 going to call the meeting to order is 6.15. Thank you, everybody, for being here. We have a long meeting tonight, but it should be fun. And we will keep that long. We will keep a good pace. I was going to share with you guys that I always try to share something that inspired me or something that happened, and we haven't seen each other in a while. And I went on Sunday to the concert for Ukraine. It's been 14 months since we started. And one of the conductors, another composer for one of the pieces that they were singing moved to Burlington. Michael, I can't say his last name. Sure. Composed a piece that's the name of the piece. It was A Times I Wondered. And then he went on to describe how, when he was writing the piece, every time he writes a piece, it is The Times I Wondered, because he wonders every time it's a little different. The people are playing, depending on the orchestra, depending on the context of the time. Or in this case, they were playing for, it's a fundraiser for Ukraine. And it was 100 people. So 50 from Burlington and 50 from here, all playing together. So in some ways, I know that we are not an orchestra or a choral group. But I feel similarly at times, at times I wonder what we'll do with our time together as a board. I get excited, I don't know what everybody gets excited about for me, but how do we call people in? How do our shared understandings and responsibilities and our shared humanities help us with our duty? And how do we model tonight and continue to leverage public education as the pillar of our democracy? But also how our leadership matters and how we share the space with our students, with our administrators, with our community members. So tonight, I was not sure how many people we were gonna get. We don't have that many people on the Zoom call, but just a reminder to be present here with you, however you're feeling today, just be present. As yourself, speak for yourself, lean into and learn from the discomfort. Listen to understand and make space for everyone. We're a lot of people here tonight. So with that, let's get started with our meeting. So any adjustments to the agenda, a reception of guests. So we wanna welcome our guests tonight. We have a group of students with us tonight and we have some members of the public. With us tonight, we'll take time to do introductions when we get into the student report. Any public comments today from people in the audience? Anybody in Zoom that have any public comments before we get started? Seeing none. Mark, do you see? I don't see any hands. I do not see anyone. Okay, so let's start with our student report. So Megan, do you wanna come in and introduce our students? Yep, I think I know, kick us off. So we're excited to be here. We have two of our four team members here today. So Cal Boyd and mine who couldn't make it, although if they pop on the screen, we will welcome them to come and join. But I thought I won't introduce Kai and Amelia, let them introduce themselves. But I was gonna just tell the board a little bit about the process, the conversations we've had. They will share more. But we knew that we were coming to you to give you information at the board because our policy requires it and because we want to have this conversation and share it with you. So we started, Steve and I went to student council who decided that they wanted to identify some volunteers from student council to help us design what the review should cover. And so two of that four are here. So I'm gonna have them introduce themselves. You've had a chance to review the report. They are gonna highlight some things, share their perspective with you and then would sort of welcome a conversation. So Amelia, you wanna start and then we'll... Sure. My name is Amelia Garland. I'm in eighth grade and I use she, her pronouns and I'm a representative, well, not myself. Well, you know, I'm from East Mott Piliar. So I've been, but like, you know. Awesome. Kai, you wanna introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Kai. I use they, them. And I'm also an eighth grade representative. I'm from West Berlin, though, from Berlin, I'm coming to you 32. And yeah. So I will let you all highlight, I, what you have read in the report and I don't wanna repeat it for you is we looked at two main things. One is it was important to look at the historical associations with our mascot and look back. And so they will share a little bit about what they did to do that. But it was also important for us to start to gather some information about what people think now about our mascot. So I'm looking, Kai, you can't see me look at you. I'm looking at both of you. Let's jump to you. Who wants to start? Amelia, would you like to go first? Sure. So to start this process, as many of you know, I'm pretty sure we got the letter. I'm not completely sure who it was from, but we got this letter. It was like, hey, your mascot's not cool. We don't think it's cool. Can you like look into this? Maybe you can change it. We're like, sure. So we did all the research, the backstory, and we found there was nothing really wrong with it. So, yeah. So we did multiple things. We sent out Google Forms. Nope. Yeah. Yeah. A survey, a survey to the students. We're like, what do you think about mascot? And the general census we got from that was there's not a problem, but it could be cooler. So most of the people who thought it should be changed thought it should be changed to be cooler versus it actually being like offensive to anybody. And if I may add to that, we were specifically looking at who was making the complaints that it was offensive because we were looking to see if it were coming from actual indigenous people or if it were coming from like white organizations and people who weren't indigenous and weren't directly affected by mascots of racial caricatures or things that are rooted in racism. And we took the time to look at that and we found out that there were two groups, if I'm not mistaken, making complaints about the mascots. And that's why we got the big scary little envelope nail. And one of them was indigenous lead and the other one was not. So we looked at that and we looked into the two groups who were sending in complaints about the mascot. And so one of the questions that I'll sort of pose to the two of you, because this is one of the conversations we've had a lot. So we've met several times both to, first we met to look at the historical back, like looking back in the mascot. That part is pretty clear. The Raiders mascot started out as the Raiders name. It didn't have an image associated with it at first. And then the image was designed for the school by the yearbook company, actually, in the 70s. So and the group did a pretty good search of yearbooks and newspaper articles. Because sometimes you see images, even though they're not the official ones, you might see them on posters in the background. And I think the group feels pretty strongly that they didn't unearth any indigenous imagery associated with it. But in the survey, they sort of asked two questions. They asked, what do you feel? So I'm going to read the question, actually. Am I worried about how the Raider mascot represents U32? And do I think we should explore a change? And you can see in the report the data associated with that. So I think both Kai and Amelia highlighted that. But we had really good conversations about the comments, because there were some themes. And the themes around what does the mascot mean to individuals were a whole lot of neutral responses. In other words, the mascot itself is not super meaningful to us. That was the biggest theme in the comments. And then the second and the third, which were kind of similar, were tradition. They associated with the school. And a lot of associations surrounded strong. But then there was a smaller number but a pretty powerful group of comments that talked about it kind of represents smore and brutality. And really thoughtful comments about, is that how we want to be represented? Then we asked some questions around, what do you think of when you think of the Raider? And the biggest number, think about the Knight or U32, because that's what they're used to associating it with. But there was a pretty big group, a bigger group in that question, who that violent sort of raiding, pillaging, that's what they, that's the connotation. So then I'll stop talking. But we, as a student group, I think the students had some good conversations about what does that mean? There's not a lot of strong feeling like, yes, we think we should change, but there were a lot of comments around, is this how we want to be represented? So I don't know if you would add to that or expand or. Just one quick comment. There were also an overwhelming majority of students, at least in my grade, me and Amelia's grade, who didn't even know what the Raider was supposed to represent. Because they initially thought that it was just a Knight and they also didn't necessarily care about what it represented. They were just like, oh, well, it's a Knight. We don't really use our mascot anyway, so it shouldn't have this big impact. And that's the feedback that we got from our grade. I personally asked some people about what they thought. And that's what I got as a response. And I think that that is also the overwhelming majority of people in the school, not really knowing what the history of a Raider is, and also seeing the Knight and not associating it with the Raiders necessarily. Yeah, I was talking with some seventh graders as well. And they were like, we have a mascot. I just thought it was the eight graders. That might be a problem. So I'm going to also put Willow on the spot a little bit only because both and Cal were our high school reps on this group and they couldn't be here. So I don't know if there's anything that you would want to throw out. And then I would actually then will invite the board to ask questions. I mean, I think I would agree with both of the representatives here. A lot of kids just don't really care and don't really know that we have a mascot because a lot of our logos now on our sports uniforms are used, not really a Knight. So we've definitely like evolved from that logo. I mean, when we order things like sweatshirts or like long sleeves, there's a huge U on it. So I think the Knight itself is kind of vintage at this point. But we do call ourselves the Raiders. So there is that crossover as well. Four members. Questions, we're going to debrief as part of our board operations steps. But right now you're welcome to ask any questions from the process or any other questions that you might have in our students. So one thing I noticed was a statement around not worried about the mascot and then what you were sharing about kind of a sense of not really not being fairly neutral about it, but then there seemed to be this strong feeling about not exploring a change. Did you get any sense from that as to why people felt so strongly about not exploring? I think that people felt like that's a lot of work and I don't really want to be involved in that. And I don't think that most students would know how exactly that would work. So they're just trying to stay away from things that they don't really know much about. So was there any sense that we even needed a mascot? That's a great question. I don't know the purpose of a mascot. I can know the purpose of a name because it identifies a group of people, but a mascot itself, like all our grammar schools have animals, like wildcats or something like that. And I just, I'm not sure that it's so representative where you want students to be embodied by a wildcat or whatever the names are. So I'm not sure the value of a mascot in itself. The name is something different, but the mascot, I don't think they're on strength with that anymore. I mean, take Montelier, they're the souls, but that's the name of a professor, they say. Well, it's the most later. Their thing is outward. Right, right. I mean, you can have plenty of words that would be exemplifying what we hope for our students. A lot of them aren't animal based though. And you know. Related to that, Chris, there were, because obviously we didn't reproduce all the comments in here, but there was a comment about, wouldn't it be cool to have something you could dress up as and go to a game, right? That's what they're for. Yeah. So I guess I was not in my head distinguishing the name from the mascot in looking and doing this. Were we specifically looking at the imagery or the name or both? I think that we were specifically looking at the name, the Raiders, because I think that most people don't see anything wrong with a knight, but the Raiders, the name of it comes from a mascot called the Red Raiders, which is an offensive depiction of Native Americans and really stereotypes Native Americans and indigenous people. So I think that we were more concerned about that than we were about the imagery of a knight, because I don't think a lot of people were getting offended about a knight. I think that we wanted to look more about the name and look at the origins of the name and the history. And yeah, I think that's what we were more aiming to look at than the actual depiction of a knight as our mascot. Yeah, and I think we had a lot of, also additional comments that were about that part of it, where we sort of, there's an acknowledgement that there isn't an image associated with the word Raider that is discriminatory at face value anyway, but that the word itself. Then I guess my response to your question would be the role I see as having the name portion would be to create some sense of community, were the Raiders. The U32ers sound weird. I don't really keep the Raiders. I think there's value to having a name that we call our community. And then you can shout it please. So we have, so I'm part of PEP Squad and Peter Choffee and I normally do cheers. And mine's normally the Raiders and Dimion R and like et cetera, but we also say role union and that has become a very popular chance that we've done as well. So we're definitely getting a balance of it, but yeah, I agree. A couple of questions for Kai. You mentioned the name had its origin in the Red Raiders. Is that our name or is that Rutland? No, that is Rutland's name, but what I was bringing up is that although we are not the Red Raiders, I think that that's probably where our name maybe came from was the Raiders, but we might have stopped and taken it aback and said, oh, well we don't wanna be the Red Raiders. That's obviously not the best look for our school. It's not what we wanna represent as a school. So I think that that could be a possibility or it could also be a possibility that we just heard the name Raiders and we were like, oh yeah, what are the Raiders do? That's pretty cool. I honestly couldn't tell you which one was more profitable to happen. I can't speak right now, but that's what I think. Did you guys take a look at the policy and if you did, do you believe that we're in compliance with the policy? I don't think we took a look at the policy, did we? We did at the beginning and I, yeah, and what I would say is we felt it was important for this group to inform the board and give as much information as possible as opposed to necessarily coming out with a recommendation about alignment, but what I would say is that, and I think kind of, Kai, this is related to what you were saying, the mascot itself, the image itself, I would say, this is now me talking, isn't compliance because the imagery is not discriminatory, but the thoughtful questions that came out of our conversation is if you didn't know it was a knight and you only are here the word Raider, what are people associating with that word, even if it's not what the actual intention was? And that might be worth a conversation about whether that's a compliance. See what I'm saying? Yeah, just a couple more quick questions. Chris, do you know that the Doty mascot, because no one's ever been able to tell me she'd ask you guys to? They don't have one anymore. See, I thought it was still there. We know the Worcester Warriors. We were the warriors and they're no longer the warriors. Now it's just, because I actually asked if I was like, it's Doty warriors, but they just took out, yeah, they took out, there's no mascot, I mean, Rose Mary thinks they're the warriors. And for the student members of the group, is it fair to say that there are not really strong feelings among this general student body about the name, the Raiders? Yes, I think that's a very fair statement. I agree. Because people seem to not really care out of the 170-ish people, out of 700 people that responded to our survey. They're like, you know what? It's our mascot. Never really thought about it. I don't really care that much. Just to be clear, did we hear, did you hear from any voices that thought it was definitively harmful or problematic? Sort of. Right, it was not to themselves, but an acknowledgement that other people may feel harm and concern about that, right? But in terms of like, I feel harmed, there weren't comments saying that, but there were definitely comments that said, but I worry about how someone else might get hurt. Any other questions for our students? Great work. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for your work. And I would also just add to later, as the board has conversation about what they might need, I would be happy to bring, if there are more questions the board has for the group, we can circle back around to them. And you all are welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting and you also don't have to stay. Yeah, we'll do a little more talking and then I get the message. Yes, if you don't want to stay. You're welcome to stay and be part of the meeting, but we're not done with the conversation. Run while you can. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'm going to go too, guys. Thank you for having me. All right, thanks, Kai. I do have to share that in my high school, we were the criminals. I still are. And I never realized that was a problem to reason with. You have a name. You were the humor. We were the scorpions. That's right. Yeah. My undergrad is a clam. Oh, gooey ducks. Okay. Before you get so carried away. It's pretty awesome. So cool. Oh, it's Olympia. It's a coastal Washington. Like completely appropriate. Yeah. So we're going to get to the next part of the agenda before we do rail. So we're going to have a presentation and discussion with winter assessment yourself. And you might have said this. I missed it. Are we now that the students are presented. Are we going to hear from the group? And I know they wrote the letter saying there were certain people who did not want to come and speak because it created additional harm for them. But are we, is anybody going to come and speak to us? Or was the letter it? And now we're making a decision based on the letter. Yeah. And I'm happy to say now, or I'm happy to make it part of our operations. But since you have the question right now, I could just say the group is not coming back to us. The letter is completely, you know, at this point they're working directly with the legislature. So we don't have any obligation to respond to the letter, but we do have an obligation, I feel, from what we've heard to have a clear process of what we're doing as us, right? So regardless, it was a good conversation to have and we had to do it anyways because we had the policy. So the report didn't come now just because we had the letter. That's also something to make clear. We didn't respond to the letter. We were already engaged because of the policy. We had answers for the engagement process. Well, and we did respond to that. We responded with a letter to the letter, but it's not the only reason we did this. Right. Oh, okay. Yes. So by sending the, they initiated a complaint and we should respond to the complaint and either invite them to hear it or ask them to draw the line. Otherwise it's just about it. Let's do that in our next part of Inboard Operations so that's moving to this. Mark, do you want to pop the slide up? You're going to kick it up? I guess I can kick it up. I'm jumping in in my role as the chair of Ed Quality. So Jen's going to walk us through a report on our student monitoring from the winter, which holds to include growth data because we had information from the fall. So I'm going to go ahead and remind everybody of the Ed Quality Committee's goal, which is to develop and have the board adopt a system for monitoring student achievement by this June. And it's a smart goal. It's been our same goal that we've had for a year. It's specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timed out. And we are on schedule to do that. We're going to be at our next two Ed Quality meetings, reviewing our schedule and our monitoring process with a timetable and an official process that we will bring to the board. Thank you, Ursula. So many of you are on the Ed Quality Committee or came to the meeting. So I want to let you know, I've made a couple of tweaks based on that particular meeting. And so this is one, I just want to remind the board that this monitoring is sort of very much a balcony level monitoring. And that is the appropriate role of the school board. And there are lots of other ways that we look at data in the school system. And so I gave you a sample. So the Ed Quality Committee is the group that takes up the subcommittee of the board that takes the deeper dive to our district, into our district level data because they need to help the whole board realize its roles and responsibilities related to supporting our students and the achievement of their student learning outcomes. At the leadership team level, we look at data district and school level. The principals are looking at data. Our teachers are looking at data and students are looking at their performance as well. So just for those of you who aren't yet familiar with IREDI, IREDI is the common assessment tool that we're using across the district in grades K through 10. IREDI measures both student performance in terms of proficiency and growth. We're going to dive into that a little bit more in a minute. This is our current practice. So in reading, we currently administer it in grades three through 10, three times a year. And in math, currently K through 10 kindergarten is optional in the fall. Again, three times a year. The math diagnostic directly relates to a personalized instruction program that we have that complements our first construction program kindergarten through grade eight. And so in terms of measuring proficiency, there are five placement levels. I've put them there for you. And so we're looking at kids wanting to be in the beginning of the year, early on grade level and by the end of the year at mid and above grade level. And then we have kids who are one grade level below and then two and then three or more kids who are in grade eight. And then we have kids who are one grade level below and then two, and then three or more kids who are in kindergarten or first grade can't go three or more grade levels below grade level. So. Let's see anything else I wanted to say about that. Oh, the other thing I guess I would say that you can't see right here is that we can also look at the data. We are not going to do this at the district level, but at the school level or at the board level. And so as we look at the data that we have here in schools and other levels, we can look at the domain specific data as well. So just so you know, the math domains, which are aligned to the common core and aligned to our student learning outcomes, our number and operations out of run out break, thinking, measurement, and data and geometry. awareness, phonics, high-frequency words, vocabulary, comprehension of literature, and comprehension of informational text. So we had included in your packet that one page overview of the growth model and the link to this video that I hope you had an opportunity to look at. I think the biggest takeaway from this particular slide is an understanding that the growth targets are unique to each student. So a child takes the diagnostic the first time in the fall and based on their grade level and their score, they get two unique growth targets. One is their typical growth and one is their stretch growth. And again, millions of kids take this and the typical growth is the average amount of growth that they would expect a child to make based on what grade level they're in and where they fit initially. And again, we look at it over a year and the stretch growth is attainable but much more ambitious and sometimes the kids are significantly below grade level even if they achieve their stretch growth in one year, they will not hit proficiency in that year. But if they continue to achieve their stretch growth, they will get to the proficiency. And Curriculum Associates, the company that operates the whole thing says 20 to 30% of kids nationally make their stretch growth each year. And so for our winter diagnostic, we get to see how our kids are doing toward their typical growth and their stretch growth goals. And so at mid-year, we'd wanna see them at least 50% of the way towards their goals. Here is an example just of the overall placement. So I didn't give you the snip of the domain specific information that we could get. This is an example with a student who was in seventh grade who took the diagnostic in the winter and you can see that the student is significantly below grade level right now and that student is making incredible progress right now. So you can see their typical growth and their stretch growth. They had already made an incredible amount of stretch growth just from the fall into the winter diagnostic. I just wanted you to see a snip of what a student report may look like. If you have an earlier version of the slides or you printed it out, I realized I made a mistake in the slide. So this, it said in your copy originally three through 10, it's actually three through eight. And that's true in the next slide too. There are no growth scores for ninth and 10th grade. So we administer it through 10th grade. And I, although this graph is both proficiency and growth, it does not represent our ninth and 10th graders because they don't get growth scores. So this is showing you each dot represents one of our schools. And this is how they were doing toward thinking about both the performance of the kids. So toward proficiency and their grade level targets and their progress toward their typical growth. And so at the midpoint of that Y axis, that would be 50% of their growth. And they are all in quadrant one and that is all good. That's reading. That's exactly where we would want our kids to be. I wanna see what else I wanna say about that for you. Curriculum associates, if we were sort of explaining this to the general public would say, look at how to build on any school that's in that quadrant, look at how to build on that grade's schools growth or performance success. And keep in mind that half of the students are performing and growing less than the median. That I forgot to say the median part, this is all based on the median student performance. So half of them are not quite performing there. So just to keep that in mind. And here's math. So not as strong. And I wanna read to you what each of those quadrants mean. So again, the darker blue means that two of our schools scored pretty much at the exact same place in terms of the winter data. But I wanna show you, talk to you about the low performance, low growth quadrant. So quadrant three, curriculum associates would say, so the median performance is 50% of the national app is below 50% of the national average and the median progress to growth is less than 50% toward their typical progress. And they would say dive deeper into the data to create an action steps to move all students forward. Remember, half of these students are growing and performing higher. Look at what those students are doing and continue to build and replicate that. And then for high performance, high growth, look at how to capitalize on the schools or grade levels above average performance, dive deeper into the growth data and see where they're growing and how to accelerate their learning in other areas. So those are kids who are doing quite well but they're just not growing and we don't want that either. We want all of our kids to be making at least a year's worth of typical growth. We don't want them to be stagnant in any way. So how does acting mean half-forming low growth? It means that our kids were doing well already, Chris, but they're just not making lots of growth to get even stronger or even better, okay? Yeah. So we are also disaggregating our data. And so we've plotted both some information about proficiency and then some information here about typical growth and stretch growth. Couple of things to note, this is by gender and we've been doing a lot of work in the district related to gender. Right now we have to report in the binary. So males and females, this graph does represent what our students prefer, or how they identify, which is different than what the state requires. And we're still working with both the state and infinite campus to ideally someday have more than two categories. But this is what our students have identified as. So this is how our kids are doing. And so you can see that at the winter, our kids were, half of them almost, were proficient or buff, right? Where we would want them to be. And then the way that we calculated for growth was we took the kids who were, had met at least 50% toward their growth goal and we categorized them in that way for you all. So that's math on the left and reading on the right. And you'll see that trend that are throughout all of these that our reading scores are higher than our math scores. You just saw that in the overview. And the growth data, again, does not include grades nine or 10 because they don't get growth scores. And remember math is K if they took it