 I'd like to start by opening our guest list. It's great to see a lot of people coming out to create on this issue, spread out also to a lot of people, and obviously to our school system. I guess I'd like to ask, is there anyone here who is interested in or wants to speak to an item on our agenda that is not Act 46 related? Okay, so I'm going to assume everyone is here because Rick is in Act 46. Can I give a show of hands of people who might be interested to speak to make a comment to the board? So far, we're going to be going to, you know, contain your right. Carl. Yeah, Carl. So, the board has adopted norms. The board has basically specified that we invite the public to comment after the board has had a discussion on any particular issue. So we're going to follow that tonight. I think that actually will probably be for your benefit. I was just trying to point out. We may touch on your address and issue or answer a question that we have. Yeah. Or maybe a new question board will be addressing to us. Talk. So I think it will be more efficient for you to be more effective if we follow that format. The other thing I want to mention is that we've purposely structured our agenda so that our Act 46 conversation comes at the end of our business agenda. And the reason for that is that we now have business we need to dispense with. And we leave that till the end and we will inevitably be in a crunch to try to get it done. So with our apologies, it does mean that you may be here a little bit longer. But I promise we'll try to explain this as fast as we can and get to the needed stuff that you're here to discuss. Are there any agenda provisions or comments? Don't be over here. Are there any signs of what I've just discussed and tried to organize? Are there any other public comments? Of course. And I should actually, I'm supposed to ask that we dedicate a time to you. Is there anybody who would be willing to serve the time? Laura, okay, that's awesome. So I will just sort of say what amount of time I think we should designate each item. And if we start to go beyond it, just shut us down. Would anyone like to move the minutes of the last three meetings, including Christy? Of course. Of course. Okay. Discussion? Just quickly, just the correction of my name. Just quickly, the spelling of my name is incorrect. So it starts with an I, not a Y. And I'm Matthew, not Matt. So I'm Matthew, not Matt. You do that, I am. There's no further discussion. All those in favor of improving the minutes of June 6th, June 20th, and August 2nd. All right. 3.1 budget. Thank you, Matthew. I think most of you have had this discussion in your local board meetings in August. And I've had it with the executive committee, but I thought we would just cover it again tonight and talk about the executive committee board. As you're all aware, the Supervisory Union starts to prepare budgets at the end of August beginning of September for the Supervisory Union Board to vote on usually in December, which is usually the first Wednesday of December. We are staying with our budget timelines after talking with each board and with the executive committee as well. This, in the next two weeks, the principals are receiving their budget binders and starting to develop budgets as we have every year. The things I think, and Matthew, I might get a little bit of a 3.2 here as well. And one of the things that's in your packet is a matrix of timelines of Act 46 budget process, Supervisory Union budget. And I think, and I forget which page that's on it on that note right here. But you would see on there that usually in October we act the local boards to give us direction. This is starting my seventh year, all but once, of all six boards. And I remember when there wasn't a direction to start with a level service budget across. So is there something different that you have for suggestion in preparing these budgets? We're doing it the way we have done it in previous years. Knowing that there's the issue that we're talking about tonight about what may happen with governance. We're starting, we would start from looking at each building anyway. So, and asking what is needed. So Lou will work that way. The thing I need to say for my colleagues are right, Lori. She works extremely hard and does a lot of work on these budgets. She's the main person that prepares those and supporting the principles. Looking at our work down the road. If there's something you think you need, please tell us at the beginning, not at the end or partway through the process. We can't do a lot of budget pieces this year. We just don't have the personnel time to do five, six, seven versions of budget. So if you think it's something that's needed, we're more than willing to do it. But it can't be a model this, model that, model this. So I'm just asking for some understanding of the governance. It's not that we don't want to do the work for you, we do. It's just the capacity and the hope we're looking at. There's a lot of business functions that have to be taken care of if we're looking more into a merger. We don't know that until after what the state board does. I just wanted to explain all that with time. If there's any questions that you'd like to answer about timeline, but we're working in our normal way we have every year. Are there any questions for Bill and Lori about the budget timeline? Do you want to speak a little more about the priorities of these trades? Yeah, I kind of alluded to that right now. The central office right now, we have many, many hours of overtime happening right now between servicing the budgets here and the change in healthcare, both by Blue Cross and by our data map. We've incurred a lot of expenses on that. Not only monetary and personnel time, but personnel stress. Again, we're willing to do what you need, but we're pretty strapped right now. We're doing a lot of different requests. And sometimes they're pretty innocent. He used himself at the executive board, so I'm going to go there. He asked a what he had question and thought it would be a few minute analysis. And when I told him it was about 15 hours worth of work between the principal and myself and Lori, I said, we can go do that. But I'd like to try to talk those out with you about the type of time that it takes. It was a question of what he had with the capital fund. And who wanted to spend the whole thing, which meant I had to go get an architect, to start doing some price estimates and all that to come back and say, you know, it's just, it puts a lot of work. It's a really good question. It's a fair question to be asking. And it's one of the boards should be asking. It's just the capacity to do all that. And I'll just kind of restate that and slide in the words. It's an extraordinary year. You know, all the work that the central office of the leadership team had to do. And it's typically a year plus the chaotic energy that was happening with Ag. 46. And other things besides. So these I could talk a little bit about, you know, the need to really try to minimize random or special requests to bill and leadership team at this time. But it's impossible to really give some thought and discuss. You really need this right now. Is this really a priority position? No. Negotiations. Students and negotiations. That's good. This is a time to say. Wow. And I think if you made members all agree that we would serve as the police on our respective boards. Thank you. And that was basically 3.2. Which was what I just said. 3.3. And... Matthew? Yeah. You would ask Florida to be a timekeeper. I know. You're going to go to the time. Yeah. So I don't know if you want to give her the time or you want to see how we get down there. I'm about to give her the time for this. Okay. So 3.3 is the school start time report. And we have five minutes to this. I hope that folks have had a chance to read. Is the work in the school start time committee... I'm doing for it. Oh, you are? Karen Bradley can't be here unfortunately. But you have the school start time report on page 27, I believe. The bottom line is no further action for this school year. There's enough chaotic energy as it is going on. At the same time, we're convinced that sleep is still a big problem for our students, especially at U32. Even though of maybe the big three physical well-being questions, hunger, we have a good food services program to cover that. Keeping students warm, dry, and safe. See for yourselves. But sleep, which is what we're specifically hoping the students do not do in school, is nevertheless something they do outside of school that has a huge impact on their performance in school. And it's a problem in high school that only gets worse when the students get into college. It's just deeply rooted in culture and use of technology and the scheduling of children's days and everything else. What we are really looking at is pursuing this on a very back burner basis with just an educational mode. I think Alison had a good term for this. Gentle education is what I recall her saying. We're just not going to cave this one onto an already straining system while keeping it alive, the awareness of the novel. There were a couple of suggestions that education activities would be done. Is there a mechanism that I read the report? I think the SD board has taken action? We don't, I mean, here I am kind of speaking a little bit from the hip. But I don't recall us seeing any action for the supervisory board. I think what would probably happen is that on the year 32 board, this might be a recurring topic of discussion. And at other boards as they submit were necessary. In that case, the charge and timeline for the school start time committee runs out this month. So there really is no action required for us in essence to table this issue as recommended by the committee. So are there any other comments or discussion on that? We'll go to 3.4, which is our policy committee chart. It's on page 28 of the packet. If you want to look at it. And, Mindy, I don't know if you wanted to speak to this briefly. As a policy committee. Florida with five minutes, I think. At our last meeting we realized in the past we haven't had a committee chair that just met and talked and determined that we needed to do that. And I got the honor of being the committee chair. And we put together a policy committee charge. We've been working together to update policies using the Vermont School Board Association's model policy so that we're a little more in line across the schools with policies that are required, recommended, and to be considered. And we've gone through the required ones. We've been working on the recommended ones at this point. And then according to our charge, the last thing would be to look at all the policies that are left at our local school districts to see if they're still relevant or were they superseded by these recommended and required ones through the BSBA. So our charge, we have an order that's going down the line of that as a committee. And there's a representative from each board on that through the policies that we were bringing forward. That's up to you. Or you can speak to the link at the action also. Okay, probably. So when you ask the policy committee to suggest a charge for the committee, is this what they came back with? Would you take discussion or a motion? I just have a question about the part of the charge that has to do with identifying individual policies held at local schools and extending them at the SQ board level. If you could just talk a little bit more about what that actually would mean and look like. I'm sorry. That was put in there because there are binders at the local schools