 Do indeed, we have a super quorum. Okay, so let's come to order then at 6.04. And we have a lot going on today, tonight, this evening, both institution building of our own and working with other institutions that's going to be coming up in the core of the meeting. But before we launch into it, I must beg the indulgence of our patient public and allow us to go into executive session for what we estimate to be about a half an hour. That will be the target. This executive session has a lot going on. It would be entered into under title one, section 313A1ABC and 313A4 for personnel, administrative, student and negotiations. So if I may ask for a motion to go into executive session with Brian, Carla and Scott Cameron, I do believe. Is that correct Brian? Yes, it is. He is having an issue. He just texted me saying he's having an issue getting, he's having a login issue. So I might, we have other things to talk about besides what we were going to talk about. So we could go in first and then I can ask Carla and Scott Cameron to come in when he gets here. Very good. I see Flora, your hand is up. Caroline is having a hard time getting in the meeting. She wants to join the executive session too. Just to let Jim know, maybe he can help her. You got that, Jim? Or thank you so much. I will, as soon as I see her come in, I'll make sure I keep jumping back and forth. It looks like she's just trying to arrive now. So that's good. I'm gonna go ahead and admit her into this meeting so she'll be here in enough time. That's correct. Excellent. So we still need a motion. Do we go into executive session? Caroline, you move. Thank you. Second? I'll second it. It's Lindy. Thank you, Lindy. All right. So I'm in favor, click yes or show a thumb. Okay, I'm seeing nobody objecting. So we are entering executive session at 6.06 p.m. Jim, is there anything we can do to make this easy for you? I am, if you want to raise your hand in the thing, I think I have most of the board members down. I just, in case I miss anyone who's going in. Thank you very much. Okay, so we have, let's go ahead and assign everybody here one second. Thank you very much. I see everybody who's done it so far. Jim, it looks like Scott Cameron might be on the list now. I haven't been able to. Yes, he is here, which is terrific. So we're gonna bring Scott in over at Carly as well. Okay. Perfect. Great. Outstanding. And let me just get the list of everybody else on the board here. We have Jill, we have Jonas, John Goddard. We have Kari, Caroline, Cindy. Getting close to everybody. Thank you for your patience. Many thanks once again to our patient, long suffering public. Appreciate your, those of you who are able to wait, appreciate your waiting. Do we have any agenda revisions tonight? Anyone? I'm not seeing any. So let's move to Anna and Towns for the student reports. Awesome. Sounds good. Absolutely. So middle school students are starting their pen pal and they're going to be writing to pen pals their own age in Switzerland. That's pretty cool. Stage 32, about a week ago or so, they performed their virtual show, which is called G. Kale's Monsters. And I believe that is recorded somewhere if you guys would like to see that. It looked very interesting. Three U32 students were accepted into the New England Music Festival, which is very exciting. So we had to showcase some of our musical talent. February has created a lot of really good resources throughout the pandemic, including having books to the online students who can come pick them up. And they also have been doing some online tutorials to some really cool crafts. So that gives a lot of creativity for our students. Nordic skiing has their first meet this week and middle schoolers are going to start with their winter sports. First snow day yesterday, which is very exciting as we did not expect to have it during this pandemic time. That was very nice. Thank you for ending on a high note. Are there any board member questions for Towns or Anna? If not, oh, Jonas, please. Not so much a question, but I know the Towns mentions this frequently, but I hope that everyone on the board reads the U32 Chronicle frequently. Yes. Lots of good stuff in there. Thank you. Yeah, we're loading on the Chronicle, hopefully weekly. So yeah, should look out for some really good articles in. Yeah, thank you for that pitch, Jonas, agreed. Okay, we can move on to Superintendent Report then. Central Vermont Career Center Governance Study. Yeah, so I'm going to introduce Penny. Is Penny, I'm going to turn it over to Penny Chamberlain without further ado. All right, thank you. Good evening, everyone. I appreciate you giving us some time on the agenda this evening. You have a very busy schedule, so I won't delay. I would like to introduce to you the folks that are joining me this evening from Central Vermont Career Center. Starting off with Mike DeVise, who's our consultant, who's been working with us from the Grand Schoolhouse to the Oakland term. Dr. Scott Greggs, who's our assistant director. Clifton Long, who's a CDC instructor. And Cal Hopwood, who's an immediate lead also a CDC instructor. I'm not sure if Cal is here with us this evening, but in case he does join us, I wanted you to know who he is. So the Career Center, we sent a packet out to all of you in advance in your board packet to review, which consisted of a cover letter that outlined briefly what our wishes and focuses for this evening. And I will cover that a little bit with you this evening. Also in the packet is a white paper that was created by Mike DeVise on looking at governance for the Central Vermont Career Center and considering other governance options. This was presented back in December to the Barry Unified Union School District Board, and they approved and agreed for the Career Center to move forward with a study committee to look into governance and to research and investigate the pros and cons of a variety of different governance models. Also in your packet was a chart and I outlined pros and cons from three other independent career centers who a little bit more than 15 years ago also went through this process and are their own governance structure now their own regional technical center school districts. And that would be River Valley Technical Center, Patricia Hannaford Career Center and the Southwest Vermont Regional Technical Center down in Bennington. So I'm going to read a portion of the memo that I sent to everyone to give a little bit of a background to what this is all about. One of the challenges of the many challenges that a career in TechEd has with trying to align with regular education is being governed under a pre-K-12 board. And as you have noted tonight, starting out your sessions and your lengthy agenda, there's a lot of business that needs to be covered and managed by a pre-K-12 education school board. A career TechEd runs slightly differently than a regular education school board. We have different regulations. We have different licensing, different funding mechanisms. In essence, we're running a business inside a school and then several businesses inside of that center as well. So in short, we wanted to be able to look at a different governance structure for the career center and investigate that and see if that was a possibility. In order to actually do this, we needed to present to each of our school boards the governance white paper that we provided and ask for your approval to move forward with a study. Now the study is just that. It's a study of a committee of 14, 12 to 14 people who would meet for six to nine times during April, May and June and look at all of the components of a variety of different governance structures and compare that to what we currently do and what would the pros and cons be and what would be the best structure that would best serve our students across our region. You might have heard in a variety of different ways but you have a rad member, Flora Diaz-Smith, is your rad member who comes to our quarterly regional advisory board meetings and the Central Vermont Career Center is also looking at a re-envisioning project which is trying to figure out how to expand programs, improve our access to all of our districts across our region and look at where we're located within our region where we happen to be on the outer skirts of our region at this time. So the governance is one component is another so they're not the same and nor did they have to happen at the same time. So you happen to be the first board that we're presenting to this evening and we're interested in hearing questions from the group to see if there is anything that we could answer or help clarify and if this board would be willing to approve for the center to move forward with a study committee and we would need the majority, five out of six school boards in our region to vote for us to move forward if that were to happen. With that, I would like to ask if there's anything that my team who's here with me tonight would like to add before we step into questions and answers. Well, I'd like to answer something, I may. So I'm Cliff Long, I teach plumbing and heating at the center and I think our connection with the school board is extremely important but the Barry board only represents one of our sending schools and so in a way it feels like it's kind of a buffer between us and the other sending schools. And I was on the Washington Village School Board for many years and a chair of the Orange North Supervisor Union Board for a couple of years. And we really value the connection that we made with teachers. Washington Village was a small school. We felt like we're very intimately involved. And I would like board members from the sending schools to come visit us, to get to know our students, to see what the students are doing and to be involved in our decision making. I think that, you know, strong local control and the involvement of the community with public education is a Vermont tradition. And I think we can all really benefit from that. So I certainly think it warrants a study and while we're on the topic, any of you are always welcome to visit us once the pandemic is over and there's free access to the center. I would love to host you and show you what we do at the Tech Center. Thank you. Thank you, Clifton. To further provide a little bit more detail and what Clifton is talking about in order to provide an equitable voice for all of our sending schools in the region, a regional board would have full and legitimate authority which would include a close understanding of technical-led regulation within the state board rules which run parallel to most traditional education, pre-K-12 education rules and statutes. They would also have program approval, admissions, program design and curriculum authority, policy development implementation, determine, they would determine the center budget and program needs, be involved in recruitment and retention of qualified staff, also be involved with marketing and recruitment for students in grades nine through 12 across the entire region, which would also include outreach, middle school career awareness and provide more flexibility for faculty and staff and industry partners to do presentations to the school board and have adequate time on a monthly agenda. This would also allow for a regional board to have full decision-making authority versus the RAB model currently has advisory duties only and they would make recommendations to the current Unified Union School District Board. This would also allow for full board involvement in CTE matters and issues versus a shared board where the majority of your focus like this board is on a pre-K-12 business to no fault of their own. There's a lot going on with the recent mergers that has led to larger school