 It's 6.33 PM, Montelio-Rochbury Board of School Directors. They're all masked. The first order of business is public comment. Just everyone wish to speak. I see we have a couple members. And then we'll write your slotted for after the consent agenda. And do we have anyone on Zoom? No. Okay. We do want to add an executive session to the agenda for the purpose of appointing a new board member. And then we also have a contract issue to discuss. Any other plausible agenda item? On the policy monitoring report, there's a third policy in our board packet, but it's not on the agenda. And it's one of the ones from the last meeting. I believe it's the dissection one. And there was a second from last meeting. That wasn't in the packet. But I think. So I'm wondering if we should just move to put both policy monitoring reports from last meeting on to tonight's agenda. But we don't have a report for that. But nobody could open it. So that's right. So my suggestion was to add dissection to the policy monitoring report list. When you were going to check to see, had you guys done that in a policy? That's why it wasn't on it. We discussed it. No, I think it's fine to move forward with the monitoring report. It's just that. The monitoring report. Yeah. We're going to have it as the first reading. Yeah, that's why I was confused on that. So add it to the policy monitoring. List. Okay. So we'll have three on that. All right. Do you have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Do you have a second? I'll second it. Jill. Any discussion? All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? Great. Thanks. And then next item, a new board applicant. We got one letter of intent from Rhett Williams. And you're very welcome to take a few minutes to speak to your candidacy, answer any questions if you wish. You don't have to, but opportunity. That's pretty much on the spot, Rhett. Yeah, yeah. And you just referred to your letter, too. The letter kind of says, if anyone didn't read the letter, you know, I was a teacher for four years in Queens, learned a lot, had had some struggles. We can talk about another time. But it was part of the Teach for America. Yeah. Yeah. New York City teaching fellow program. My husband did. It's like teaching fellows. Yeah. So I was a teaching fellow. And then, you know, family issues move towards psychiatric care to mental health care. So that's what the field that I'm in now. And I'm the director of education and training at the psychiatric care hospital next to CVMC. And I've always thought that this was the public service that I would end up in because of my background and because of my interest in the schools and because of my interest in the future of the school system. And the vision process. And there's an opening and there's a need. And there's not a lot of people stepping forward. And the time is now. So, you know, my, I just want to do the best job I can. I don't have an agenda of any kind. I want to be open to the best ideas. And, you know, hear the bad ones and put in what work I can to the best ability that I can and try to help in any way. That's good. Excellent. Thank you. I appreciate it. Any questions for Rhett? And you're welcome to stick around. We will formally appoint an executive session. Yeah, I'm coming to find out if you have cliffhanger. I want to thank you for submitting your letter. And I think it's great that you're willing to step up. Yes. Thank you. We're all very lucky to have some of your interest. Absolutely. Great. No, thank you, Rhett. I really appreciate it. So, board discussion, planning for community outreach for the board. I know everyone gave ideas. Amanda very kindly put together kind of a list of assembled ideas. I know Amanda can talk about your list a little. We have a lot of talk about our list and then we can kind of think about an outreach plan and which will probably be various people taking groups on the list and planning to reach out to them and do some listening and then come back to the board. So, yeah, I mean, I send it out around. It's a list that, and I compile everybody's ideas. So kind of sit in three components. One was like the in school outreach to students, to families. Another one is extending that outreach to in community sessions with the various organizations in both towns and like the places that people frequent. The third one is just like tabling at events, you know, community events that happen, places that people congregate, like the farmers' market, art walks and things of that sort. And the third piece of it, well, four pieces, I guess. Another one is the community organizations, which I already talked about. And then the rest is just marketing flyers using the various outlets like From Porch Forum, some of the local newspapers like Time Argus and that. So I was hoping that, you know, we can use some of those ideas and then decide, you know, like how we go about. I see as like the next steps just together coming up with some questions that we want to answer so that it's not so open-ended but also not closed so that we can, when we do analysis and qualitative data that we have some sort of framework but did not switch out of that. So that's what I was thinking. I don't know what people think. The other thing I clarified too is, and we had a amount of talk about this, but obviously this is important for the sort of three discussion, but we were thinking of just framing it in terms of budget priorities in general so we can not use it for the budget but we also thought it might be less confusing to the public if we were trying to explain various buckets of money rather than just, you know, stating the type of, I think make clear the type of spending that Essar can be spent on so people are thinking about those priorities but then also just getting ideas in general so the discussion is not well, we can't spend on that or maybe we can spend on that. But just to get the priorities and then, you know, obviously if Essar funds aren't appropriate for things that rise to the top, you know, there are other funds that are budget discussion that we can talk about. Any questions from others about the idea of process in general? How do people want to go about divvying up groups? Either take some now and maybe, you know, if we don't get to them all, we can, you know, come back and if we have some later, we can do it by email. For that to mention, one thing is that also the idea to have some affinity spaces for different folks, BIPOC folks, or families that have kids with IEPs, 504 plans, you know, diversity and there are some community members that might be interested in helping facilitate those just to give people trust and, you know, a little more openings to kind of share feelings and things. So that could be, and, you know, we could probably ask LGBT folks to also, like, lead some of those conversations so that it is more of a affinity space. That's why it's important to kind of come up with some questions. That sounds okay. Two things. One to come up with some common questions and maybe we can do that again by just email them and then it might take a little time to set up some meetings. So if there are groups or organizations that people kind of know right now they'd love to take, they can claim them. Otherwise, we can also just claim them by email. Yeah. I mean, there are some that you're missing. You know, we can add them now. You can send them to me. That was not a full list. I'm, I've reached out to the mainstream middle school caregivers alliance and