourselves at the SU. We're not equipped at this point to have cameras in our doors right and to buzz folks in. We're working on seeing what that would take to have that happen. We expect that in the next month, we'll have it so that the central office is locked down and we have the ability to buzz folks in. But that is required in statute now too and then is aligned within that policy. These policies are essentially boil or take from the Vermont school board's association after that law took effect. So expect in September that we would hopefully be able to take action on it. The statute, this law was passed on these two policies requiring them to be put into place in those procedures in May. And they wanted them approved by August 1st. The Secretary of Ed, Interim Secretary of Ed acknowledged the Superintendents that that was not a very realistic timeline. And so she said, as long as you're showing that you're making progress toward them, that you've got drafts, that you're reading them, that that would be fine to try to get them done and approved as soon as possible in school. Is this gonna affect how the high school entrance in fact works? Well, this policy would read, it's about during the school day. So we're gonna define that again. The length of our school day will be from eight until when students would leave within procedure, which I'm thinking is essentially gonna be when one plan and ends is what we're essentially gonna define it. We don't have some of the buzz people in during practices all night, right? And so that's how we'll define the school day. And so that door would remain locked during when school starts. Which is essentially what happens right now. I think, yeah. It doesn't change what our procedures are. This is not gonna change us like having a lockdown all the time, right? Like before school starts, they'll still, they'll be unlocked. Okay. Any other comments on those policies? But I mean, it does speak to, and I think it's something that the task force needs to take up. And when we get to EEI, I've asked them to come meet with us again here soon, is that I think we have some work to do in regards to security, in regards to, in general, it'd be nice to have a holding area at each building, like we do in Royalton, meaning here in Buffalo. It's sort of, in the middle school, you can picture it quite easily. As you're approaching and there's the overhang that could get boxed in. And then you could enter there and then they would get buzzed in. And Eric and I talked a little bit when he was here doing the walkthroughs in June, sorry, July, when I was here with him on the HVAC work of how the elementary probably wouldn't actually be that hard to do the same as you walk in. And then discussion about the high school entrance and do we want camera out at the high schools to access that door throughout the day? And get buzzed in, the double entry. I think that that's like for future, like next summer, possibly work. All right, so under the discussion items, the annual board retreat, possibility in time, will we actually, Did we schedule one? I didn't know. We did schedule one. Oh, sorry. I agree with that. Yeah, I meant to get back to you on this. That's all right. So what is, we can remind, Yeah, so we will be doing it's September 22nd at 5 p.m. That's a Friday, right? Yes. Yes. In my senses, we would do dinner. Yes. Rodney's making brisket. Right? Is that what we talked about? I missed all of it. Okay, that's good. I'm just volunteer. All right. So the, okay, summer capital projects update on EEI work. Yeah, so I was able to do a walkthrough in the middle of July. It was right after the flood beach, which didn't work well for a lot of our board members. They weren't able to be there across the SU, but I was able to do a walkthrough. We've been having owners meetings every Thursday with the EEI, the principals joined and had a maintenance, actually Janet Brown joins here at the middle school campus. So their timeline, they are on schedule. Folks will have access to their rooms. Are the radiators got back ordered for here and in Rochester, which is not ideal. And so they expect them by the second week of September. Their plan is to come in and install them during the weekend, like the second weekend in September. They'll be installed. They have cleaned up the room space so that it looks still neat and tidy, where the old ones are all removed. So that's the only, all everything else, all the piping, everything's run in the rooms. We just need to hang the radiators, which they said doesn't actually take that much time as a big, big kid. We can now bang it out. So that's the delay here, other than the fact of we're still having issues with act 250 permitting on the wood chip boiler. Boiler, the propane boiler's all good to go on running. Or we'll be running when the radiators get put in, but hot water's good to go. All that's running. We have hit it. The issue that we're having with act 250 permitting is actually about carbon footprint because the way the act 250 permit here worked was that due to the boiler boiler, we're now moving to a wood chip boiler, which changes the footprint. It changes it in a positive way. These boilers are pretty efficient. But I guess it still needs to go through the entire act 250 permitting possibly. Although we were asking for a, essentially we appealed to try to get approval that it wouldn't have to go through the whole process. You probably understand that. It's kind of a odd thing where the new two systems that will be installed together will be almost 60% more efficient than the current system that we have, I don't understand. As an entire model. And the state had approved that model and obviously not only approved it, but give us money for it. But then when act 250 was writing their opinion on it, they had no problem with the LP versus the oil. But when it came to the wood pellet versus the oil, the wood pellet actually has a little bit larger covered footprint oil. Even though that at the end of the day, the wood pellet system maybe only makes up 20% of the whole heating element. So instead of looking at it as a group, they look like they broke it down into the doors. So that's where it's been held back. But again, the LP burner isn't gonna stop us from heating the school. It can do the whole school. It can do it, we might take a little bit more gas in the wintertime until we get on board. But it's something that doesn't make a lot of sense. But they're- I've been told that they're still open November. That it kind of- So they still might have it for the winter? Yeah, approval, yeah. Yeah, probably December. They just- If they don't have it for November, does that mean that they can't have it for winter? Can it be put in subsequently in December? All the pipe-ins run. So really what it is, what we couldn't do is actually put the boiler in, the wood chip boiler couldn't go in, and we couldn't pour the pad and have the silo. That's all we're missing right now. So it's pour the pad, install