with things that haven't been dealt with since the 70s, 80s, and 90s and possibly or most likely are out of date or they've been superseded by the recommended and the required ones that we've been working on. And so to go through all these local binders and make sure that there isn't a policy from 20 years ago that would cause confusion down the line if we adopted one and not rescinded an old one. Yes. I have a question about whether you have any review of the statutes to the power of the SU to actually adopt policies and then rescind policies of local boards. Because my understanding of the way the statutes work is that there isn't expressive power given to local boards to develop policies, but there is none in statute given to the supervisor using the board to develop policies. It's very confusing. Phil and I have talked to him about it before. It's never been straightened out and I'm just wondering if that came up in any of your conversations. It did not. What we were discussing was revealing all of these in order to bring it to the life of local boards because there's so many old ones on there that they would then redone and then whatever we bring to policies, they come to this board, but if they were local ones, they'd go to the local board. So maybe that's the answer to the question that Charney was asking. I think I understood what she was asking. She was basically saying it's still the local boards that are going to have to take the final move to rescind the policy in order to move it to the top. That would be my understanding at this point. I guess I would suggest on that basis a small amendment to the power of language that would need to strike the last five words, which is to supervise a new board and then just put as needed, then instead leading up to the policy committee and to the entity in the question, how to dispense with American language. I'm not sure we're still on the same page because I do agree that at the policy committee that we said anything that needed to be rescinded needed to be done out of both of the schools, but how they can be passed out is at this point. From my understanding, the superintendent can work that way. The locals would, if I'm speaking to the UN, if the Worcester board adopted a policy 20 years ago, they'd most likely should be the one to rescind it if the SG wants to adopt a policy for all the boards. I'm pretty sure they can. I haven't gotten that overview of it, which is about it. I think that suggesting the change that I recommended addresses the inconsistency in the charged language, I think the policy committee is free to operate that way. Do you want to bring it to the SG board so that it's on everyone's radar? That's fine, but which entity needs to rescind which policy? Yes, Rick. Isn't this almost a mood? I mean, with consolidation, essentially, your local entities basically cease to exist. That's kind of the way the whole direction of governance is going, which bothers me immensely. I mean, this is my opinion, this is community business. I believe in continuity across the union, but I mean, after July 1st, assuming that we have consolidation formed upon us, I mean, this all basically becomes a duty that consolidated board, correct? I believe so. I mean, it's a question that comes up with a lot of things, but this is something we started to address back in the spring and wanted to get in place. Here we are. We don't know what's going to happen either. Matthew, short of an actual vote in trying to amend this on the floor, would the policy committee be amenable to having heard the discussion that the first, the two sentences, the first sentence is fine and makes sense and just asks them to consider the discussion and some of the uncertainty expressed tonight and just reword that last sentence and then bring it forward after the next meeting. Sure. It's a fine way to proceed. That is going to be your course of action. I wonder, I think I read this in the minutes that you were talking about the rule of the policy committee helping policies that are consistent with each other if not identical. I just wondered if there was a reason that that wasn't included in the charge. It seemed like an important part of the purpose of the policy committee and so I wondered if you're going back to amend this if you might want to include that in the charge so it's clear that that's part of why the policy committee exists. We could add that. I thought the words provided by the BSBA shows that continuity because we're using their language but we could make it clear. Okay, over those, yeah, we're over time so with those suggestions, we'll table this issue until our next meeting and look forward to the policy committee's you know, recommendation at that time. So we're going to move on to 3.5 which is the WCSE Board Retreat Review and the next steps and we've got 15 minutes for this one. So we'll start with a review of the retreat and I think most of the district boards have already had discussions flowing out of the retreat about what we heard, what our opinions are, what some actions we might consider and result in various different kinds of things. I've participated in some of those discussions. They were very active ones for the most part but we want to provide time for the SU Board to weigh in. This is the first time that we've met since that retreat so if anyone has observations or comments or thoughts on the retreat itself, was it valuable at the event and then also, you know, regarding the content, five minutes or about that, we intend to talk to you about it. So being a former chair, we've frequently chastised board members for lack of participation. I would like to commend the school board members for a lot of participation. I was very impressed and I just wanted to share that. The only other brief comment I'll make, I know there has, in my understanding, there's been a fair amount of discussion around guarantees and I would encourage boards to think very carefully if they're going to guarantee what it is they are going to guarantee. It's about guaranteeing what hope comes for students that's the specific thing we're talking about. Boards might make specific guarantees on what's going to happen with students. Other thoughts or observations coming out of the retreat? I thought the keynote speaker was excellent and spoke just better utilizing resources and looking at the way we operate and what we could actually really improve. It was very eye-opening for me. It was interesting seeing they come from very large school systems which aren't comparable in many ways, but you could also see that there were a lot of things that could really be adapted to our system, I think, quite effectively. I think it was a well-spent day. From my observation, there were some really positive conversations in place at our board and, as I understood, in place at other boards from the takeaways of this retreat. I don't know the right word. The puzzle's not the right word, but to hear about the plan for budgeting for this upcoming year, we're all talking about level service budgets. And I guess is that are we currently meeting sort of the objectives of what we took away from that retreat and individual boards and so perhaps that's the level service is fine, but I don't know, I guess I feel like if momentum was to be built out of that, we might see some movement in how we do our budgets and I understand the landscape of time and energy and resources right now, but because I just wanted to at least put that out there for people to consider. I'll just comment on that briefly. I think the original timeline, suggested timeline that we laid out for goal number two was to try to have a goal around student learning outcomes that we could agree on by December or so and make sure that we were widening accordingly, you know, resources for that goal. It's a little bit late actually in the budget process for that because the budgeting is already starting now. I think that there is my sense of the meetings that I attended is that there's some appetite for advancing the discussion on this, figuring out what's possible and what's appropriate and seeing if we can get somewhere where that's as big as I can be, I guess. Just to summarize, I think people were really interested in the idea it seems to me, most people were interested in the idea of first of all, making commitments to improve student learning outcomes or asking that of the leadership team to come back to us with recommendations and suggestions for how to do that. But there's also some concern, particularly around the word guarantee and what does that mean? Does that put us at a tricky spot essentially? You know, in aspiration idealistic aspirational goal and scalbinizing I think the jury is still out and sort of where we come down is a group on that question. If the board has reviewed the memo from the members of the School Quality Committee which is in the packet on page 29 I think most people know that the School Quality Committee has really been looking at this issue for several months already but they examine kind of what data we have available, what it's telling us what we don't know and would like to know what the data may be suggesting we need to do better and these kinds of things. And so this group you know, recommended that we might consider at our October itself meeting asking the leadership team to report back to us on how are we aligned with some of the best practices or ideas that we heard about during the retreat if not where are we not and then some suggestions on how we might be able to be more aligned with those or make better commitments around student learning. I know that this is a priority for Bill I also know that it's a lot of work and a lot of time to do that kind of thing so you know, just being cognizant of the priorities and workload issue that we talked about earlier I think that also has to factor. I don't think there's anything else that we need to do nor do we talk more about it but I think the plan the plan of people are not nobody objects is to have this on our agenda for the October and take up the discussion of what we should be doing maybe ask for the leadership teams input on this too. The question of the guarantee is actually a very lively discussion on the board a couple of meetings ago and what we really grappled with was are we willing to make the statement of the guarantee which carries with it a certainty, a commitment a advocating to putting resources behind that guarantee I suspect not every board would would define guarantee the same way but this may be an area where certain boards have different not aspirations but aspirations with a guarantee that just may differ over time so I would just encourage people to have a very detailed conversation about that have community members really discuss that whether they are willing to stand behind a board saying we guarantee this particular result and are willing to commit the resources to achieve it because most folks see a guarantee as a certainty but it's also an aspiration and if we're using that type of language we should really mean it so it's a great discussion to have because it really does cause us as boards and the administration to really step up and pursue a specific purpose and just so it's clear the guarantee was for literacy a degree of literacy at third grade and a degree of numerosity by fourth grade so it wasn't a guarantee that everything would be beautiful but it was very specific in terms of goals that are foundational building foundational points in learning I just want to clarify too so the school quality committee didn't have a quorum at our last