so I know I'm going to start going to those meetings and helping. They want more, they want briefings on what's happening at the school board and then I can use those at that time to also receive feedback. Yeah. So I can do that one. I would be willing to do the high school. I need to know what the status of your high school career was. Boosters. Boosters, yeah. More athletic. I'm still talking to them. I know it's kind of evolved over the years. I'm meeting with Jolinda tomorrow who's like the High Group President. So I can talk to her about how they can support and then I'm part of the U.S. Caregivers Alliance. I love the idea of having like a regular presence at places like the farmers market. I think it might be good to have some sort of like sign up genius or something going where, you know, we could just rotate through and just have a table there that people could talk. I don't know if that's what we're picturing at the farmers market or the coffees, you know, that kind of thing. I'm happy to partake, but I'm not going to do it all myself. We'd probably have to reach out to the organizers of the farmers market and I think, you know, we could do it in a more like casual way, but it's going to be awkward unless we have an official presence. So here are the tasks. All right. I can reach out to the farmers market and figure out that logistics and then you can set up a genius and people can sign up for Saturday that they are able to go there and enjoy some coffee and like just fire. Christian, is there a farmers market that happens weekly or bi-weekly in Roxbury? There's not a farmers market. I've kind of tried to develop like an inventory of like gathering places, you know, I mean, you know, Roxbury is a bit of a different community in terms of what its downtown looks like. So, you know, places that get I guess like high traffic places in Roxbury as much as there would be traffic, you know, like the country store and the town office and, you know, the school certainly. So at the post office actually, so, you know, something I've just been thinking about, you know, if it's a private, you know, business, obviously we would need to get permission from the store owner and then also the post office being a federal building. I don't know what that would look like. So just needing to do some outreach from, you know, the few well-trafficked places that we have here in town to see if we could, you know, set up and do some outreach. So I know that there's also the community center, which would just be a matter of arranging with the town, our town administrator Tami and just getting permission, I think, to just set up there, essentially. So yeah. Do you want to check on that? Sure. Yeah. Okay. Yep. I could reach out to someone on FOMS and see if they want to do like another kind of listening session like we did pre-COVID. With who? With the Friends of Montpelier School's group. I'll take the basement team center. Reach out to somebody there to see how I could, I or a couple of us or maybe we alternate like the harvest market, drop in, like figure out how to engage, ask questions, see if the teams will even talk to us. Well, it kind of brings up that question of like also potentially having a board member. We had talked about it in the spring and then we sort of said let's do the table that and do it in the fall. But maybe, I know there was a lot of, you had a lot of ideas about how to potentially or who to reach out to to do that. Maybe we just like accept letters and do the same thing like we are doing with other board seats. We just put a poster up or something and have them send an email out, whoever that would be the principal and then just accept letters of interest. Yeah, I think that would be great. Do you want me to reach out about that? There's student board members? Yeah, student board members. There's not a lot of people knocking on the door to take that on. The person is Matt McLean. Matt is the director of flexible pathways and we run that through the flexible pathways programming. So I'll connect with you. I would be good to recall that. Yeah, and it might be nice to not have it be only like a flexible pathway thing. Matt just knows that Matt has closely connected to all the students around what interests are and he just knows the student body in that way. So he's the best person to do it. It's not a tactically flexible pathway. So I'll reach out to you. Have they ever considered a middle school student? We've had them on some committees. Yeah, we've had them on parents and subcommittees. The facilities, the school building. I think it becomes the night meetings because we're more of a challenge than the middle school level. It's worth, you know, like Barry has any ideas or something. I mean, I have a few students that I would love to have and it's brilliant, but I mean, I think the idea of having a letter of intent if people are interested just like make it a little more exciting. Of course it is. So I'll reach out to Libby and kind of work on it behind the scenes and then come back to the drawing board with you guys at the next meeting. Is Matt McLean also the one to ask about sporting events? If we wanted to put a table there. Matt Link, thank you. Can we go through you for that? Yeah, you just see me. I can do that one. You actually get a lot of... There it is for you, Matt. I'd be willing to write an op-ed. It's only run by everyone before publication, but if that's helpful. Great. Does it make sense to do an op-ed now or do we have a budget to start? Maybe it's the front porch forum for sure to try to drive people to the webpage to submit ideas. And then, yeah, definitely that makes sense. We have nothing we're opting... Or to announce like, I don't think we're opting. Find us at the farmers market this Saturday or something. It would be what you use that for. So maybe with all this, we can come up with some schedule once we have a baby. Here are the three spaces. Here's how you can take part of your conversations. Rocksbury, Boom Boom Boom, and Montpelier, Boom Boom Boom. We'll also have a presence these days at this stable event. Come talk to us. And do we have to compile this as some sort of a report to meet the requirements? Does that... There's no requirement for it. I'm just looking at the schedule. Like, we... In order to build the budget and take community feedback into consideration, we need it... We, the administration, would need it by the board meeting of the 20th of October and no later than that. So, quick turn around. Yeah. October 20th. I mean, I think... It doesn't... This work needs to happen regardless of budget season to know the feedback of the community so we can have some of it and we can have, you know, others afterwards. I don't think we should limit ourselves to, like, we have two weeks to do all this things. I think this is a way for us to start really having... Becoming really that bridge and that people can see as if it is an open door. So, I think that we could do a lot short-term before October 20th, but also we shouldn't limit ourselves. And we should actually plan to do this... ongoing. ongoing so that we could have that community feedback and build something that is, like, that can help with the visioning process once that begins, which is a six-month process, and it just becomes a, you know, a platform of data collection from our communities. Yeah. So, the October 20th, you're saying, Libby, is about ideas or input for budget creation. Right. There's still time for budget feedback after October 20th. Yeah. The initial budget presentation of the board by the administration is the 1st of December. Okay. But that takes a while to put together. Yes. So, if... And that is not... October 20th is not ESSER feedback. No. No. No, it's budget. Budget season. Yeah. And I totally agree, Amanda, that this should just be part of the board culture of, like, just creating space for people to talk to us. But just so you know that the first presentation is the first and you give feedback on that presentation and then we take that feedback and we bring back another presentation, which is often similar, but it has your feedback in it on the 15th of December. Yeah. We take more feedback. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Yeah. So, there's plenty of... Yeah. Except if you want... Once we present on the 1st, like, yes, the budget... You're tweaking. We're not reinventing that budget going forward. Got to. Yeah. And we've often done a separate kind of... Early January, like a special meeting to try to entice the public. Yeah. Yeah. Where we've brought in, like, pizza and, you know, just taking feedback. And that's... That meeting is more or less, like, the last opportunity to really change it. Because it has to get more. Yeah. Yeah, and that's scheduled on the 1st of January. Okay. I'll be so cold. Thank you. Yeah. No, the... I'm sorry. The first meeting. Yes, sorry. The first meeting in January. It's the way we bring everyone in is to just... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The first meeting in January that are in Roxbury, I would... I myself would like to attend some of those. Mm-hmm. And I would encourage other members who live in Montpelier to come to those and also Kristin and to come to some of the Montpelier stuff. Yeah. That we should be doing both. Yeah. We should be in both places because we represent some of the community. Yeah. Correct. So a process question around that, so if there's more than two board members present at any sort of meeting, does it need to be warned? Is that... to talk. You just want to absorb and let someone else leave the event. They're going to be as many board members as possible. But once you start engaging in the discussion, can you give like an introduction as to what type of feedback we're looking for and then sit back and listen or is that too much? I think if one person did that and kind of like laid the foundation and said, you know, here's the process, here's what we're looking for, here's the good. We're here to listen. We can't speak because of the board meeting. Yeah. And then you sit back and you listen. Yeah. That's fine. Okay. Is it strict listening or there's not even a follow-up question or what do you mean? I think if you if you answer like like a basic question. I think if it's like purely informational, I think once it starts to look like brainstorming, then it becomes problematic. Okay. If you have more than one board member. If you have more than two board members. Okay. So we're going to want to make sure we have a place to compile. When we do start creating a schedule, we want to have a place where people can see that so that if you want to attend, then you can. So I like making flyers so I can make a flyer and then we can just change the date and like the name of the places. I'll just make a generic so like if you want to do that, you can, you know, farmers not good and we just change the date. Great. Thank you so much for creating this. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, look at some more of these if you want to, you know, start doing outreach. Just send an email so people know so we're not creating efforts but we can probably see some more groups before we talk to you about it. You can also add me to the list for the principle swoop scoop for more of the outbound engagement. I imagine it's something like the Caregivers Alliance has announcements in like every other one of the swoop scoops that go out. I think there'll be nights at the board. And Libby, do you know where you stand? Where does the school stand right now? Like I see one of the things is about open hours at the MHS library. Would that have to be outside of school hours? Yes. Okay. But the idea being hope that we're hopeful to attract students to that is what I'm thinking. So maybe it would be better to have open hours outside of the high school or something. We should talk about what makes sense of how to like create a public presence for students to engage with us. I think if you were, yeah, we can talk about that. And Matt and Renee would probably know better than I do. But I think students' schedules are sort of different. Right. And so, and we're really trying to limit some things. But if you were to do things on the courtyard directly after school, you know, it's a nice space. There's lots of seating. And if it's directly connected to school time, that would probably be better. Or you can hang out in the tent during the lunch hours. And you want to do. That's a bad idea. Yeah. They don't have enough time to eat. Oh, the high schoolers do. Oh. So I will explore that. Yeah. With you. Yeah, Matt and Renee would probably be better in that conversation than I would. But there's definitely free time for high school students. We would just have to make it known who you were. Yeah. Right. Kind of good stuff. Yeah. Okay. So, what's your mom doing here? Exactly. That's a good vantage point to spy. I know that the U.S. Cardiabas Alliance is firing outside for, like, their meeting and just, like, a welcoming thing. So, I wonder if that's something you could do too? She's like, fly her. Oh, let's go for a member. Try my thing. Sure. You mean during the drop-off and pick-up? Yeah. Yeah. I should ask Peter about that when I email about the food scoop. One that had great appeal to me because it just seemed like it would be so much fun is riding the bus with the kids. And is that a real offer? I would love to know, because the rock story, you have 30 minutes of the captive audience from here to there. Is that allowable? I can't see why we couldn't allow that. You're a school board member. Sure. I don't think parents would be happy if other people were riding the bus with their children. Right. I will tell you that if you're riding too much, you're in the morning. A little sleepy of a crowd. The students are not exactly super at that time. And in the afternoon, they may be too exuberant to really talk to you. Maybe an early release day. So, I mean, if you wanted to... It would be an interesting... It would be. Yeah. Very informational. It just looked so fun, so nostalgic. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I've been thinking about the Roxbury team population, too, because I think initially when I joined, I was asking about the number of Roxbury middle school and high school students. And I was kind of... It was like 46, which somewhere around... Yeah. It's not that high now. Oh, yeah. Actually, if you're talking about middle school and high school, yeah, yeah. So in our community, we don't have as much of a... There's not many places for young folks to be visible. We don't have a lot of commerce. We don't have a lot of places for them to be. So I'm very interested in trying to reach out to our Roxbury kids and possibly look at the library as being a space to host some sort of Q&A platform with them because I think their experience is also somewhat unique because they're coming back and forth and they're new to the district. So I would love to hear how their experience is going and what's been happening for them. So I will take that on, too. You can add that to my list. I wonder if you could arrange the bus ride as not just you being on the bus, but you just speaking on the bus and asking them to do that kind of composition. Yeah. I think though... That's probably the best way to get it. The high schoolers from... Sorry. I know this. The high schoolers from Roxbury get to school early because they get... Because they have... We have to have the middle schoolers there by eight and the high school schedule doesn't start till 8.30. So that's another window. I think they hang out in the cafeteria from 8 to 8.30. So it might be another opportunity that might be a little bit more structured than being on the bus and you might have a more willing audience. Can I give him a donut? I'm definitely happy to give it any caregiver's alliance and be a second person who gets all those others as well. It would be great to brainstorm with Matt McLean about how we can attract students here, like what would entice them. To become board members? Yeah. Yeah, he'd be the best person to talk to about that. Yeah, because I have a feeling that there's a little self-perpetuating machine that COVID would kind of kill. The students who are moving off like recruited either a junior or sophomore to come on. I think we've lost that and now it's like I'm going to say it was adults and my ones that I've never heard about really boring things. No, thanks. Because I'm interested in the middle school. Get them young. Do you want me to... Do you want to be part of those conversations when I reach out to Libby about... Yeah, if it works, I definitely would be. And just if there is any... Yeah. Yeah, kind of a good structure is like a credit project. If there's certain things that if we told them they were going to do, they'd be really excited about. What about college applications? That doesn't... Isn't a thing anymore. I feel like... It's a huge thing. Yeah, so like people are looking for things to put on their resume. I'm sure we can find something. There's some really great students at Montpelier High School too. I think we're going to find someone. Yeah, and the ones we had when we had them were fantastic and we would give them space to present almost immediately. Well, they would be a good resource for us to keep that channel of communication alive between other students. They could help us do that. Yeah, so... And the students that were here, the public safety committee were really amazing. Really amazing. Yeah, I did try to recruit them actually. Yeah, we did kind of a hard salad. One of them did, yeah. But they're busy too. I mean kids are busy and they have sports and other extracurricular activities, so... It's one of the challenges is a lot of kids who would be interested in the school board are also playing sports or do theater and... Yeah, so that's what it is, but we'll figure it out. We'll find someone. So with this... Okay, Annika, what would you like to do? Jill, you've got an op-ed. What else? I was thinking I would like to do the either sports event or the character of his alliance, if that's not already covered. I'm already going to feel hockey games. I'm happy to go to more things like that. It would be nice if somebody went to the U.E.S. so that I've been And I think Tina Muncie would want me to volunteer to go to the senior center. So I would be happy to go. That's great, great. I'll do the high school games and public school games. Great. I think we should sign Andrew up to go to the senior center with Kristen. And I think the two of them would be great at the senior center together. For Jill, you mean? It's like, yeah. I think they'd be great at the senior center together. We do go to the senior center before COVID. The administrative team goes to the senior center once the budget is cut to answer questions and serve lunch and things like that. It's Grant Keisler's favorite thing to do. I have Mike Berry's. I think a couple of times I wanted to be a board member. It's one of the bigger audiences. Oh, they are the most articulate educated audiences. Absolutely. I wonder if the city council is the place where we can, like, pick up their public comment and every of the city council members like, here's what you guys need to know about the school board, boom, boom, boom, or something like that. Or just like ask that. Oh, but we have the same day, no? City council have the same day at the school board? For the alternate. Kristen and Matt, isn't there a senior center here too? There is a senior center. Yep. Oh my, I think the kids go there. We have potlucks. There may be a potluck on October 2nd. Certainly that could be a place to solicit information and interest. Which audience is trying to bribe you guys for your vote now? It's okay, I'm on them. Great. I can do all the community organizations that work with some of our youth here, like Vermont's entrepreneurial union and that can outright Vermont. Great. Excellent. Thank you for doing that. Gia, what did you sign up for? Only friends of Montpelier School? Foams and boosters. Okay. And he's also volunteering to help deal with the recruitment of future student board members. He's also definitely doing coffees and farmers markets. When the sign-up genius is ready, he's on that. I should have willow on. Can I just have a table right here? Can I just hang a shingle? Did we want to brainstorm questions now or do that over email? How are we doing with the agenda? Although I would take the time to do it. Is the thought exchange a presentation? It's not a presentation. I just wanted you to have the link to that. That's a resource that we have purchased with us or too many. And just take a look at it. It's not in our hands yet. But once the bill is paid, it will be. We just had to wait for the amendment to get approved. It's a really cool, it's like Google Surveyor on steroids. It's a really cool tool that we'll have at our fingertips. So once I get the 401 of how to work it, it's certainly at the boards, you know, you all can certainly use it as well for any board work or anything. I mean, just if you haven't had a chance to look at it for the public, it's just a really brief, like, you can ask a question. You can either be in a meeting together and ask a question, or you can do it virtually without the meeting taking place in secrecy. And people chat in answers to the questions and that you can rate people's answers and you can answer, you can talk back to them. So you can see, like, which themes rise to the top as the most prioritized and what people are saying to each other about it. So it's a really, I've only seen little demos of it, but it's a super cool tool for getting engagement from people. Right. So let's do some questions. I'm ready. These are questions we're asking ourselves or questions we want. Any questions you want to pose to the... I mean, a good one is the top three things you'd like to see more investment in. I'd ask for specifics, too, if I could. So if somebody says social-emotional health, I'd always follow up. Well, could you tell me more about what you're envisioning? And then some questions around values, too. Like, what are some of the values that you think should be driving our spending decisions? That should be driving our spending decisions? Yeah, which goes so much to priorities, but I think it's a little different. So are we mostly trying to generate questions that are focused on budget for now, because that's the most