districts and more business across the pre-K-12 system which makes it even more complicated. I would also like to entertain either Scott Griggs or Michael DeWise if there's anything else you'd like to add and then I would like to open it up to questions from this board. Any, it's Mike. Unless there's anything further I can add about the white paper, I think you've captured it really nicely. Thank you. Thank you, Maya. This is Scott and yes, I wouldn't have any specific information necessarily to add. We've enjoyed the support of the very board over all of these years, but I think that is a valuable note that we've had an effective regional advisory board over the years as well, but we are a diverse region and it's a pleasure having been in at the Career Center for 20 plus years and as a teacher for a time and then an administrator and seeing the groups of students come from our various communities within our classrooms, I think it would be equally powerful to have that diverse representation of communities on our governing board. Right, I have a suggestion. Why don't we have a motion, the first motion and I see Stephen has his hand up. Stephen look. I moved to approve the Central Vermont Career Center request to establish a governance study committee to determine if a governance change is appropriate for Central Vermont Career Center. Thank you, Steve. One second. Sorry, where'd that come from? Caroline seconds. Caroline, thank you Caroline. All right, Stephen moved. Caroline seconded the first motion to approve the request to establish a governance study committee. All right, we have Penny and company as a great resource, but if I might go first to floor, would you mind floor giving us your view of this? Oh, sure. I'm in complete support of this. I think that this is something that is worth exploring. I am actually willing to volunteer to do this and step down from the quality committee to do this work. I can't think especially coming out of the pandemic a more important thing to invest some of our time and it's just, it is a study, right? It's not, we're not making a final decision tonight. We're just authorizing a study and I've been involved as I have told you before for two years now and we don't get much say in the quality of program or we don't have a real investment. We are a sounding board but we're not really part of the decision making and from talking with very school board members, they wanna have more involvement. They're happy to do it but they would like to have more people brainstorming with them. So that would be my input. And if I could, I would wanna make this middle school. It's just high school too. Right now is we're just targeting high school kids and it's too late. It should be middle schoolers, so. Yeah. Thank you very much, Valar. Board members, do you have questions, concerns? Anything you'd like to raise with regard to the motion? Chris. Yeah. Why is it that you need our approval to engage in this governance study? And then a follow-up to that is if there's a different governance model that is actually adopted, what is the expected impact on the Washington Central Unified Union School District? Two great questions. The first question, like why the approval? It's actually written into a state board role. That's the process that a center has to undertake with all of this regional board in order to even write a proposal to the secretary of education. So we need your approval to move into a study committee. The study committee would then spend multiple weeks looking at all the pros and cons and then writing that proposal to the secretary of French. There are multiple steps that follow a study committee before anything would actually potentially be approved, which would also include voting by all 16 towns. So it's quite a large undertaking. And as far as impact, I think the one thing I would like to stress to boards, there should not be an impact. There wouldn't be more work on your shoulders, on your plate. You would not have to take on additional work. This would be a separate functioning board with membership from every region, to every school district on that board and who would be appointed and then eventually elected. So that would be, it would serve as its own board much like you do as your supervisory district board, your unified district school district board and a very unified union school district board. Two separate districts, two separate boards. You don't typically impact each other, only you would all have a shared voice in what happens in the shared CVCC career center. Thank you, Penny. I'm sure it did. We can't see his face. I'm sure he's smiling. Any other board members? Two separate districts, two separate board. Are we ready to move to a vote? If there are no other, I have another follow-up question. Is there any budgetary impact that would, like if there's a separate board that is developed, does it have its own budgetary authority that would then impact our respective towns? The current funding structure for career and technical ed would remain the same until the legislature decides to change that. There is a discussion about changing funding for CTE across the state. Could happen in the next year or two but we don't really know. The way it is right now, we already have our own budget. That's required by statute as well. The CVCC budget is separate from the BUUSD budget. It cannot be co-mingled. It sits on its own. It's created on its own. And the difference would be I wouldn't be paying an assessment if we were our own governing board. I wouldn't be paying an assessment to the BUUSD, which equates to about $200,000, $220,000 out of our budget. The only expenses that would continue, which are already built into our budget would be the shared expenses I have because I'm sharing a facility with Spalding High School at this time. So it could relieve a large portion of that assessment amount that's paid to the district. And from what I can foresee in talking with my counterparts, the other three technical centers is I might have to hire an HR business manager in order to bring all the components of the supervised union district work together under our umbrella. Otherwise, we're adequately staffed and I don't see an impact. There could be a slight savings even. I don't throw that out there. I do have a under level funded budget proposed for FY22, but there is no monetary impact on our sending districts. You would still pay tuition as you do at this time on a six semester average basis. Thank you. Wonderful. You're welcome. Any other board member questions, comments? Otherwise, we can vote on the motion to approve the governance study committee. All in favor, please click yes, opposed, click no. And I am seeing all yeses. The motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. How about let's invite someone to make the second motion and floor. I don't know if it's appropriate for you to move to sacrifice yourself, but so I mean. Steven had his hand up. Oh, Steven. Steven, look, please. I moved to elect floor to serve as a U32 district representative on the CVCC governance study committee. Right. And in place of U32 district, Washington Central, et cetera. Washington Central, yeah. Okay, great. Thank you, Steven. That and Chris seconded. Flores, since you're the one who's in the spotlight, do you have anything on this one? No, I'm happy to do it. And I think it goes hand in hand with quality. And I'll just step down from quality for now and just keep an eye on that, but not do that in. It's wonderful. Thank you so much for being willing to do this. Other board member questions, if not, we can move to a vote. All in favor of appointing floor to be our district representative on the governance study committee, please click yes. Opposed click no, and I'm seeing all yeses. The motion again carries unanimously. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. I appreciate your time this evening and we will keep you updated as things progress. And I wish you the best with the rest of your pandemic school year. Everyone stay well. You as well. We appreciate your being here too. Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you, Michael. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Okay. Now Berlin town center, 4.2.2. Yeah, so I just wanted to remind board members that this is a presentation made by the town of Berlin. And if there's any questions that you may have to please email, please let Melissa tell her now in the, by March 1st. So we have a list of questions that we can then send out over after this presentation to Berlin. And I know, so I don't know if Tom is here or not. Is he here? There he is. Okay, great. So I know that this is a conversation and I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, Brian. My name's Tom Badaskin with the town of Berlin. Many of you may know that Berlin does not have a traditional downtown and has been the town of constituencies have been really looking to establish such a facility where people can meet, recreate, and prosper their community. So for about 25 years now, the town has been looking to develop a new town center application. It's a state formula that gives permitting and financial incentives to towns like Berlin to in effect create a downtown. With me tonight is Brandy Saxton and Paul Simon. I would like for them to be able to show some of the concept drawings that we have. The town of Berlin has as of February 1st of this year submitted to the state of Vermont, a application to create a new town center. Tom, I've put the map of the new town center up. Thank you. And so what the board can see here is the area where it's being proposed for the new town center in red is a 118 acre series of parcels centered around the Berlin mall campus and the central Vermont medical center. The Berlin mall is represented by numbers two and three and central Vermont medical center is number eight there. The, it's a 118 acres by Berlin's population. It could have been a maximum of 125. We had some limiting factors of wetlands and such. So those are existing conditions today. I'm gonna show, and here's the concept plan that we have submitted to the state as of Monday morning. There's really several sections and Brandy or Paul, you wanna maybe talk about each of these sections here and it's fairly quick and succinct order. So Paul, I think you were gonna do that. Sure, yeah. So basically the new town center has two nodes proposed here. In this section, we have the Route 62 entrance that comes right off on that kind of the North West side. And then we have the CBMC, there's a parcel of Fisher Road and Route 62 there. And then there's also a connection to that part of it there that's on center with the center of the mall itself. So that's like center street and there's a rotary in the middle there. The majority of the proposed development for the new town center includes housing. That's what is in demand and that's what is much needed, not just in Berlin area, but throughout Vermont, especially workforce housing and affordable housing. Chestnut Place is currently under construction. That's a senior housing facility that's next to the mall there. And then box run is letter A there across from Chestnut Place, which is also in the works as well. So those two are happening now. The rest of this plan is proposed new town center development. And we're looking at it in a comprehensive way to include a variety of mixed uses, a multi-use path that'll circulate around the perimeter and provide good walkability and pedestrian access with very limited vehicular curb crossings for safety reasons. And we have also extensive stormwater improvements. We're actually breaking apart the mall parking lot quite a bit to add stormwater bioretention areas. We're