in the fall and then through 10, and reading is grades three through 10 right now. This is the same data disaggregated by race and ethnicity. And in the group that is historically marginalized are all of our students who identified as races or ethnicities other than white and not historically marginalized are students who are, well, who are white as reported in our student information system. It's not self-reported. And so you can see there's a difference there with the stretch growth in math but otherwise pretty comfortable. Next is by reintroduced lunch qualification or not. You can see that difference and you can see where the difference becomes starker than it was when we disaggregated by the other two categories. Jen, can you talk a little bit more about that than difference in proficiency is stark but then there's relative parity in the growth and stretch growth. Yeah, so kids are doing well. They're growing around the same rates right now regardless of whether they qualify or not but there are more children who are not needing where we would want them to be if they're qualified for free and reduced lunch. Is that a silver lining or not? I don't know. That everyone seems to be achieving growth. I think it's, I would not categorize it as a silver lining. I would say we want both. So it's something for us to be paying attention to. At Ed quality the other day, there were questions about are these statistically significant or not? And I haven't crunched the numbers or have the stats since college. And so I didn't do that. I don't know. And I would say, and I am not intending to be flippant in any way but I would say, I don't know that it matters if they're statistically significant or not because we were responding to the data. We don't want differences in performance among our subgroups. We want all of our kids to achieve at high levels and we want them all to be growing. And when they're not, we want to be able to be in a position to respond to that. I would also add, and I don't know if this is a softened silver lining but when there is a proficiency gap, if there wasn't stretch growth or if there were gaps in stretch growth that would be especially concerning because then they're not narrowing it. This might be telling us that at least the same, that students are stretching at the same rate as their peers who are perhaps proficient. And that is a good thing. So it's like a modified silver lining. Would it be a fair inference to say that our instruction is helping everyone, at least the data, helping everyone rise equally no matter where they start? I would say, yes, when you look at our district snapshot, I would say our principals should be deeper dive into their school level data. And that is true in many places and sort of pause for consideration in other places. Or sometimes we're wondering about like some interventions being incredibly effective and kids who are maybe just below just not quite making the growth that we'd want. And so those are the conversations we started to have at the leadership team when we looked at this data. Would you all principals, would you add anything to that? Is that the sounds about accurate? Yeah? Yeah. James, there's something about the instruction that seems to generate growth in the same way, but not proficiency in the same way. Well, one thing that we're starting to pay attention to and we can do this in math, we can't do it in reading. But is the relationship between personalized instruction that my path in the math program and student performance? Because there's an optimum number of minutes that kids might spend engaging in personalized instruction and their pathway of personalized instruction is set based on their diagnostic results. And so we're starting to look at that and wonder about the role of personalized instruction in terms of helping students make growth. And the other thing is this is the midpoint. So we're gonna wanna see what does it look like at the end of the year as well. This is just this snapshot right now. I'm gonna move to the next slide. Never slide. Oh, sorry, this is all right. No, I was gonna say would, I don't wanna say success, but would seeing higher growth percentages in our pre-introduced lunch or next slide on the IAP, but would seeing higher growth, to buy growth and stretch growth in our, we'll call it the ideal. I think we would wanna see for students who were below grade level, more of them making their stretch growth, that would be awesome. Because that's the pathway for proficiency ultimately. And that is gonna take more than one year. Yeah, yeah. This is a good segue or select. Here's the IAP data, which again, you've seen some data that mirrors these patterns. And this is work for us to do. So some wonderful growth and ways to go in terms of achieving proficiency. Another slide just for those of you who were in ed quality, there's a new one just to spice it up a little bit. Some of you were asking about just more about what does it look like to think about the data. And so I gave you an example at each of these levels about questions that we might ask. And so I had like a million more, but it was too much and too overwhelming. So here's just a little snippet. So again, wanting to look at performance, wanting to look at their growth. You can see drilling into some domain specific instructional priorities and then kids. And this is an area for us to grow. I just had a curriculum council meeting earlier today and we were talking about the next step in making not the local comprehensive assessment plan more than a plan but the system. And we've been talking as a leadership team and with instructional coaches about how do we continue to infuse more data chats, more data literacy in our practices. And so one example here is just really sharing those, the performance very transparently with our kids and saying, okay, here's your performance. What's the goal that you wanna do? Or what are you proud of when you think about how you did in the fall and how you did in the winter? Those are areas that it exists in profits and we wanna grow that practice. And then Ursula, back to you. So I'm gonna ask board members, you thought for a question, does this information in our courts serve our goal of building a system to monitor student achievement? Yeah, the data and the support is so much better and clearer and more helpful than I've seen before. It's a huge improvement. So, gentlemen, you said we're in the balcony. I'm just wondering, are we in the nosebleed section? Yeah, we're in the front seat of the balcony. You're in the front seat of the balcony, right? No, no, it's pretty tight up. Right in the back seat, right in the back. I was just, just a comment on that initial slide you shared with us about sort of where, what grain size is hopefully looking at this. I think by and large, I agree with it, but I think there are problems that it poses. Like you yourself brought up when you asked a question about the parity and whether that was what we were looking at and you said, well, in fact, if you look at it at the school level, it's a more complicated and nuanced story. And I guess that just gives me pause that the grain size is always appropriate. And I would just say we also trust you to change the grain size on us when there's a story to be told at the school level. Oh yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that, Daniel. And our principal is right, principal reports focused on academic achievement too. That's another place where they might want to highlight and compliment the overall things that you're hearing so that you have the information that you need. Yeah. You must have thought, could you help on it? You see these disparities and the why, the potential why, because then you don't always know why. But just don't know how it is as to why people are saying that you're experiencing these disparities and different options for trying to deal with it. And then just come back and say, well, there's gonna be like that, but this did. And just, because I think that helps at least get the one question worse rather than just this is a, you know, we see these disparities and not like that. Yeah, I would also add, Chris, you're making me think about continuous improvement planning which is a responsibility of the board as well where we can drill into those some of those questions as well. And then for monitoring, if we are doing it regularly and doing it well, you'll have the information you need so that when it comes time to do continuous improvement planning, it doesn't seem completely out of the blue, but as a coherem part of what we're doing across the board. And related in picking up a thread that we've kind of touched on a few different times, including in quality. So it's a bit of a repeat comment, but I think it's important as we, as we plan our work for next year at our retreat, we want to talk about there's a monitoring cycle and then there's a presentation cycle to illustrate for you what it actually looks like. Some of our instructional programs, and I think the two go together because they kind of answer, they are part of the answer to, here's what the data shows. Here's what we think is going on and here's what we're doing about it. It's that here's what we're doing about it piece that I think would be a helpful layer to add to this. So, and I would add to that again, how do you, what's that continuum of fidelity to what we're doing? You know, how are we able to onboard new teachers to these processes and how are we doing keeping in fresh and engaged with teachers? I also think that the data is super important as we started to have more multi-year data for us how we were sort of going to start planning our, you know, our budgeting and how it's a four-year would make more data on decisions from about them. So, I thought this was, this was great. I love the focusing on the growth and stretch data. And I, you know, there's a lot, especially on the slide. Not, you know, hopefully we'll be able to move from the binary gender soon, but I rate the density, you know, I definitely, for me, having that stretch was the sort of significant this, you know, more some, but, but it's in that positive way. I don't know how to describe it, but it feels attainable in some way. So, hopefully. You want to do the next question? I think you're, there's an answer to that question. I'm gonna be sending you a question. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I said this. So, already you had three. Yeah, you should bow. No. No. I'm sorry, I was like, sure. Thank you, Jen. Can you throw one thing out there? I think to answer that question, this is an excellent way to monitor student achievement if we're defining student achievement in the future, literacy and math. And I know that plays its thing to measure, but I just want to put it out there to keep in mind that there are other way that students show great achievement. You might enjoy. I read these are a lot. I'm so happy I'm done with them. Yeah, there's not. No order, they get the list. I think they are, I think they are the choice. Okay, we're gonna move into our report since they're with our student report. Okay, so as you can tell, Maya's not here. So, both of our languages just left to go to France. We're staying. So, our Spanish class is left yesterday and they're now in Seville. And our French students left today. And I think they're recording right about now. Yeah, they're in Canada, they're flying over. So, they're all really excited. They're all stressing out about actually being in a different country and learning to actually speak the language and not really conversation stuff. But they're all really enjoying it. They're all super jet lagged right now but they're all really excited and happy. So, that's where Maya's. Maya's in France. I had, I talked to a couple kids and teachers about IC. And so, ICs are like grating with them and how parents can see stuff and it's kind of just like where everything is. It is not very loved at the moment. And a lot of people find it frustrating because it doesn't show a clear view of grades and like progress and everything. I know speaking from personal experience, if you get a two, then it doesn't show the process of getting a three which can lead to not great circumstances. So, there's definitely, I think IC is gonna come up more as the end of the year and also next year because I know a lot of people are not having the best time with it. Pippin, our theater production just ended and that was Maya who was the stage manager's last show. And so, I'm sure she had a lot more to say. But, I personally didn't see it but I only heard good things about it and they worked really, really hard on it. I think our theater department does a really great job at the visual part and just like the talent. We have a lot of talent in students. Our seniors are getting news about college so a lot of kids are starting to accept their college things or figure out what their next plan is and if that's a gap year working so a lot of kids are starting to get ready to leave U32. We had a substance meeting so about drugs and alcohol and as in our student community and how that is getting affected and the norms, the social norms of drinking and taking drugs. It was interesting to hear because I went and listened and there was a couple different grades and from a middle schooler to a senior talking about the norms and what's around in our school or in our parties or just in our community what is seen as normal. And I thought that was a really fascinating meeting because you can see it's becoming a much more casual thing but there's still definitely that strong and safety sense where a lot of students are safe and they do understand risks they take but it's still not the best thing to know but happens, I'm sure you all were in high school ones. Our spring sports are starting. We're doing really well. Our La Crosse Girls game just played Spalding and they destroyed them so that's great. Our tennis team tried their best, I know Floor knows that but the warm weather's really having effects on students and you can tell kids are happier, they're getting sun. As happy as we are, we're very stressed. There's AP testing and SATs coming up so a lot of kids are grinding out their homework and trying to get as much as done to study and prep so a lot of kids I know are studying over the break. Speaking of break, we have spring break in two days and that is just gonna be so lovely. I know a lot of kids including myself are just ready to do nothing and relax and obviously catch up on homework. May 20th, does anyone know what May 20th is? My son's birthday. Really? My son's birthday too. Yes, yes it is. Well you're both wrong, it's prom. So prom is coming up in the juniors and seniors. Sorry sophomores are getting very excited to get their dresses, their tux, their outfits already and it's gonna be from eight to 11 p.m. And so a lot of kids are getting excited and I think it's gonna be great. If you have high school students, you