immediate? Is it... do we want to also, like, just hear what are your top concerns? Yeah. Your top three concerns? Maybe they only have one. And do these all need to be framed within COVID-19? It looks like these are intended to prepare for, prevent, and respond to COVID-19. Yeah, that's for our professors. Yeah. That's why it was, like, beyond. I think we could frame up that, you know, some of these values are tied to expenditures around COVID-19. So, you know, in addition to other things, yeah, it's just, you've got specific ideas around that. That would be... You would also be nice to know, like, what's... if we're talking to a student, like, what's the best thing about school? Or what's... I don't know if it's your favorite thing, or what's, like... The strengths. What's the thing that you're getting the most out of right now? I don't want to frame it as just favorites, because, you know, they make just all safety gear, recess, or whatever, but... There's nothing wrong with that. Which is, you know, I understand they have very... those are very valuable, but I also want to know more, like, it's not just what it is that you like about school, but it's, like, what's helping you get the most out of it. Which, I don't know, maybe that's a hard... yeah, I don't know. But that's that's why I was trying to bring the question in that way. I think also as students, like, what... Yeah, like, I don't like... And they're... As soon as students, you might get some kind of infrastructure, building type things that you might not get with the general public. Oh my God, they're blockers, you know, all of them, although they're not. Thank you. You're our congenitor. But then, at the time, when they were quite pretty gross, and, like, who would know that? The only caveat to that would be that any kind of document you make, remember, it's a public-facing document and you don't want any teacher's names in there. Oh no. Oh yeah. We will make sure that we have... Just a reminder. Yeah, yeah. I think from adults in the community too, it would be interesting to know sort of what they are seeing that's working really well in the schools, what they think is, you know, what they value the most in their experience with the schools. So kind of like the student question, but just for adults also. I think it's important to know. In terms of data collection, do you... Do we ask the same 10 questions to every single group? You know, like, do we have a sign at the farmers market that says, here's our top 10 questions. Give us feedback. You know, like, we can... Yeah, and there can always be open-ended. Composite people can record and send us, like, what's up chat. Hey, we do that. I'm always recording. Yeah, like, here are my top 10 concerns. I don't know. That's just a question for data people. I'm just not here. I think it's going to end up being more qualitative anyway, even if we do ask the same question. People are going to be giving open-ended long answers. So it's, I don't know if we're going to be able to do, like, a quick analysis of, like, 86%, you know. But if we ask the question about, like, what are your top three priorities, we can sort of list that out. I was kind of wondering the same thing from a data standpoint of, like, do we want to present people with choices? Like, here are all the sort of buckets of funding that we typically, you know, put money into. What are your top three? But it might be more valuable to leave it open-ended. I think, in my opinion, I just, I think that we should have, I think this is a beginning of a real community engagement process. Yeah. I think, like, we should have that, just, like, be open. Yeah. Especially because, like, we already know that there are certain things that the district needs to spend its money on. And so, like, this is, like, I think of this process as just, like, beyond the actual money that we have this year on the budget, but that it helps to see whether the community is, like, envisioning that it gets tied in with the visioning process with the consultant. Right? Like, it gets tied in with the budget process that I leave out to the administration. So I think it's just, like, the beginning of really listening. And then creating those thematic things where we can say, hey, there's, like, we already heard that the special ed needs a lot of support. How do, you know, like, we heard a lot of that. So how do we go about? And what are the tools that the administration is already doing or anything that we need to do? I could see value in using a method like we used at our retreat in terms of, like, a stickies board. You know, if you're going to have, like, a large volume of people going through. I mean, I know that we would love to dig into substance, but some people may not feel comfortable in that and would rather kind of stay somewhat anonymous. So just to give people not, like, the questions are visually posted and then folks can ruminate and maybe they can just, you know, stick their stickie and, like, get on their way. And if you also are having a traffic jam, there's a lot of people, you know, building up. It gives people still, you know, at least a quick way to chime in. It doesn't allow for follow-up, but at least maybe could, you know, initiate some thinking around some topics. Yeah, no, about three or four years ago we did a problems thing like that based on the tele-covered library. And it was, you know, people put sticky notes with kind of, like, people had, you know, three things that they wanted the school to focus on budget-wise and they just, you know, wrote a rundown, put on the board and then they kind of, like, lined them up in groups. And it was, it was pretty clear where priorities... I feel like it was, like, six or seven years ago. Maybe six or seven years ago now. No, that was before me. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yes, that was before me. The years are... Tickin' away. Anybody wants to go to the library? The library is a good thing. You mean, like, a table? Just to drop in and see... Drop in, talk to the librarian so that they can help with, you know... In terms of, like, almost leaving, like, something like that up for a period of time. Mm-hmm. Yep, I could see that working here as well. I don't even feel like a dropbox in the library. Is it safe to say that the board's role is the public facing and that the administration is engaging with the staff and educators on getting their input on the budget development? I'm just looking through this public engagement piece and it mentions educators and I... Again, that's for our professor, right? So we generally work with the principals who know their buildings pretty well, right? I mean, to think that there's a lot of wiggle room in the local budget is an accurate thought, right? There's not a... Because most of it is salaries and benefits. So, the staff we already have. So there's not a huge amount of wiggle room to play with here, right? So it's the administrator's responsibility to truly think about what are the priorities that we need. We're starting a process on Monday, you know, with our big brainstorming session and they bring their teacher's voices to that table as well. With our professor, we're starting those conversations too next week, actually, around some different spaces with individual teaching teams. So I'll send this out. If you guys have any questions, you can reply to me and then I'll put it up. I'll do the flyer and then I come up with some schedule that people... I'll send it to Emma so she