also changing the configuration of how the vehicular flow currently flows straight in front of the mall for safety reasons. We're really pulling that around the back and creating intersections at those two corners of the mall to really slow people down and create a safer environment. So we have quite a bit here involved with this. We've got short order restaurants. We have a small one. We have a medium-sized restaurant. We have a larger restaurant as well. So there's three types there. There's CBMC has clinic uses proposed. We have strong pedestrian designed components, different street typologies and a CBMC parcel there at the Fisher Road and Route 62 intersection. We have what's called a P Street too. That's in the middle of the building block forms which really is away from all the vehicular aspects and parking and it's really creating that environment that a new town center desires. So and we have a lot of the new forms here with this creating that. So the blocks of the residential buildings that are across from the mall have a community green as well which will really came out very strongly in the community participation process that we did online because of COVID but that was very strong and we have residential buildings fronting that. We have a performance area that's in red there that'll accommodate that and many other aspects to it. So I can go on and on but I know we have a short amount of time but okay. So what? Go ahead, Brandy. I was just gonna say before we flip to the next slide to show the area that involves the schools property, one of the requirements of the new town center designation is that there be a civic building within the designated area. And so that is part of the requirements and the reason the town is looking. Well, one of the reasons the office of the town has a need for a expanded town facility fairly soon in the future running out of space on the current facility but the reason the town is looking to site a facility inside the designated area. So this shows the gateway area coming off the 62 and the municipal facility that Brandy just talked is this a number five and you'll see number two is a series of basketball and pickleball courts. So we envision this area as a place where the people can come to do town business and also take advantage of some of the various outdoor recreational facilities we have. What we're as the majority of this proposal currently sits on a unified school district ground of the we are asking your board to consider gifting back to the town of Berlin of approximately 7.4 acres where this campus would sit on, there's a rendering of it. You can see the mall building there. You can see the school building. So this is the area that we're approximately 7.4 acres. Of that, the lighter brown areas wetlands it's about 3.6 areas. So the available area is approximately 3.8 acres. And this will facilitate our construction of a municipal center for the town. It will, and again, the vast majority of the development for our new town center is residential. We envision somewhere between three and 500 residential units to be constructed over the next 10 to 15 years. We see that bringing potentially 40 to 60 students to the Berlin Elementary School. And so we really see that this plan is a beneficial to all parties here tonight. That's it in a nutshell. We do invite folks if they want to come visit this area. Gladly show you around. The winners will kind of tough to see some of it. But you have in the packets that we sent to you the complete drawings of the concept plan. We have, we are going in front of the regulatory officials February 22nd. That's when they begin their hearings on this concept plan. And we would welcome any questions that Brian, you and your group have. Thank you very much. So for my fellow board members, today we are in listening and watching mode. And as Brian mentioned earlier on, questions that we have, we should put together and send over to Melissa for further transmission. And we will eventually be making a decision, but that is still some way off. I know this is a question that should be perhaps with Melissa, but is there a timeframe from when a decision would need to be made, Tom? That's really not. It's the, once we get the designation, assuming we're going to get the designation, the town's going to look at funding sources. We're looking at a tax incremental financing district. All of these things take time, takes voter support. Ideally, we would like your board to give this consideration, come back and hear maybe a more formal proposal from us. If sometime by the fall of 2021, the decision could be made, that timing works for us. So there's no, it's not a critical item right now, but we do really need your support to help this project move along. Understood. And we can't thank you enough for getting to us early. So we have a chance to actually think over time for a change. I just wanted to say to show the investment that the town of Berlin has made in 2015, they put in their first ever municipal water system and that was about $6 million. In 2018, the planning commission adopted a road in Newtown plan, which was the focus of that plan was this Newtown center. That was overwhelmingly approved by the voters of the town. In August of 2018, the constituency approved a $2.2 million sewer improvement project bond. And the school would receive some of the fruits of that laborers this fall. We replaced your entire wastewater system at no cost to the school. And so now you should see a much more efficient system on the go forward. We developed a in 2019 unified code, which took our 1980 zoning regulations completely revamped them. And that received nearly two to one approval by our voters in March of 2020. The town voters approved a $600,000 additional bond vote for the water system. Our initial water system was such a hit that we in effect ran out of water. And so we needed to develop more water to help supply this Newtown center. So we've seen a really from the constituency of the town of Berlin embrace this idea. And we hope that you all can see the value as well. That's great. Thank you so much for that background and for this presentation to you and Paul and Brandy. Much appreciated. Thanks. Thank you. So I guess we can move on to 4.2.3. Yes. So this is just- Stop, stop. Sorry. I hear Chris. After we prepare our questions for voting to- Melissa. Um, Berlin, would you like to make it? Um, they'll go through Melissa. Hello. Yeah. We kind of asked- Okay, so we send our questions? Yeah, do we send our questions to Melissa? Yes, to Melissa. And she will- Okay, thank you. She will coordinate the transmission and the receipt of answers and all of that. Great, thank you. Of course, you're welcome. Um, thanks everyone, Brian. Yes, so this is just a quick update on the tax estimates where there's a lot of chatter and talk going on at the estate level. So I'm gonna turn this over to Lori to give us her two cents, maybe more. Thank you, Brian, that was good. So I included a memo on page 32 and a chart on page 33 of your packet. And what I wanted to share was that if you hadn't heard it in the news that the state has had a huge change in their revenue forecast since December. So the House Ways and Means Committee took a vote to actually consider that extra revenue in giving out information to school districts. Unfortunately, the information came after our town reports are printed, but we wanted to share this with you tonight to let you know the good news. So what happened was they were projecting a $58 million deficit at the state and it became an $18 million surplus, which resulted in a change of $76 million at the state level. When they factored that in the property yield would increase, which means that property tax rates would decrease. So what I gave you on page 33 at the bottom shows that if this plays out throughout the legislative session, which we know there's a long way to go, that every town at Washington Central would be seeing a tax reduction. Yay! I said, I'm gonna say happy day. I haven't said that in a while. So that's the great news. If this goes through, so hopefully you can continue to lobby people. Jana Ansell was the one who's chairing this committee and they did release this to school business officials. Unfortunately, like I said for us and for many others, it was already printed in the town reports. So hopefully we can do something with an article in the paper about this. But at the same time, Brad James has worked really hard at trying to put together an equalized pupil number. And I think you recall, we've been trying to calculate that internally. And the good news is his equalized pupil numbers that he's been giving out as of today reflect better news for Washington Central. And there's a couple reasons for that. One of them is because Washington Central has a high number of students attending early college. And there's a provision in the law that holds schools harmless if you go beyond a certain point of your class. There's a multi-year look back for the students and again, it's probably more detailed than what you need tonight. But the good news is that would increase our equalized pupils. In addition to that, and it's not so good news, but our poverty students have increased, which means we have a lot more families getting support from Medicaid and from other state-funded programs. So our equalized pupil count for this year would go up higher than our projections. The numbers on page 33, the savings of like 14 and a half cents at Berlin would actually be about 15 and a half cents if this equalized pupil count is finalized at the numbers that we currently have. So I've kind of babbled on. I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but if not, I'm open to questions. Thank you very much, Elaine. It is welcome news, thanks. Are there any questions for Lori from any of you? We're straightforward enough. So we'll work on some kind of a press release to put out in the next week or so to let people know in our communities. I know Brian does a lot of community outreach with newsletters to families, and maybe the principals could also put this in their newsletters to share the good news so that at least it will be out in addition to the report. And thank you. Our thanks to you, needless to say, Lori. Great. So shall we proceed then, Brian, to 4.2.4 COVID-19 update? Yes, this is another quick item, which is happy to say it's a quick item considering we're in the midst of a global pandemic. Just so everyone knows that schools are open always well. Folks are safe. We are gonna be doing surveillance testing again next week, which will be happening next Wednesday. And as of right now, it appears that the state of Vermont is also keeping track of participation rates amongst faculty and staff who participate at each school across the state of Vermont. And I'm happy to say that the last time I checked, Washington Central School District was number one in the state amongst the participation rate. So our staff and faculty are taking it very seriously and just a big thanks to everyone. Elizabeth, I don't know if you have anything else to add? Oh, I think you're muted, Elizabeth. I think I know by now. So I think things are looking very good in the district. We have had no, I shouldn't say it, right? But we really had no cases in schools in some time. And that's, there's been a lot more cases in the area, but we seem to be doing the right things and it seems to be working. There's still a lot of fear and a lot of worry. I think that the surveillance testing for staff is a real good indicator. And it also does relieve a bit of anxiety of people that we know that there's, the last time it was zero. No positive cases in that surveillance testing. There were 220 