need to make sure they get a ticket before, no later than May 18th and they're 25 dollars. All right, word of mouth is coming up again so word of mouth is a performance. It's pretty laid back, it's all original piece and we're bringing it back to transition time so while kids walk to their next class so that was the original word of mouth. While kids walk to their next class there'll be music playing and not on the overhead but kids actually performing. And there's all that scheduling got moved around so everything will be set. I was in the first one and there was only three performers and now I went to a meeting about it and there's eight so it really sparked interest and a lot of kids are excited to perform. And to finish us up, this Friday is a talent show during Colbeck so that should be very entertaining. And that is it, I think so. Any questions? Any questions for members? Yeah. What is word of mouth? Oh, okay. It sounds cool but what? Yeah, so word of mouth, it's kind of like a talent show, it's a performing time. So students have to have an original piece so it's either poetry, singing, music playing, dancing, any kind of art form, comedy even, that's how we stopped doing it because comedy wasn't the best. But we brought it back but everything's original piece and so kids get the chance to perform with it being their own moment versus being a talent show where you sing or do someone else's piece, it's your own original piece. And originally it was through transition time so while you go to class but last, the first time, just to inspire kids, we did it during Colbeck and everyone's called back to the atrium and it was really cool to see but now we're bringing back the original piece to it where you can walk by and not stay. But there is a time at the end of the day that everyone will get called back to for the louder pieces. Is that a compliment? Oh yeah, yeah. One I saw Pippin in a week, so just want to give a shout out so that everybody involved in that. And I also got to see the Seeking Social Justice present at the conference in Royalton and they did an amazing job and based on what I heard from other people who were participants in that session, they were really impressed with what the students presented and want to kind of bring them to do work in other schools so they can emulate what we're doing here. To go off of that, so yeah, Seeking Social Justice, our green team, our conversation, our student-led groups are so successful. And I think U32 does a really good job of allowing students to really focus on something they feel is important and act on it and really support them. The conversation is a group that just kind of talks about the sexual assault community kind of and how we can make a safer environment for everyone, including really focusing on women and people part of the LGBTQ plus community. So we did have a walk out, the couple callbacks ago, and Alice Lam and Anora, so best. They talked about, they work with the mosaic and so they had a full presentation and visuals of just how to do better as a community and really take rape culture and jokes and stuff and take that away and really show the support our school has. Because we do have moments in our school that we need to work on and stuff like that. Like everyone does. But that was really powerful and they did an insane job. Welcome back everybody. We're gonna move into our next report. Superintendent of Central Office Literature. Any highlights? So I'm happy to answer questions but I'll highlight two things. One is just there's an update in here on where we are with climate surveys. So we had talked about that earlier in the year. We really appreciate the opportunity to be really thoughtful about it. I think that we product at the end will give both us and also the board some good information. And then there's just a pretty an update in here around kind of policy procedure overview which I've also talked about in the past. There's a lot we have. There's a lot we don't have. There's a lot that we're close to. So there's a pretty good overview in here. A look ahead for what the board can expect before the end of this year. And then when we build our work plan for the following year, it will kind of build in a more regular cycle for that policy review. Happy to answer questions. Questions from the board? Otherwise, I just wanted to, just because we were talking about I had underlined some of your own language so that it will help us at the board monitor. Eventually this will help us with our superintendent in relation to and just in general along the lines that you were talking to McKaylin about how our students are doing and how our school increases data that is not necessarily related to reading and writing. So I really appreciated that on the report and your next steps. Sounds like a very solid to me. Can you tell us what Cindy Coman is doing at the board? Yes, thank you. So Cindy is doing with a specific focus on the human resources related policies. So we have some front loaded work that's needed. I just used the word policy incorrectly, procedures. We have a lot of HR related procedures that either were lost in the cyber attack or were never created as a single system and there's a little bit of digging out from under that. So Cindy is working with us on what do we know we don't have and what do we not know that we don't have and then she will do some of that procedure development for us. And that's sort of more administrative related to such or so. Some front loaded work and she is also gonna set up a more regular meeting with us so that when we have kind of HR related questions of organizational pieces, she can be available for that. But the focused work right now is on procedure development, specific to HR. In page 15, the views were just regulated for students. Does that have a specific technical definition or is it just kind of a word of views and education? It's, thank you for calling it on. I think it, I would say it's jargon and it's all, but it's, we try really hard when we talk about student behavior. The reason we use dysregulated is because it's an acknowledgement of the state of the child as opposed to a judgment about the child or the behavior or there's a, you know, and I think we try really hard dysregulated kids need help and we have to figure out what's going on and re-regulate them. So that's sort of an explanation for why we use dysregulated as opposed to words that have more emotion behind them. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. Kara, would you add anything to that? Yeah, I was thinking of it relating to a physiological state as opposed to a personal attribute. So someone may be dysregulated because they're hungry and so they're not feeling good in their body that's manifesting those behaviors. They may feel lonely or shameful, but it's a way to tie it to more of the bodily experience as opposed to maybe labels that might be imposed by their disability or characteristics of them. Thanks. I have just a comment. I fell into the board learning category, but this raises it for me, which is that I haven't, for myself, haven't seen or been able to visualize like a list of policies and a corresponding sort of list or groupings of procedures. And that would be really helpful for me to see. And I'm curious, maybe this is part of Cindy's work, but are there areas where we have a policy but not a clear grouping of procedures or vice versa? Absolutely. What you have here is the narrative summary of a procedure's manual that we are developing along with Cindy and my goal would be that that manual itself can be on the website so that people can say, oh, here's the procedure associated with the policy. And so there is actually a draft version of exactly what you described that will eventually be public facing. We're in the, what do we have? What do we don't have? What do we prioritize? And then, yes. Yep. And I had a question. I think it's related to this and maybe toward our retreat as a board to have who actually is working in central office, kind of that administrative team. And all this, yeah, an organizational chart because there's been a lot of change and we don't necessarily see or hear or I've had, we sometimes have constituents make statements about top heavy or not top heavy or things. And if I don't have that information, it would be helpful to have that information. Happy to give the work chart. The other thing is in one of the budget meetings, and I'm not gonna remember which one, but in the quote report, there was comparative central office comparisons, central office size. Tuning into your comment about people worrying if that we are top heavy, we do have a grid. I think it's in a follow-up report, maybe the second budget meeting or budget meeting. Anyway, I can dig it up and pass it back on. Also, work chart I think would be. Well, in the budget meetings, we've talked about student numbers going down and we know we're going into a very tough budgeting year. Yeah, so the question that was asked was how do our central offices compare to other similarly sized districts and we have that data in there, yep. But that doesn't necessarily include like names and people. No, exactly. Like the organizational chart, yeah, that would be good. Yep. Thank you, my name for that. Just to piggyback on what Daniel was saying, man, I had been having conversations just because we're gonna have that retreat too of how to focus our policy and procedure learning from the board that might be a way to do our next level of learning just like we were doing the student learning outcomes and we were learning that fail. So more to come on that, but we would get the brainstorm together about a principal report. Any highlights or questions from the board? I guess since we're in finance, we're gonna do the playground. I don't know if there's a fun letter from one of your writing pieces, Alicia. You could share about a piece of it but maybe it was not possible or maybe it's possible, but just since we're gonna be talking about it. I'm happy to share it in an hour when we talk about it. I can talk about some thoughts around it. Okay, sure. Do you want to stay all the way for finance? That same one. Do you want to stay all the way for finance? So yeah. I'm gonna stay. Okay, okay, so then any other questions for members? I appreciated the sharing of, there were a couple of things about field trips and I had just recently heard how that's one thing that went away during COVID and a lot of places haven't brought them back. So I appreciated hearing about it coming back and acknowledging the challenges that has brought for kids who haven't realized what it means. You too. Oh my goodness. I'm so happy. Yeah. I'm so happy. But I am not the practice. Yeah. Can I come down there and speak the truth, sis? I really enjoy the section of community injustice and equity in every school's voice but at the same time as the year has passed, how much more alignment there is in the work that you're doing. It's just, it's great. So thank you for doing that. So moving into the Center of Vermont Career Report. I'm gonna be super brief. I'm not sure if you guys get the newsletter from the Career Center but I'm gonna try to start sending that to you guys. But a couple of highlights of that is that they had a curriculum instruction review and both Megan and Steven and it was from our district. Just the two of us. And I'm not gonna read everybody's name but they participated and it was just, it was great. It was really, it was very meaningful for the district to have them in the Career Center. It's now a district too. The other highlight is that 18 of our students participated in the HOSA which is the Future House Professionals and well actually 24 of the students that are participating. But there were a lot of winners also at the National Skills. Especially I wanna talk about the plumbing section because we just had both Pete and Adam Chase. Adam Chase is the teacher he had. It's the first time that the Career Center is doing this. Adam Chase is the teacher that is there five days a week and then they have a person from industry that is there three times a week because he has the, we were not able to fill this profession, last year I don't know if you remember this, I was just struggling to find a plumbing teacher so Pete jumped in into it not so sure about teaching and now he's found himself as he's getting ready to retire, loving teaching. And I think what was most inspiring for me at every meeting we get to hear from one of the different classes and plumbing percent better last time and so high expectations that they have and how much they believe in their students and it was also something that was highlighted if I'm wrong when you guys did the curriculum review as a positive to have somebody from industry. So they are getting to order materials, they get to check the list, they are delivering to the Career Center. It's one less step also for the Career Center because you have somebody from industry that has had for 44 years their own company and there's 10 students in that class and they also are working towards their first year apprenticeship test and also getting to work on par with their code book. And there's not as you all know, there's not enough plumbers in the state every time you get together, most of the plumbers are retiring and the average age is like 55, so like really good. It's really great and they're just amazing. So that's what I had to report about the Career Center. The next one was the BSBA report. So I'd be super brief with the resolution process. It's an opportunity for us to highlight something that is important when you guys get the BSBA newsletters, re-operate by resolutions. Carrie, the last time you had mentioned to me something about rural school, like we could think about, I'm not gonna take a lot of time because we had a break, we can, there's a resolution kit in our website. All proposed resolutions should be in by June 15 because we start our work in July and try to have the report by August. But if there's any questions of how to, do that work or any ideas, we should probably schedule it for our next meeting. So I just wanted to put it on here later. And if there's any questions that we should bring to the steering committee or our next meeting, please. So was that the suggestion I had about BSBA leading a study of what it's like for rural populations to depopulate and the effects that it has on schools? Would that be appropriate for a resolution? So maybe not this study, but it could be of how decisions of rural communities, and we could take a dive and just see what existing resolutions we have. It's something that nationally has a lot of attention right now, so we're trying to look at data from the rural perspective and the urban perspective. And in Vermont, we are kind of the micro-customers of that because you have Burlington and Winooski, yeah Winooski that have a really urban and they're still growing, and then you have all of us in the rural districts that