can do a genius. Great. Yeah, thank you. Awesome. Thank you. This is great. It's always good to have a year where we can start back and see people. Let's move to policy monitoring. We have three, we have 15 student attendance of 14 student freedom of expression and whatever that is. Animal death section. Animal death section, I've sent them in. G5. G5, thank you. All right, do I have a motion to approve the student attendance library report? I'll move to approve. Oh, I have a question. Oh. Can we get through that during the discussion? Approve the student attendance monitoring report. Do I have a second? I'll second it. No. I'm not sure who said that. We both did. Yeah, all right. All right, discussion. I have a few questions. What I got was the procedure. That's what, right? Mm-hmm, which one? There was a procedure in the... Attendance procedure was in our board packet. In our board packet. Mm-hmm. But... And so I have a question regarding the truancy procedure, this one, that was on the website. And... Well, that's my question. Okay, and so there is S16 passed this year a couple of months ago, which is the discipline built the past, which created a working group that's looking at discipline data and suspensions, but also has a piece on truancy. And it has a data reporting clause that the schools will report to the agency of education every year that reporting of truancy and like what was done. And so I didn't see that in the procedure itself, that of the data collection thing? That procedure that you have in your hand that's still on our website, the truancy procedure. Yeah, that's given to us by the courts. Okay. So that's not ours that we have written. Okay. That's given us to the courts and they haven't given up. They... It's not the most facile system. So that's the last update that was given to us. Okay. Yeah, most likely is out of date because we're working with... the court system on that. Like they give it to us. Okay. And then... And so when I was reading the procedure, there is... In this sheet, it says level one and level two, students have missed ten or more days in any 12-week period, but in our procedure itself... Too many papers. It doesn't specify the 12-week period. I just wanted to understand... We might just have missed that in the procedure part. Okay. Because it's like... So if I miss five days in 12 weeks from six, or like on excuse, right? Like then... Can I miss like 10 days through the year? So that's what I didn't really get between this sheet and this procedure. I would... I actually didn't recognize... We're going to take that one down the court one because it's so out of date. So I... And we'll reach out to the courts to child... Nick, reach out to the courts to try to get a new one. Because the last meeting I had with the courts around that was probably my first year of my superintendency. So that's what that's from. So that's four years old. And I actually didn't even realize it was still up there. So we're going to take that down. Thank you for pointing that out to me, Amanda. Great. And I can find clarity on the 12 week piece for our procedure. And just to clarify is that if a kiddo is sick, that's an excused absence, right? Yeah. That's not an unexcused absence. So truancy is dealing with unexcused absences. So I just want to know, when a court gets involved in truancy, who's the enforcement against? Is it against the garden? Yeah. Yeah. And to say the court gets involved with truancy is... You can just take it. Yeah. Yeah. Really optimistic of you. That just doesn't happen. I had a question about, so another is mentioned of the community liaison, I think, is the position I came through, ESSER. And it's probably too early to tell whether or not that's being successful yet. I think it's amazing. Cool. But so I'm just curious if that position is using any... You know, I know there's... I didn't go as far as Amanda to dig up that truancy procedure, but I remember it was mentioned and I wondered what that looked like or how archaic it was. And wondered if the community liaison is... Like what approaches or new approaches as does this individual envision using and will we kind of see at some point the outcomes of that? The truancy, there's very... Like that's outlined for us by the courts. I mean, there's very... How you can go about... Right, what the procedure is. You know, what the letters are sent home and all that kind of stuff. But you can have a whole lot of wiggle room there. Nick currently is a phenomenal hire. Don't have him come talk to you guys one night because he's super. He's technically got a caseload of four students right now, maybe a couple more. And he is building relationships with them. He's at their houses. He's got kids texting him to make a connection. Most of the kids are just not willing to leave their house for anything. And so he's making the goals he should be making. The first goal is so let's go outside. Let's go for a walk. Let's do that kind of stuff. He has a lot of experience with this in Colorado in a month before he went to Colorado. I can imagine... I haven't seen him work with kids yet, but I can imagine they just love him. He's joined our equity team. He's working with kids who are having a hard time. Even if they get themselves to school, they are refusing to get into any type of class. And so he's connecting with those students as well. He's just a fantastic, fantastic hire. So I'll have to have him come talk to you. As far as envisioning new procedures and things like that, I think he needs to learn more than what... He just needs to learn the procedures now. But yeah, I'll have him come talk to you guys one night because he's great. That'll be great. Thank you. And so far the last piece will be the data reporting. Yeah, when the law comes through, we'll make sure that policy will probably... The student attendance policy may have to be updated. Yeah. Well, that already passed that piece of it. I know, but we haven't gotten any written guidance on it. You know, we've gotten the written guidance around suspension. We got that just last week to give you a sense, right, so that the law passed a while ago, but the written guidelines on that just came by, came through Friday. Oh, who writes the guidance? Dan. Oh, he does? Oh, okay. So that's the no child under age should be suspended. Right, right, right. Yes. So when they send through for a term and see them, we'll let you know if the policy needs to be up to date. Oh, thank you. Okay, that's all I have. Great. Any other questions, discussion around the student attendance policy? All those in favor of approving the monitoring report? All right. All right. Any opposed? Great. Thanks. At 14, Student Freedom of Expression and Schools Law to the media, do you have a motion to approve the monitoring report? I have a motion to approve the monitoring report at 14. Do I have a second? I'll second that. Any discussion? Two brief questions, probably for Liddy. Is there any like media literacy courses or curriculum that's available to students, especially in? I'm going to get back to you about specifically what we offer. Yeah. I can speak to my middle school daughter. It's very much. And it may show up, you know, not be specifically, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty impressive, actually. They learn a lot about digital footprint, about questioning sources. But it's sort of embedded in their DLA and social studies. We do have a curriculum for digital citizenship. And that course is pretty comprehensive