meeting but Brian, Harry and I were there and we did talk about the guarantee question from the perspective of the school quality committee I think the idea of guarantees is still an idea and some of those ideas that were floating after a treaty are ideas that we feel like we would want to learn a lot more about before the three of us as individuals would want to be promoting those or encouraging boards to adopt them for example could there be unintended negative consequences of adopting a particular guarantee because of the way that that would drive source allocation and prioritization and push some things to the sidelines and we would really want to hear from we really want to hear a lot more about what that looks like and how other districts have used guarantees in ways that have overall been positive for the learning outcome than not have unintended negative consequences so all of that is still in the hypothetical range and hearing from our leadership team and identifying what we do know about how guarantees have worked and what we don't know about how they have worked I think would be a really important first step along to the sidelines if you're really interested in making sure that we discuss exactly how we are going to measure literacy and numeracy so what test the quality committee was looking at what testing test is the right word what measurements we have available to us to evaluate more clearly what it is we're considering a guarantee upon I would say the bill I don't want to put you on the spot but I feel like the input of the leadership team on this is really critical I guess I wouldn't want to ask in a way if you would report or something but just we're going to talk about that in the end I think that the what we took away from was our recommendation was to look at the leadership team to we could provide some frameworks some sort of aspirational goals or just more 30,000 foot goals but we would look at the leadership team to really drive what it was and how to tell us some questions how it would be measured we have a discussion amongst the leadership team we don't have a full ever client to be honest with that we're still trying to figure out what that would look like to us and what that means that Allison is right on point what are the measures but it's not one measure it's multiple measures we'll be talking about this next month when we look at the student data and you want multiple points of measures so I think there's I think there's an appetite for the leadership team to talk about the priorities in our system and that's really what I think Nate was getting at less of the words guaranteed but more it's set of priorities you can't say everything this is what I took away from what he said you try to do everything you think it's hard to do something for me one of the biggest standouts and takeaways from the presentation and also was phenomenal and I also want to say Lisa's right on in the minutes is incredible and it's worth taking a walk down through the minutes because you really get a pretty complete field for what we all experienced and it's an excellent speaker but she did a really good job of just doing it down the takeaway one of the big takeaways was to do more and so talking about budgeting it didn't have it wasn't in a way that we were going to come and say we kill a lot more money to do these other things it was really an internal reflection of how we do things and re-prioritizing and reallocating inside of the presentation I just wanted to say for general public talking about the treaty itself was about best practices of how to be the achievement of our study technically raising the achievement of our students and the one thing that I want to say for all of us I've seen this more as an opportunity not even as what we're using right now what are your guarantees and what are other schools what are we doing as a whole and what the leadership team is telling us so I saw a lot of opportunities that we could take and the word to me guarantees kind of scares me a little bit so I would like to talk more about the course direction and CMR's opportunities rather than I really appreciate the point I was saying because I can but the word guarantees kind of excites me but that's the conversation while I'm coming back to a different place so the school quality committee I know will continue sorry I was I did not attend the treaty that I was able to see in our video in the intermediate minutes and I agree that they were fantastic I guess I'm really cautioned against treating Nate Levison's material as the last word in past practices as you may or may not know he was he does not have a classroom experience and there were certain ethical issues that he experienced and I would so all that said I think he had a lot of really great points but I would caution us to not solely rely but also to tap the credible hundreds of collective experience that we have in our classrooms in terms of setting those priorities the school quality committee will continue to discuss this I guess we'll put on an agenda for our October meeting I think they're consenting that there's an appetite to discuss it and try to again advance the conversation and I guess I'm just asking whatever if the leadership team does not have bandwidth that's fine but if you do then we appreciate any guidance or anything in our last meeting we talked about that's part of what our October student minor reports in the back about the same Nate wasn't presenting his work he was presenting work of other as he said it's really a line of multi-tiered system supports which has been a cornerstone of educational best practice for the past 10 or 15 years and that was really the system he was pushing towards and that's the work we've been doing so we'll show it to them as the leadership team did that day right on the spur of the moment so we're at 3.6 I'm going to suggest that we try to dispense with our action item 544 which is the first meeting of the policies we've listed here so anyone going to move those policies to sleep? so moved second moved second discussion I like the discussion we just had when it says we send from the policies C2 the question comes with this board has the authority to we send a from the policy so I'm very excited this question and we're going to ask that we remove that we're going to remove that out of this slate of policies and we have a clear answer on that question did you let me know where you're looking at this is 5.4 oh shoot I'm going to take the money can I need to the rescue? thank you thank you my pleasure there's no clarity there's not anything to rescind there's nothing to rescind there's only first reading of SU policies as listed there's a procedural question for me is that if these are first reads and I was assuming that all boards were at their local level then rescinding local policies that might reflect whatever the ordinance with these policies is that the case or is it just our board? looking at all the agendas which I have right in front of me Brian there on all the board so my next question is that this is a first read these policies don't go into effect at this read but if we rescind policies at our local board tonight are we going to be a limbo with some of these policies there are no policies in fact in place so the policy on policies we just comment across all six boards and I should say all seven is that on one read you may adopt policies if the board so chooses our practice is usually two and if there aren't any big technical changes on the second to go right to adoption we're just trying to do the piece of the policy committee have been charged to do to bring these things apart and these were pieces of game straight so I guess perhaps a young one is being asked before tonight to do whether we are if this is a first read order so far the motion on the table is to approve the first reading of these policies so they would not be adopted unless the motion were amended to I am hesitant to try to move quickly I don't have any problem with any of these but our common practice is to approve on the second read and what I might suggest to the local board chairs is they table the action item if there's any rescinding of local board policies in their meeting tonight to table that until after the second read order from what I read on there's nothing like that's crucial if we don't put something in place before the next full board are there any questions for the policy committee or any other comments about hearing none are you doing that is this an opportunity to ask questions about any policies for us ok so this is 118 the notice of non-discrimination but I guess what I was curious to know is I remember this came up in conversations that we had at our board that went around the building use policy and issues around discrimination and legal access to the building discussion around what happens if any group for example wants to use the building here as I'm reading this and this is not law is not my area of expertise I understand in this first sentence that we cannot rescind me in that way and so what I was curious is that if that's the case does how does this policy interact with the potential building use policy where we might want it there might be a desire to have control over who has access to the building based on the values the school might have I'm not a lawyer but the lawyers that are here but I think the key term is unlawfully discriminating you can lawfully discriminate so it's safety if there's a safety concern those types of things so it doesn't completely tie me down so ok deal with it the example you give Brian the town of Stowe went through last year and while many residents in the town did not I don't remember the exact group but I'm actually glad I don't but it was a group that is questionable as to whether how many people would be supportive or not in the town but wanted to use the high school at Stowe to hold a rally and the district had to provide to the building to use it because they do it to other groups and so there wasn't one where a judgment could be made by the board or the district administration and you could it went through some legal review I don't have all of it and I love it so I can't give you any more particulars than that and I couldn't get into a conversation about what about this, what about that for the law I just know that Stowe went through something like that and they had to allow use of the building Yeah, there was also public protests and other things in the law there so yes, a lot of free speech Right, and I think to open the building up to groups and discrimination based on a little bit of a few points and I think Alan would be able to speak to that pretty well but I think it's because we're public institutions And then you have a comments question and they were approving the motion the first reading of these policies Hi Just a brief update on Twinfield Maybe I can do the background and you can say the correct status Sure At the August meeting the Executive Committee asked Bill and myself to reach out to the Twinfield Supervisory School District Thank you very much The School District about just having a conversation with an interest in exploring or openness to possibility of looking at opportunities for how we collaborate, coordinate improve opportunities for students Of course, there's a backdrop of is there some cause for discussing developing a closer partnership So we reached out to their Board Chair and to the Superintendent I had two meetings with them attending one of their board meetings Their Board Chair and Superintendent attended our Executive Committee meeting