are declining and how millions of things coming from the legislature sometimes affect differently. And so it's just something for us to think about it. There's a, like I said, there's a little bit there and we can talk about it, or if there's something that any of you feel passionate about to advocate for our students, now is the time to talk about it. Okay, I think then moving to the corporations. Any questions on that or any moving to the next steps for our master's review? Here's some like, it's DNA. It's DNA, it's DNA, it's DNA, it's DNA. It feels like praying, you know. It's freezing cold out there for those parents from those kids. So in the next steps for the master's, we can start by the question that was asked right when we were finalizing the presentation of the students. So we are, we send a letter back to them telling them that we were involved in this process. And that's, as far as I know, and as far as they, that's all we have to do with them because there's no file back from them. They send a general letter to the legislature not directly to us that they're gonna be addressing this issue directly to the legislature and they're not gonna be attending any school board meetings. They failed the process to elaborate for them. So now it's like, the conversation really is about what do we want from our students and continue to have that. They continue to have that student voice. So I don't, of course I have lots of comments but I'm gonna try the conversation. So our next steps would be to, what do we wanna ask our students? Is this enough information from them? Would it be good to have them go a little deeper and reach our elementary schools? What do we want? We are also involved in our strategic planning right now with the possibility of, you know, not having a better understanding of what our communities want and how they, all of this could inform this conversation too. So we're not in, what I'm trying to say is that we're not in a very strict timeline. So we have the ability to continue to have this conversation and also be truthful to our vision and strategic planning, right? That could inform this conversation too. So with that, I don't know what thoughts you guys have. So I guess the question that comes to mind based on what Chris raised was procedurally based on what we've said our policy is, well not what we've said, we've voted for our policy to be have we followed the procedure that's required? So, you know, that's what I heard the question of us and thought that's a good close the loop moment. Yeah, I mean, I think that, and we sort of touched on this, the pieces that I think are relevant that we would be doing regardless of the letter, one of them is we review our policy per our policy review cycle, provide recommendations. That's something that'll happen on going as part of policy. So that's number one under administrative responsibility. Then it's assist the school board in its review of the district school branding to ensure compliance with policy. Following any branding changes or updates to the policy. We did this because this is a branding policy. And Jonas, your question was sort of this, do we feel like we are in compliance? So there, our job is to inform you as you make that decision about whether or not you think we're in compliance with that, which is essentially Jonas's question. So there could be a future discussion and action to affirm or not affirm the answer to that question. There's obviously under administrative responsibility is we have to ensure that we prohibit branding that references or stereotypes. That's the image association part of it. I think that's the part that's actually pretty clear in this report is the imaging association or the imagery associated with it is not likely a policy violation. The perception around the word, that's the part of the conversation that I have. And then develop a procedure for an individual to file a complaint that an element of a school branding is in violation. That's one of those things that will be on that policy manual and procedures manual. So in terms of that list of things is what our policy asks. And then our policy asks that if someone makes a complaint, you allow them a hearing if they would like one. And to Floor's point, we reached out, we offered a hearing and they have not reached back out. So that's the policy answer to the question about what we're supposed to do. I don't recall, did they specifically ask for it here in the left? They asked in general for it. Yeah, that was the expectation. Yeah, yeah. They just felt like it was gonna be one for all. It's my understanding from other, instead of like having to go to each individual school, but there's no process to just do that. But each one has different history, potentially. For the origin of the name, so I think it would have to be individual. And I think they asked for an opportunity to appear before the board. Then they've involved the complaint section and we should do something. Either just say we haven't heard from you, so we're gonna assume you don't wanna hear it anymore. Just kind of close the loop on that. And if we don't hear from you again, give it a certain time that I said if we don't hear from you in 14 days or whatever it is, that will consider this matter to us. And I think to me there's two different things. Do we wanna close this discussion completely? Not the discussion, with them. With them. Yeah, yeah. Do you have a separate? Yeah, okay. This is a very specific complaint and we would confine with our policy. And so that discussion does not go. Yeah. My sense is that they're, and again, that doesn't preclude us from doing exactly what you just said to say can we affirm that you are truly not asking for a hearing? Because right now we're taking their silence and this would be confirming it. I would say that what they've done almost in response to all of the individual board, they probably got some version of what we sent to from multiple boards. They have elevated that to the general assembly because they have concerns about the legislation itself that puts the decision, frankly, they have concerns that the legislation itself puts the decision making in the hands of the boards. And they have a different opinion about what that legislation should have. So they've directed there that way. But that doesn't preclude us from just saying, following up. I suspect, I think the reason I'm saying that is I suspect they will be referenced that answer in their response to us. Yeah. I don't even know that we can count on a response, but we will follow up with them. We will follow up with them. So then give them a point. So that's good. I like that. And then the other question that I have is, what if anything else does the board need in order to make a decision about whether our mascot is compliant with their policy? Do we need anything else? Do we need community input? Yeah. To the people in the community. And I suspect you will have some strong views about that, about the, just because there's one. And maybe not, I think they share some community. Yeah. And I think we should keep in mind keeping it student base. So still have the students be the ones. To me, it just like continue to empower them to have those conversations. So either get them some sports like we have said, to open learning, but like have them be the ones to reach out to elementary schools too. Cause they're gonna be the ones that will be here also at 7th graders and 8th graders. And reach out to the community and then report back to us more, you know what, how they visualize this work that they're doing would have an impact. What impact would they want have in the future? To me it's more, that's what I was hoping that we could like get back to them and said, please get more input, 171 responses from 700 is not a lot. But it was, and also the data was a little mixed, right? That we could drive that data however we wanted in some ways, right? We could take some of the comments that were, we wanted them to have some ownership. It didn't seem very strong. Like I think in some schools you'll get kind of feeling and I didn't get that from those results. Yeah. That may be the reason to change it. I was gonna say that's, right, it's a data or not by itself, right? But the other, what we did here, and I don't know if that meaning was accurate in terms of them, the feeling on the survey saying, I'm not interested in exploring. And their sense was because people didn't know what that meant and didn't wanna take on that work. And so I think that in opening it up to the community and that we need to have several scenarios as to what does this mean. If I say this, this is the potential next steps. If I say this, these are the potential next steps. Whether that's students who brainstorm what that is, but I think that if we wanna have people clearly understand what, if I say this, these are the actions that might occur from that. There may be another and people attribute different things to that. But I think we need to be clear in what our question is asking, what's the work that comes from that potentially? Can I ask a question? Is it clear that it's the board's responsibility to recommend or change the mascot name or the name of the high school or is that the high schools that rest with the principal and the leadership? That's a great question. So I would answer in a couple ways. Our policy puts the responsibility on the board to make sure our mascot is non-discriminatory. So that implies some decision-making authority in the context that if it's discriminatory, it's your job to make it not so. The second part of the question, if the board ultimately makes a determination that it's not discriminatory, in some ways, you can decide that it's not discriminatory and still have a thought about whether or not it should change. Those two things can both happen. Whether or not the decision about that part of it and who that sits with, it's the districts that have had to do this and have had those questions asked of the courts. Really do you put that authority in the school board? And that, but that was the distinction between the voters versus the school board and which is a different question than you're asking because you're asking, is it high school, meaning administration or the board? Yeah, just from what they found, I mean, it was picked like the raters, the mascot was picked by your book company. Right. Yeah, the image. The image. But right, the night, so I just wonder like, oh, it's that easy, you know, is that just like contractual, like I wonder. That was a simpler time, that was seven years. Yeah, right. It was a different time, I recognize that. I just, you know, was curious of where our responsibility ended if not discriminatory. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, I think if we are going to look deeper at this, first of all, I think, you know, I had some confusion around the imagery versus the name. So I think, making sure there's clarity there and being very clear on the questions we're asking. And also, I don't know if anyone talked to the people that were, yeah, in the school and me too or whatever. They did a couple of interviews. They did, the students did, yep. With the students and teachers, ever. They were current teachers that were students at the time. That were students. Yes. Yeah. Because there are also teachers around that were in communities still, that were teachers at the time. It would just be interesting to maybe know a little. Because that's the very first time I heard any reference to the reviewers. I don't know. I doubt that that was right. The students seemed to have some conception that that was the original inspiration, which was not my understanding at all. I think you're correct. And I would say only because I've had this conversation with those students, I think what Kaya was talking about is other people outside of our community might be making an association that actually doesn't exist. But the conversations we've been having are if they're making that association, even if they're wrong, does that still might cause us to want to do something? I think it's that. It'd be pretty stretched, since our colors have never been red and white, like the other schools are. In one of their other comments, I think that last comment is for sure. It doesn't affect me personally. However, I'm worried about the possible connotations and hateful meaning for others. I mean, I think next steps are we still need. I think the board has to have a conversation to decide. But I don't think that the school name and the night need to change or write. Do they fit with our non-discriminatory, non-offensive? Well, that's two things, right? Change versus discriminatory. Because if we say it's discriminatory, does that trigger something? Definitely not change it. And I can understand that we kids, I think that if it's non-discriminatory, I think it can go back to the administration on whether or not. Given this feedback from the students, where they're like, man, we're ambivalent about it. Maybe that is reason to change it, but it's no longer our decision to tell them to do so. But we as a board need to decide whether or not we think that it is discriminatory before we give you like, you guys can figure out whether you want to change it or not, or whether we are like, we think it's discriminatory, we need to change it. And then what happens after that? But I think we need to set up parameters on how we're gonna analyze this, because I think some things that have been brought up are the idea of like intent versus actual impact. And it doesn't matter what the intent was. The impact is what matters. And so, I think that's one of the things that we need to do with that. I agree. I think you can say that it's not discriminatory now, but I think, even though the report sort of shows that there's no legacy of like a racialized mascot, the fact that we in this moment have been associated with the red raiders controversy is sort of like data point number one. And now we have to be hyper aware of the fact that some might conflate it with that. And I think we have to be careful. I think the other thing I wanted to say was that, if I was intended to the school community, but what I'm more interested in is the community of our five towns and what they think. I do think we need to get more public input from the five towns and see if we can go to the five towns. If there's some way to sort of put this out to the public, this was a little bit more reflectionary. Did we have any feedback with the, there was a lot of concern about how we did the 50th anniversary. You know what I mean? And so, there was a lot of strong opinions regarding that. And so, I wonder if that group of people or anything might have something strong to say as well. You know what I mean? If that was one that got tapped or not. Or some history. Right. I don't think we're associated with red papers. I don't think that's been established in any way here by what we heard or any self. And