staff who tested. So we're working on that. So I think things are going okay. We're keeping a close watch on it all and so far so good. And I appreciate what everybody is doing is amazing. I think people are a little tired, but they're carrying on. We'll be ready for a vacation in a couple of weeks, I believe. Well-deserved vacation. Any board member questions for Brian or for Elizabeth? If not, once again, am I missing someone? No, I just thank you for doing that. Oh yeah, yeah. It creates a lot of stress in everybody. So thank you, Elizabeth and Brian and the whole team. Amen, amen. I appreciate you saying that, Floor. Good, I guess we can proceed then to 4.2.5, table of organization. Yeah, so this is an important and timely presentation. I'm gonna ask Jim Garrity to please put it up. There is, I try to, everyone knows that I do things intentionally and I know that we're about to have a curriculum management review. We are a newly merged district and there are some things for your consideration as we continue to move from SU to SD, meaning a supervisor union to a school district. So this is a view from within. I just want to share this with the board tonight and we move to the next slide. So basically, if you see in the bottom of the corner there, it says that every cloud has a silver lining, right? With the challenges that our district has been going through and there are some of them right here, right? These are, I got two weeks before I thought about this presentation. I had a fortune cookie and it popped up and it said, everybody loves progress but nobody likes change, right? So, and it seems to me that this district which was newly merged has had a lot of change heaped on it all at once. And the good news is the strong culture here in the district. There's a real strong culture here amongst the adults who work with children every day and the board and the communities that folks are able to get to work their way through this. The bad news is there's probably a lot more change coming down the pike as we continue to consolidate as you've had three superintendents in three years declining enrollment, we've had budget challenges this past year, maybe there'll be better news we're always hoping. And of course we're trying to figure out how to improve our student achievement. Next slide. We're also fighting facing all these obstacles while facing a global pandemic. Next slide. When I was hired as your superintendent the advertisement said you wanted someone who was an educator who was more democratic, inquisitive, experiments, delegates and balances different constituencies in making decisions. These are the pieces that I've been trying when I work with my, when I enter the superintendency here in Washington Central and I look at the work that we're facing with the challenges that's where I try to land at all times. Sometimes I don't think I ever play it safe maybe I need to sometimes play it safe a little more but I think sometimes I try to make sure I'm on the left of that spectrum. Next slide. And hence we've been working with my entry plan and some of the things that we worked on this year as I worked on with the board here is to ultimately get to know our communities. That is an ongoing process especially during the pandemic. Also working to reopen our schools with our leadership team and our teachers and the task forces. They've done amazing work. I think that's gonna end up ultimately helping us increase student achievement when compared to other districts that are not open full time. It gives our children a sense of stability and safety. The other pieces is we're success way continuing to move from that supervisory union model to a school district system. And now part of that is a part of this presentation today is really to accentuate some of that. And as we're talking about here the implementing a bottom up strategic planning process. And so we're conducting a curriculum review. I'm getting to the end of my entry plans so I'll have more information for the school board. We're ultimately gonna have the leadership team review our artifacts from the entry plan and curriculum review teacher and staff input, getting input from the communities. And last but certainly not least getting the school board input on all these documents as they come. And one of the things that we're ultimately moving towards is getting a creating an accountability system for our administrators and principals and myself, right? That's a big part of the accountability process. Next slide. So we're doing a lot of work here and there's been a lot going on here. And I thought that the board should just take notice of the good work that's happening in our district. The piece of the thing is just to let everyone know our team works as one unit. We have a superintendent, school board and administrators, teachers, ESP, educators and students. And we all work within the confines of a larger school system. And I think the school system piece is something that we continually, I need to continually talk to the board about and talk to the community about because I'm gonna show you some things here that I think are some interesting, adaptive types of challenges, but they're not without solutions. And I think the question is gonna come down to is, how do we want to operate as a school system? Because we're no longer a supervisory union. And I always say that every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. And that's from Edward, W. Edward Stemming, one of my favorites. So I think one of the reasons why I'm talking about this tonight is we talked about some great things that are happening in the district. We have our challenges with the pandemic and that the Act 46 consolidation, which is still here that we've done a lot of good work. There's still a lot of work that needs to happen. And then, and I think one of the big things is letting everyone know that there's a whole industry based on this change management process, right? There's a person who moved my cheese, which is a very popular book back in the 90s or 80s, Jim, I can see you. Thank you. And it talks about when things change, how do people adapt and how do they respond? And then I think the other piece is on the right here is one of my favorite books called Our Iceberg is Melting. And it's about how do we create the impetus that we need to do something different, right? How do we explore, how do we continue to say, hey, we wanna do some things differently here and now that we're becoming a merged school system, and what is that gonna take, right? So if you can please just show that one minute video here. I thought this was nice. It kind of lightens the mood a little bit. Can you hear the volume? It's a little louder. Oh, boy. I got to do something. I gotta tell Alice. This is Alice. She is one of the pendulum's leadership council members. She's tough and has a reputation of getting things done. Alice, can I speak with you for a moment? I believe that our iceberg is melting. Really? Well, show me what you mean. So Fred took Alice to the park of the iceberg. See, Alice? Our iceberg has tracks that lead to larger caves. If the ice melts sufficiently, God will pour into these cracks in cave. Would you give me a few minutes, please? Fred went quickly down the mountain and arrived minutes later with a glass bottle. Let's fill this bottle with water, seal it, and leave it in the ice overnight. Then tomorrow we can see if it's broken by the force of expanding water as it freezes. If I am correct, the bottle will be broken. Let's do it. We'll meet here tomorrow morning. The next morning they found the bottle broken. Oh. I'm convinced. We have to do something about this. Let us go with general assembly of the colony. And with that, the penguins started the change leadership process with step one, establishing a sense of urgency. Thank you, Jim. So, and what I really like about that video is it's, there's a recognition of that there's a need to do something a little differently. And I'm not saying that our iceberg is melting and here in Washington Central at all. But what I am saying is that we may have to consider doing some things a little differently. And if you move on to the next slide, here's some of the things that we're doing this year. Like, and if you looked at the, I like the idea of the needs assessment, right? Let's put the, like the penguins did with the glass jar, the glass bottle that broke, and help identify what they need to do. But here are the pieces here of what we've been working on this year as a school board and as your superintendent. And I just wanna take you back to your two goals, adopted back in October 21st, approved student achievement. We're now doing a needs assessment to help fully better realize and understand what we need to do in order to hit that and understand that and set more goals around student achievement. And that's your curriculum review. We're looking at a strategic planning. I've been working with many different folks in our district about job descriptions and responsibilities, where the ultimate goal is to get there with our district employees, for all district employees. If we turn to the right here, we have board governance, continuing to work on that. The board has developed their norms already for the meetings. We have not, we still have some work to do in developing a superintendent job description and a board of ed job description. And for more work on formalizing our goals and board training, which will come with time. Next slide. So I'm gonna show you a graphic that I've been working on this year. And I think it just kind of, I think it kind of gives a good, I should give you an idea. I'm hoping it gives you a good idea of some of the things that we currently have. And I've always been asking intentionally throughout the year, is our district structured the way we need it to be to improve student achievement? And the expectations are the job responsibilities and expectations of the past, the same as what we will need in the future. So if we can just open up that Oregon Emmy chart there. We're gonna do that right now, one second, sorry. Here we go. Yeah, so if you can go to the district office. And again, this is a work in process, if you can, is there any way you can make that bigger? Or okay, thank you. Yeah, so basically, if we look here, right now this is our central office leadership. We have, there is, if you click on, if you click on like, let's say Lori's job description real quick, you'll see that it's been updated, right? And we did this already and we have a very good idea of her job roles and responsibilities as to what we need, what we need this position to be moving forward. And this was just updated in 2020. So I think, I think you've seen this already so we can go back real quick. Oops, apologies. Yeah, we don't need to go. They've seen this before. I just just wanted to make sure they have an idea. I lost the screen, sorry about that. So if you click on central office one last time. So it folks that have job descriptions are basically everyone in the central office except Carla, which is our human resources coordinator, our director of special services and our director of curriculum instruction and assessment. And outside of those folks, I also do not have a job description yet. And I think these are four key functions in the central office that I think the board and the district and our leadership team really needs to come together on just to figure out what it is that we want everyone to be doing because there is now, if you look at a lot of these job descriptions if you clicked on, you know, or any of these other jobs that have not been redone, they basically align with a SU structure that we've had in the past but it's a different