at the very end of August So those conversations are ongoing Yes We're watching northeast since it's a place where their Supervisory will be dissolved as of the end of this school year We're looking for a place for their two School Districts Cabin and Twinfield Executive Committee authorized to talk about the Twinfield School District We are meeting this Friday for our first meeting and looking for other dates Steven Lowe Scott Thompson and Cara Bradley and myself are working with Patrick Healy and Mark Tucker They're looking for another Board Member but as of yesterday, I still didn't have another Board Member to join the conversation So we're meeting then and this first meeting is about exchanging data a lot of what we've looked at through the 706B process and what they have and what are the possible opportunities and they're meeting tonight with the very Supervisory because the state plan will be placed either toward the Washington Central Court or very Supervision State Board has rights to redraw Supervisory unions outside of Act 46 as its statute and can review that when need be So I also just thought just to emphasize that these conversations are extremely exploratory nobody's authorized to take any actions it's just kind of trying to figure out what the school system's underlying and what are some of the strengths and weaknesses Questions or discussion about that on the 3.6.2 review of the draft and default articles officially set to 10 minutes for this We'll take a look on the after the agenda and the packet I'd just like to know if you'd like to grab one of the packets that's being offered here we'll take that feedback and do a calendar and we'll try to correct for that if anybody else able to give up copy for these folks because I'll we'll do another review on the review first okay so review of the draft and default articles I'm going to assume that folks at least have a chance to skim at least for being the summary I would just want to have these not to sort of dig deeply into the full documents I really my only sort of objective in approaching this part was to offer an opportunity for board members to comment or ask more, request more information or things like that I really didn't have a presentation we didn't include the summary which I think hits most of the ceiling in highlights and then we have the information on the course before this one but that said are there comments or questions requesting more information is there going to be a group a committee working on this or is it going to happen in the full the executive committee when it put this on the agenda basically noted that this would be a complicated document with a lot of women parts and deadlines and so yeah the point was that the discussion would be that we would try to charge a committee to dig into that more deeply and come back to us in October with our specific recommendations of the project this is just for perspective's sake when the U-32 high school union was formed about 50 years ago the articles of agreement took up not even a single page now as you can see those of you who have copies the today's 50 years later articles represent a huge either advance or retreat depending on your point of view in organizational and administrative complexity so I'm I just am amused by things like that other comments here I don't understand these things very well but I had two questions one was about the restructuring of the piece of the debt it seemed like every school was sold to the new district for one dollar and all the properties associated with it I was really surprised that it wasn't more like a business merger where each each company is evaluated and given a specific value and then you kind of buy a new company so I was very surprised by that and I would like a little more information as to what that might mean for each school additionally so that's section then there was also article 3 the attendance I was not sure if the paragraph stating that you could request a different school was are we working towards school choice in the district I did not think that was the plan previously but after being as I wasn't sure I would say that we have not discussed that or put them on the table as an item for consideration by our board it's just a clause that the agency of the state board included in the default articles I don't know if they're rational for doing that but they do make it something to approval by what would be the new union district board in the superintendent I believe that's all that I really know I think it was trying to say I think it was a clause that was in that article Matthew that was trying to say keep your grade configurations the students you served the same for two years but we're not going to lock you into that if there's a good rationale for a student to move from one building to another so I think they were trying to have a little bit of an out there and I don't know if I'm going to ask about that but that's the way I interpreted that and can I ask her one question about what she asked for because I'm going to be one responsible for the analysis can you explain more what you meant about an analysis of not having a one I know how I might interpret it but I'm not sure it's the same as what you were saying so if you can restate the first part where you said you wanted some pieces about the transfer of assets I mean that I would think of this as a business transaction and we have six businesses that are all going to become one and so were this a more obvious business transaction each of those businesses would be evaluated and the values would be taken into account and so let's say one business's worth $5,000 and one's worth $10,000 we'll have a one that's worth $10,000 has to buy in so in some way accounting for the difference in what they are selling for $1 that seems stark just wanted to be clear that's what I assumed but that can be done yeah and the build on that too the idea that the school has then returned back to the municipality at some point for a dollar when in fact the town has paid for that structure and now a value has been used that school has been used by the consolidated group for 10 years there is a dollar amount of value lost in that and investment at that point that the town then has to make and an aging structure that probably hasn't been made if a decision was made to get rid of the school you know for long term on the capital side so there's an inequity there I mean in general as you know as a general comment on these I am incredibly disappointed with our legislator legislature I am incredibly disappointed with the AOE and you know the lack of respect to the municipalities through this multi-year conversation and the hundreds of people just in our district that have been involved with developing alternatives and kind of coming up with options that would kind of work for us and basically we've gotten they've listed with the intent of taking that information doing something productive it has been used into block those pieces essentially we've ended up we're ending up with a messier of government so we've got significant times out of sight I think it's going to be to talk about sort of what our approach to the statewide plan is going to be I think a lot of issues like the one years away that will come up in that conversation but to tie this up I think again the sense of the executive committee was it was quite complicated we needed a dedicated group both of these were defined to come they trip and we understand everything that's in it and you know come up with a list of the questions we've already asked I think we'll also come up with other questions potentially that we want to relay to the state board and the agency so anyone want to pose a motion to establish in the article 14 it's on page 51 page 23 of the article under the process for amending articles of agreement it has a statement that after the state board of education issues the statewide plan then districts subject to murder shall have 90 days to form a committee with members appointed in the same manner and number as required for a study committee under 16 BSA chapter 11 and which shall draft articles of agreement for the new district during this period of time the committee shall hold at least one public hearing to consider and take comments on the draft article of agreement and so too if the committee's articles are not approved within the 90 day period then the provisions in the state board should fall articles of agreement included in the statewide plan shall apply to the new district what that says here is that there is an opportunity for the members of the new district to draft their own articles of agreement and get them to the voters for an approval it has to occur within 90 days after the statewide plan comes out and I urge all of the local boards to appoint a member to what will essentially be in other semesters of the study group of agreement yeah I think this language is pretty clear but it has timelines that say if this isn't done then the fault articles which these are I think these are the fault articles will grab the fault articles but the fault articles nonetheless will go into effect so I think there is a superb opportunity for the new entity to draft its own articles of agreement and get them to the voters for approval can I just respond to that game before just that note was stating there are certain things in the fault articles that are so until the law, state law can't be amended or can't be changed so I think they would there should be automatic articles correct that would be my comment because there is none in the same I'm sorry my reading of this is that we can form a committee we can draft articles of agreement but they have to conform to the content that's laid out herein so if there is language that's specified and if there is an article either by the new board or by just my reading of it I agree of course do you have any also there are two names for the groups there's the initial transitional and then the initial and the transitional group is composed of two people from each town who are the current chair and the current clerk sorry two people from each school social community who are the current chair who are the current chair and the current clerk and my question is what if it just happens in one of our six current districts, the current chair or current clerk are not the people who want to be a member of that transitional board is it like right now we go to change our chair or clerk or how do we have an option because it sounds like that's just wrong so there's two things the first is that it has to be the chair and the clerk as of July 1st 2018 the date is specified the second thing is there's no provision in the document for if someone is unable or unwilling to serve there's no provision for what happens I think we should default to remember my patrols wouldn't replace any board members my guess because I don't think it's I just don't know so I have to ask the board members and I need to be rude on this but you really need mics it is hardly here 10 feet from you in this room so please just pause we'll give the mics to you, Gloria's servicing that side I'm servicing this side my comment was that I think you would just default to whatever private patrols or whatever apply to board members I don't think the law affords a vacuum do you have any place in that Allen so I've read these articles, believe it or not, three times and each time I see something different which is really scary but one of the things that is driving me more than anything else is that we are about to see a huge fundamental change possibly in