I, you know, you make a good point about that was 72, this is now, we're about the future. Should we have a vision in our policy where we evaluated every 10 years? Why shouldn't the future generations be imprisoned by what these students now decide? They want to match that need. They or the school or the team's sports teams to be in it. Yeah. So, I mean, why not? It doesn't make you policy set, you know what I mean? It doesn't make you policy set. Policy set. Yeah. The policy set. Yeah, the policy set. Yeah, the change is set, generally. Yeah. Okay. Eric, Eric. Thanks. Oh, you're welcome. So, I have a question and this is not to, so after before this request came out from these groups that blanket did multiple schools at once, my first question is, had we ever had a complaint from the community, outside the community, from the indigenous community about our mascot or mascot name, that's my first question. And then after this request came out, did we have any reaction from the community for anyone saying, yes, we agree with that? So, is it just because of this group that put out this blanket letter to multiple schools or have we had anything in the past over after the fact with concern directly from direct community and stuff like that? So, thanks, Eric. I asked that question, because having not been here prior to this year, so my understanding from conversations with Stephen and he's gotten in his tenure, one question from, I assume a parent, a family, a school community member, just asking what's the origin, can you tell me about the image? Shared that, shared probably a version of this. So, I think the answer to that question, at least in terms of people raising their hand, officially is no, that there have not been complaints raised. I think there was some commentary in the community when this, because it hit the newspapers and we were associated with those groups in the newspapers. And then I would just remind us that the review, and in a sense actually what we're doing right now, we'd have been doing this either way because our policy asks us to. And I don't know, if anyone who's been here longer, which is everyone, I don't have anything to add to that historical answer, feel free. So, a couple of comments, one, I do remember being a student and the question about Raiders and actually Worcester Warriors being raised around the violent nature of the massacre. Not necessarily did it have an association with indigenous people, but that it was just a violent mascot. And was that something that we wanted representing our students at both U32 and at Worcester? And so that was happening when I was a student. As a former alumni who did three seasons worth of athletics and editor of the yearbook and stage 32, I could care less if Raiders continued to exist. And I was a proud Raider. And I would be, it would not bother me at all if U32 was no longer Raiders. My other thought is when I read this, because we keep talking about discriminatory, but the way number three reads, it says school branding that directly or indirectly references the likeness feature symbols traditions or other characteristics that are specific to any person, group of persons or organizations associated with the repression of others. And Raiders definitely repressed others throughout history, whether they were other white civilizations or non-white civilizations. That is the nature of a Raider. So regardless of whether we can tie it directly to the Red Raiders or our indigenous population based on number three, the term Raider cover is covered under 3B. So I just think that that's something that we need to think about. And then my last comment is, being in other communities in Vermont, when conversations around mergers have happened, and what do we do with our mascots? Communities have like literally come to blows around this. And it's because of this legacy that alumni want to hold on to. God forbid I'm no longer a whatever. And if we change our mascot, that means my legacy no longer exists. And so I just, I'm not saying we shouldn't reach out to the community. I caution that because I'm not sure that the response we're gonna get is gonna be based on this, that it could be more based on, this is my legacy as somebody who's been affiliated with the school system for X number of years. I agree. And I think that's why it's important to keep it at the student level and have the student voice be what drives this. Because I don't agree that it necessarily, our communities are the ones that support our students, where our students are smarter than we, they represent our communities. And their voice really matters especially in this occasion. And they have grown in a different way than most of us in my generation about to be 50. And they have more empathy. They understand each other better. They have a better understanding of the world, the context now, right? Because that's the other part that is really important. We also have to have capacity, the capacity of our district, right? Like we're in the middle of the strategic planning and visioning part. We can't be all things at once. But like I was saying, I think that our strategic planning and visioning plan is gonna inform this process. We can continue to let the students drive this process in a constructive way and get more information from community, from other schools, while we're doing the visioning. And then we can talk about the name, the those conversations that we never had as a district. Together it doesn't all need to happen today. That's like right now, like we can plan ahead for that. No, I appreciate the conversation a lot. I come back to Kari's question about what do you need in order to help you answer this question? Because I think that the idea that the board would, probably does need to come back and affirm a decision about this review. So this review's job was to help you give you some information to be able to decide if your mascot, our mascot, is compliant with our policy. So I think you've gotta come to that decision, which makes the question of what else do you need to know. I can also come back to you with, I will work with the students on this, but also administrators. And kind of propose a, here's how I think, because here's what I heard. I heard elementary schools, maybe some more targeted questions to students. I can come with some ideas about community input. That doesn't mean you have to take them, right? But allows you to have that conversation. So a next step could be to come back to a, A, I could propose some additional engagement if you think that's important. And if there's something you know right now that you would need to know that you don't know in order to make that decision. Now's a good time to surface that because then I can bring it. But I do think that coming back and actually affirming what did this tell us is probably a good next step. So just to clarify, the board's role is to decide whether or not it's discriminatory, not to decide whether or not it's a good, like a positive, just a discriminatory question. Your policy says for sure it's your job to do that. And that is an affirmative. If it is discriminatory, we're changing it, right? I just am also acknowledging you could decide that it's not and still ask that we explore a change. That's all. And it seems to me like gathering more information from the community is not necessarily needed to decide whether or not it's discriminatory. That's my point. As an alumni who is very attached to being a leader, I do recognize that I think it's discriminatory. I would admit and I would be willing to change it. But maybe people don't feel like it's obviously discriminatory in which case they need more information. I kind of feel like it's discriminatory. So I'm not sure I need more information. That's a good point. I think the process with this case, we did decide that then in cleaning the issue is important, but I don't know. I would say we shouldn't not engage the community because of the board concerned about the answers. They may get bad because it's also an educational process. That dialogue may ultimately think it is a board decision because we have talked in the past about naming parts of the building or naming parts of it. And that was ultimately a board decision that what we would or wouldn't do. And I think having just the board be the ultimate decider of what we're gonna do is where that decision should come. So just push back a little bit on naming as because we did that through policy, right? We created a policy to decide on naming or not naming parts of our building. So right now would be similar, we would be answering to the questions on the policy and maybe what McKenna was saying, maybe we don't need more information for us to decide on the actual questions on the policy. But so we could decide our next board meeting on discriminatory or decide right now if people feel that way, but then still have a process. I still feel like we need some kind of rubric or something to make that decision. Yeah, so to answer that question, what I wanna know, which I think was largely answered tonight was does the mascot actually cause anybody harm? Yeah, you know, to the impact question. And I think the students telling us that they can't detect that anybody actually definitively is saying that they're harmed, they're worried that maybe that's different in my mind. And so, and if the people that are around the mascot all the time aren't telling us that they're harmed, I for one would be satisfied with that, the next level would be to go to the community I can ask anybody out there? I have a couple of thoughts. One, going to the community, we need to understand that if we're gonna get feedback, what are we doing with that information? So if we get a large number of people who are highly passionate with that, I am so attached to that writer's name and I would hate for you to change it, I personally don't feel it's discriminatory. I'm not sure how that truly guides our decision-making on is it actually discriminatory? And I think the idea of just going, well nobody has spoken up yet, we need to remember one of the two groups that has brought this complaint forward is Indigenous-led. And they are leading a conversation that it is harmful and we need to listen. Like, I am very white and so I don't have a lot I can say on it, but I can say we need to listen to them and they have spoken and I think that they are speaking. Just to kind of piggyback on that, I'm gonna push back on students not saying they're harmed because I know that they're black students in the school who have heard the N-word used in classrooms and their responses, it didn't bother me, but it really bothered me. So I think we need to be careful that just because a student is saying is not verbally saying I've been harmed doesn't mean that they actually haven't been harmed. They may not feel safe standing up in the N-word, especially if they're on the sports team and our identity is we're raiders. Or especially if they're on a group of people who strongly feel that this is important. They're not gonna feel safe and I think that that is true when kids are in a situation where they do feel harmed but aren't safe. I kind of want to reinforce something that has more to do with the role of the board than even this issue because I think it goes beyond the issue. And it's the point that you made, Ursula, about sometimes it's the job of the board to make a decision despite the input of the community. And maybe that's not the right way to say that, but it's not your job. It doesn't have to match the will of the community. Doesn't mean that engaging the community around the issue is not an important part of the process, but I just think that's an important piece. And then, yeah. Joshua, you already have your hand up there. Yeah, it might be more of a process thing that maybe it might help us to think about by not voting or not coming to a decision tonight. I personally believe that we should change the name and we should change the mascot. I just wonder if to facilitate that process I just wonder because it maybe it could be argued either way about whether it is discriminatory or not that what would be the best way to vote for that to facilitate that change without going through and exhaustive process of gathering information for the community. I mean, I don't know if the message from the board is more important that recognizing, I wonder if that is a decision that's important in itself, or if it's more important to help the students to get on with their work, and you know what I'm saying? So to me, it goes back to the policy though. As you pointed out, Natasha, why do we have that statement if we're not gonna listen to that statement? I mean, Knights are oppressive, that's their role. I mean, and so if we didn't agree with that representation, you know, that category, then we shouldn't have agreed to the policy. And so since we did agree to the policy, to me it does fit very clearly under 3B and I don't know how I would not vote. Yeah, we could think of that. I think the process, there are just two votes, right? Does it conform to the policy or not? And then if it doesn't, second vote's determined should be changed at any moment. And there's two parts of the first part. Is the night mask on? Does that confide the policy? And then you get to the name. Is the name Raiders? Does that confide the policy? So it's a two-part personal question. So do we want to take that one at a time and do a straw poll tonight, or do we feel that we need to come back and have a more in-depth conversation that sets out a, I don't know the word I'm looking for, but a river that has definitive, like things that we can put things in as opposed to an anti-emotional, but. But I don't think that we would be making an emotional straw ball today. We don't have to say that this is the ultimate decision, but we could do it around that. We could just answer 3B right now. Just that one question. And that would be, so we're gonna take the night and then the name's separate. Like Chris suggested. I'm curious how there's any ambiguity about the term Raider being anything, but offensive, like I just, I don't, I don't, I'm struggling with that. I have been since the articles came out since we received the letter, like, and as a parent attending sporting events at the school for a long time, every time I hear it, I cringe. And we're competing against other schools where the mascot, sometimes there's a mascot, sometimes there isn't, but it's visceral on a routine basis. And it's, we can look up the definition, but it was, we know what the definition is, so I don't understand how there's any ambiguity on this about the name Raiders. And they can, like the students were saying, the U is the symbol. There are occasions where there are people who show up at night, aren't armor for sporting events and stuff, but it's, I know, it appears like, you haven't seen that? Not on my day, no. Oh well. I was just gonna say, it's temporary. It's just the first