and covering sort of like what you would want it to cover for a middle school student in terms of like. High schoolers, high schools. It's actually a K and A curriculum. Yeah, my first grader came home. So it's a worksheet the other day. It only came on my radar last year for noticing that my kid was in it. But anyway, it was, but it was really great because there was like asking questions that exactly the type of like about sexting and, you know, what's appropriate to post online and how your footprint sort of lives with you forever. And that those kinds of conversations. Great. And at a free level. In regards to media literacy and like critical thinking, is that what you're asking? No, more along the lines of what we're talking about just that kids are being, you know, they're being tooled up, you know, with the ability to navigate this media heavy world that we now live in. When we first got here, there wasn't anything. And that was a main thing for Mike Berry to do in the last couple of years. And it lives with our media specialists. Yep. Right now they kind of own it. But it is, I know if Don Taylor was doing things in the sustain, it's kind of gone through that route at the middle school along with Katie Chabot. And it's mainly housed with the media specialists helping the teachers in bed. But there's mandatory things that all kids have to do. Great. To. And a lot of the global citizenship standards are based around like identifying bias in a source or, you know, being able to recognize when a source is credible and being able to weigh different perspectives on the same issue, that type of thing. Yep. So that's being taught across the board and global citizenship. Okay. Thank you. My other question was, is there a student newspaper or a blog that we could ever see that would just be like an example of what? Last year we did have one at the high school. I don't know if there is one. I have not heard of one yet this year. Mr. Tilletson told me he's Soren's TA. There's going to be one? Is he the advisor? He was, yeah. He's the advisor. So it's probably in the works then. It's in the works. Yes. I think he's on the list tonight. We signed up. Yes. He's on the consent agenda for tonight. He's doing it then. Yeah, there will be a newspaper coming out. It's just early in the school year and I haven't seen it yet. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thanks. Any other questions, comments, discussion? All of us in favor of approving a 14 student freedom of expression this will close the video. All right. All right. Any opposed? Great. Thanks. And then P5 animal dissection. I moved to motion to approve the animal dissection policy matter report. I'll second. Any discussion? So there was some discussion about this at the policy committee meeting and we just had some questions around the procedure. So it says that we, our policy reads that we will develop procedures but we were not able to, so I don't know if the word procedure, I'm thinking of procedure in terms of the procedures that are listed with the policy on our website with the policy. But if this is more of a loose definition of procedure in terms of like just the science teacher themselves need to like develop something. The science teachers ask. Yeah. So I can put that in like procedure language but it would be like one sentence the science teacher will ask before every dissection. We thought it would be good for the public to be able to, I also looked in the handbooks that were available online but the one from this year isn't quite up yet, right? Or it wasn't when I looked. When did you look? A couple of weeks ago. It's up there now and I did before she left. So I didn't see any talk about dissection in either the curriculum for the science courses or anything like that. So we just felt like the people in the policy committee felt like it would be appropriate for that information to be sort of publicly accessible for parents and you know students to be able to look at based on the policy language and the and the law. It sounded like in the statute that it was sort of requiring that to be accessible. So I don't know if that means like I've never really run into this with any of your policy monitoring reports. I don't know if that means that we should reconsider saying that we're compliant or if we should just say that that was our reading our reading of it or your reading of it was that it can just be a policy a procedure developed by the science teacher and expressed to the students. It does say I think it the law talks about parents also or guardians having notifications so I don't know if that's happening anyway. Well we didn't do any animal dissection last year so there wouldn't have been any notification last year okay but I can certainly put a procedure. Yeah I think that would be good and then I'm fine just interpreting it that way for now and then moving forward. Yep okay. Any other questions, comments, discussion regarding animal dissection? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? And then we have two policy readings which I don't think we actually need to say just a reading but first reading of policy E01 fiscal management and E02 budget execution and just for a quick summary these policies are being updated to reflect small changes in basically federal register citation that a few other just updates to make them fully compliant for current law and I don't think they want to add to that but they're opposed to it if the public wants to look at them and weigh in going up to more readings. So Jim did so Andrew the is it the budget committee is that what it's called? Finance. Finance committee. The finance committee that these went to the finance committee first and so it was my understanding that Grant along with the finance committee tweaked and made the changes necessary. I just don't know where to look on this document to know like. Yeah when it got downloaded the PDF the red ink. The strikeouts and stuff like that. I think the red went away. Okay. I was wondering about that. Okay I mean I tend to just have complete faith in our finance committee and Grant to make the changes necessary. For the second reading I'll make sure that that we'll upload crossouts or something. Okay yeah it'd be good to be able to bring your eyes straight to the changes because they're long policies. I was wondering if that happened really to pretend to look. So they were in our board packet in the last meeting and those changes were there. But there were some changes. But then there were changes since then. Okay thank you. We're going to have this second reading in the next school board meeting which is two weeks from now. Maybe we can put a post on Front Forge Forum just to say policy second reading on this policy just like to give more to start kind of like seek input to seek input or just to let them know that that's what we're going to be doing. We could just post our agendas on Front Forge Forum which has all the policy stuff. That could be good practice. We generally get those like on Friday mornings. Right generally I um so I'm doing them now and they take they take me approximately four hours and I've obviously made two mistakes every three mistakes each week. So I'm scheduled myself to do them Thursdays. So you're getting them Thursdays because I'm sending them out as soon as I do them. But it may be Friday sometime. It's when I have a four hour block of time to do it either. I can't imagine any time you actually have a four block of time. It's blocked out during Anna's entire maternity. I'll make a note for myself then for the that Friday before our next meeting to do the post on Front Forge Forum. Thanks. Great thank you Mia. Yeah great idea. Now we're going to move into executive session which I think probably means sitting here and moving to the. Can I ask two questions? Sure. When you do a Front Forge Forum does it go to the Northfield Front Forge Forum because that's the Rocksbury Front Forge Forum. Good question. I think it does. I'll take a look because I know it goes to surrounding towns. Okay I think that a lot of them do but I don't know how it works necessarily but it's definitely two separate Front Forge Forum. Yep. The other thing is if when someone were to be elected to the school board would they get some kind of how-to packet? 300 pages of stuff and if it's 300 pages of rules specifically is a big thing like what you can and can't do that would be a priority to myself if I were to be but how does that is there a you know start with these five things are a priority the next 10 things or something like that is there a yeah I think the best thing to do the VSBA has some good kind of starter packets which are worth looking at remote school boards association. It's literally called November. Yeah like VSBA, do you remember training? And they will send you a package if you want hard copy. They will mail you the things that you want. The the other I would read through the policies you know don't you know have to read them like they're a novel you don't have to you're not going to absorb it but it's good to just kind of familiarize yourself and pay attention to a couple things there's a couple on like like board expectations you know board superintendent relations you know pay attention to to that. There's a vote for us. Yeah well we're we're just talking to you right about that. I also give the new I also give the new member a call and take a walk with the other who have to lunch together or something and answer any questions you might have. Yeah and I would be happy to take that member out to lunch as well. I think I'm going to have a busy lunch schedule in the next few weeks. The other thing that that person needs to do is they have to get sworn in before you can become an official member and you can do it by phone you can do it by person but the time clerk needs to do that and usually Anna would be reaching out with an email address and um and the swearing in rules and the phone number to call and all of that stuff so that's going to be half jammy legacy as an excellent person to be sworn in by. Yeah she does require in person she will not do it over the phone. And we used to have Jim legend has it that there used to be like a mentorship type of program happening. Well I would call it a program. Tradition. But that has not happened I don't think since I came on Jill did you get a mentor? I did have a mentor. She's going to have a volunteer to mentor. So I did not get a mentor I don't think we uh or mama or Kristen. So we've we've been like really flying by the sleigh of our pants since COVID and initiation has been fast and furious. And then we also have subcommittees so I think um and that would probably be a conversation with Jim but if there's particular topics that someone is interested being on a subcommittee there's always running on we have a negotiations committee we have policy committees we have equity committees we have lots of. It wouldn't be the would it would that be something that might be more appropriate once there was an actual election wouldn't I just step into where Jerry is because that's where the needs are or not I mean. Oh filling the role on the committee shoes on. Yeah I mean which committee shoes on. Yeah I mean it's not actually you know it's sort of. We can discuss that right. Yeah we can discuss that. There might be some shuffling around. There's a little room for shifting based on interest and I mean we have a few committees right now that. You know we have four members that could go down to three or fourth could drop off and you could come on if you're really interested. Yeah there's room for shuffling I would I would give some thought to what interests you or you feel your strengths are. But it probably wouldn't happen for a few weeks. The new board members should think about that. The new board members should think about that yes. Okay thank you. Regarding the front porch forum so I do post our agenda to the Northfield Rocksbury front porch forum every week so I don't know that you need to click that box or. Look at Kristen just. Hey. Already there just trying to get the word out there. Hello the curve. Excellent let's have a motion. Okay. We need two motions we need a motion. We need the urgent motion which is. I have it. We have it which is that it would be dept. Basically something around the the detrimental to the. Positioning at the board to discuss these matters in public or sometimes. Well I thought I had it. I think something like that would. Because of it because it's around it's around. Negotiation. Negotiations. Negotiations. Yeah. Contract negotiations. It would put it. Put the board in a disadvantage. In a disadvantage or else it was position or something like that. Okay I have it. Half of it too. You go for it. Okay. There's a lot of fill in the blanks that I'm not ready to do. This is for the contract negotiations. Yeah. So I moved to find that premature general public knowledge regarding the contracts with the unions would place the district at a substantial disadvantage because we risk disclosing our negotiation strategy if we discuss the proposed contract terms in public. My gosh it's like you channel bridges. Yeah. I second what he said. All this is a paper. Aye. Aye. Aye. Yeah. Now we need to emotionally go into executive session for the purpose of personnel and contract negotiations. No. For the purpose of choosing a board member. I think is that broadly personnel? I think. Could be. I think I think a board member matters personnel. Sure. Okay. Yeah. I move we enter executive session for personnel and contract negotiation matters. Yeah. With the asterisk the personnel means choosing a board member. Personnel from the board members. I second. All this is a paper. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion to nominate Rhett Williams to the vacant or motion to dominate someone to the vacant seat on the board which is the Roxbury seat expiring March of 2022. I move that the board appoint Rhett Williams to serve in the Roxbury position vacated by Jerry Suck through the finality of her term in March 2022. Do I second? I second. I second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Great. Congratulations Rhett. Thanks Rhett. Yeah, thanks Rhett. I will send him an email and I don't know if it was your turn. Most of your turn. Sorry. Just like can we just make a little plan to support him in his entrance? Real quick, like Jill can. Yeah, I think Jill's going to be a mentor. I'll reach out for lunch and kind of give them some, you know. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Situated here in Roxbury. And then we can send that PowerPoint from, yeah from PSBA. For that board training. And he will need the swearing in an email. I do feel like Anna and I might give you an answer. I'll give the email for him. And get him an email address. He's just got to call Tammy. Oh, he must have emailed his letters. Yep, we got his email. Okay. Hey, second. Oh, is it better? Aye. Aye. Thanks for the idea.