structure than a school district. And we have to really define what that will be. I mean, so we don't need to click on because of what'll pop up is their older job descriptions. If you go back, if you go to the schools, Jim. Yeah, you're seeing a little bit of a delay, Brian. Oh, okay. You go to the WCUSD principles. Yep, I'm here. We have job descriptions for all the principles. I want to point out, we don't probably need to click on all, every single one of them unless the board members would like me to in the interest of time, we have six schools, six principles, six different job descriptions of what people are expected to know and be able to do at their schools. And so when you have, and that's really a remnant of the old system of how we do things. So ultimately just want to let you know that those are some things where it's, if you want to have a predictable system where you can plan professional development and plan opportunities to develop capacities of principles to become instructional leaders, to help support their teachers as best as possible. It's a lot of times central office serves as that function in a school district, which again, very different than an SU. So I just wanted to point that out to the board as we get the results of the curriculum as we conduct this curriculum review, we get the results back, we get other information from the leadership team and the ultimately the teachers is another group we'll want to definitely work with to look at how we look and consider these positions. So I just wanted to let everyone know that there is a, I don't know if you want me to click on any of the different job descriptions here. I mean, would it be helpful to just see, I mean, you can see that they're extremely different. Some of them have font from like the night from a very long time ago. I don't want to say what years, but it's from a very, very long time ago. This is the board descriptions here. We're still work, we still haven't defined what those are yet, but sometimes there's some other work that we would probably want to do in this area as well. So just letting you know that this was done intentionally to show you that there are lots of different folks who are working in our district. We have really good people working here and it's just an opportunity to say, hey, we have job descriptions and we have folks that are doing jobs, but as we're becoming a unified district, we may have to rethink these job descriptions and how people do the work and how the work is structured throughout the district. And that is my presentation. Any questions? Thank you, Brian. Yeah, board members, if you have anything from Brian on that. I can just say that this is not something that the superintendent should be doing alone or in isolation. This is a collaboration and it's going to have to be a lot of work on behalf of the leadership team and folks as we figure out what it is that we want to do and how we structure our district as it is a newly merged district. So it's an opportunity, I think it's exciting and it's also an opportunity to update the job descriptions which haven't been updated in many years. So. Thanks, Brian, Diane. So will these documents be live anywhere so that we can refer back to them just as we're processing all the information? Yeah, I think we can probably do that. I mean, we've been basically putting it together. We haven't finished it, but it's really as it builds as you go, right? I mean, this is a process that could take a while because you want to get it right. You don't want to just put something out there and every job description we follow, we've been doing a following a process, right? The, I mean, Kelly will talk about the ESP job description last time we've been talking about this very collaborative process. And so these other positions, including mine and the boards and some of these key instructional pieces are going to really involve a village to make. So are you asking, do you think it should be posted somewhere for maybe on our website? We could probably put it up on our website. Either that or included in the packet next time. It's just a way to kind of reference back to what was said. Okay, we can do that. Kai. Yeah, thanks, Brian. Can you anticipate when we might face some decisions but maybe you might be trying to make some decisions about significant changes in structure or the responsibility associated with these different positions? I do not. I can say that, you know, we could do it, you know, change everything tomorrow and that would be just horrible for everyone in the system and get it wrong, right? So it's really about getting it right. So for example, looking at the curriculum management review, how do we manage our curriculum? How do we build and write and develop and monitor curriculum and how does that look and what does it currently look like? Do we have it in our job descriptions? Do we not, right? And some of the job descriptions have things in it that others don't. And so I think it really comes down to is getting together with the really smart people on the leadership team and presenting that but really having a better idea of what is it that we want to do? And so I think it's going to go hand in hand with the strategic planning process, right? Whereas we're coming up with all these different ideas of what we can do and then it's going to be what we want to do and then thinking about what we actually do and you really want to make sure that your description lines up with what we're actually going to do, not what we can or want to do, right? Cause, and then maybe tweak it as, as any organization worth its weight in gold, in my opinion is updating the descriptions as the jobs and the schools evolve over time to meet the needs of the children. So I think it's going to take some time. I don't want to put a timeline on it, Kari, but I think it'll be fluid. I think some positions will get updated before others and it'll just be kind of a rolling, kind of like it's been this year, like one or two here and one or two here over time. Thanks, Lindy. And then Flo. I think, I don't know what I think, but one of the things that sometimes disturbs me is the Act 46 was very, very painful for a lot of people, but it wasn't because our six schools weren't working together because they were. As WCSU, we had carousel board meetings where we worked together. We were looking out for the kids across the district. The difficult part was all about funding and control. It wasn't about our leadership teams working together. And so sometimes I feel a little bit like statistics like three superintendents in three years, but four superintendents in 25 years isn't quite as shock factor, I guess. So I don't want to give the impression that this was a very broken system. I'm not saying there's not room for change and improvement, but the teams were really working together. The schools were on the same page in a lot of ways. And so I just don't want throwing out the baby with the bathwater kind of thing. And felt I had to say that. Yeah, and that would never, I hope that didn't come across like that. You'd never want to throw out the baby with the bathwater or the bathwater with the baby either way. Definitely not, I mean, the key is working together, right? And everyone really works very well together in our district. I think it really comes down to is, what is the gloom that's gonna continue to bind folks to do this work together? And how do we define that? And I think that there's conversations about how does the current structure, does it, sir, again, I'll just put this out there, does the current structure give us the results that we want for our children? And if it does, that's great. We don't need to change anything. And if it does, then what does that look like, right? And what needs to be tweaked? What needs to be updated? And any organization, I believe in my opinion, constantly needs to have that conversation and look at those things as we look at continuous improvement. Thanks. Salah? I appreciate the presentation. I think it's something that we need to be brainstorming, but, and I like your comment on the end, especially that it's a collaborative thing that you'll be doing with the leadership team too. It just, I'm all about visuals. And the first visual where you put, you know, superintendent and Jim, and so there's not a cold name. So tech, technology and a business administrator, they should be at the same level as the leadership team or we should change it because, so like Kelly and Jen, as far as I know, are your assistant superintendents. So just as far as practice, because it's the wrong message. And I know that you're just... Ultimately, Jen and Kelly are going to have their own page. They're going to have their own page. And we just have to define all the other pieces. So that's why... Yeah, I'm just saying as a visual. So don't worry. I'm just saying as a visual, it's confusing and sends the wrong message to others. Yeah. One thing I don't force comment, I think it's a good one, is that I'll work with Orgami because basically what we do is we load the data into the system and then it builds the chart for us. So as we build the different groups. So I do agree with you, IT is nowhere near at the same level. I wouldn't even consider it one of the strategic pieces of the group. So it would really fall somewhere else. It almost falls under... When I think about it in for-profit organizations, it falls under finance generally. So it always falls under lorry, right? So it's those types of things that we look at. So I'll work with the Orgami team. That was the tool that we went with and we'll see how we can make the appropriate adjustments. I'll work with Brian and any more to figure out if it should rest there. Thank you, Ford. Thank you. Thanks. Or maybe it even goes under director of curriculum or it depends, right? I mean, those are the conversations that we have not yet had, right? So I'm just putting it, putting that. This was just the purpose of it was to give you an idea that there are certain positions that have job descriptions that have been updated and others that don't have them because we still need to get a collaborative process to update them. So. Thanks. Any other board members wish to comment before we move on? I think on this project, Brian, I'm not mistaken in thinking that we, the board, will also have something to say about our own contributions or articulate our own responsibilities in this. Well, I would say, Scott, that the biggest challenge, and I think it's, I'll just say it, and it's something just for everyone to consider when you don't have clearly defined responsibilities or roles, sometimes folks step in different areas unintentionally and it sometimes could create unnecessary conflict, which isn't always good for the culture of the district. And so, you know, so I think that as we continue this newly unified district, you know, just something to consider. And I think that making sure that everyone has clear understanding of what their roles and responsibilities are and how they're going to relate to the strategic plan and what are the ultimate goals of the board. I think it creates an opportunity not to have any hurt feelings or people feeling like they're upset or not included or things like that. So it takes some time, Tom, and I think that it'll continue to take some time to get there where we need to go. Thank you. Um, are we good on this? Ready to move on to MTSS? Yes, I'm not gonna say too much about the MTSS piece. I'm gonna let Janet and Kelly, they've been working on this for, before I was here as superintendent, they have been working with a number of folks in our district on MTSS and we're trying to get this system, we're trying to enhance