place. Wow. Yes, it's, it's, it's, and you know, Willow and her peers there is a lot of school spirit right now at sporting events, and they are actively working on that as a department, and that comes up in the newsletters as well, like, so, from parent perspective, and also just understanding what the word Raiders means, I don't, I just don't understand why that, there's any question about that. It's, it's really problematic. And do we have to have the name? Let's do this. What about things that interest of time too, and it's just a proposal. So the thing about the name Raiders, just like you said right now, so the Raiders, if we're looking at 3B, any person, group, or person, or agency is just sitting with a repression of others. If the question is yes, if you feel like yes, the name represents that, you know, raise your hand. Is that, makes sense? Can we, can we put it, just as trouble? Just as trouble. Okay, read the entire definition. Read the entire definition. Yeah, I'm just, so this is the school board ensuring the prohibition of school branding that directly or indirectly references or stereotypes the likeness, features, similar traditions, or other characteristics that are specific to either, and just can go to be, any person, group of persons, or organizations associated with the repression of others. So if you feel that way, raise your hand, it's just a struggle. Okay, so, I'm just talking about the, but I figured, yes, yes. The name Raiders. Because I think school branding covers both the knight and the raider primarily together, so. Yeah, just a thought. Yeah, so the name Raiders. It's like an or, either or, right, would cover branding. So is the sense of the board that it's, the violence and the repression that a raider embodies, or that it's part of the vision of it, that is the problem? Yeah. Okay. So raising your hand if you feel that the name or symbol fits with this definition of being discriminatory, or should be correct? I think I would like to stick with the definition. I. With the words that just, Chris just read and just answered that specific. And it's just a struggle. It's not a motion, right? So, and you can, we can even go this, this or that. If that helps. So, you know, you could do, if you guys are familiar with that. I believe, yeah. So if you feel like you're okay with that, middle is that you're a figures and you can tell us why. No. And yes, you feel like, you know, this represents oppression. So, I don't want to come to three, but can you do it? Why don't you bring it to three? It makes me really sad to do this. But, yeah. So, Indy, I can't quite read it. Oh, that's fine. Sorry. I got that. So, I'm just kind of. So, I have one, two, three middle ones. And one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And Erikson Middle. So, and it's just a struggle. So, I feel like the majority of the board feels like, you know, it's worth going deeper into what that is. And we don't know yet, but this will help us because we could take a vote tonight if you want. I don't know that would be fair to our students and to our communities. Can I ask if we could figure out what happens immediately after the motion? So, that was a thought. So, one of the things the board should think about, and this may be a reason to do the vote is, on one hand, there isn't an, the timeline through which we take to make a change is ours to design. On the other hand, you will have taken a vote that something is discriminatory, and you don't. Well, that's a discriminatory. Well. You said you pressed it, and that's right. That has a different connotation. Well, it's a sign that the policy literally says not discriminatory. That's right. So, we're not saying, we did not go to say that the NASDAQ or the name is discriminatory. We're looking at its filing back. So, we will say it doesn't violate the policy. Yes. Regardless of what that is. Exactly. And so my point was, you might want to think about how quickly you might, it's kind of your question of what happens after. One thing that we could do is bring to you to a proposed outline for what would happen next after, which would have to do with what is the process. And there are schools that have done it quite successfully. And so, we can bring some different models of, here's how you go about making the change so that you can have that information when you take the vote. And I think for me that is, if you were to vote now, oh, I guess it, I don't know, in some ways it doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter one way. You know, we are gonna need to create a process regardless of the majority of the board feels like. Yeah, I am thinking and appreciating your comment about capacity. Capacity. So, allowing us to come back and saying, here's how we think, here's what we think would be a feasible and also fast enough process given this conversation. And here's how we think, here's what we think we would need to do to do it well. That's the other thing. And it might be helpful for you to have that information. I don't know that it would change your decision though. So, I think that's what we need to do now. That's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that that would necessarily change our decision because if we make this decision right now, the time frame is ours because we are not in a constraint of having to respond to a lawsuit or anything like that. So, it's for us to decide how we wanna move forward. Had we mentioned to the students whether or not we were making this decision on this time? We told them that they were just reporting to us tonight, which is what I was hoping. So, that's what I was just thinking. I was a straw ball and not, you know, I never enacted that we would come sort of. I feel like it's totally appropriate to, not rush the decision, not take an action tonight, reflect on what's happened, learn about the implications of this decision, and then in a couple or four weeks make that decision. And maybe hear from them again. I mean, are they coming back together to think of alternate mascots or? Actually, that would be a student led process. Yeah, that would be a student led process. They are student led, right? I mean, I want to go back with them and share this conversation. That's what I think is worthwhile. And all of that. And then the process through which you go about changing it is a big endeavor. And so I think what we would do is give you a little bit of information about what that looks like. And I don't think that we need to make that decision, you know, the first week of May or the third week of May, it could be, you know, we could see where that fits in that work. So I get that in this regard, but it worries me for us to say, well, you know, whether or not we vote that it's discriminatory or repressive or whatever, we're going to push that down the road a little bit. So I'm a little concerned about having that. I mean, we agreed with this policy. We, you know, and we're doing great work around fleshing out what that looks like. But I am worried that if we did take a vote tonight, it's very clear the majority feel this is, this meets, it's it. And so all I'm saying as a cautionary note, for us to say, we know our capacity is limited, that that makes me nervous, because how else do we paint? I mean, it's very easy to then paint other things that our capacity impacts them. Don't get me wrong. When I said capacities more, what is the best process? Because we are involved. No, I, I, I hear you for us. Just saying. I think we can make this meaningful part of what we're, what we're doing right now. I think I agree with Carrie that we can reflect and not rush this. I think we're sending a strong message tonight. Anyways, just by the straw ball, I don't think that anybody would read or message any different. I think we're having a strong and, you know, not a strong react. We are being honest and taking a straw ball decision, not decision, but a straw ball, signaled with integrity to how we, that is meaningful to the beliefs, the vision and the mission of our school district too. And in response to our policy. Masha? I appreciate wanting to have a process, but I also appreciate what you said Diane, because I feel like if this was a blatant racist mascot, we wouldn't necessarily be saying we can wait to figure out a process and see what happens next. Like we would, I feel like we would make it more immediate. And so I think that, I think that that's a valid concern that if it is a violation of the policy, if it is something that is repressive and oppressive, that should be just as much of a priority as if it was a blatant racist, Diane. I tend to agree. I also had a thought in part in the football reference, but the other possibility is that, first of all, I think it would be good to help, to give you some examples of what we think a thoughtful process to rename would be and how long you think the Washington football team was the Washington football team for a year because they needed to end the discrimination part, but they wanted to do a better job. I mean, debate whether or not they were successful in that. But, but like the point is they were able to end the discriminatory piece and quickly on that and not rush the, okay, but what should we be, right? So, sorry. I just, we've talked about this for so long and I don't want to drag this anymore. But the discriminatory, who were discriminatories at the beginning of the policy and the complaints that were made were about sort of a blatant Confederate imagery, indigenous imagery, whether flattering or not, and the Raiders, which seems that that was generated by the controversy in Rutland. There are other mascot names in Vermont like Marauders or Presidents for that matter. That could be seen as people who are in, well, that's the blatant Confederate imagery that I'm referring to. But there are other violent names, right? And there are other, the Galloping Ghosts, Randolph. And it was like a hooded writer at that point. But where we're coming at, this is not where the NAACP, right, and the indigenous groups were coming from. I think that there's some consensus around the table, but I believe that this would be the first instance in the state where a name was changed, not because we found that it was racially or ethnically discriminatory, but because the name itself was violent and indicated oppression, right? So I just put that in the state-like context of all this is going on. Yes. But I think that that's our duty to... Oh, I'm not saying it's not. I'm just... Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. This is not something that anyone has made a complaint about. I'm not saying it pejoratively. I'm just putting that out. Okay, so does everybody feel okay? Where we are right now? Mm-hmm. Okay. So because others are never getting home today, approve 22-24 calendar. Yep. They can be rigid super quick. I think you can send them out, have some information about how it's developed in case you needed that reminder. Today. Happy day. I'm looking for a motion and then a second and then we will have discussion. Accept the calendar for the two of them and you can agree to them in the form screen here. Thank you. Thank you. And Ursula, any discussion? Who's talking to this? Ursula. Seeing none, all those in favor, please again. Sorry, can you repeat that? For some reason, I get back here. Oh, it is the motion. I think it was sent out by the board. What was said by... No, I just asked if there was any discussion. We are accepting the calendar, Eric. We are. I agree. 3 and 6.2. Okay, so it's not the last thing, it's the calendar we talked about right now. Right. Okay, accepting the last day of school or accepting the 24th calendar? The calendar. The calendar. 6.2 calendar. Sorry, thank you. They're in a different order in our packet. Yeah. Okay, yeah. So all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. Now approved the last day of school and that was... Yeah. 26. Yeah. So it was 26, but I have a motion and then we'll discuss. I can make a motion. You want the exact dates? Yes. Okay. I make a motion to approve the recommendation for the last day of school for students to be Friday, June 16th. Partial day for students and for teachers, Tuesday, June 20th and also for ESP to be Tuesday, June 20th. Thank you. A second? Second. Thank you, gentlemen. Discussion? I just wanna put on the record that I very much appreciate the school district recognizing Juneteenth because I'm arguing with a number of school, other school boards about this. So thank you. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. Okay. Can we go to the next round? District clerk. Yeah. District clerk. So you got in your packet and bring my other thing out. You got in your packet that Rosie resigned. So we want to acknowledge how wonderful she's been for a district. She's been with us since we unified as not just the town of Beechmont-Biller, but dealing with Laurel commingling. She has been without an assistant clerk. We accept her resignation. We try to convince her to not leave us, but she's got too much on her plate. So we respect that and we wanna appreciate her. She couldn't join us tonight, but we're making for a new certificate and something for her we really appreciated. And I wanna make sure that that, she didn't want any public acknowledgement, but she's done a lot for us. So with that, the process of how we consulted with the secretary of state just to make sure that we didn't have to file something with them. And so what JP said is that we need to post. What we're hoping to do is to similarly do what we do when we have a vacancy on the board. So we're gonna post in Frontbridge Forum and our website and our newsletter. We have a little guidance of what the duties of the clerk are. And then we would, as a board, we would appoint somebody to be our district clerk until the next election with that person of whoever wants to run. We'll do it instead of like trying to just go and find one person, make it sort of equitable and with equity around our towns and hope that either one of our clerks will wanna do that or somebody else that it has to live in our district. So it can be clerked somewhere else, but the person has to move in our district. But it doesn't have to be a town clerk. It doesn't have to be a town clerk. It helps, but it doesn't have to be a town clerk. It helps, yes, it helps. So that's the hope that we, if you feel comfortable with that, I would take the responsibility with Megan to put something out, and then we will appoint together with the letter, okay? I'd like to ask when either board members or a clerk resigns that we're notified as soon as you get the letter that it's shared with us, because this was a month ago? Yeah, so here's the process, Lindy. So we did not have all the answers. We were gonna try to debrief with Lindy, with Rosie that day, it was right after election, and I'll be frank, I was in denial that she was gonna resign, we were trying to talk, but you know, we were trying to talk with her and also debrief the process. And we did not have all the answers. We had had a board meeting the Wednesday before we received the letter. So our next board meeting was our community engagement, and it was not until this week that we received the information from the Secretary of State too. But she sent the letter in March, which is what I was saying that we, I think as a board, we're all equal and should just be notified. When, just like if a board member sent you a, because we're all elected officials, including the clerk. I'm not questioning that, I just like we did not have answers, and sometimes there's more questions than answers, but I'm happy to, if we get a resignation from the future to send that right away. Well, I guess that when you mentioned that, I mean, it does address us in the heading. So I guess that would be the only question. To me, this might be part of that. Maybe it becomes part of our retreat work where we designate and kind of talk through some of those different things, just for a better understanding of when communications come through, what's the procedure? Policy committee. I think that is a motion to formally appoint 90. So I'm looking for a motion to appoint Maggie to the policy committee. So I'm planning to voice the policy committee. Second. And take a scenario very quieted for our last meeting. I think we'll have a lot of adventure that fits sooner than I know the why. Yeah. I missed that one. So. Retroactive. Retroactive to the last meeting. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. And Natasha, any discussion? Thank you, Maggie. All those in favor, please stand by by saying aye. Aye. All right. Finance committee. Here you are, Patricia. Okay, let's do that. So, so. Okay. Do you have another one? Chair, you better speak to the other side of the board. Oh man. Okay, I'm a little sleepy here. So. So I'm at, just because of the time, I don't want to, I don't want to, could I have a motion? I move to approve the use of the capital improvement from reserve for the NES to pay for improvements to the playground, to have it on the path, for the amount not to exceed $43,153. Second. We're gonna thank you Ursula and now, Alicia, could you mind sharing some of the writing? I'll just share a second great piece I was looking at these tonight. So, I put in the principal's report that every four reasons that we go on today prompted in the last one I asked students, the prompt basically was if you could add a piece of equipment or have more of something, what would it be? So, kindergarteners through grade six, I'll tell you for some of the doable changes. That would be good. Not so doable, but like a four square court, four swings is a big one. A cabin in the woods, because we used to have one with a covered shelter, some signs of playground rule. So there were really good suggestions that are totally doable. We also had zipline, swimming pool, hot tub, rollercoaster, and that was the teachers, I'm sure. Did we approve a hop-up in the morning? Yeah, we approved a hop-up in the morning. So, on Friday, I intentionally did this, waiting for Timmy to make sure it was going to go through, but on Friday we're gonna have an all-school assembly, celebration to end just before going into grade, I'm gonna share what happened tonight, and also share some of their writing pieces to let them know that their voices truly do matter and we do listen and wanna take their feedback, but this is just a second grade student who said, I think there should be a wheelchair-accessible play structure and braille. People can get excluded because they can't play on the play structure if they want to. That is when schools are meant to be welcoming to everybody, please let this happen, or else I will never give up and I will never stop. I will protest at school. I will protest at school, I will never give up. As we share in you, a huge reason for these changes are we need to make former playground accessible. Several students wrote about accessibility, knowing some of their classmates in Kiddosett School, but hers was very, not threatening, but very powerful. Powerful. Thank you for sharing that, so with that note, I don't know that we can top that, all those in favor of pissing me five by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So Susanne, it's with us, I don't know if you wanna give us any highlights, or is there any questions for Susanne, the quarterly financial report? Not about that, but I just noticed that without snark, the letterhead on the form about the ENES playground, that letterhead needs to be on the roof. Oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Is Jen's line, is Jen still listening? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jen, you don't mind, right? I think every three or four meetings, just one memo should come in with her name. Just gonna be looking down on you, huh? Test us. That's right. Thank you for that. So, or do you wanna just talk to us about the fund balance? So that we can go back over to you. When FY23 budget was prepared, the board had a plan to utilize fund balance to offset the expenditures in the amount of $325,468. The beginning fund balance started at 1,599,965. And right now, we're projecting an increase in the fund balance, not a decrease, an increase of $57,438. It's a combined effort between revenues increasing and expenditures decreasing, or coming in under budget. And so the potential increase in the fund balance brings the amount beyond the 2% target to $926,017. So it's a good forecast. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the finance, if you have any input that the finance committee is gonna be taking this on their next meeting too. But we wanted you to be aware of the policy committee. I'm carrying out the policy for consideration in adoption versus a C5 weapons and firearms in the hopefully complied with Ursula's command that we track the changes in the policy, which was a great suggestion, because it's really helpful. I appreciate it, it's helpful, thank you. And I would point out that we added on a reporting report into that the suspensions that we're dealing with the violation of the policy that weren't coming to the board would be told to the board and described why, so that we were more informed about the level of violation that did not come up to board for expulsion purposes. And so that's the highlights for C5. Any questions on C5? Where is the report of the question? So it's at the end. I'm very relaxed. Yeah. Which is policy implementation, the last paragraph there. And it's gonna show up as bold, not red, because it's new, as opposed to crossed out, which might be why it's hard to find. It's basically, it says the superintendent shall provide an annual report to the board of violations of this policy, including, but not limited to the following information. Total number of violations, total number of violations that did not warrant a hearing and the nature of the reasons for those violations not being recommended. Is there any promotion to the C5? I move that we approve policy C5. Second? Those in favor? There's a way that, I have a question. Okay, discussion, discussion. Go ahead. Is that, we're now saying that folding knives with blades less than two and a half inches may be possessed if they are not used in a threatening manner or with intent to cause harm. That's a great question. They are still prohibited. And there would still, the administration This is just, okay. Exactly. They would still use our discipline procedures process to institute progressive discipline. So they are still prohibited. The difference is it doesn't require an immediate board expulsion hearing because we are allowed to let intent be part of that. And are there other changes like that in here? I'm sorry if I look at it closely enough. I think that's a primary one. Okay. Any other questions? Well, those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. And this is another example of Daniel how you're saying, you know, so that the procedure next to it would highlight there is still the disciplinary, there's still the student handbook issues that are, take a rest. So just to, historically we've had a lot of discussions about where the procedure should go. And we've always been told that it would make the policy too long, but I tend to agree the policy procedure should be coupled with the policy rather than have to hunt in a different spot. So we'll work on that on the other. Just to ease, you know, the user-president. Why can't there just be a hyperlink? Like, why does it need to be text-free? That's sort of where we were. That's where the manual would be alongside of that. Yeah, cool. So next up is an E20 change, just to clarify that when there are municipal elections held, then the principal cannot close the school on an election day, even if it's bad weather, because the election has been scheduled and that would take precedence. So basically, just to work around taking a little bit of authority away from the principal, close the school on that. To close the building. But there may not be students in the school. Okay. That's it. Any questions? Jonas? I'm just gonna move. That one is just a second reading, or is that one? It's a second reading. It can be done. Yeah, okay. Go ahead, Jonas. I move to adopt policy. Second. I move by Jonas, second by Ursula. Any discussion? Any more discussion? No. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries. All right. Let's move to the consent agenda. Where did I get the motion? I move to approve the minutes of March 15th, March 29th, and the April 5th. Second. 23. Thank you, Jonas. Thank you, Natasha. Any discussion? Any changes? Seeing none. Please signify by... All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Hearing none, the motion carries. Board orders. I'll make a motion to accept the board order for the period 316, 23 through 419, 23, in the total amount of $893,958.18. Thank you. Second. Thank you, Ursula. Yeah, we had it coming out this way. Any questions? We did not bring this, so we're gonna have to send an email. Yeah, I forgot to read my email. Do you have it? No, I forgot to, sorry. Yeah, I'll send you an email tonight. So all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Hearing none, the motion carries. All right. So, personnel. Page 54. Yeah. I'm a lot of them. Yeah. To the left, please bring a letter. Ursula, do you want to do it or do you want to do it? Want me to do it? Sure. I move that we approve the new higher nominations for 2023 of Sarah Cousins, speech-language pathologist at Burma. Second. Sorry, my bad. Oh, that was late. Okay. She's great. You're welcome. Oh, it says for 2022, 23. Is it 23, 24? Is it next year or is it next year? Good catch. The vacancy exists, which is why it says 2023, but she is beginning next year. 23, 24. So, the motion is amended for 2023 to 24. Do you agree, Naebi? Do you agree with that amendment? Yeah. Okay. So moved by Ursula, seconded by Naebi. We're accepting Sarah Cousins as speech-language pathologist. All those in favor, please. One little bit of discussion. More Aussies. Always more Aussies. See you, Michael. Hi, Mr. Sherwin. Good day, mate. All those in favor, please. Five. Same. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Hearing none, the motion carries. Okay. I move. Hires. Yeah, sorry. I move that we approve the following rehires, Olovenoite U32 math interventionist, Lindsey Wright, U32 social studies teacher, Karen Chesser, Berlin school counselor, Nancy Robinson, Berlin health teacher, Annalisa Kirby, Berlin special education teacher, Uriah Proctor Mattingly, Calus School-wide student support services. And is that for next year? Yes. So awesome. Of course, we'll move in. Natasha, is that that? I have a quick question. Is there a reason why salaries were not listed on several of them? I'm just wondering. Recovered. They are rehires, so I. There was like a statement on one of them. Yes. They will be rehired at a step in the old contract. Oh, that's true. That it might be. OK, thank you. Second, small question. Yes. Which of the elementary schools have health teachers? So Jen, do you want to? Health education is provided by a number of people. In which elementary schools is health delivered by a health ed teacher? In Calus, there's a certified health educator. In Romania, there's a certified health educator. In Berlin, there's a certified health teacher. And in any other schools, the curriculum's delivered by other people, licensed, qualified to do so. But yeah. U-32. And U-32. All those in favor, please unify by saying, hi. Hi. Any opposed? Any abstain? Seeing none, the motion carries. Next one. I move that we approve the long term substitutes for the 2022, only 23 year. That is actually accurate. They're right now. Richard Terry and LTS Music, U-32. Clarissa Gold, LTS Science, U-32. And Aiden Mayer, LTS Physical Education, slash LTU-32. Thank you. So a second. Chris. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please unify by saying, hi. Hi. Any opposed? Any abstain? Seeing none, the motion carries. Thank you, everybody. Future agenda items, we should look at our work plan. I can actually put it on screen. So what I would say is our next immediate meeting is the community forum, which will be one of the engagement sessions for strategic planning. So the format and structure, and potentially even the location of that may vary. That group is meeting tomorrow to plan what that looks like. And then the one thought that I had for is we'll want to add the action item around mascots on the 24 to give some time for me to give you some information about what that process might look like. So I'll add that, what's that? Sure. And then our agenda, our steering committee, we always look at the agenda, and there might be more things to add. And also the strategic plan should also inform our agenda. And that would be a report on that too. OK, any board reflections? I took the board orders and just signed that argument. We could. Oh, we could. He doesn't mind. We don't mind at all. But I'm trying to say that the last one is going to go forward. So we are having a couple of sessions. And in order to let Megan go, we are going to have negotiations first. So I'm looking for a motion to go into executive sessions. I move to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing negotiation strategy to include Megan Roy and Suzanne Dan. OK, second. And is it possible to move to another room? He's in the room. OK, he's in the room. OK, you're recording now? Yeah, I have to. OK, I move to authorize board chair floor DS Smith on negotiation negotiations with Superintendent Megan Roy for an extended contract with the understanding that the final product will be presented to the board for final approval. Second. Thank you. You join us. Thank you, Daniel. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. All those hearing none, the motion carries. Thank you. Move to the room. Second. Daniel and second by Useless. Utanimously. All those in favor, please signify by leaving.