the silo, put in the wood chip boiler. All the- If I brought you to the boiler room, it's all ready to be hooked up, like the platforms are poured, all the lines are ready to connect. Just can't put it in until we get that. But typically we wouldn't use the wood pellet portion of it until late December when we need the high VTU usage point. So we're hoping it won't be a big deal, but I think the only thing that was kind of a big deal to us was the registers becoming backwards, because that was an in-class component, but we found a workaround. All right. The update on the lighting, the lighting will definitely happen. Their crews have started in the SU. I did just, so the Redboard knows, we did a lot of work here, so I had them prioritize starting with a few schools that didn't know work in the SU other than just lighting, so that it just felt like everyone was getting a little work done. So they're gonna be here, it'll get done this fall. And what they do is they do it third shift. Does it finally get done? I don't know, I think it's working out. Yeah, I mean, I always, well, yeah. Considering what it could have been, like I feel like in general, the way these things work and timelines and the lanes. There's always gonna be something. There's always gonna be something that we're in pretty good shape. Okay, well then let's move to the revised lease agreement. So in my report, I gave you details on the final lease agreement. The interest rate that you had originally approved back in February was up to 5%, and the final interest rate came in at 5.22%. The final payment will be $119,780.80. The impact on the interest rate to the payment was 1,761.50. In the FY24 budget, we had used a projected lease payment that EDI had provided of 79.6, so we will make that adjustment in FY25 in thereafter for the actual payment. I'm not overly concerned on that because we have other areas in the budget where we will have room to compensate for that increase. All right. So the motion that I need you to make is a motion to accept the final interest rate of 5.22%. Seconded. Was that sufficient or do you need us to say something? Okay. All right, any discussion on the motion? Okay. So we'll do a roll call vote. The first did that motion? Okay. Ed. Who did what? Oh, I think Chris. Chris, I seconded and seconded it. Okay, Chris, thanks. So we'll do a roll call vote at one of the board chair training that was mentioned that for hybrid meetings, we should be doing roll call votes, so. Peggy, did you have something you wanted to say? How long is that interest rate for? How many years? So 15 years, Peggy. So 15 years. So if the interest rate drops, we're still at 5.2, right? Yes, it's a fixed interest rate. Fixed interest, okay. That was my question. Okay. Is there any further discussion on the motion? All right, then we'll do a roll call vote. Nancy? Say aye, so we hear you. Aye. Great. Rodney? Aye. Peggy? Aye. Ed? Aye. Chris? Aye. So it passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. All right, that concludes our action and discussion items. So we'll move to public comment. Is there any public that would like to make a comment at this time? Okay, we talked a little bit about it, about new hires and resignations. It was outlined, I think, in one of the attachments. So no resignations. We have a new, I have to read it. It's too many, hold on, give me two seconds. I'm ready, I got it, I got it. Libby Lane, teacher? Right here. Yep. We have Libby Lane, she's a second grade teacher here at Bethel Elementary. Alyssa Castellini, who's gonna be teaching fifth grade homeroom, but mostly science for three through five. Mitch Smolier, who's our new school counselor here on the Bethel Elementary campus. Cassandra Berlini, who's a librarian on this campus. Stacey Rupp, who's a librarian in the South Railton campus. So I'm gonna be a teacher already. Yeah, I just, I don't know who we didn't do last. No, you're good. Sorry. Wendy Grunthal, who's kindergarten in Royalton. Melissa Wilson, who's first grade in Royalton. Tiffany Bates, who's grade three in Royalton. James Blondin, who's PE in ECO in Royalton. Crystal Lumber is officially hired as interventionist, although she's been with us for a little bit previously. And the new, a new all ed teacher is Christine Swenson. And I think that is intensive program classroom. Right, right. I think that's, I think that's enough. I will say I appreciated the little biomes that you post on social media. We're trying to dribble them out slowly. So yeah, highlight the kindergarten teacher's next class. So we'll keep on, we'll keep coming. Great. And Tammy, if you need that for the notes, just email Andra. Yeah, I emailed her last time, so she has the notes. I think she has first of those. I don't think any of those other than rich, smaller was the last one we had at the school counselor. I'm just gonna point to the principal's report. It's kind of full listing. Sure does. If they go to the attachment, as soon as the welcome letter has the full listing. Yeah. All right. We don't have any other. So future agenda items. We've got the elementary school structure discussion. Yeah. Yeah, principals are gonna connect with staff too. I think having some staff feedback on that will be helpful to incorporate into the presentation. And we'll have a presentation for you. Okay. Then I guess we'll probably have the policies, those policies will need action. My sense is you're gonna have another reading. Well, we'll see what the full board says. The board member conduct and code of ethics policy. We felt like it was real close. And I was actually gonna reach out to you, Andrew, to see if you wanted to join the next policy committee meeting. Some of the changes we made in regards to just giving the boards like some different opportunities that have like what constituted complaint to be brought to the board level versus not. There was just some questions around that. So remember we used the language that came out of the essential work of boards. It's probably not the title of the book. I was getting wrong. What happened to my board package? There was just some conversation around that. So I'm gonna try to capture some of that and keep the original draft, but then have another draft based on what they said, and check that we'll get around a little bit. Okay. On Tuesday, if any of them. Reminder that full board meeting is on Tuesday, folks. It's Tuesday. It's coming Tuesday. Right. Well, yeah. 27. All right. So our next meeting date is Tuesday, September 19th at 7 p.m. Royals and then we do have our retreat that Friday, the 27th at 5. We should probably have a general finish up the agenda on the retreat. Yes. That's a good idea. So if you guys have things that you think we should talk about, we'll discuss that at the next meeting. And my senses will have another update on just building. Right. That's it. I entertain motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. I have a second. Second. Great. All right. See you guys. I'm off. That's good.