the current system and make it more accessible to more children. So, Kelly and Jen. Before Kelly and Jen, before you go to it, shall we make a motion? And then have you be part of the discussion of that motion? Yeah, I think, yeah, so basically, we're looking at posting a MTSS resource developer or, and also trying to simultaneously find out if there's a contract person out there for hire. We have a grant from the agency of education. We have to spend it before June 30th and there was an opportunity to see who's out there to help us with this work. So, in developing this MTSS system, not developing it but enhancing it. So, great. So, would anyone care to make the motion on page 35? I'll move to approve the position for MTSS resource developer using grant funds for the remainder of the school year. Thank you, Jonas. Is there a second? A second. Dorothy Pitt, you too, Chris. She's too nimble. Okay. She is nimble. Discussion. Kelly and Jen, would you like to introduce this? Sure, I'll start. Kelly, help me out if I forget anything. I'll just share a little bit of context about this time last year, maybe 13 months ago, Kelly and I and a few folks from primarily East Montpelier started attending a series about multi-tiered systems of support, really. Analyzing what went well in terms of the initial rollout across the state and what the improvements were, especially related to roles and responsibilities for students and student achievement. Also thinking about some of the recommendations from the DMG report. And we decided that we had some work to do in our system. And as you recall, MTSS and the Educational Support Team, EST were part of the 2016-2021 implementation report. So we had started that while we were doing the PD. We were developing the module and then COVID hit that sort of the common refrain. And so that work had been halted. We moved forward with the continuous improvement planning work that we had started. Those of you who were involved in it, and even last month you heard that MTSS was a big piece of that work and it just hadn't been actualized. So we were taking that work up in the past probably month or two. We were revisiting that work, thinking it was time to start rolling it out again and realized we needed to take stock of sort of the current state a little bit. A lot has happened and changed January or February of 2020. We needed to do some of the work, even the CIP work that you all learned more about last month had never officially or formally been rolled out at the school level yet. So we're taking a few steps back to just get folks on the same page and realizing that MTSS work is vitally important. So the concept behind the position or service, we're not sure who is available or how to make it happen is really to help us further that work, to help us do some design around roles and responsibilities and make sure that concretely we have tools at teachers fingertips so that it's really easy to do some more formative assessments or progress monitoring along the way. And Kelly can speak to the, again, the SSIP and how it's related to the SSIP. Yeah, and I think, Jen, part of the bigger context of this is also positioning us to implement Act 173, right? So that's in here too, in the mix of all of this, which is, you know, there are four components to 173 and around the comprehensive curriculum. Jen, I don't know if I'll go the rattle off all four, but the assessment plan and EST and what was the first? The comprehensive news assessment. Right, yeah. And so that's all part of this. And we, as you know, you'd heard us talk about, I think a couple of weeks ago or maybe a month ago, the SSIP, so the SSIP, that too is to help us and take a look at our current MTSS structures and how, right, that comes with a systems level coach. You heard me explain that the last time. And so in talking with her, we, in the MTSS resource coordinator position, we talked about how can all of these pieces go together? And that's when we came up with this job title of MTSS resource developer, because the SSIP systems coach will help, it can help us take a look at our MTSS system as a whole. So this spring, the goal is for us to really establish, look at all of our data, pull it all together to see how we can position ourselves to have a more comprehensive structure to roll out in the fall. I think another thing I would add to this, just to make sure that it's clear is that you know that Dodie has been identified as a school in need of comprehensive supports. And so there are monetary supports that go along with that. It's the way that we funded and supported the CIP work last spring that was through the Dodie School Improvement or SI grant. Things need to be grounded and anchored in Dodie because it is Dodie that was identified for comprehensive supports, but we can make sure that at a systems level there is sort of incidental benefit, so to speak. And as we were just talking about, it's really important for us to maintain the coherence that already exists and enhance the coherence in the system for our kids. We're pre-K through grade 12 or graduation system and we wanna make sure that that we're really looking at this from a systems perspective for our students. Thank you for that comprehensive look. I see Chris has his hand up. Oh, Jen, this is a question for you. Please explain a little bit more fully the anchoring of this, is this position gonna be anchored at Dodie? And there'll be incidental benefit district-wide? Yes. Yeah. Or did I, okay. Yeah, Chris, you're right. So, and the way that you can see in that job description that it's at Dodie and Gillian Buchwa is the principal who will be supporting that position. We put in the roles and responsibilities, a lot of sort of research and development across the system so that the person in that position can have a deepened their understanding of what is and is not working across all of our schools while then coming up with some sort of system. And I mean, you all know very well that there have been different levels of resource at different schools in the past in that we've been working to really think about what's the level of interventionist, for example, that's required in each of our schools to meet our students needs, that there's no sort of one size fits all. So we wanna just make sure that we're really clear about what our kids need and then how we're gonna continue to support them. And no question about that on my part. So this is a grant funded position for the rest of this school year. Are we expecting that this will become a permanent type position that will then be brought into, folded into the future budget? So I'll tell you what I think right now. I think no, I think that the scope of the work for this position is finite, that we want to somebody who can be the catalyst for the development and resources over time so that then we can sustain it in the long run. So that's also why we can picture it as being sort of like a project almost that goes out there versus a position. And it's super clear with the AOE that the funding is through Jim Berdea. Great, thank you very much. Many thanks, that was very helpful. Other board member, Lindy? I was curious about what, I mean, there's a big job description here and it says per negotiated agreement, but it doesn't say, is this a teacher? Is this a researcher? What is the negotiated contractor? What is the position? I think we wanna keep it open-ended right now. I mean, I think ultimately it'd be great to have a, we were trying to figure out, is there someone that is out there right now that's not working, right? That wants to come and work in our school during this time and we're thinking maybe it's a retired teacher who has this expertise, but if it's a retired administrator, but I think it would be more or less something that would be falling under more of a teacher type of contract, at least from now till June 30th. If the reason why we ask for the RFP is maybe that person doesn't exist right now. And so maybe we can cast a wider net to hire someone on a more of a contractor basis to get them to come in here and work with us as Janet described as a project. Okay, Lenny, any other questions or concerns, et cetera? If not, we can go to a vote. Diane, was that your hand raised or? Nope, okay. Then let's go to a vote on the motion. To approve the position. All in favor, click yes. Opposed, click no. And I'm seeing all yeses. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you everyone. And can I just add one thing here that I'm extremely happy and I want to say happy with Kelly's work with this ESSIP and Jen's work with the MPSS piece on this grant in particular. And it's great when you see two of these initiatives working to come together and just want to thank them for their support and leadership on this. And just to let Larry, we're definitely again, I think this is a perfect example of not throwing out the baby with the bath water, right? This is something that we definitely want to continue to build upon. And this is again an opportunity for our district to move things along in this area. So thank you, Jen and thank you, Kelly. Wonderful, very good to hear. Thanks. Okay, then we can move on to the AmeriCorps VISTA program item. Would anyone like to make a motion as on page 42, I believe, of the packet? I'll move to the district reply for the AmeriCorps VISTA program for FY22. Thank you, Jonas. Is there a second? So our seconds, many thanks. Okay, Brian? I'm going to turn it right over to Kelly. So Kelly. Great. Yeah, so this is right just again, asking for your permission to apply and just be super clear about that, right? It's not something that we're guaranteed at this point, but part of the application process is that I have to have a superintendent signature as well as our board chair signature. So that's when I said to Brian, I probably had to ask the board before I go ahead and do this. And so my current thinking, right? You'll see in this memo that I just, I put a list here just of some projects and things that we could have this person do. You know, you heard Lori say earlier in her budget presentation that the number of students that are eligible or meet the poverty criteria is on the rise. Our homeless numbers continue to be on the rise. And so one, some of the objectives of the AmeriCorps VISTA project, right? Is to some community development strength in some of our systems and coordination between poverty-focused programs. And so I happened to be on a listserv that this grant had come out. I'd actually never heard of it. And so I reached out and asked them if schools could apply. And she said, absolutely, but there's never been a school that's received this grant through this program. They have a youth-filled type of program as well that does support schools. But this particular grant would be the first time any public schools have received it should we be awarded the grant. The commitment from us would be, as you'll see again in the memo, we would have to pay $6,000, which is half of what the program contributes to their living expenses. And we'd have to provide them technology to do the work that we're asking them to do as well as mileage reimbursement for when they're moving throughout the school day. And this would be a full-time person working here with us for the FY22 school year, if we were to get the grant. Understood. Without proviso. Excellent initiative. Board member, questions? No questions? If not, oh Diane. I'd just like to say thank you for the detail in the memo because it's very helpful to read through it and have a sense of it in the menu highlights. So thanks for that detail. Thanks, Kelly. Yeah. So are we ready then to go for a vote on the motion to approve the application for the grant? All in