the way our schools will be better and it's not six months away, your way it's not even four months away it could be as close as two months away we will start on a path towards becoming obsolete all of us here as the boards we represent if the board issues a order in November that says we have to merge we will have until July 1st of next year to have a new union district formed according to the rules some of which cannot be changed through our government we will have to have a new board in place who will have developed the budget and who we as five towns will have voted on for the start of the school year July 1st next year 2019 I mean this is one of the most rapid transitions I think I've ever seen the state government ask anybody to do and I worry about all of it it really feels like a titanic and we look out the window and report all and there's an iceberg there and we can't really order tomorrow supper we have to really think what we're going to do next really quickly and I'm really worried that we're not prepared for what's about to happen I'm not suggesting we can be prepared but I think we can start looking at some very specific issues that I know from my town's perspective I really worry about one of the things we've been talking about is the transfer of assets property and I don't know if you realize but the transfer of assets includes all the cash assets as well so if you have a fund balance if you have anything in any sort of reserve fund that's all going to be assumed as of June 30th or July 1st 2019 for my town potentially we would be giving just about half of our total municipal budget in terms of the value of the asset of our reserves if that's what happens and that's that's a big chunk of money and I don't think my town I'm guessing your town's didn't go to spend that money on a new district I think we voted to have the money spend in this sort of domain or what not I'm not trying to be parodial about this I'm just saying that as a voter voted for a school budget back in March we voted for very specific things very specific places to spend it and I'm really worried how people in my town are going to react to that if they have to essentially have $170,000 given over to this new consolidated district and for other districts that can't look at your balance sheets it's much more and I think we all agree that this comes to pass there isn't a solidation in the long run we are going to be pulling all these funds but we're sort of stuck right now between the way we have been operating and how we're about to be forced to operate and it's not very pretty the pace is just amazingly fast and I think a lot of us are going to really be scratching our heads wondering where the train is going because it could be really moving down the tracks very quickly so I just want to point out I think things out that our time is rather the other way there are probably 25 different topics that we can spend an hour talking about we can spend 25 hours talking about different aspects of drafting for our agreement with Ziggs but we can't really expect specific things we can do specific questions we need to answer it seems urgent and then if there is a strong feeling we need to have a larger and more broad-ranging conversation about a wide variety of things I really think that we're going to have to think about scheduling another meeting with this board because that's the only way we can do it we can't sort of piggyback hours long discussions on our WCSU board business meetings so I really am hoping that we can move on to a couple of these things and get to a really critical question that we'll see and I know it's hard for people people are worried and concerned and interested and have a lot of things to say but I'm hoping that we can keep those off the table and we need to we'll schedule another meeting so Stephen I'd like to bring us back to the agenda and the discussion because some of the questions that have been posed here if we establish a subcommittee on the statewide plan they can be doing that or offline answering questions like is there a way for the current clerk and the current chair to have someone else and several of the other questions in my mind I think it's crucial that we form a group to do that work and I would really like to bring us back to that item first before we move on to other questions and discussions so I'll make a motion we establish a subcommittee to review the statewide plan the draft the statewide plan is not going to cheat yet I'm sorry draft articles that agree with is there a second? I think Stephen said review the draft articles I think at this point it would be to review in the neighborhood report back in October certainly it wouldn't be restrictive to just reviewing them if they had a recommendation on how it might be worded I think I think that would be to supervise your union board that we do entertain any specifics this is just a clarifying question so from the action agenda there's an item that says established subcommittee on the statewide plan so I first I just want to say which I appreciate all of the thinking and work that went into getting ready for this meeting and many of us are really leaning on those of you who have put in countless hours to help us be more prepared and understand this a little bit better but I wonder if you all think especially maybe folks from the executive committee could share your thinking about what a subcommittee might do or two subcommittees I'll do my best I think it's a lot of what we're doing we have done a little bit tonight and this meeting is just to point out I'm not sure we understand this and there are some parts of the draft agreement that don't really seem to agree with each other, to align with each other to the earlier point not really sure of the people under meaning of what they're doing if they're interpreting those statutes and their authority correctly so I think it's first of all just reviewing practically speaking what really are we looking at here every piece of it and we can give feedback to the state board so if there are questions we have, recommendations we want to make if we do that if there are articles that we can anticipate time frames are very short so can we get an early jump on anticipating if we wanted to amend an article if we wanted to try to make a change what would that be if anybody could make it we're on an incredibly short timeline here when we've been shoved down into this funnel with these things we're talking about discussing articles and I agree Chris we actually need to be preparing but I think what we should actually be doing there is nothing on this agenda that's more important than this issue this group ceases to exist in a very few months essentially and we're being I actually think we should be looking we are the people that are driving these are our communities we are our kids and I think we should be looking at what we can do to fight back I mean this is a legislature in the AOE out of control at the state school board and I'm sorry Matt don't cut me off on this this is the essence of what people are here for probably and we need we have an item on the agenda for this we're trying to get to it we also have a motion on this table I have one question about the motion do we specify how the committee would be comprised how many people would move I don't know my answer would be no but best practices might suggest we do that so I would not hearing a friendly amendment but I heard one that said each board would be a member to this committee one person from each board open for discussion I think that we should consider whichever if each board decides who since you just said proposed transition board members if each board were to decide who the transition board members would be I think we should consider having the transition board members also be the ones who evaluate these things ahead of time the process would probably make it easier for the transition board members to do their job I think that's a great suggestion I think at the local board there's a point that's going to be at their discretion I appreciate the I would suggest that the that we have a number that are voters but then others can't participate because if we're looking at the transition board as the current chair and clerk as of July 1 there may be others who are interested in participating and have the skill and knowledge to participate in drafting what are basically governance audit articles and my hope is that the group would be crafting articles of agreement that would reflect the variety of the towns and would include in those articles issues that are very important to particular towns even though they may not be important to all of the towns so that would be the hope of having a broad range of individuals from the different towns just so all of those issues and concerns are at least addressed somehow so has there been an amendment? we've been working on that just now I just need a read back I see you can move to create a subcommittee to review the draft article for agreement and report to us with here's the final amendment with one member to be appointed from each district school board Chris, anyone who come to the meetings they'd be open meetings so anybody I'll second that can you accept it alright so I'm interested in all the questions alright let's do that all those in favor of approving the establishment of subcommittee please say aye aye the executive committee intended to do the same whether it's to establish a subcommittee specifically to examine the issue of debt and indebtedness because that one really has been formed our size all the way along it's particularly complicated there's been some work done but I think we just want to make sure that we leave those stone unturned they really have exhausted every possible avenue or option on this so that was why that was why we put this up thanks in the agenda packet I made you read a number of pages that I think are overtaken by events and in particular pardon me, by apology we have these letter I've essentially come to the conclusion that there is no solution to our debt problem under current law and even with the effort that was made by the legislature in 2017 to create what I refer to as an emergency parachute earlier by an ability to transfer assets and viabilities from school districts to towns and municipalities evidently that doesn't fly because the towns were not given the complimentary authorization to receive that property from school districts so essentially well, we're screwed if I may put it in the vernacular the treatment of this issue in the state plan is not very helpful because essentially this situation sets up a new merge district for failure the states the agency of education's approach to the debt problem was basically debt problem what debt problem? I don't see any debt problem this is an approach that actually works surprisingly well in government except when the thing that you're pretending doesn't exist happens to be arithmetic so it's inescapable it comes to an newly merged district as a kind of you know original sin that would be very difficult to overcome I'm just trying to I don't think there's a opinion there about whether we form a committee or not I don't think it's worth it so your comment is that you don't think it's worth it to form a committee because the issue has already been exhaustively examined and tested is that more or less right? I really don't want to suggest that I'm the last word on the debt issue there are plenty of people who are a lot smarter than I am but and I think actually the agency of education are those people they understood from the very beginning there was no solution which is why whenever throughout our years long attempts at working with the legislature to get a solution tenaciously against those that legislation undoubtedly here I am my hypothesis is that because it does represent a defect in the concept that acknowledging the defect would create political problems for the marketing of the pollution does anyone want to speak in favor of or establishing a committee on debt or so Scott I think frequently I support favor in the subcommittee on it I agree with everything Scott has said it's not encouraging the feedback we've got thus far is not encouraging however if there's movement forward and we merge this in my mind is the one issue that has to be resolved differently even though it's mandated it has to be resolved differently than what's being required and as you alluded to Matthew we have to make sure we exhaust every single possible approach even if that goes against legal advice that we proceed to force an issue I think it's incumbent upon us to do everything we can possibly do to come to a resolution that's as fair as possible and I don't think the current article for agreement on debt is as fair as it can possibly be I have one more comment about that and she was saying that instead of asking a lawyer whether someone turned in a way of handling the debt issue it's legal to not instruct an attorney to come up with a way that will work and if it involves enabling legislation I'm sure the legislature will be admirable so I agree with Stephen that even though Scott's done a lot of work that we should have a committee so that they if the debt is not a distraction of the committee that is doing that is the articles of agreement too that there's somebody working on the debt I can't see Allison Matthew may I get something with the board sorry what I said with the boards that are coming but on the same side just to clarify if when we vote on this motion we'll at the end of the discussion the consolidation will be going to the request for we're going to move on to that okay at long last so by the way you're looking at Matthew I think Rick said something very profound last week in the executive committee on this issue and that's looking at the current asset values it's a similar place where Allison was going earlier what are the current asset values of the different districts it's the way some districts have been able to work their way and look at the debt and look at the current repair level of all then capital structure of all the districts and looking at that piece and I think if there were a committee to do the debt I think it would be more expanded to what are the assets and liabilities just not the debt and to understand the current value of each entity I would like to make a motion to support that committee that is there any further discussion hearing none of those in favor of establishing the subcommittee that the sheet will be sat in those amendments 3.64 which is the one local board meeting at 7.50 I don't know how we hear this I have this question some patients we need to have a discussion about this we also need to leave time we'll shoot for 7.45 30 minutes we're going to set aside 24 minutes for more discussion I'm going to ask people to speak for 90 seconds at a time about 15 people just to why are we what is this question why did the executive committee want to bring it we're saying that we're united in our principle of opposition to a forced merger nor unanimous in that opposition as well but we may differ to what lengths we are willing to go to contest a forced merger that seems like an important question it's one that was brought to the floor this month by a request to Washington Central to join yet unspecified the question to contest a forced merger so that's the question in general it's to what lengths are we going to go to contest this and the specific question is what is the SU board's opinion about joining a legal action to contest I'm probably going to want to step out of my moderator role have my 90 seconds I'll just go 6 so that there's no need to last I'm just saying please I think we should deal with this as a supervisory and at least comment on it it's uh we have unanimously made a decision and I know that we're in different places and there are different people that have different feelings and that's okay what is really being the challenge here is who is making the decisions I mean we are the the governance is about us these schools are about us these are our kids our tax dollars and they impact our communities and yet we are in the act of not in the act of kind of delivering into the hands of the bureaucracy the decision making we are losing our power here we need to oppose this and I think we use every tool in our fingertips to do this and this is a viable option it won't cost us a lot of money and you know there are real questions of legality involved with many pieces of this legislation and by god I think this is an opportunity for us to fight back I think it's an obligation for us to do that it's good a few weeks ago Rick and Reuben were arguing heatedly at Willow Mines about this and Reuben said as we were moving away we swore an oath to uphold the law and I thought to myself damn that's the best argument I've heard for supporting the lawsuit actually no that's not where you're headed with it but that you're a responsible citizen so you read the news which slapped the anti act 46 label on this lawsuit it's not anti act 46 it's just the contrary in fact this whole lawsuit is completely consonant with the instructions that the supervisory union board it's given floor Matthew and me to defend our alternative governance proposal what we're doing with this is defending the rule of law it's not about whether merger is a good idea or not it's about whether we all observe the law in its integrity and not in some dismembered version where major sections are locked off at the arbitrary caprice of the agency of education and I think it's especially important for people who believe in merger to support the lawsuit because if we can get merge at gunpoint it will be a failure since my name was brought up obviously I have a different view so I'm going to say my piece of the lawsuit first the way that I look at this this is our taxpayer dollars fighting our taxpayer dollars in the court of law it's a soap I think it's a colossal waste of time and energy that should be otherwise spent and I think at the end of the day it's going to be like a divorce where the new parents waste all of the assets of the entire marital property and nothing but trauma is left at the end and that would be correction so I'm going to turn to a completely different topic because every argument that I have heard against this this argument comes from a place of fear and mistrust and that definitely bothers me we all send our kids together in the same school in seventh grade there is no mistrust amongst the communities that are going to see our school run we all trust each other we all are great communities we're all doing the right things by our kids there's not going to be a cash cloud at least one player isn't going to take your capital fund and go spend it on playground equipment you know so I would encourage all of us to take a breath and step away from the overheated rhetoric that we're all hearing on all sides and understand that at the end of the day everybody in all of the towns want the same thing and this will work out okay do you want to check? yeah let's go I just want to go ahead Laurie I personally think that we have made a really good case in front of the state board and the question I want to put back to you is what is the reason to make up our mind premature to join these losses why can't we wait until the state board meditation tells us what they want us to do I think that prematurely you're not going to be sending them and saying no the only reason to join the losses right now would be to let the lawyers know how many clients they're going to have and at the end if we have to retreat it doesn't make us look good either way so I would really urge us to not to not do this ahead of time to wait and to continue to work together to figure out all of these questions to really put our time there's two committees that are creating right now and wait until that time comes so that we can better understand why we would be joining a lawsuit and it would be beneficial to us at all thanks Jordan I really think we need to join the lawsuit the five towns work very hard to work together as best as we could and at the end some people some of the towns didn't really want to join to do the alternative governance structure but they realize it was best for our communities to not be divided and to come together we need to take this last step there are several things we decided we worked together and we need to take this last step together it's not going to cost us anywhere near the kind of time we're talking about having a committee to work on the articles of agreement it's not going to take us any any huge amount of money the thing that worries me most about if the town if the state it's not the one thing it's a thing that worries me right now if the state on November 30 says that our communities must be merged the world will know that the callous and Worcester tax rates are going up unbelievably how many houses in those towns will be sold how many people will want to move to our two towns even with the school still open with the tax rates that high people are not going to want to come here I'm out of time we need to join the lawsuit we can leave it at any time I oppose I also think we can join the lawsuit at any time so that my written needs is the reason to act precipitously because I oppose it I think it's unlikely to succeed although that's a minor reason to do it not just in terms of funds but also in terms of approach nobody here has seen exactly what the legal action is going to be we're being asked to join we're being asked to join this just trusting in the folks that are putting it together that is not the way but I oppose it most of all because I don't think it's good for kids I think that that's my first priority always we seek an injunction we have superintendent principals teachers their licensure with the state depends on their obeying of all if we are going to be asking them to take different approaches if our board is divided and asking them to do one thing or another their careers potentially in jeopardy we have a retreat we talked about coordination, joint scheduling sharing of resources other than boards that aren't going to participate in a process like that public communications might be divided the state of the priorities would be divided would be closed as well to privatize it divorcing it entirely for public education I don't think any of these are good for kids not good for the school system in terms of joining the law student the floor makes a fair point about when that the state hasn't issued a plan yet but we shouldn't be deciding at that point whether to or not I think we should be prepared to right now and throw our hat in the ring Matthew makes some fair points about going long to get along but what we haven't seen in this whole process is that type of equity from the state board in terms of all of the alternative government structures that were presented to the state Department of Education how many were approved were recommended very few if any we presented significant information as to how we are moving forward jointly in many areas that we can and that was just you know it was really not really considered I think there was an equity issue there as to who was making the decision that would be worthy of a legal challenge we also heard today about the extraordinary differences in debt that would be shifted from one community to the other and you may say it's all one district after the merger but it's not all one taxpayer and it's not all one tax rate and so at this point I would think we would want to prepare to join when the time is right but it's there are times when we have to stand up and I think this is one of them Susan, is it Adrienne or Susan? I am also very uncomfortable with joining this lawsuit at this time I think we don't know what's going to happen with the state board we don't know what the lawsuit is about we actually don't have any idea how much money it costs us our budgets are really tight I have real trouble with spending money that could go to students and teachers and education for a lawsuit that I don't really know anything about I also feel really strongly that these are all our children and we have all their best interests at heart and I don't think communities are going to pit one community against the other I have great faith in this Washington Central community that we care about all our kids I also have a statement to reiterate that it is unable to be here tonight so I might need another 90 seconds he says, I feel strongly that we should comply with the state board's decision if it is to force a merger Act 46 is the law of the land and we may not persuade them that a merger is impractical I personally was not persuaded myself I think it is even more important that all the boards act in the same way whatever that is I learned through this process that our unity whether it is one board or multiple boards is critical to our doing the best job we can in helping our kids learn I would like to address the kids that we know of in West Virginia and frankly at Harvard you can see that there are male issues that some of the kids in larger, richer towns do find maybe they are in the classes but the kids who live in poorer towns who have the longer they end up getting bust their families end up getting disconnected and they themselves are not necessarily being served so I think to make any contention about what's best for kids has to take into consideration there are different roles in the towns So I don't think it surprised anybody that I had to merge it all along so I imposed joining the lawsuit and I'll just offer a point of clarity of the districts that offered alternative plans 34 out of 37 alternative plans were approved of that majority were approved who were in the minority it was not approved you said 34 out of 37 34 out of 4 no that's so spent a lot of time in my previous job trying to decide a third question while being asked here tonight and one of the things you have to realize when you bring the lawsuit is that losing can actually make things worse don't just lose you can make more things worse when you do that if the decision against you creates case law that gives the state even more power then it appears to have now in determining what it can do in school governments it's a really hard thing to accept because you're a part of the saying one thing but your mind really has to tell you that there is a risk when you file the lawsuit and if you don't feel at least 50 if not 60 or 70 percent sure that you can win it you really should have second thoughts about it because you can then make things worse if you lose it for example if we brought the suit like this and we lost it it could be the state would be emboldened through a court decision by the Vermont Supreme Court to attribute more into activities in our schools it could give them more power which we do have now might not happen but you don't know that but I have to tell you in personal experience one of the worst things is losing a lawsuit and seeing the decision cited later to work against Will I I think it's premature at this point to make a decision like this I also think it's premature to know to have any sense of what the real cost is or risk is or advisability of the lawsuit because we don't know when the state court is going to do it but if you listen to some of the conversations the state court doesn't really seem to even have a framework yet about how to make this decision but on October 2nd or 3rd whatever their next meeting they're going to start doing that probably going to start getting a better sense but the state court is persuaded by geographic isolation but not that but the other way around that's going to drive which communities are going to push this and not and if it is if some AGS proposal are approved but ours is not there's going to be a smaller population of those who might might consider suit after that but we might need more or less on our own and at that point we need to look at the board of education's decision and discuss with legal counsel at that point I don't think we can simply join other towns because depending on what the board of education says our interest may not be aligned with other towns depending on the board's decision I think the only way I didn't correct was if the board just blanked approvals or denies all of the AGS proposals issue right now I'm not sure that that's certain I hate to weigh in on momentous issues when I don't feel really confident about the risks and benefits of the two courses of action and that is where I find myself tonight and I have done everything that I could to get a better understanding of all of that so I just wanted to state that and I think that many of us are in that position and it's not a good position to be in when the when the stakes are so high but I will say that I do not support joining the lawsuit at this point I would echo comments that have been made by many of you who stated that position I have years ago when this whole shebang started I had a conversation with Scott I at that point thought it was too pretty clear that the stain wasn't going to accept anything we did I'm very proud of this for the work that we've put into this the amount of work and effort we've put into making this work for us it's been a mom and it's been great to be a part of and great to watch but my argument to Scott that day two and a half years ago was the topic of how do we go about fight as came out and my thinking at that time and still my thinking today is if citizens of our town want students through the state or fight this legally somehow that's terrific it's reprehensible I'm all in favor of that but we as school board members are here to run a school we're not here to use our resources to fight that legal battle I don't feel comfortable backing a legal challenge at this point I want us to take our energies and put our energies in our resources building the best school system we can do for our kids we're pretty much coming up on the 24 minutes right so I'm going to invite the folks over here to before I do I just want to note for everyone to say that the executive committee's thinking on this was that we would actually do a strong poll at the MFS because the SU board itself hasn't been invited to join the election and I think can't do so so we were interested in sort of getting an expression of the group about whether majority favors the SU gang involved in it or not as well as whether majority favors the best in time and supporting our county so we set a strong poll because that would allow everyone to see here to express their opinion rather than just voting for that so with that said, if there are any members should please come up to the front and we'll get you a link and I'm going to ask you to speak for one minute at a time that's how we're very sure to apologize for that thank you my name is Charles Mary and I'm going to get this this great discussion what I would do what I would recommend you do at this point is take the fight to the SU board right out of the state board my understanding is that before coming here there are seven page traits from the acting secretary of state responding to your thoughtful proposal and my understanding is you're given an opportunity to write one page response that's not a good process so what I recommend you do is that I say recommend you send a strong letter respectful with strong and forceful letter from the state board they are articulating with all cities and demanding from this report and demanding that they consistent with the statute as passed that the alternative government and the structure of the folks that put together be passed put it to them and with respect to the lawsuit I kind of think Florida's point is well taken but I'm going to put a letter of intent saying that following the decision of the board you may be very well made joining this lawsuit and by the way the constitution on 46 and this is a violation of the protection of the proportional contribution but it's becoming on us as citizens to fight it. And you can return to this decision today John Raven not an attorney but I just wanted to bring up two points Laura wrote up an email from Edie Miller and she said we need to task your attorney to see how comes that you're you're looking to achieve Mr. Giuliani clearly wasn't tasked with seeking a methodology or finding holes in an AOE's argument to favor a win if there were a lawsuit if you contrast what Mr. Giuliani provided what Mr. Kelly provided another attorney two very different perspectives same law David Kelly an attorney found a few holes in the AOE's position that's number one. The other thing is if folks hear a thing that the AOE's decision was not political I actually remember the governor's office it's very political this is the governor's office agenda that's being carried out and by joining the lawsuit we fight politics hiding does not help you this is a political battle to fight firefire folks I'll give an agreement that's for your name where you live my name is Scott Bassett how can an agreement that's good for half the group they give a point in half the group but terrible for the rest of the group be good it's not logical it's not fair as attorney Kelly said shot down weddings almost always in the tea particularly where the parties are moving in logical but different directions once mergers are compelled the genie of unfair death distribution and the power of larger communities to exert their will over smaller communities cannot be put back in the model I urge you to take the responsible path and fight like hell against this forced murder hi, Kyle my name is Marnello from Bell Sags just a parent speaking my personal capacity um if we fast forward a year and we're merged and taxes go through the roof in perlite and wister and callous and there are enough ambulances to go to the people in callous from having heart attacks when they get that first tax bill and then these fontilier programs are getting cut because everyone's upset about your death being shared and put on everyone else and in middle sex when for two years now citizens have been clamoring for more input into what happens in our school and suddenly we go the exact opposite direction and have less citizens like me are going to have one question for all of you did you do everything in your power to stop this hi there, you used to be looking callous thank you all very much I know how hard you have all worked it's a grueling process whatever side of the alley you're on I do appreciate all the hard work you've done however the callous select board in July sent a resolution I emailed a copy to each and every one of you callous select board very strong supports our school board and I just want to read a couple of things from the resolution that we said local schools under local control are the Vermont way and a standard of provision local schools are important in maintaining a strong sense of community and cohesion callous is not willing to surrender our school to a consolidated district take on the debt of other towns whether it however it comes out we're not willing to pay everybody else's bills without our own without first fulfilling our duty to the people of callous protecting their interests and their school the tax dollars have paid for so I would strongly support the school board's decision to join the lawsuit thank you good evening Michael Dwayne I also urge you to join the lawsuit at this time but firing that I would agree with Charlie Merriman's comments that that's not the time to do it that you may be known that depending on how the state board of education decision comes out that this board or boards are looking at intentionally taking for the legal action and the state board of education decision in order, it's called in order is not the final word there's an appeal process any state agency decision can be appealed to a superior court that may be the next logical step so I would actually keep those options open thank you for the time you have come it's all okay, it's much earlier I hope to put in a lot of time working on this over the years I commend you for that but I've got to say I'm pretty disappointed I've got to say I'm a little disappointed you've spent a lot of time talking about these things what you should have been doing been out talking to the public and I don't mean just inviting people to your meeting but really get out there and do something you've all been to town meeting or at least I hope you have and you know that when you get out and there are issues that people get wound up about, you don't have very many people at town meeting sometimes you have to go out and explain what you're really talking about so if you've done that a lot of the things that you've done in the last two years would be moved we're now down to a place we're out of time sir I'll tell you what I'll tell you what sir everyone's under the same time thank you I'll write my chat right now for the fund to promote this suit against the state thank you so for the for the board we have a government page I believe who is not a resident of our towns we're required to hear and provide opportunity for people from our towns to speak but not necessarily those who don't live in our towns so I just wanted to note that no one objects thank you sir very good, my name's Edward Page and I'm from Washington Vermont down to Orange next to us it's very beneficial to Orange and very close to her there's some confusion here about what Act 46 is all about Act 46 is confusing because it's designed to fail it's designed to be the next step to begin one year ago with Phil Hoff in 1964 for creating one statewide school board and one statewide school tax Phil Hoff failed Natalie took up the charge along with her secretary of administration John Daly we've actually issued the rig of the decision it failed and so it's gone our dean made the same attempt and it failed so Act 46 it boldly been brought forth by the legislature with the coordination with the agency of education so we're at a high strike can you wrap up in 15 seconds I can the bottom line is that the legislature passed the urging of the AOA Act 46 violates section 68 of the online constitution as amended in 1964 it's just as clear as that thank you hi I'm Carl Hartman hi I'm Carl Hartman from Berlin and as I look at this table up there I see a lot of people I work with on the board and I see amazing minds amazing people people that care about the kids in our community and I think about forced merger which half of those people do I not want to be directly related and have direct input into making our schools better for our kids because with a forced merger at least half of this group at that front table will no longer be directly involved in the governance and decision making so I would also encourage you to let the AOE know immediately that if a forced merge happens that we will fight it in any way we can if a forced merge I believe a government should be and I'm a patriot for a government that believes in individual rights and freedom and local input I support that but a government that imposes or forces you to do something is not what I support and I think a forced merger is a dangerous precedent to set in our form of government in the interests of expediency because this is not a binding motion I would go ahead and try to phrase a strong whole question I would invite help so if I get this wrong the question I guess I would like to ask again this is non binding so the question is does the WCS board support joining the legal action proposed by association of the alliance for months for awards today so I'm going to say I think it's too narrow I think that motion is too narrow because if you're and it can give a not an accurate response or a sense of the board because there are a number of people who say not yet and kind of weigh in to make a decision so I think it has to be broader three options maybe yes, no or wait until the state board makes a decision before committing I have the word today I know for that reason because I think people might maybe they would look at it from the end but the state board but you know this is going to be reported in the papers and the sense that you say today so I'm not completely doing it today I'm giving this impression I think of the true sentiment coming forward so I think you need at least three options to give a true sentiment because you've heard quite a number saying not yet I would be more comfortable asking two separate questions because what I worry about is we're giving three options and that is a kind of model response you can give a rally, great is what you may get as well but I always sometimes you know, come to the program and you can but I think if you give if it's two, one with the other if it's a big one who has the nuance of the discussion at the end of the night would a second question be would the aspects would be acceptable to you would the state board be open to the idea of joining a legal action to contest of course I think I said I would say because folks who are saying no now I'm saying both I think that would be a good question because that takes into account those who would join now and those who would wait for the future and it also takes into account the folks who are now saying who wouldn't join I think my Chris I think a possible it's not Chris I think I think a possible question that could combine both of those might be would the school board be willing to now or in the future join to the lawsuit and then you get a clear idea of people that may be interested in joining and then a clear idea of people that are interested in not joining I'm fine with the question but my my concern about it is that local boards will be district board I should say will be deciding this evening whether or not to join the lawsuit because the deadline for doing so is on September 28 so I think there's some benefit of my mind to board members knowing about the sentiment of this board is I don't think I agree with Matthew I would like to separate questions if possible so one today and then the other one in the future because before I at least on my make up my mind I need more information from the lawyers I actually one David in my right here to explain more what is it involved if we have to cross that bridge later so if we could do the two separate I would feel more comfortable and I think we would get a better sense of everybody that's my take I'm going to ask the question after Alan speaks Matthew my you accept an amended motion that asks do you as a member of the WCSU board at this time reject participation in a possible lawsuit against the state concerning consolidation if you repeat that I didn't quite catch that okay the question to us would be do you as a member of this board or their local boards do you at this time reject participation in a possible lawsuit against the state regarding consolidation I don't typically like freighting questions I was trying to get two questions down to one so I think Chris's question that's how I came up with the next one I'm just going to go ahead and ask my question you would ask other questions is this a stronghold it's not a again nobody to say since and I think I'm representing the executive since it's only a stronghold we want all members here voting not just the voting members that's correct it's only straw so it's non-binding so we wanted to hear all the voices not just three designated my question is is the WCSU board in favor of joining the legal action that's been proposed by the alliance for the long-term scoreboards here if your answer is yes to that question please raise your hand is the SU board in favor of joining the legal action that's been proposed by the alliance for the long-term scoreboards today if your answer is yes so is the second question coming I'm sorry one second let's finish with this one really she needs to know she's getting the middle option I'm anticipating two questions all those who do not agree raise your hand they got confused is the SU board in favor of joining the legal action that's been proposed by the alliance for the long-term scoreboards today you're not in favor you didn't get the middle ground you said today we'll get there I counted 10 in favor and 15 not in favor 12 to 15 the answer is that the SU board is not in favor 12 in favor 15 not in favor 12 in favor 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 14 14 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 16 16 17 17 17 to join now yes or no and then they'll ask the questions but maybe in the future we would the board be interested in joining in a lawsuit in the future depending on the decision for the state board? This is a separate question. Would members of the board be interested in keeping the legal option open to join in a lawsuit in the future if depending on the decision we get from the powers of the state board? From the state board, sorry. Thank you very much. So all those in favor of that. That's everybody. How many agree? Take your hands off. Thank you very much. All those not in favor. Any abstentions? Four abstentions. We're in the state now. I'm sorry, five abstentions. Floor change your vote. I got her to report. Four abstentions, five noes, and nine noes. Did anyone heard the result? Yes, Ruben. I want to just make a comment that this is a point in time today. And the reason that I voted no is that I don't have information at this time that would drive me to join a lawsuit. That doesn't mean that I couldn't get new information later and I know some of you are disappointed and I respect that but at the same time that is part of my job as an elected board member. I take it very seriously. One last question, not related to the topic, but rather to future board meetings. We have a parasol meeting scheduled in late October 24th. 24th, thank you. We have committees, two committees meeting between now and then to take further of these issues and delve into the report back to us. But I do want to ask people to feel that more meetings are necessary in conversations on this or not. Thank you very much. We're not on this question. We're sitting on the larger issue of what's happening in the timeline and still isn't going to be done. I'm not hearing a huge outcry of a claim to get the idea out of itself. Is there any other business that board members want to bring tonight? Okay, thank you very much for your patience. Thank you.