favor, please click yes or if you're opposed, click no. And I'm seeing all the yeses. So the motion and carries unanimously. Once more. Many thanks, everybody. And once again, I love this ingenuity and looking for opportunities in places where they haven't necessarily been found before. Okay. Now we're about to go to the policy committee. Is everybody feeling okay? Do you want to try to plow through or do you need a break? Should we plow through? Five minutes. Okay, five minutes. Right, okay. Back at 834. See you all. You've made my family happy. There's a, yeah, I'm ready to go. So we have, so the first time in a couple of meetings we have some policies for first reading. But first I'd like to acknowledge Jim and Gary's great contribution to the development of these policies. When he's not, you know, based on how he looks tonight, I'm glad he took some time from his Harley shop to come in and be with us. And he presented us with like a 40 or 50 page computer, you know, electronic records security policy, which did us a great service. And then he and Brian and others at the central office broke it down into more digestible pieces, the first three of which we're going to have tonight. So again, great, thanks to Jim because he did more than Newman's work in creating this policy and bringing it to us. And also just we had really good discussion over the past couple of policy committee meetings about the implications of this and how it would work in our district and made some changes and things like that. And Amy Malina was very helpful in that regard too. So I would ask that if any questions for these various policies going to ask Jim to chime in because he is much more expert in the policies themselves than me. And I won't speak for the other policy committee members, but I think he would be more able to clearly respond to questions about the policy. So we have up for consideration for first reading F22, which is a data retention and storage policy. So if there anybody have any questions on it? Sounds like the questions have been stored and retained in data and they're secure and safely packed away. So we'll go down to now F25, which is access control policy. Okay, enough jeopardy time has elapsed for questions. So we'll move on to our final policy, which is F41, which is our reasonable care and protecting proprietary and or confidential information policy. Chris at the section has a sense. Chris, not so much a question about these policies, but more of a question to, I guess, Scott and Jim. What kind of training and familiar, if we pass these policies, what kind of training and familiarization do you think would be necessary for the entire staff across the district to put this stuff in place? Because I think some of this is gonna require some tech savvy and some training. Yeah, so one of the things that I do for boards all the time and I would love to do it for all of you and for the teachers and administrators is we'll go through an overview training and then we can do much more detailed training as necessary and we'll do as much of it as you need. So it's one of my favorite things to do on a teacher and hard on teaching the college level. I love it. So I can do it early and often. We can do it as a group. You can do it individually as much time as you need. I have a question. How will we adapt these policies as technology changes? I imagine some of these different protocols or however the proper term to refer to them is. Yeah. Will it change over time? It's a good question. We actually thought about that. And Chris has done a great job as you head in the committee. I've been really impressed and we've thought about that. I think what we've tried to do in these policies and I hope we've done an adequate job is to try to stay as technology agnostic as possible so that as technology changes the policy doesn't have to change. I use an example in our policy committee that it would excite me in a big way if we didn't have to change the policy for like 20 something years. I think I used an example about a record I still had at a swim club. I've had one for 20 years. So I'm like, if we can keep our policies still have to be updated for 20 years because they stay consistent between technology we're in a good spot. So Scott, I hope we've done that. I should go back and look one more time just to make sure but our intention was to be as agnostic as possible. Thank you. Thank you very much. And Scott and fellow board members what you'll see in the future is there is a policy that we'll talk about a basically a technology team that is from across the various schools to take into account changes over time. And so keep an eye out for that. We're still wrangling with composition and who appoints and who decides who will be on this team. And there'll also be some issues of delegation of authority in terms of making changes for technology issues that come up. And so again, we'll highlight those as they come along but those are things that are percolating through our committee discussions. Okay. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. So we're good with the first reading then. Yeah. We, excellent. Very good. So these will come back to us at some point soon, I imagine next meeting for a second. Probably, probably there are next regular meeting. Excellent. Terrific. Okay. Thank you so much Chris. Policy committee and Jim. Yeah. Thank you very much to the policy committee. I know that, you know, Jayal and Chris and Dorothy and everyone, I really appreciate everybody's, you know, helping council there. It's been really, really very beneficial. Even the audience with the terrific. It's been awesome. Wonderful. Glad to hear it. All right then. We can move on to board operations. 5.1, open board seats. So who wants to grapple with this one? Floor? Sure. I just thought most people are aware that George is not running for his seat in Berlin. And Jonathan, who's with us, is running for his seat in Berlin. And then we have been sits in Worcester. And I believe, Jayal, are you running as a write-in or is open, the seat is, I'm stepping down in March so that my seat will be open. Stepping down in March. Yeah. So it's, my internet is unstable. So hopefully you can hear me, but so just wanted to make the board aware of that. So, which also brings us back to that conversation that we wanted to have about this. So, can you hear me okay? It keeps telling me that it's unstable. But, so that's pretty much why we had that air. And the agenda planning committee, we did talk about whether having two informational meetings or not. And we all agreed to just have one. So that would be March 1st. I don't have the permit, but I'm pretty sure that's right. And so just one more informational meeting before our town meeting. And I think that's all we had as a report for operation. So if you know of anybody that wants to run as a write-in for Worcester, there was Jonas is gonna be holding the fort for them and Berlin. Also we have a seat, obviously knowing that here when we have ends to tabulate, right? But, or maybe later on looking at appointing people, but we do need to. It would be nice to have more board members representing, especially Worcester. I think I did find someone who's willing to run in Worcester as a write-in. So she is planning to email people. There's one for her. Fantastic. Thank you. You're welcome. Now I'm forgiven for all my interruptions tonight. No, that's great. Absolutely, Karla. Yeah, it would be terrific if the third seat in Worcester can be filled as well. And still beating the bushes in Berlin, right, Diane and Jonathan? Yeah. Okay, good luck. If you need any help from us, if we can provide even minor entertainment value happy to oblige. Well, I just want to clarify too, in terms of appropriate communication or not, as the board member, am I okay to reach out to, like Berlin staff, I would really like to get, or at least provide reminders to families of young children as well. And so I just want to make, again, it's that being my first year, what are my appropriate roles of communication and allowable roles? If recruitment of board members, as far as I'm concerned, go for it. Yeah. Jonas, did I see your hand as well? Yeah, is there a threshold for right-in candidates? A number or a percentage? No, not at all. That's great. There is, but it's not very high, I don't believe. I think, Jonas, in terms of numbers, I think there has to be 30 votes at a minimum for a right-in candidate. Otherwise, it gets some to an appointment. Great. Okay. Anything else? I think, Floor, you just did a one-two punch on both the open board seats and the town meeting update, but you have more. Yeah, just a remind. Yeah, I just pulled out my date. So, yes, March 1st would be, we had a February 17, we're skipping that one. We're gonna do a March 1st information meeting and then just a reminder that our official tell me it's March 2nd to everybody. That's it. Great. And then one last thing would be that, one last thing would be that we should make, I know Brian and Lori talked about they posted it in Front Porch Forum and make an effort to put the new tax numbers in Front Porch Forum because the information that they will be receiving in our, is not updated, right? Because those are printing as we speak. Right, yeah. We may have to do this a couple of times over there, just to get the, make sure the message sticks. Yeah. Yeah, so Hint, they share my one a writer in all posts in our Front Porch Forum. Yeah. Maybe. Great. Sounds great. Thank you, Flora. Anything else on board operations? Comprehensive board operations? Lenny? Yeah. When Flora was just talking about the Front Porch Forum, if Lori could, maybe she already has, but at some point it hadn't gone to the town clerk so that it can go on the town websites. I know my husband got it up on the East Montpelier website when he saw her numbers were different than what they had posted. He made sure it got up on the town website. So whenever those calculations get changed, it's a good idea to send them to the town offices too. Great idea. You say that's a great idea. Thank you, Lindy. We'll get to work on that. Thank you, Lindy, and thank you, Brian. Okay, are we ready for the consent agenda then? Do we have a motion to approve the minutes of January 13 and January 20? I'll move to approve the minutes of January 13 and January 20. All second. Thank you, Jonas. Second? All seconds, Doc. Thank you. Is that Jial? Yes. Thank you, Jial. Okay, any changes to the minutes? Dorothy? I should be listed as in attendance for the January 20th meeting. Okay, good. Lisa, did you catch that? Thank you, Dorothy. Sorry. That's okay. Any other changes? If not, all in favor of approving the minutes of January 13 and January 20, please click yes. Opposed, click no. And I'm seeing all yeses. The minutes are approved unanimously. Thank you very much. And Lindy, sorry. No, I've got it right here. I appreciate it. I make a motion to approve the board order in the amount of $174,007.10. Thank you. Is there a second? Oh, second. Oh, forget. Thank you, Jial. Floor, raise your hand. That's fine. So, any questions about the board orders? If not, all in favor, please click yes. Opposed, click no. Once again, I'm seeing all yeses. Great. Okay. Thank you very much again. Oh, and Floor, I'm sure will remind us with her sort of usual setting the example email to write to Michelle and company. Next up, approve the educational support personnel job descriptions on page 53. There are three of them, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. I don't, I think they're quite self-explanatory. Are there any questions? Otherwise, Jonas. I just, well, first I want to thank Kelly for working with Becky and Christie and Mary Allen. Kelly, I would assume given your memo here that these job descriptions are all okayed by those folks. They've reviewed drafts and gave input, yes. Thank you, Kelly. Thanks, both of them. And there's four job descriptions. Oh, my apologies for four of them just so that there's no mistaking. Okay, I did ask for a motion on this. Didn't I? We're approaching no switching. I did not, okay. Anybody will move it? Move the four job descriptions. I'll move to accept the four job descriptions as presented in the packet. Thank you, Jonas. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Chris. If there is no further discussion, all in favor, please click yes. Opposed, click no. And again, all yeses, motion carries unanimously. That's it with the consent agenda. Now we can move on to personnel actions. I believe there is just one. Would anyone like to move it? I can do that if you want. Thanks, Lynn. I make a motion to approve the change in FTE for Mary Carpenter. I think that's enough because the paperwork says the rest. Excellent. Second? Second. Jonas seconds. Lindy moves Jonas seconds. Any further discussion? If not, all in favor, please click yes. Opposed, click no. And I see all yeses. Terrific. Many thanks. That's basically the substantive part of the agenda. Public comments. Are there any members of the public who wish to speak out at this point? If there are, please go to your, the reactions icon and click raise hand if you would please. If not, then we can proceed to future agenda items. Is there anything? Oh, Carrie, please. Yeah, something Floor said earlier reminded me. We have a responsibility to make sure that the district has an emergency executive succession plan. And I don't think it needs to take a lot of time, but I think probably annually we need to hear that here's what would happen if I'm or suddenly unavailable to perform. Excellent idea. That is definitely going on the future agenda item list. Emergency succession plan for district leadership for superintendency. So that would be 9.6. Thank you for that. Floor and Carrie. Any others? Okay, in that case. Oh, sorry, Jonas. Yes. Sorry. It's okay? Okay. Thanks. In that case, there's still one more regular board meeting before town meeting. So I won't, I will say farewells to Gael and George for next time. But that is also a future agenda item of sorts. Anyway, board reflection. Anyone wish to Caroline? I think we did really well in terms of time and sticking to what was on the agenda. But as I reflect on the meeting, it seems like there were some items that were included that didn't feel time sensitive to me and that maybe could have been postponed to another meeting. And meanwhile my request for time dedicated to discussing our superintendent evaluation was not allocated time because the agenda was so full. And so I just want to point out, which we all know that it is February and we don't have an agreed upon method to evaluate our superintendent. And as he pointed out in his presentation, he doesn't have a job description. And so I just think overall, it would be great if we got more clear on our priorities and had tighter oversight into what items make it on the agenda. Thank you. Thanks Caroline. Members of the agenda committee, I'm sure have taken note on Stephen. I'll echo some of what Caroline said. I think we have room for improvement, but I would also acknowledge that I've been very pleased with the advance notice of many more items and the good explanations of that advance notice of many more items. I think back just a few years ago and it's a dramatic improvement. And I want to commend you on over the last two or three meetings, running a very nice meeting. I think you've balanced what people be heard with very tactfully interjecting time awareness. So thank you. You're very kind Stephen. I think I just got lucky, but I appreciate it. And really it's a collective venture. So I'm grateful to all of you for just being mindful and keeping yourself disciplined. Jonas. I want to second what Caroline said about the importance of getting the superintendent evaluation on here. Time is running out on that one. That one does have a deadline. And I'm hopeful that the agenda committee can get that on for next time. About the timing of meeting, I think that I agree with Stephen. We have been really disciplined, but I want to make sure that we don't go too far the other way and that we don't limit the things we have on the agenda in the interest of time, that we don't limit necessary discussion in the interest of time. I still think two meetings a month is probably not enough for us to do the best possible job we can. And I hope that at some point, there's more of an appetite for going long if we need to. I just want to make sure that we're not limiting ourselves too much. Understood. Thank you. Chris and then Diane. I noticed that we had no public comments this evening. And I can't help but think that that is because it comes at the end of a very long meeting, including executive session. So I would urge that we move the public comments portion of our meeting back to the beginning of our meeting so that we can have and hear and encourage the public to participate in our meetings and offer comments, because it is the best forum for all of us to hear what is on at least some of the public's minds as a collective. I imagine the public reaches out to individual members, but as a collective, that is the time when we will all hear it. And I think having it at the end, it just discourages it. And we shouldn't, I don't think we should be doing that. However unintentional it is. Thank you. Thank you, Chris, Diane and then Floor. One thing I think that would help as being a member of that agenda committee is when we put in future agenda items that when they are timely, that we have some due dates or hopeful dates. That would help as we're looking at that because coming into it, there's a lot of pre-prap that occurs. And so you get caught up in that sometimes. So it would be helpful if we knew there were some more urgent. I mean, that should have been a no-brainer around the superintendent evaluation. But again, it gets lost in that timing. Yes. Part of it, I think was that the superintendent evaluation is another work in progress. So, but understood. Floor. Diane, still my thunder. Yeah, we could add dates in, and you know, the times is sort of adding the times just with the time in each specific as we're running the meeting. I agree with Steven that we've been running better meetings. I do want to say if Chris is okay, that maybe we can provide a different venue. And that's what we have set as far as community engagement where we can actually engage the community and let our meeting, because I think part of the reason our meetings are working better getting into doing our business is sooner and keeping our flow going. This is the meeting of the board to get the work done and having, you know, maybe they're specific when we don't have an executive session, there's maybe a specific time where we could add a half an hour before the meeting for a, it'd be more intentional about how we asked for community input too. I think instead of making the change right now, I would advocate for that. Thank you, Floor. Ryan. Yeah, I think I just want to remind board members that a board meeting, a school board meeting is a meeting of the board's business in public. It's not a public meeting in where you're getting input. And you do get input because, but I do think that the best venue would be to hold a special session where you just get public input, where it's about around a specific topic or and you can put more in something like that instead of having public, worrying so much about the public comment in the board meeting. It's always, it's your choice. It's the board's choice, of course, but just wanted to remind folks of that. The superintendent evaluation, I know we've met, what is it? Caroline, Scott, Chris and Kari, we've met what, four times already? Four times in the last four weeks. And there's a lot of stuff to talk about, right? Because it's not just about my evaluation, right? It becomes about the evaluation of the entire, my evaluation impacts the evaluations of the administrators and other people. So I think, I always put the plug in for a board retreat. I see you have it down there. It could be a good topic. Thank you. Would board members allow me to step back to public comments for a moment because a member of the public has his hand raised. Is there any objection among board members to hearing David Lawrence speak at this point in the meeting? No. No objection. Okay, David, all yours. Hi all, David Lawrence, Romney, Middlesex. I wanted, I agree with all of you in a way. I least agree, unfortunately, with Brian. But Chris is right. I did have something that I was kind of curious about and would have brought up, but at this point, you know, it's three hours into a meeting then I have other things to do. And I just decided not to bring it up while you were asking for comments. And it's not that important a thing. So I'm not going to bother with bringing it up now. But it is something I would have asked about earlier. I think Floor is also right that, you know, this does have a little bit of an impact on the efficiency of running your meeting. Although I haven't noticed in all of the meetings that I've attended, that public comment period has tended to last all that long, even when people in the public have had something to discuss. But the thing that I don't really agree with is I agree with the general sense of it doesn't, like if I wanted to engage with the board, it doesn't specifically have to be during one of these, you know, Sunday monthly board meetings in order to do it. I would like a regular period though, that is somewhat free form. The part that I disagreed with Brian about was the idea that we would warrant and have a specific focus. No, like if I have a question that I want to bring to the board, I don't know what it is that I want to have it warned well in advance. Like the question that I had in mind was something that just happened this week and kind of, you know, threw into question, you know, school calendar scheduling for the school year and so on. And so it just would have been, and perhaps it's also something better to engage with the administration on, which is a separate issue. But my overall point is you don't always know well in advance, you know, what it is you want to engage with the board is and you don't want to have a whole separate meeting call for it. It didn't kind of like the idea of, well, maybe, you know, half an hour or 15 minutes before the regularly scheduled board meeting, then there can be kind of like an open mic time. But I do think it has to be both regular, if not necessarily, you know, twice a month and free form. And Chris is right, having it at the end of the meeting just, you know, kind of is like, okay, let's get on with the rest of our mics. So, thank you, David. Can I just respond to David? I appreciate him disagreeing with me. I hear what he's saying and he does have a good point. I would just still reiterate that, you know, and maybe it's not a special, and maybe it's a special meeting without a topic then where I've been putting ideas out there. It's ultimately the board's decision. Right, yes. So, do we have any other board reflections before we, oh, floor. Yes? No. Ha, ha, ha. I don't look or part of it. Oh, bye. Oh, okay. Yeah, I was just gonna say, any other reflections before we adjourn by consensus at 9.07 and have a wonderful evening, everybody. Take good care. Many, many, many. Good night. Good night, everyone. Good night. Good night. Good night, everybody. Thank you, good night. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks.