 for a lot of the respiratory and school districts. Two Gen.WM changes, one addition and one change. This across has asked to have her name before the clerk, so we can get a seem to be some problems around that. So we can, I think, formally nominate and vote on her candidacy for clerk so we can have a clerk when we go back and forth. I'll be glad to nominate. Okay. Let's, it's kind of a bit of a first order. Okay. And the second is at the board governance discussion, the current agenda says to review and approve the negotiations committee charge. We are going to do the finance committee instead of the negotiations committee. We'll do the negotiations committee next week. It says to have a clerk first. Pretty quick, please. Okay. Down here. So then why don't we do the first? Okay. All second. Any discussion? Okay. Can we review quickly the views of the clerk? We know we haven't had one. I will work with Lisa to formalize those. At the last meeting we discussed that the remainder of the meeting is to make sure and the meeting we have is posted. Yes. In the appropriate place. So to make sure we meet the posting requirements and then sort of take those. And she does not take them. She just makes sure they're taken. Exactly. Okay. That's it. Yeah. Most of these, you know, other. Yeah. Because we're all professional, right? Yeah. I think we said this time around, we were willing to step up to the position, was going to be willing to explore options for how this is done and to ensure that we're doing things correctly and just, yeah. Yeah. These that I have come to know about is things that may be increasing visibility from the forum and, you know, Facebook pages and those other different pages. More channels where they're seen for the discussion to, or to support. They said it's perfect. Hi. Hi. I'm going to do both. Great. So consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Or will you approve the consent agenda? So discussion on that. Hi. Hi. You both. Just realized that we don't have a projection of capability here and I didn't think about that early enough. So I was going to show you all some things but I'll talk about it and I'll share with everybody. We can certainly push it out in public as well. So one of our focuses this year, in the beginning of the year, is building a district wide collaborative culture, which I've spoken to you all before. So I wanted to share with you some steps that we've taken thus far in doing that. Every first Monday of the month, I've been given this gift of a district wide staff meeting that is unique. We don't get that very often in the real and small enough system that we can do that. So we have everybody come to the high school and in the past they've done book discussions and protocols around that and things like that. We're taking a different take on it. We had our first one, a couple of months, their couple of best ones, and we timelineed our entire history of it as educators. So across all the walls in the high school, using post-its and things, people, everybody in our district put up when they started working from up in their Oxford Public Schools. Everybody in the district talked about their past history as to why they became educators, big moments in their life as students, that one of them made them become educators, things that really touched them, things that frustrated them. Other questions were what class was that class that you just remember for whatever reason and why, what was that student's particular moments in your teaching career? So it was pretty phenomenal. While logistics weren't great, the story that the post-its told was goosebumps, you know, goosebumps reasonable. So it was fantastic. There were some really funny post-its. There were some really touching post-its that were about just coming into their identity, you know, all that kind of stuff. So you can see some pictures of this. But I just wanted to let you know that that kind of thing has happened, and it looks kind of like this. We have all of these now. You see, this is the 2018, the things like dabbing, one of my favorite ones in 2018, I learned that eight fortnight. And some funny ones that were great, the Black Lives Matter flag being raised was a theme that popped out. It was interesting because I learned a lot around, when I was planning this particular logistics, Heather wasn't there for two days with my lifeline, the things like this. And so I didn't realize how many, I didn't know when educators were hired and when they weren't. So I made an assumption that in the 90s, 80s and 90s, a lot of people would have been hired out of the way often. So that's part of our logistical challenges because the most people you can see were hired between 2010 and 2018 just from that visual of the post-its right there. So that was, it was just fascinating. So we put this on a timeline. We put them by theme. And if you really look up the post-its, you can see some really touching pieces here. And then I think it was pretty great for the staff in general. This was one of my favorites. There. Was the 1960s to 69. And sorry, I can't post it, but it talks about Woodstock and JFK. And it's like a history class right here on the 60s. And the teachers who put these events up and talked about how they influenced them as educators was a fascinating conversation. And then what was even more fascinating was when the young bucks like me came behind them and started talking about that as well. That was really something. You know, and talking about what grade you were in when the Challenger explosion happened and how that influenced you later in life. And if you were in a grade or if you were teaching during that time, which you still have a few. So it was just a fascinating conversation, brought people together. And that's how we started this work around flagric culture. Whatever our instance is as educators because I think that's really important to celebrate our history. So this learning focus is really quick today. I just want to share that with you. Sorry that I can't conduct it here, but I just actually might find that interesting in how we're starting that. Our next step with this is to look at our current realities around evidence of where we are in student learning and have some great conversations about that. And then the next step after that is where you want to go. Altogether as a staff. Just want to share that with you. As first steps of power building is flagric culture. Did you say it was my point? Did you have these? Yeah, the first Monday of every three months. Can you see people show up? They have to. They have to say it. There are a few that didn't and will be followed. So, yes. Part of their contract at ours. Thank you. Yep. Some other things are next month in November. Our student reps are starting with us. Emma Harper and Hope Trello. We're very excited to join us. Lovely articulate young women that I think are going to be a really good one as to the board. I'm not sure how they were determined to make the great people's needs forward to us. So, do you know how they were chosen? I'm not sure they were chosen. No, no, no. The student council, I don't think had part of it. Had part of it. I didn't know if they were part of that. We can ask questions. One thing we haven't been real aware of in the past few years is really engaging them. They sit. They listen. They go home. They don't complain that they don't really get involved to the need because of the session. And I've actually taken them all through once a month, I remember, and had the discussions with them about how we do that. And likewise, even though they sit, they also don't like it. They suddenly remember that they're there. And some of them say, Oh, so what do you think? Yeah. About something they have no background on or have no study. And so, I think we have to look first. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, and we're actually trying to set up the new board. So, it's all safe. We can start to ask the board how they want to be. And I'm new to this board having student representation, but the new board has much more in terms of community capacity than the old one. So that might be a better opportunity to really get the students engaged, maybe a smaller, more safe environment. I've already met with them once. They're very... I asked them. I said, Do you want to do kind of a student thing and then leave? Do you want to stay at the old board? And they said, I want to stay at the old board, babe. I want it all. So, I don't talk about what I did talk about, but we're talking about they're reporting on something that's happening in school, whatever. And they were interested in part of what we talked about is, you know, these questions, you know, and I said, I want to go to the middle school. You know, I want to go to the middle school. Yeah. Yeah, I have talked to them about how do they get perspectives and kind of reports from student populations that they don't want to, you know, they aren't part of. So they have it on their minds. I think these two are going to take and apply. We'll just see some guidance for them to do that. Well, I'm a simple thing, too. I'm not sure we can do this in the past, but just provide them with the agenda and then check them in before the meeting. Yeah. To say, are there items here where you think you might want to stay? Yeah. Yeah. When you said about being surprised when you finally asked them, I mean, that leads to, you know, they're not feeling empowered, right? Because how can they prepare if they're never asked? Yeah. We'll get them ready. Yeah. But I think we can do that as a group, too, by just regularly expecting them to be participating and then they'll be prepared because they'll realize they're going to get called out in a minute for an opinion in our world. And knowing these ladies, I think we'll have problems. I think we will. Yeah. Do they have, do the student reps have a formal role on the board? They, I imagine they will be giving some reports from the student perspective of what's happening with the items that are happening. And then we'll have to really think about how it works. I don't think it's fine. But they can allow it. Yeah. Also, they'll concern that they've got the student council that ranked you if they're elected. Mm-hmm. I mean, they could define a school that works. That's what I'm wondering about. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's been kind of a discussion about what it would be about representing everybody if you're an adult board member. So if you're as consistent as a student member, are you just European or have you talked to some people about why you're expressing your opinion as a representative to a student? I should read a discussion. I did not plan any formal protocol for anything. I'm just curious as to what popped out at you all. Usually when I do a non formal protocol what popped, what made you think, what questions, what challenges could you make? So my wife saw that I was reading that and she's read the book. And she sent me all these additional ideas. She's got additional ideas. So how did you get that? The top five problems that was mentioned in the book which I was reading were the five points of that. The idea of thinking about it one of the first ones was the idea of literally going out of business but or something like that. It wasn't that people didn't want to give the stories. They just accessed the stories differently. How did you focus on kind of the skills that you're trying to and the deeper skills that you're trying to teach rather than the specific skills about content? Yeah. And there were some when you posed a question about what do students need to write more now if you can set up a blog first? I thought it was interesting but also like I said in 1926 like how many professional people I need is if I'm writing these things. So the process of thinking behind an essay and how it's transferable not that it's not relevant but I mean those are the type of skills like being able to like are you teaching an essay or a blog or teaching people how to think critically and how to conduct arguments persuasively and how to back it up with evidence and how to compel people and so on. I think what I don't want to put words in Carlos' mouth but I think what he would say is that yes and the medium that we teach posting through is essay and only essay and in this day and age knowing how to write an effective blog post quickly like getting those ideas quickly may have a different way to get at students than the traditional essay. I don't think he'd say it's a leader or that's what it's great. Yeah I think the emphasis on the different mediums by which information can be pervaded but what I like even more than that was the emphasis that these mediums on the ends and not themselves that they're the means to get to these other ends I thought that was an important message. I think the kind of along with Jim is pointing out the almost cliche common that they use that we need to prepare kids for jobs that don't yet exist. That's kind of how it's always been. I'm thinking we're not predicting what technology is going to be like we have to make sure that they know how to use their software program. It's really the same thing as Jim is pointing out we need to make sure that they know how to continue growing on their own and actually it says the soft skills are really important it doesn't matter if it's again 1990, 1980 whatever you're so being taught the skills will allow you to move forward and independently. Those are that's not going back very far in history or the history of schools and I think that in some ways we don't even operate our schools like 1980 we operate them like 1900 in the sense and I don't mean fully but we're still coming out of a period of designing for the industrial kind of path and so we have a much slower rate of technology change that we're expecting and what we need to expect in the future is continual speed and so I don't know I think that that is a true statement it is a cliche it is a true statement and I don't know that it's true in the way that at least I was educated no one ever thought we were being educated for the jobs that have always existed jobs that existed for my teachers generation at that point I don't remember ever being taught anything about you're going to need to adapt that was never a part of our education and I don't think it is happening it's not now I don't think so but there would have been people in your cohort in your generation that would have been taught in the framework that you're describing but still came up with new designs for instruments I don't know I'm just saying this but I don't know I mean I think that the creators the innovators in many ways have had to always buck everything they would have been taught how to do that to be liberated they've been they've had to choose to be liberated against expectations in a sense and I think that's very much the reality still now if you're looking at the millennial generation and you're looking at the millennial generation if you're looking at the millennial generation and the amount of side hustles and the way people are making a lot of money you know it's bucking trends it's bucking expectations so we saw guys told you we saw him in a conference and one of the stories that's sticking with me right now is a student who was out in California and her dream was to go to UCLA or some school like that she had pretty average grades and on paper she didn't get in she got way less did so she called up the the people making the decisions the admissions office and just said my name is this you put me on the waitlist Google me right now and so they Googled her this girl had created like she had millions of followers on her YouTube channel and and showed so much knowledge and growth and initiative as an 18 year old that they immediately said you're in from her from just Googling her right so and she did that in spite of school you know because her school record did not indicate that she was this famous YouTuber to to millions of people in her generation the school couldn't integrate that right right you know I just read this other article about college debt and the amount of people that are in their 30s or in that age range that are paying huge sums of money for their college debt and don't have a job because you know they went to a little large school or they didn't or they were got a job and I think it's our job to help people be innovative some of the people with the most money in the world don't have a college degree they were innovative thinkers and they didn't need one to go to college I'm just saying we need to rethink that too on a total different note though so I I generally agreed and valued the perspectives in the body of this but I thought the beginning of this change almost never fails because it's too early it almost always fails because it's too late I because it was on the front of this I thought about it I was on the plane when I first picked this up and then it's just kind of been my face on the table every morning and that quote which isn't his quote he's grabbing it from this set going on that is but I do think that there's I was thinking about that and I don't know how accurate that particular statement is like take for example it's totally accurate yeah all the time yeah exactly yeah and particularly with regard to new technology particularly information technology like at the state level like you know the health benefit exchange was Vermont was out front trying to implement this state of the art health insurance exchange and it kind of had to do that from a policy perspective to maintain its programs for lower and middle income working people but because we were out front on the front end of that technology you know we squandered a lot of not we but the state of Vermont squandered quite a bit of tax-figured dollars during that effort and so did other states that were out front on that and meanwhile and at the tax department where I work there were some early IT systems that really fell flat on their face and were horrible and ineffective and the new IT system that we have that works really well because it's been developed over 10 years and there were 10 15 other states ahead of us who worked out those growing pains and were able to enjoy those the effects of that and then I think of like social media like MySpace and the earlier versions of of social media falling flat on their face but What do you have it paid for? I'm I'm I'm not an advocate I'm not I do think that sometimes it's you know I think with regard to education and our approach to education we should be thinking innovatively everything you said in here I generally agree with but when it comes to some some more administrative or technological leaps I think it's all right from time to time to say Hey, has any other state done this or have any other districts done this and if they have learned learned from what they've done well and I know I mean just teaching people to be innovators and and the skills behind that because there's it's a different skill set but you know kind of like the essay versus blog who knows if blogs are going to be hanging in ten years but you know I think kind of going back you know several decades you know education could be taught a couple of skills and those could get you through life now your skill is really the ability to enter enter in the enterprising in new environments constantly and do our teachers do that themselves yeah that's one of his his sticks is do do our teachers put them in a position put themselves in a position where they have to feel that uncomfortableness and learn it themselves you know and some of the quotes that he said he's like kids aren't better at technology than adults are they just push more buttons like we're worried we're going to mess up right so we don't push the buttons push the buttons until they figure it out you know you said something around if you're not able and able and facile to figure out social media type things in this day and age regardless of whether you are old you are now illiterate and so do our teachers know that platform in that medium and if they shy away from it immediately they're they're becoming unable to speak to our kids in a different way so it's it's something that we really have to start thinking about always if anybody's interested in a little bit let me out I got it you got a few copies of it you're more than welcome to Andrew has it I know Superintendent report just some little things to push out Fall Festival success thank you the community that was a miserable day and very cold in the dump right Jen how many times did your kids thank you for always who wants but I have a bunch of little kids to come out I was one right it was it was they are in the water but no I didn't do it but I was in the board it was cold it was definitely hard to contain the shaking but yeah thank you to the community for supporting our schools and for the parents who put that up that was pretty impressive I've been doing fire and police safety walkthroughs in all the buildings myself to do the high school but I've gone through here at Oxbury the fire chief and police and at Union and at the middle school to make sure our buildings are all safe for kids that's how we do it I'm pretty good we have some changes I'm just cleaning things up that need to happen particularly from the fire perspective things that are the way yeah they're all surprises too so that was just put there today yeah we're developing a new procedure for volunteers Heather's been working very hard on that for the modeling system for volunteers I know particularly at UAS that's been a big shift for folks and we are working to clean that up some information was given out probably before we were ready for it to go out and we're working on those communication structures as well could I ask just in general what does the volunteer procedure look like now I've been asked a little bit about in the past a few weeks a couple of times we're actually modeling ours after Central Vermont the new school district would be the Northfield school district that has three different levels of volunteers so level one you're serving on an interview committee you don't come in contact with students that kind of thing working on the book fair kind of thing where it's very limited with parents around and everything like that which has no background check required whatsoever level two being that you're in contact with students so you put your narrow loan with students in any way, shape, or form so it might be volunteering in a classroom that kind of thing working in the office putting books away for the librarian that would require the Vermont online check that we do very quickly whether it goes very quickly through our office and then level three would be that you you may have the opportunity to be alone with kids which is the full background check for your printing that's a group of children by themselves at a farm would be an example so if you're a level two volunteer so the question that came up at the false festival from several residents parents was if I was a legal citizen and my student was in the building was at a child and I went through a company in the Santa Monica field trip or something would I be able to do that with the I'm not sure with the Vermont background check would be you're an illegal citizen not here legally so you wouldn't be here in the past your background check to be able to accompany you wouldn't well the company it's not name date of birth it's name it's name date of birth it's name date of birth and last four of your social security and if it's they say no match what do they do they say the response how does it work yes yes yes no record found no record found is what it would show so you wouldn't you wouldn't be permitted then yeah unless you were on record as being they're trying to find you sure then you'd have a violation that that has caused it was probably on check too it's just Vermont yes it's not an FBI no fingerprints right okay I don't know how fast that goes or how honest that is but I mean I assume you all know there's going to be a chilling effect on volunteerism on that level too but that's going to create a problem for a lot of I might create a problem for finding resources for teachers on trips and it's definitely going to cause a problem for some folks just not all of here and so just to be clear at that level three that's your time on trips and things level two is a trap level two is so any trip regardless of the intensity of contact would be a free if they're alone with children yeah I'm not saying I'm not alone with I'm not alone with like you know last year I went on a hike with my with one of the two two years ago I went on a hike with one of the teachers up at Elmore and there were you know me and two other parents and Ms. Pierce and 15 kids or 18 kids and so we all kept in visual yeah that's different than if you go to a city and I give you five kids and say you're off on your trip that's that would be a level three yeah but it's really really required sure I don't think level three is going to have any issues for folks I think it's a level two that has to be finessed to make sure that the districts need to admit but also that we don't create barriers to community involvement in the schools and I think that we need to be really careful not to overreact is what I'm saying yeah what's the main barrier that you see I think that and I don't understand why I have to I'm never alone with a child there's always a teacher around you know what's the deal that mainly I mean to be honest with that mainly goes to the sex offenders check with Vermont I mean those that's what we're looking for if I what were some of the cases that you've seen like some of the hits DUI or you know that doesn't you're not driving kids around you're not like that's a piece of it that's my responsibility to say yeah okay you know like that has nothing to do with what you're going to be doing with children it's more of what I look for is for things that could harm kids I think it's holding an effective number one because it doesn't it only looks at Vermont but evidence shows that it doesn't really do that much it doesn't really help and the second thing is that it's it absolutely chills so if it's a DUI if you say if you don't understand your DUI it doesn't matter if I have a DUI I'm not going to volunteer because it's going to be a big chance I just think it's a real mistake to be doing background checks on parents unless you have to and I don't think we have to on level two unless you can show me otherwise I don't think it adds to the safety at all okay thanks for your feedback so I um looked at the superintendent's report this year this week differently I took the injury and plan to have a update on the entry plan so that works differently just with in my comments, so thus far at the entry point. So, for you to answer any questions, anybody might have, or any report? There'll be a lot of people, really. That's fantastic. Yeah, can I ask you a clarifying question? The curriculum and assessment section of the report, you said that there was a high level of interest for restorative practices among the faculty. Could you just generally describe what restorative practices would entail? Yeah, so restorative practice and restorative justice is the idea, it's similar, right? So it's the idea that if somebody does harm to students and or the school building, that they're gonna do something to make that up. And it's based on student decisions and a lot of conversation. Okay. Rather than, you'll have detention or you're suspended or, you know, so for a lot of talk about restorative practice and restorative justice is definitely being buzzwords going on in education in Vermont right now. And there's some interest in the schools to get going on that. Okay. Yeah, that helps a lot. I was trying to decide that we're talking about the science class, are we talking about- Yeah, yeah, sorry. It's a great approach, yeah. Okay. Those that come, you can understand vice testing results, not national criminal assessments. Why would George disagree? Do you mind explaining that a little bit? So our local assessment plan for what we have, while right now it's incredibly hard to analyze those local assessments because we don't have a place that it's all housed in one place. We don't have a data management system but we're working on that for next year. From what we can see, our local assessment results, which are done by teachers and kind of subjective because of that are up here. And our state-of-the-art testing is pretty middle-run. So while those two things are somewhat apples and oranges, they're very far apart and they should correlate in some way. Our local assessment plan should be an indicator as to how our kids are going to score on the standardized tests. And because there's such a disparity and my question is why? Why that disparity? Yeah, your local assessment should tell you how you're doing up to and so you're ready for. Yeah, it should definitely correlate. So it's our internal assessments of standardized testing. No, it's our internal assessments of student learning and growth. Okay, but as it relates, because if you wanted to correlate to standardized testing, then you would just correct me if I'm wrong. But do you want our internal assessments to be a barometer for how prepared they are in anticipation of the standardized tests? Okay. We should be able to say that we think we're pretty, that the level of rigor we're assessing at in TGF matches the level of rigor of standard assessing. Right now I don't know if we can make that statement. And I would say as a teacher, I'm testing partway through before I get to that. And if my class isn't doing well at all, I know I have to do something differently to raise the level. And if I don't have any tests, I might think they're doing great, but I haven't any assessment to tell me they need more different things. So how do you escape that becoming? Teaching to the test. Teaching to the test. Okay. That's why it's good. The innovation conversation, which is like when a teacher on it says, Right. Right. So I nailed the standard. Let's make sure we've noted what a local assessment is, different types of assessment in a classroom, right? So our local assessments are kind of dipsticks that we take three times a year, right? And usually the beginning or middle of the year towards the end of the year. They're not a full standardized battery of tests. They generally take two class grades. You know, they're very quick and they should be standardized at some point. Not like an aspect, but that they have benchmarks and protocols and things like that. Some of the ones that our school's viewers are computerized. So they are more normed and have different preferences and they're dipsticks. They're screening measures. They're not giving the aspect over and over and over again. Right. That's not what's happening in any way, shape or form. So those pieces have served two purposes. For me, they serve a purpose of looking at our program and thinking programatically are kids where we say we think they are, right? And that I'm not teacher-creative tests. Things made by other people, right? And then, and they, so they give me that information programmatically. There's other forms of types of assessments that teachers are doing all the time. You know, every day in their classroom to gauge their instruction and to change their instruction and to do what kids need, right? So that happens all day long every day. And that comes in two forms. And the summative and the formative. So a good metaphor for that is that your formative is like your checkup, your doctor's checkup. And the summative is your autopsy, right? You're done teaching that in a minute. You wanna see how they've done. But the formative is how they're going along the way and how you need to change your instruction. So all of those things are happening all the time. None of which are adhered exactly towards the SBAC. But it still should be a programmatic measure. So the SBAC is the end of the year autopsy, right? A big time autopsy, not a teacher-creator one, but a big time one. All of our local assessment plans should point to the fact that our kids are ready and prepared for the rigor of that particular assessment. Because if we are getting programmatic measures all the time through the local assessment plan, I don't see what the teachers do on a daily basis. So I don't need to see that. But the local assessment is just that kind of measure for us and it's important for us internally to see how our programs are. Is that an assessment alignment or a curriculum alignment with the SBAC or with the test at the end of the year? Curricular or more curricular alignment. So the SBAC for me, because of where they are, one of the questions I have, I don't know the answer to it yet, is does our curriculum match the rigor of that particular assessment? Because that assessment matches the rigor of what the comic core is and we have to go by the comic core, right? Not to confuse comic core state standards with the SSEC, they're not the same thing, right? So with that in mind, I just question that. I don't know the answer to that yet. Our local assessment plan scores are pretty high. I mean, they're not, with the exception of some places in some schools on some tests, they're pretty high. So what does that tell us that a kid is reading that we're teaching with snippets of information? Because generally our screeners are, for reading, are snippets, they're not longer texts. They're not demanding kids have a whole less stamina of a text. So right as a library, and I'm sure you, like it's different if you're reading a magazine article than you're reading a chapter book. You've been in that SSEC or a blog post? Yeah, there you go. There you go. So there's lots of questions I have about that. Problematically, we're gonna dig into that and see if we can find it. Another big flag for us is that there is no way to follow a student in our system right now. And we're having this conversation with the administration team from kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade because we're not using similar ways to measure them. So when a kid goes from fourth grade to fifth grade, how are we having that conversation as to where that kiddo is academically and how do we support them? Because they're not talking the same language at the moment in terms of our assessment plan. So there's lots of questions around that piece with the local assessment plan that, because there's such a difference in the aspect scores in the local assessment plan that just the questions come up and there are good questions to ask and there are good questions to dig into. I have a question. Lily, you mentioned that the data management system is underway. Do you have the resources to do that? Yeah, I think we budgeted some for that in the last budget, but yeah. So the resources- We really did you. Wasn't that the point of adding somebody else with IT in the last million years? Yes. When we're talking about a person, we're talking about a software program. But wasn't that part of the idea of adding a person? Is that we had the software but no one around? That we needed someone to help put capacity in the central office. Yeah, that was a capacity question. Data collection. Are you talking about the need to purchase a lot of the shelf solution of sorts? We are going to do that for a software, yeah. But we don't need extra money to do that. We're fighting that money elsewhere. That by being more efficient with our software purchases, and we have in the past, we will pretty easily be able to come up with the money for that without any extra budgetary expense. That's good. I also love that I'm letting you go again. We don't have to do that. I love that you're interested. That you're out about once a month with your team. And you were saying it doesn't happen as much as you write well. I'm just excited that you're doing that because when I talk principles, it's, there are a lot of principles that actually never prove they're not getting any of their observations done, so I'm glad there's a model of, you know, a different kind of thing. Our principles are not necessarily here. I'm not in this anyway. Yeah, your principles are in our classrooms a lot. Yeah, a lot. That's great, yeah. The other question is, is Papa Benjamin, the one she said you had somewhere earlier? Can I say any more? I can ask a lot more. I just have some small ones. Like I was wondering if you were charged for the administration because there's a lot of... Very basic ones right now. Very basic one. And with the budgetary cycle, should we be able to get higher human resource officer? I'm going to reshuffle responsibilities at the central office level because of that, because things when we take out people's plates and we need to be more efficient with other things and we need to add some responsibilities on the central office. So I hesitate to do that right now without knowing that position is going to come or not. Do you have any idea what's driving the disparity in attendance? Don't ask me that today, right there. I have some ideas on that. Drew Heather and Tracy have some ideas on that too. There are several factors that could be coming into play around the disparity in attendance. But I have, there's some. One is that they're little kids and have snot noses or don't have proper hygiene there. Others are that, while I know I couldn't tell you the exact data on this, it might be that we have younger teachers at the elementary school because that's a trend in many places and they have smaller children. And so they're kids, you know, like it could be that. It could be that there hasn't been a real high level of insistence that they're there at that particular building and that they're missed when they're gone, you know. So there are lots of things that are flowing around in my mind are on why the discrepancy is big. It's noticeable. If you were new today, too, you'd catch everything in those first couple of days. Okay, but I mean, I think I can speak just anecdotally that when my children were in elementary school, it was made very clear to us and we were very appreciative that educational experiences outside of school were valued and that if we had our children doing things, traveling or whatever it might be, that that was actually really... Oh, no, no, no, no, this is referencing teacher absenteeism, not teacher absenteeism. Sorry, Steve. Okay, no, no, no, it's my fault. I didn't read it correctly. Yeah, no, sorry. Oh yeah, we haven't noticed that. I haven't tracked student absenteeism yet. Yeah, yeah. I haven't tracked that data. That's, that, that took me long. So actually, I've never noticed that. Well, have you as a parent? I haven't. I haven't as a parent, I don't. I haven't heard. You know, the number of days of substitute, so whatever we experience. Seems normal to me. Never experienced that. There was a lack of commitment or a lack of any kind of, it's never felt that way. Yeah, no, my kids don't, you know, they're never going to come home. Say hello to the guests tomorrow. Hi, Rach. What does that mean under federal grant investments? So student leadership for a loop when taking the reins in July? Second to last page, under? That was referring to the fact that when we started, we being Mike and I started on July 3rd or whatever it was, we found out that the, what confusion group plan had that submitted and what, we didn't have any information on it. And that's just referencing that we had to do a very quick turnaround around that piece and rewrite the entire thing very quickly. Mike said that when you presented it. Yeah, that's what that's referencing. Okay. Going forward, it will be a much cleaner process because both are better students. Excellent. Do you feel like you've had opportunities to connect with the broader community? I've seen you at lots of events, I'm just curious. So I know you've been there, I just was curious. I think I can do more of it. I'll tell you honestly, I was taught in general earlier today, it's not my strength because I'm such an invert. Like I really have to force myself to get out and talk to people who are not immediately connected to education. So it's my own personal, like I gotta do that. So I really have to look for areas that I can and I ask any of you to support me in that and say, let me go and I've reached out to Tina and I'm going out to the senior center with Tina. So if there's any opportunities for me to be more visible in the community at events and things like that, then please I welcome that feedback, particularly in Roxbury, because I haven't been able to be part of the community very much here in Roxbury. Or meet many people from Roxbury. So I welcome any feedback or invitations and that kind of thing to get me out there more. But yeah, I have been there every about that. Okay, I've been here a lot too. Yeah, I actually agree. Don't bring a job and covering the faces. I'm trying to be that smiling face. Yeah, and there's some places that are, you know, I think you're addressing time and places that matter. Yeah. I think one thing we realized when we were hired was that it was gonna be, I don't know if we can use this term with you, but we used it, so it's kind of ground you to your desk for a while. The idea is that you really had a lot of work to do to kind of get on track. Yeah. And that we recognized that, you know, the bureaucratic pieces and then the teacher relationships, we're gonna have to come, the staff relationships are gonna have to come first. It's gonna take many months to get through that stuff. But then there'll be a time down the road when you feel like, okay, it's going the way you want it to and we can introduce you to more people out in the community and have you be more of that communication face. So I don't think anyone feels like the deficit at this point, but I think it'd be great as we move forward and you feel like, okay, I got five seconds in my day now. We'd love to introduce you to more people. In the old days, there used to be things like, you know, somebody had a party at their house when a new administrator would come on and they would meet 30 of their friends and those friends just happened to talk to everyone else in town. And so it was a chance to just, people to get to know you on a human level. So those things could still happen if there was time and, you know. Yeah, thanks for that. I'm a little bit of a perfectionist, so I know it's an expectation, so I'm, I have it on my plate. Yeah, but again, you know, there's a time and place for everything. So we really appreciate all everything you do in it. You know, and also I think that the principals have been really doing that. They've stepped up their game. I think, especially I've noticed that, you know, elementary and middle, they really, they're kind of like doing more communication. And then I think, you know, Mike Berry has taken up the mantle of Mr. Communicator. So that has really supported everything that's going on by, I don't think people are feeling like, where is the, where are those administrations? They seem to not even exist. You know, there's nothing like that going on. So I think you're okay. Good. And even though there are a few glitches yet to do on the website, I think that helps for the people who don't have any kids in the system. So when they're looking for something to go to the website, we'll get so they can find it. Any other questions or comments or feedback to look into more deeply? Yeah, this is a great report. Yeah, yes, thank you. Thank you so much. So I want to inform you that he's an officer. I love how it's not really a narrative format. I see you like the baller point. That's what I'm learning. I think there's bullets, outlines. I think I'm believing more than two sentences. Remember that essay, blah, this essay. Yeah, this is the refined form of the poem now. Okay, follow your soul servants, you need to have some. Of course, there is. You're ready to move on to the budget. True. She works. Many committee outreach reports, I have, I brought the community out from the Fall Festival. So we were at the Fall Festival, which I thought was really nice. I don't know if folks who were there later had more people to talk to, not that many people stopped by. When Becky and I were there, that or Michelle was there earlier, but I will say that we were able to have longer conversations with a couple of people. I had a, Michelle and I had a long conversation with a parent about the health curriculum, which I guess continued to be a topic of discussion and some action in the community. And I had a long conversation with them about breasting. So it wasn't, even though I didn't talk about it in school, an opportunity, yeah, or in depth. We had this. Lisa, thank you, school board members. Leader's start time for middle school and high school to correspond with natural time slots of community groups. Less fundraising for kids, better funded field trips. Foreign language commitment at Union and beyond. Continue to focus on diversity, equity, and anti-biased training. This must be ongoing, accountable, and a high priority. Thank you for your service. Some of the little sticky notes, I think they're from some of our younger constituents. Right now we have a large collection of young people who primarily add into the box. You probably said that. Yes, the four-day week suggestions. Yeah, the happy, kind, and valuable decision. More recess. Also another vote for the four-day week. I think it's, I don't know, that'd be me. Totally, six-day week, please. Having more time for science. Keep kids at the top of priorities. A note of gratitude. Students and families of color need a safe avenue to address concerns. Who can we talk to when something doesn't feel okay? Who will listen? Who will respond? A request for more collaboration across all of the schools and grades. More opportunity to dress up. Perfect, that's awesome. A student-cultivation. I think one of those things is perfect. I know, they're great. Community answer. So thanks for coming. Answer which question? Which question? The question about who students of color and families of color can talk about issues that they're facing in a safe and private manner. Yeah, absolutely. You can come to me or any one of the principals at any given time. I had the opportunity to, with these three, actually ridden Stephen Ryan to speak with the wonderful students in all of their racial justice alliance. When was that? Tuesday? Monday. Monday? Such an articulate group of people. And I had a private conversation with Marianne afterwards saying, you know, my office is right there. So come whenever you want to. And she said, I've never heard that before. Thank you. I might take you up on that. I was like, please do it. And then I saw her mom in the hallway later. Introduced myself and gave the same message to her mom. So yeah, any time, any community member wants to come talk, just let me know. The door's open and kid, especially kids. And I think we're looking at a more, a more systematic response to that, also in addition to the fact that everyone on staff, especially leadership, is preparing itself and is already prepared, but is increasing in skills to be able to be those avenues of safety. But we're also looking at a, in more systematic approaches too. And so it's part of the proposal from the students that we're considering policy. So we're a little ways from being able to, hopefully next time we can talk about it more seriously and show you guys what they're working on and how we're responding to it. But it's, yeah. There's also, there's a very formal response in that we do have a hazing harassment and bullying policy. And under that policy, we have people who are the designated reporters in each school. But I think the hope is that there are less formal channels for reporters. That's really important though, what you just said. Because I think people may not understand that there are actually, that when anything occurs related to visibly harassment, that it's instantly triggers actions by the district. And so, you know, there's a process that has that occurs and that's a state mandated process effectively. So at least there needs to be one. We just had three or three or four of our administrators attend an HHB training just one day, let's see. Is that policy available on the website? With the procedure. Well, I think it's really important for the district to aim to have every adult who's in a supervisory capacity with children, teachers, et cetera, be people who are trained to deal with these issues and be able to talk to students and have students feel that they can come to them and have it be handled in a sensitive and effective way. Even if that's not the end of the chain. Absolutely, yeah. And I think short of that or enhancing that in addition to the issues of like a safe response or a safe person to go to, one of the things that we're all working on this year is raising all of our competency around this as a district so that the experience a student has in the hallways or in the classroom or in a complaint procedure, whatever it may be, that it's done with much more understanding of race and really all cultural sensitivities too. And so there's sort of a sense of we've got a long way to go. We know it and we're working on it now. This is the year we're working on it effectively. So, and it began, honestly, I think to some extent with the administrative hirings we did is we really kind of started to take this very seriously. Well, it actually began with Black Lives Matter flag. That really began with the students, right? And then it translated directly to that. So the challenge from students has been, let's take the symbolic action of the Black Lives Matter flag and turn it into a district commission, right? And that's sort of that transitioning from a symbolic action to actually turning our district towards it as part of our core mission is what we're working on now. That's great. So I took your advice and took the grants. My advice? Yeah. And then went to the seniors, group of seniors. And so their comments were they knew we're coming up to paying the bond since time around, right? And that it was nonetheless, even after that, it's hard for them to comment unless they know how it's gonna affect their taxes. And so that's understood. And they felt that Montpelier was still above average for people spending. And that they wanted you to know if they're gonna pay for the bond, paying it, they can't afford much more. Is Montpelier above average for people spending? No. Anything so. We're actually right on average, basically. We're so close that it's, in fact, this year it might be different than it was last time. And I think that includes, I think that's kind of Washington County based too. Well, we're actually below average for Washington County. Are we? I think we're the second lowest in the county. I think we're one of the lowest. Yeah. And we're average for the state. Yeah. Project, can you remind me of the Fall Festival? When we were standing there, we had a box with people putting comments in for the vision. And then we had a tablet that people were writing down themes. Everything you just read was an amalgamation of all that, correct? I don't think the difference really came across that well. So I think what really mattered was, did you want your comment to be visible? Or did you want your comment to go in the box? Which is fine. Right. It was my first time. Yeah, we tried to get some feedback for the vision, but it doesn't seem like we really got anything to direct that effort. I think as we realized at the retreat, putting together a vision is weight. It's very complicated. It's not something probably that was that amenable to people dropping by a table. We tweaked that whole day. So is there a way to journalize that stuff somehow so we can keep it in the record of comments for the budget preparation? Isn't that kind of what we're trying to do here and yours too? How do we? We can take that and add it. Just a short type up, probably. And the same with these. Any more on the outreach? So there's some more to do. The members have reached out to the community about getting a forum together. So we've set up this kind of our deadline. What date? 7. I mean, for it to be immediately incorporated. As I said, Luisa attended the open house as a board member. We talked about going to one of the Monday senior lunches and I'm wondering if she actually made it or not. I spoke with her earlier this week to make sure that I could maybe consolidate our gatherings. It sounds like outdoor education, stronger focus there. It was an interest from the Roxbury side. Music and good pay for teachers. It was the limited feedback we picked up from Roxbury. I think too crazy, but. What is the music program? Is there any music available at? There is, so it's a part time. Can we get those in the minutes somehow? Maybe just break those three down and maybe put them in with the others or something. We'll just have a document that has the themes. Somebody suggested to me that I go and probably any board member go to, I guess there are parent groups that work on fundraising for different initiatives at the middle school and high school and maybe elementary school level as well. And they thought it would be, I mentioned that. I was on the finance committee and they said, oh, well, you should go and hear from these groups about what they're doing and what their interests are. Somebody has been to the elementary school. Well, we should all of them. But you should feel free to reach out if you just want to. Yeah, okay. Talk to people. Yeah, and it might be good to attend. Somebody was just there, pretty involved with the parents. Great. How would I get information about how to contact them? That's what you're looking for. Yeah, that's what I'm getting on, I can get there. Thank you. And then we need to run the calendar. Thank you very much. There you go. We need to run the calendar on the website. Thank you, my very good. We're ready for playground update from Andrew. Yep. Andrew, you want to join just at the end of the table, though? Sure, yeah, sure. Before I get into this piece that is for joining us, joining you. So later I'm going to give you a little update as to where we're at with that. Had a job meeting this morning. We're having what we have weekly job meetings Wednesday mornings. The Vesta Vutable Foundations are in. They were backfilling today. Steel is going to start being erected in the next week. This is, don't believe it until you see it, but let's get it on here. So as a concrete is poured backfilling steel next week. The inner courtyard, they have disposed of all the contaminated soil. They are in the process the next over the next few days doing their underdrain. And it's really going to be buttoning up the dirt work in the courtyard probably the end of this week, early next week. Basically putting that to bed for the winter. Their next main focus is going to be working on the retaining wall. We're working through some of the details and some of the best ways to attach to some of the walls, construction, whether we do sheet piling, this temporary office, means and methods stuff. Is that just the wall on the back or is it on the side? Just on the back, okay, just on the back, yeah. So they will be, they're going to work on that over the next couple of weeks. But they are looking good to, then they'll be moving to the upper courtyard. They're kind of waiting on that while they do some staging, leave some staging area for the best of field work and access to the back. But they're feeling very good about being sort of all the heavy lifting done this winter before they button it up for a little bit of time. So is all of the contaminated soil gone? No, just in the major courtyard, just in the lower, yeah. And will the soil from the top be gone before the contaminated soil that's on the top? Probably most of it, yeah, yeah. Somebody asked me that the other time. Yeah, yeah, they're hoping to basically have all the excavation done, kind of rough grading, get it stable after the winter, maybe for the staircase, that's just sort of, because that's sort of everything's going to build off that staircase that leads up the nest. That'll be weather dependent, but they're very in good shape with regards to schedules. So that's good news. So a couple of weeks ago, three or four weeks ago, I was asked to meet with the Playground Committee group, kind of their concern about that because they're so heavily involved throughout the whole process, that gap, that domino that we had to push about taking the equipment out of the lower playground to get the project going so we can get to the point we are now. And as part of that, they asked that I put together a little financial summary and a little, so the key pieces they want to know was sort of financially, where were we, and what would it cost to put the drawings back, the project back as it was bid, as well as sort of some of the key dates with regards to when some of these decisions had to be made, and also sort of just financially where we are. So what I put together was a little document here, which I'm sure grant cringes at my use of the word balance sheet, but it's a little document that I put together and I'll explain it before I hand it out, that basically what I put here was all the revenue sources that we had for the project, bond, fund balance, grants. Over here were all the expenses to date. This basically reflects start of construction. And what it told us was that we had a positive balance of $186,000. So once we get into construction and we start taking into consideration some of the disposal fees of the soil, which we found an offsite, a local depository for some of the yellow soils, but we have to pay to do that. So there's gonna be a cost associated with that. But we also get a credit from the contractor because they don't have to ship it to Coventry. So again, a balance sheet is sort of where we may see some extra money and then where we're gonna see additional expenses. So we're all shuttered out. These are very rough numbers, but luckily when I was at the playground committee meeting, their numbers kind of matched up with mine, so I was happy about that. So where it stands right now, sort of best case scenario we don't run into any oil tanks out there. Everything continues. As the project stands, we've got about $62,000 on paper anyway, towards being able to re-institute the playground, the inner courtyard, which also is great until you look at the second part of this, which is those big chunks that we had to take out of the project to get it to where they're going. And because of the nature of, you get your best price when you put it out of there, when you got three other people bidding against you and everything is coordinated smoothly. So as you put things back into the project, they get a little more expensive. Some things are kind of a wash, some things, not so much. So some of the major components that we brought out was the amphitheater, which to put the amphitheater back in is anywhere between $30,000 and $40,000. And- That's on the upper playground. That's the upper playground amphitheater. That was a decision that we're probably gonna need to give ECI somewhere in January or February. They don't need to know that right now. So they're gonna need to know it soon, relatively soon. Is that why it says construction priority Andrew? Yes. Second piece, big chunk that we looked at was the fire lane and sidewalk. Basically, I apologize for not bringing the plan, but basically from the vestibule down to the cafeteria, that was originally designed to be concrete. We took a cost savings to turn that to asphalt. Still gonna be structurally sound, still gonna be a fire lane, but concrete is nicer than asphalt. But that's a $40,000 to $60,000 ad to put that back in. Second writing, this action number, we actually have, we looked out on that one in that we found a less expensive fixture. Light fixtures are amazing because you can buy a light fixture for $2,000, but somebody makes one that looks pretty darn similar. If it's up high enough from outside or whatever, you wouldn't know the difference for a third of the price or a quarter of the price. So actually, we're able to put the site like back in for $2,500. I've already approved that. Lower playground equipment. So this number is anywhere from $10,000 to $150,000. And that was one of the things that we've needs to explain to people is that if someone comes in through that door and says, here's $150,000, we can build that back the way it was drawn. And if somebody comes through with $40,000, we're not gonna turn the way because we can't get exactly what was drawn. We will take that $40,000 and we will talk with the administrators at the school and the people that know best of what the right equipment for the kids are if we have a limited amount and we will integrate that back into the design. So, but the takeaway is, we took about $150,000 for the play equipment out of the inner courtyard. And just with regards to that, I make that comment about someone giving up money that was in the context of a fundraising program. Sidewalk. We had a sidewalk that went through $20,000 to $35,000. Again, the one that was drawn is probably $35,000. If we did one that was less, it's gonna be less. That's another one that depending on what we give, if we give them the okay to do it now, it's gonna be cheaper than if we give it the okay after they do the grading and more refined grading. Plantings. We took probably, we did took close to $60,000 worth of plantings out of this product. Again, that's a number that we don't have to use, $60,000 or drop that if we get, we decided to put $15,000, we can put $15,000 back in. Could you explain, you skipped over a lower courtyard? Yes, so as part of the design, there was a large area of the lower courtyard that was a mulch. Not where they're playing, just a mulch? And there was areas that were under equipment, there was areas that were just large mulched areas. So what would you put under the equipment if you didn't put the mulch? Oh, we would definitely do it under the equipment. We have to. Absolutely, yeah. Under the equipment. Like you said, there were large swaths that were just mulch areas. Okay. Whether they had a sandbox in them or a lower play structure. And those would be grass instead? That's what we put a place, when we did our, let's push the dominant over, we probably put soft grass in there. And we knew that if we decided to do some mulch, we decided to do something else. We at least had, it was, in any other terms, I would have said we put $4 a square foot out there. And whatever it turns out to be, it turns out to be. So is that what the $10,000 or $40,000 represents, the area of mulch just puts you, we wanted to put it all back with $40,000 to put that mulch back and let's stick it in deep and mulch is expensive, you gotta maintain it. In keeping it, there's some rules that we have to maintain it to a certain depth as well. It's, yeah, it's not just. Is that, it's not a one-time cost? Yeah, that's what I was gonna say, is that have. Well, that's what I was thinking of, even under a playground equipment, it's, I debate for years about what's best under a playground equipment and whatever you put, you have to maintain it because the kids mess it up, so it goes. Can you get that one? But remember, we've been mulching on these playgrounds for a long, long time. I don't know if we've been doing it well, but we've been doing it. So we've had that in our budgets. Again, plantings, we took close to $60,000 for the plantings out. And then there was sort of miscellaneous bike racks and flag poles and other sort of things that we took out. To push the domino. So we needed, when we got our 1.9 and we needed to get it down to 1.3. And this is actually probably reflects more the sort of 1.6 down to 1.3. Because that, when the bins came in at 1.9, we were able to take 300 grand out of it pretty easily without really affecting anything. No one was gonna notice that we substituted 10 million feet of grant for grass, those sorts of things. So this really reflects that 1.6 down to the 1.3, which unfortunately translates to 440, that 300,000. So that's, this was sort of the summary that I conveyed to that group. Thank you. What was the discussion from that group? They rightfully feel a lot of pride in the work they've done. Uh-huh, sure. And it's a large group. And it varied from some very strong feelings about what should be done and how we should do it to, you know, we do need to make some compromises. And I think there's also a acknowledgement that though they are focused on this project, there's a larger bond that affects a lot of students and other buildings that will affect them as well. And the message I gave them at that point is, let's be patient because this stuff can all go back in. The amphitheater is probably the one piece that we really, we really ought to be now. Because once we, everything else out here can kind of be done with shovels and a little bobcat. The amphitheater, that you gotta get the heavy equipment in it. Once we build this, we're not gonna want to put that piece of equipment back there. So, so you're saying that needs to come under this general contract? I think if you said we've got, we need to focus on something, that would be the one that I would say you really ought to focus on right now. Get that, let's get a price for it, let's build it because again, once we build the playground, the work that it's gonna take to put the amphitheater back in is you're gonna have planting beds and all that, you just not gonna get the bolt. You're not gonna get the backhoe back out there to dig and put the blocks in to create the amphitheater once you've built the rest of it. So one of the ideas is use the GC who's on site to finish up the big earth moving project. The other pieces can be done under small contracts later. Yeah, absolutely. Or now or whenever. But the way we incorporate it is is it change order back into the project now? Absolutely. Again, to play with it, if there's a however and I remind myself, policy is not what I'm paid for, so however it's decided to be done, and that's how it's gonna, and that's something that I hope everyone understands is that we're not going back to that original design. Unless within the next six months or five, six months, there's a big chunk of money that's committed to it. It's not gonna look exactly, if the intent is gonna be the same, the enjoyment's gonna be the same, it's gonna be a playground that kids in the community is gonna value. It's probably not gonna look like. I think I'm just suspending the political discussion for a minute to talk about the efficiency question. What kind of penalty do you pay for change orders? There is a 15% markup on change orders. Beyond the normal. You ask them for what we wanna put the sidewalk in now. They'll run the numbers and say it's X amount of dollars for cubic yard of dirt, fiddle and all this, and they'll run the numbers and put 15% markup on it. That's beyond the normal 10 or whatever you would pay on everything or is it not? We don't even know what we'll pay in a markup for. Okay. But as part of the big process, they tell us what you are going to be paying for change orders. And I say 15%, I honestly don't recall what their change order. It's anywhere between 10 and 15. And just to follow up on Steve's question there, would all of these items, if we were to pursue, or if we were to pursue any of these items, would each one require a change order? No, not this change order. While you would do this, it wouldn't matter. But the 15% would come on top of any of these. So they are all changes. So they're all add-back ends. So to do them under a separate contract, you could conceivably change, say 15%, but you have no idea what your new contract cost would be. So. Yeah, and that 15%, quite honestly, I was going to say some of these things, they may not even do it. Something done with a piece of concrete, they may not even do it. Because they don't have to come back, repair it, they don't have to maintain it, they don't have to die, they don't have to come back. They may just say, all right, well, we're going to pay us a amount of dollars or I mean, cubic yards of asphalt, you know, I'm going to pay it for, that may be a little generous people. I've got a number of people in for business, so they're, the 15% is probably going to be. I'm at the tail end of a big project myself, and it's the same nonsense. You're trying to figure out what to do now, what to wait on. Yeah. And that's, and I've got to come a better word than cavalier, but that's just the reality of it. And you can't get too worked up about it. It's the position we're in, and to fight it or worry too much about it is wasted energy. There's a situation, there's a contract in place, and changes are changes, and... And I don't know if any contracts that get exactly what they wanted in the beginning, let me end this through, it just doesn't happen. And the markups, and the thing to remember with the markup and overhead and profit and all that is, they're getting paid for a service, and if something goes wrong, we pick up the phones, they come back and fix it. If something keeps or something shifts, there's value there. It's not just giving the money away for nothing. The plantings, were they just decorative and enjoyment, or are any of them relevant to sort of stabilization or? No, most of them were decorative, absolutely. Did you ask the group, or did the group voice to you, if you have the $62,250, what their priorities were, what they felt like? We should spend it, how about that? Olivia, you can back me up on this. Olivia and I, we're sorry, apologize, Olivia and I both, I think that we just asked them to be patient, that we had time, and that this meeting was not the time to start thinking about how we spend it. That was also, what a month ago, it was a while ago, so the idea that, I mean, we're further along in the project now, so Andrew can be a little bit more confident in that number, whereas when we met with them, we weren't confident in that number, so we said, we have a punch, we're gonna have that, but we're not positive, so we didn't even allow the discussion to take place, because it would have been reckless. And once we get it, it'll be, we get $6,000 in contingency. Once we're out of the ground, so to be kind of an expression, it's a simple project, but once we're above grade, and the mysteries are solved, and we don't run into those oil tanks, we know what they're gonna build on top of it, they bid that, so that money will be, will free up, but until we're into that position, we shouldn't touch that. Are you done with the 62, that's contingency? Yeah, top 62, top 62. So you'll know more about that when you get to the upper plate map. Absolutely, absolutely. Some of the other things that have changed that the revenue, so the contaminated soil, the soils, though we did find an offsite, a local site for disposal, their request is that they wanna build on their property someday, and we're in Montpelier clay right now. The expectations when we move to the upper playground, we're gonna get better soils that they'll want, but right now, the soils that we're pulling out are just clay, and they don't want them, understandably, so that's being shipped up to Coventry. Oh, which is not contaminated, just your key soil? The way the soil is sort of categorized is there's green soil, which is perfectly good. There's yellow soil, which is perfectly good to stay on site, or the state house long, or within a city limit, an urban limit. There's purple soil, which is contaminated, which needs to go up to Coventry. The yellow soil is unfortunately not, it's Montpelier clay, and we don't wanna reuse it under our honor, we don't wanna use it underneath our play equipment, so other people don't wanna use it under their potential future buildings. So that's also going to Coventry until we hit soils that we can ship to Berry, or reuse on site. So which of the soils is Berry digging? They're not gonna, no, good yellow soil, not clay, yellow soil. I got it, all right. Or we could reuse it on site, but we're still. So some of the soil is still going to Coventry? Well, all of it is going to Coventry so far, so far. But that's, again, that's sort of the lower courtyard. We think that the upper courtyard's gonna have more fill, more sandy soils that we can ship locally. But there's no guarantee on that. So that revenue of 36 is probably gonna get, I actually, when I showed it to the group, I put it at 75%, I'm down to 50%. So I think that number's actually probably, that revenue's probably gonna go lower. A little lower. So you have, on the Amherst Theater, you're gonna have two or three months when you get to switch it on there. We probably have a little more than that. I want to be conservative in this. The big piece with that is the drainage behind the Amherst Theater, as the water comes down the hill, we gotta get it from behind the blocks, whatever those are, and tie that into the drainage. But it's a relatively simple operation, so I don't think it's gonna be that complicated. I do think that it's worth talking about at some point soon, not perhaps tonight, but for us to think about, be very clear about who makes that decision. So that community members aren't upset. And you all aren't upset, and people aren't upset with you and people aren't upset with me and Andrew, and that we're very clear about how these decisions are gonna be made. I mean, I do, I mean, I think the Amherst Theater does have a kind of community component to it. Every benefit does. I mean, every benefit does, but it goes kind of beyond people, kids. Oh, I see what you mean. I see what you mean. You mean it has a community use behind it. That, you know, I don't, $40,000 is $40,000. We give the overall scope of the project. I think to go that if we don't have to, it would be an opportunity to be missed, I think to tie more people into the space. I'm interested in exploring what you were trying to say there, Libby, around clarifying decision making. And I think it's important to community, and to board members, because this is an extraordinarily important project to the community. And I think that it is a high budget priority for a lot of us on the board, as because we hear this, we know it from our community. And so what we wanna do is, you know what I mean, there's good management of a project like this in terms of, you know, well, yes, we can pace things a little bit. We can, if we just spread them out a little bit, we can do everything, that kind of thing. But those are squirrely answers that don't satisfy people who are not insiders. And so I think what we wanna be careful of is to not just explain how the decision will be made, but to really be clear what the decision is. And I think that the more we can get that information out early, the better, you know, because for one thing, I would advocate pretty strongly in any budget discussion that we fund the hell out of this thing. I think it needs to be done. And I may be the only one of the board who thinks that way, but I think what we wanna do is really make sure we, you know, help us figure out what the best process for getting the community's input heard and then integrating that as best you can into what you have to do financially to run the district. So, you know, I think we need to make sure we're very clear with everything. Not just who's making the decision, but when's the decision gonna be made and what's the, what it recourses there and all those other things. And the why, so that, for example, there's something on the list that Andrew says, well, we could hire somebody later on to put in planting because they were only, and so it's not that it's never gonna happen, but not this year. And there's a reason for that, right? Right, and the reason, because I think people wanna know, well, why'd you cut that and put it in there? But not this year is a bad answer, right? It's gotta be in 2020, or whatever that would be the answer people would wanna hear rather than not this year, because then not this year is the ultimate bureaucratic answer coming down. Let's make some promises and keep them. There's a lot of need in the system. Exactly. And then in time, because we make very little out of the bond and has its own playground needs. Absolutely. Its own infrastructure needs. Absolutely. And there's been a lot of money put into the playground and it's gonna be a good playground. It's gonna be a good playground regardless. So let's have that exact discussion so we're clear where we're gonna end up on this. And I see you gritting your teeth a little bit. I am gritting my teeth a little bit. As I said in a meeting just yesterday, that Jim can attest to, if I had a nickel for every time somebody said, well, it's just this amount of money, let's just do, it was just this amount of money add up. So there are a lot of priorities and there's a lot of needs. So how do we put all those things in perspective so that we're making really good decisions for our financial responsibilities as well as our student responsibilities? And they just will be helped by the fact that we're beginning the budget session right season just now to see what are our priorities? Are there other ones that are bigger and how do they all work in together? It's a good time to be talking. In terms of facility needs. And I mean, assuming the money doesn't, we don't get more money out of the way this is structured with the contingency, that's a different question. That money's already budgeted for here. But purely in terms of overall district facility needs, it would be very hard for me to say we should commit to fully fund the playground if we have not gotten a much bigger picture of our facilities needs and particularly of the needs of the middle school, which we're not addressed in the bond and which I think are significant because I do think it's not an endless pie. Unfortunately, I think the pie should be very, very big, but I'm not sure it's an endless pie and the middle school has to be a priority too. Yeah, I mean, I think the importance is inclusion and communication and thoughtfulness about decision making and explanation kind of ad nauseam because if it trickles out or if it's an inconsistent process or some people know and some people don't, there's gonna be that game of telephone that goes on and I think the more consistent and transparent it is. And I think to be honest with where we're not able to make decisions in a lot, we don't know what the contingency is. Here's what we're thinking about, but we're not at the decision point. Here's what the decision point's gonna look like. Here's the inputs that are gonna go into the decision because I agree with Steve, this is a high priority. I also agree with Bridget that we have to make some choices along the way. And I think we have to make those choices methodically and intelligently. And I think we have to work hard to kind of bring the community along with us even if it's gonna take some patience because I think you're right, Andrew. We're gonna have a great program. We're gonna have it soon. And it might not be the exact thing around people in vision. It might take another step or two even to get to where I think we all want it to be, but I think that communication is key. And I would suggest that as we told that group without being patient, this is 1.17 million out of bond. You've got close to two something million dollars worth of bids coming in. And like we had to make some hard decisions here, maybe making some hard decisions on the other projects as well. I mean, we all know you sit at any stoplight in town and you just wonder where all the truck drivers are coming from. I mean, when was the last time we saw this amount of construction in Montpelier? Forget the stake. I mean, we can actually see it in Montpelier for ourselves, which often we don't. It's just, it's crazy. It's crazy. Well, and to Jim's point, I'd say thank you for meeting with us. Good, thank you. Yeah, that's fantastic. And for this work, it's excellent. And I would continue to reach out to that group. Yeah, and we assured them, we assured them that we weren't going to be making any. We assured them that we had things in control and that there were decisions that we had to make on our own and that we couldn't involve them in every decision just like we can't involve you guys in any decision. But we have a good sense of it. I was prior to this, I was an architect with Blackwood Design and designed tens of millions of dollars worth of schools in my career. And I know where the $2,500 change order to get lights back on the project, I can make that decision. What the empathy there is made out of and what it looks like, we're gonna go back to the right group and I think it's up. Whether it's the group of 12 that we met with or two representatives from that group and two representatives of this group but we assured them that we will make the appropriate, we will reach out the appropriate time and asked for their input and like I said, like that discussion of clarifying that we're gonna be the ultimately the ones that have been involved in this process and a lot of people who have been involved in the process. Ultimately the one who's gonna ring it, ladies desk and my desk and so we kind of, the ones on the journey. I just wanna be really clear that we here every week from constituents every week and that they're not sure what's going on with the playground. They're concerned about the playground that they are not convinced that the administration is committed to pushing this thing forward. There's a lot of that and we know what we hear here at the meeting but it's been going on a lot of years and it's really important. I mean I will take my cue from the confidence of constituents basically. If they're feeling like they're in good hands, great. So I just encourage y'all to give us the tools to talk to them and you do the same and then let's get through this so that people are feeling like they're well respected through this. I'm not comfortable pitting it against the middle school. I wanna be very clear. It's not about pitting it Steve. It's about understanding what I've heard. It's about understanding what all of the needs are. But I heard you use middle school as the example which would be pitting it against the middle school. I'm a big believer in the middle school. There's a lot of help. I also heard very careful. I've heard very much during the bond building process that we have a plan for the middle school. It's okay. We don't need to rush it. We as a board express some concern about a few items that the administration had not funded immediately. I think those things are a higher priority than they were. I mean I'd like to condemn some properties around there and build an auditorium or whatever for the middle school. I'm all for that. But the point is that I hear that there are many priorities in this district. I'm aware of that. And what I wanna make sure is that we follow through on our commitments on this particular project and we figure out how to do that. And then we'll have another project we'll have to do and another one we'll have to do. So that's all. Yeah. Anything else? Do you encourage people? They have questions. In terms of the contact us, we've got, it's, I don't know, the town I know. It's, do you encourage people to get involved? I think they're not. I think you've been doing a very good job. I'm not. Yeah, no, no. It's reiterated, reiterated. You're absolutely right. I think we did a good job of sort of getting the scheduled conversation under control and I think all of this would count. Yeah. I think you did a great job too, but unfortunately, you're in Herod, you know. Yes. You know, four years of patients wearing thin, so. We'll make it work. It's all gonna work. Got no choice? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And as we move forward, I'm gonna kind of do a worksheet like this for all the projects that we're gonna have. I'm actually thinking of where we're at. We won't show Grant. Yeah. Just in some of the conversation, I could just feel Grant crawling up the table physically. No, this is clear to me. Yes. I think if I can understand it, maybe you'll lift it. Makes sense. Thank you. Good night. Thanks for coming in. This way. You know, it's definitely a role model. Yeah, Lisa had asked a request for staffing by teacher, by kids size. That's why you got that. Lots of. Lots of members. And others. So I'm happy to try to ask any questions or take any questions. I can find out the answers later. Also, maybe lost in this and the numbers. It's a section. Is the Montclair Roxbury enrollment data that I think Michelle referenced in a previous meeting of what we normally get right before budget season. And that was on our budgetary timeline to give out tonight. So, it's from Grant's office that is similar to what I believe you receive every year. So, happy to take questions and attempt to answer them and or get answers for you a later date. So, mine have to do with the fact that since I couldn't figure out that the teachers were out tonight, I really don't know how many students each teacher has. There are two teachers in there. Three. Three teachers in there. So, you know, when you look at this chart, it doesn't really tell you that. And when I look at that chart, I have the same problem that I had with, this doesn't tell me, for example, is one of those special educated? No, it's one of those. There's four of them. There's one special educated here. Yeah, one of those. So, but I'll be able to figure that out as soon as I have. You don't have to answer all that now. Just going to get that. So, we have a point five special educator here who also does point five intervention services. So, she's a full-time teacher. We have three classroom teachers in this chart. And while it might not be exact, we have approximately 40 students here. Okay. What's up with the number of unique students? 3,116. I was, I understood, unique sections, number of students, and sections, so it's like, that's the total number of students. That would be a question that I'd have to find out. I'm not sure why it's so unique. But I can find out. Over that 3,116. Yeah, I'm not sure. Why? Well, and it's you. So, when you carry it over to the other, that same column is in all of them. So, it'd be interesting to know that first time. I'd have to find out about it. It would be the same that I'm, I wasn't like I was looking at teachers who are on the same team in the middle school but have different numbers of students. They're just trying to, I'm just trying to understand this. Well, if you're on the 7,8 team, you're a 7,8 team, don't you have one team? You know what I mean? Yeah. So, like Mr. Hampton and Mr. Taylor are a 7,8 team. Yeah, they're all the same. But they have different numbers. And I thought they, but necessity would have the same number. I have to ask how that brings down. This information came from the, like as I asked the student identification system. So, it might be that it's just classified differently within there for exact data. So, that would be my guess around the answer, but I can sort of find out. And these are absolute numbers. They're not like weighted or anything like that. Yeah. I mean, I can't believe that Mr. Taylor could have 140 students, that's it. I like that. Does that change for a subject? Yeah. That one 7,8 team could be 140 students. I mean, No, there's not 140 students necessarily, but it may teach that many individual students who are like in math. Because students from other teams coming to that class? Could be. I don't know right now. Yeah. I'm sorry, I can't, I don't know how to read this. I'm sorry. So, if we just look at Union, which is a very simple model, and we just pull up, I don't know these, I don't know their positions. So, I don't know what they do or what they do. That's what I was talking about in the beginning. It helps you to know I actually could look them up for the high school because they're listed online. But, Put it ahead of dates, okay? Kindergarten teacher, fourth one down. There's 168 unique students. Yeah, not positive. We're not positive about that. We're not sure what they're doing now for you. There's five sections, that's five sections of kindergarteners? No. So, what that's referring to is, this is based on SEC data, I would believe that we have to report to the state. So, that's breaking a teacher's day into core classes. So, she has five core classes. So, you know, BLA would be one math science social study. So, that's why it says, she only have five sections of kindergarteners, but she has, we have to report out in five different areas in kindergarten for SEC data. How many kids are in there? So, she has 16 students and times five is 80. Exactly. I think that the student number in the sections and average student per section. Oh, that explains it for the others also. So, they'll have a partial student if they aren't in every single section that that teacher is responsible for. And it doesn't mean she sees 80 students. No, she sees 16. This one sees 16 for, but she has to teach 16 times five. Basically, so, in a day or whatever. Yeah. So, five different courses. So, it's like imagining that she's got five different classes throughout the day at the same 16. Right. So, what's important? So, when you see a partial, it's because in those cases, there's not the same number of students in every section that that person teaches. So, Christina Cain is a great example of that. So, she has 16.6 averages, art. She's teaching 24 different sections. So, okay. So, the important thing if you really want to look at kind of like a workload. Is that last column? If you don't want to count many different things that are responsible for, then it's just that last column. So, I feel like something, and I don't know that we have this data. So, please. It's so interesting. Something that would obviously influence the workload, too, is the amount of preps that these teachers have. If we have a teacher who teaches five sections, all of the same class versus another teacher. Well, it's different for a high school versus elementary school. Right. So, that kind of conversation applies to middle school. Middle school. High school, mainly. And that's some of that's contractual? Yes. So, we kind of... All of that is contractual. All of that is contractual. All of that is contractual. All of that is contractual. Oh, so what is in the contract right now? It depends on the position. It depends on the school. Yeah. It depends on the position. We'll be looking at that. Yes. You will know that very well. Yeah. In fact, I'm very soon. So, I'm curious for the high school, could you inquire? I noticed that I figured out the high school who does what. And so, for example, special educators have a less load, and that certainly makes sense. There are two math teachers with a very low student section load. I'm curious about why. Math class? I wouldn't have big load either. Hard. Seven kids? What classes are? I don't know. It just so happens that those teachers that popped up were math teachers. So, I don't know what classes it is. I'm asking for a little more information about it. I'm not saying it's not like someone's just saying a little more information about those two. That's totally an answer. Yeah. And you'll have that answer. Yeah. Can we just quickly look at the enrollment? Yeah. Line chart. I think I understand this one. I think I understand. I just want to know if you know it. There have been much, not in the new year we're adding on, but on the current, on the closer in years that we've seen any significant adjustments in our previous expectations for enrollment on those years. That's a hard question, but. For Roxbury? No, for district. So, you know, we were expecting, let's say last year we were expecting in the 2021 year to be this many students. Now we're realizing actually it's going to be different from 2021. I haven't analyzed it in that way. Okay. I don't forget these charts from previous years. It's okay. And maybe not exist exactly like this, but they're close. But there's nothing that you became aware of that was like, holy crap, but what happened there? No. Okay. Now, I know that there's bubbles that are going to really influence the middle school that are coming from UES in terms of space. And they have been too. Availability. And keep in mind that things like the UES numbers, future enrollments are based on birth averages five years ago, or, you know, like so many. I don't know if that's not a real accurate measure of what could actually come to Canada. And that's what's driving, like the 65, 68, 55, so I'm saying 20 through 23, that's... It's a birth rate. That's a birth rate number. So I was looking at this and I'm like, okay, we'll have this bubble you're talking about in the middle school. But then we also have this cliff, you know, we're... We're decreasing. We're back in like the 25 student drop in our kindergarten class between nine to 20 and 12. But that's based on birth rate. We don't know. It's going to move into the town. These numbers are incorporating our historic creep up. We see enrollments, we see people joining in in the middle in addition to birth rate. Do we kind of try to deal with that in these too? So I guess we would, right? So what we notice is that the birth rates are pretty good at the first couple of years. You know, they're pretty accurate-ish, but then what happens is a few more students come in and a few more students come in as the kids get older. And so those classes grow a little bit over time. So whatever, it's just a rough number to get us. Yeah, yeah, it's not accurate data points. That's just something for us to think about. Well, I think it helps us see in general we're not expecting drops right now. Right, I understand. We've been growing, which is so unusual in the state. It's hard to tell or predict that the next house that sells, somebody's gonna have five kids, or they're not gonna have any. So that's- I mean, the trend I think thus far has been doing largely the anecdotally, but they're kind of, for the numbers, there are older people moving out and younger families moving in. And I think part of it is, I think people are attracted to the community you have to offer at the school to be part of it. The more we can sell our story. The better. Fantastic man, the better off we'll be then. We also don't know an influence about the merger with Oxbury. We have anecdotal stories of more realtors paying more attention down here. So we don't know that it comes yet. And then we also don't know if we're gonna see an increase in the speed of grand parenting, of dropping off the grand parenting in some way. So if we could see some of those numbers come a little early, it won't come late. Yeah. It can come a little early. And we'll end up in the same spot. That's a lot of kids at the middle school. Condemns of property and both of those in his face. Yeah. Yeah. Some people. Some people. Some people. Some people. Some people. Some people. Some people. Spreading everywhere. No, no, no. And I just have to throw in, as sad as it might be, if you are a senior citizen in your house you've lived in for 30 years, in Motley, or perhaps you can't afford to live there. Thank God we have income sensitization. Sensitizing in our tax codes so we don't have to worry about that too much. Oh, okay. Unless you're talking about the municipal side, the municipal side is not the municipal side, which is not what we're dealing with. Policy readings. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And ASAP. And I fun it when I have Talyn, another American who steals and treads across his home to support those. And. And. Yeah. Um. Overrun. Yep. Odııat. And that is where you are the Lights very, the green. Green. I know it. Oh. And orange. Yes. Which is essentially what I heard, we're were talking title about j українsky and that he says he African Wie Less than I skipped over. I'm not going to go back. We switched out. We switched out. We switched out. I missed the beginning. Yeah. Any questions? Is my other question, do we actually have his grant actually a chief financial officer? Is that a position that exists? He is my business manager. So we should change that. We should probably change that. There's no hyphen in the district name. Yeah. I said review the three year district plan. That would assume, of course, we had a three year district plan. And that we thought we needed one. So we thought that might... I feel like we circled around and around this topic at the retreat and didn't decide to require it. I know. Well, I don't know that we can require it in a committee, but I don't know that we can require it in a committee, but I don't know that we can require it in a committee charge when we didn't. That was a good part of the discussion. It was maybe to get some clarification on that circular discussion. Yeah. We began writing this chart from the charge we had from before, which spoke about a three year. Right. So we thought we'd bring it here to say, again, where are we? And we obviously can't review something that's not there or that you don't want. Any relevant? Any relevant in a senior district plan? Yes. There's plenty of those kicking around. Yeah. Or do we just eliminate it? I mean... What? I guess it would give us kind of the freedom to, as a finance committee, to be able to take a broad look at the district and say, hey, according to this, we're kind of doing okay, but maybe according to this, we're not doing okay. I think that gives you the discretion without... Yeah. And as this board already knows, I'll always be talking about the three year plan. So when that gets into that number seven, you know, it says develop an executed protocol to budget for board priorities, outline in the three year plan. We could eliminate the outline in the three year plan if it's important. We could eliminate it or we're not doing a three year plan. Was that the first thing that happened? I mean, we talked about it at length at the retreat and didn't decide to do it. So it is not because it was never resolved. We didn't put it in any policy that we worked on at the retreat. We have asked for it as we just did it. In past generations of the district. And it was actually in the policy for Mount Hood for years and we never had it. It doesn't exist. What is the plan that this committee would reference beyond past budgets and the CIP maybe? I have no idea why we have a three year plan. We have a capital plan. We have a capital plan. Before we get to something to plan, on this board point number seven, develop an executed protocol to budget for board priorities and a three year plan. The first part of the statement, the executed protocol to budget for board priorities, I am really inclined to feel like that is a budget policy that we passed at our last meeting. In all the iterations of discussions about budget processing and the budget protocol, I could be wrong with gladiator but the budget policy that we passed, it kind of was the protocol we expected to follow for the budget process. So if we are not clear on the plan and our budget policy itself, essentially what we create or does serve the purpose of protocol to budget for board priorities, can we just scratch number seven? Because the protocol is in the other policy. It's in the other policy. Likewise, when it says to ensure a budget process, the second part of this, I would say is when we had a little bit of discussion about this over the last part is really in the budget Should this charge reference the budget policy then? We certainly should refer to that. We can take out, Brian and I were having this discussion and since it happened a while ago, we passed a fiscal management policy, E01. What about the execution policy, E02 and then along with that this one, we didn't so long ago to go back and look because I couldn't remember. I just wanted to So here's my concern just from like a state government perspective of like seeing a bunch of SOPs sit on the shelf. Right now we have all of these different policies that have been developed because this group has a lot of energy for it. Right now there's a new board thinking like 10 to 15 years from now none of us might be on the board anymore and somebody is looking at the finance committee charge. They're like, yeah, we'll put this together. Nobody's referencing these policies. These policies need to be rewritten in about a three year cycle so they are consistent. And the exciting thing about this new board is this will be the first board I've ever had any contact with where everyone on the board has read every policy because I have read every policy. I'm concerned about the last number three because I did not understand that the finance committee would be responsible for recommending a budget. I think that's the superintendent's job. It is a big question. It is a big question. I thought we were going to cut the bottom from that bottom part. Okay. What was your recommendation? All three. I think we cut all three too. I agree. I think it should be the superintendent of the process. Well, we adopted the process. We adopted the process. Okay. So is this charge necessary? Well, we need eight charges. I think we need a charge. I think one through six makes sense. Six is rewritten. Six is rewritten. Seven reflect on the content of the budget. Whereas one through five are more of the process or the structure by which you will decide on a budget. Six and seven is when this committee would turn inward and say do these reflect our priorities? What should actually be in the budget? So I think there's a big break between five and six. One through five seem uncontroversial. They're just good government. And then at six, but I don't know if we want that group to do it. I think we want that group to be kind of reviewing the numbers to make sure that we have all the resources in one spot. There's a significant fiscal oversight obligation for the district. I understood the finance committee were delegating a piece of that. Smaller than the sequel to be conducting some degree of fiscal oversight. Sometimes looking more carefully at the numbers and assessing, you know. And kind of in a sense a bit of a wash up and come back and say well, you know, we've looked at the numbers and here are some concerns rather than you know, kind of a truthing to make sure that kind of on that line by line thing that the information the board is getting to make big budgetary decisions are real. They've dealt down and they're seeing good numbers. So that's kind of like higher level presentation that we've gotten in the past. We've got people on the board, we've dealt into those enough to tell the board you can trust these or not but I think the decision making and stay at the board loves them. But the charge of this committee is to make sure that members of the committee have the confidence in those numbers or a lack of confidence of those numbers that they can express out to the board and the board can make a better decision based on that. I think Andrew's question was a good one and this is a good discussion which we talked about before which was why do we have financing? First of all, we never had one. Then all of a sudden it was there in a sort of tricky position and so now we're sort of saying what is it you want to do? The discussion is great. What do you want the finance committee to do? The finance committee to do exactly what Jim just said. To be the smartest ones on the board around the budgetary decisions and financial things that have been made so that anybody can come to people on the finance committee and a finance committee can answer a question or know where to go to go. So look again at the numbers once you're done. There's nothing to say that you think says that. Ryan wants to say something. Listen to the conversation right now. I think what happened and I'm not going to criticize Tina and Andrew or myself but we stole from the past. When we started drafting the committee charge we started with the committee charge we had last fall and the finance committee that we put together last fall had a very different task that we liked and made sense but we didn't totally feel comfortable giving the axe or wasn't quite sure how to deal with for the future of the new committee. So yes, I think the theme overall does need to shift heavily towards the financial oversight role rather than we have kind of our hands in everything. As the new guy I certainly wasn't going to put a big axe through the whole thing. I think one through five it works very well one through five. A nice neat set of tasks that requires quite a bit of digging and also there's a cool thing there about as of four for the community we want to make sure we're good with that but make sure the community has access to information. I'm going to be careful with this because we did rewrite this saying I wanted it very clear when you were writing this to say it's not the budgets committee it's responsibility to tell the community about the budget it would be the entire board responsibility. We'll be glad to so that's why this is work with the full board I'm sure the community is presenting. Tina and I had talked about this a bit or emailed about in a bit this past week I mean I'm with you Steven that I feel it's really important when you look at this charge to keep the community in mind and keep that communication to the community I definitely understand what Tina was saying which is this is really a responsibility of all of ours it should just fall to the three people on the budget committee to make sure that these issues are articulated to the community but I think that's the working with because that's the finance committee to kind of report out so the board is informed and educated about budget and financial matters that the community can switch to get on to so something that's not here that potentially could be here is capital needs as a piece of the overall financial picture either in a variety of different ways for example I'm not sure that the bidding process or bond spending or any of that is captured by what's here and that's a piece of fiscal oversight I'm not really sure what it should be but I just wanted that and then fiscal needs in terms of capital needs are another area where there could be some oversight by committee at least related to the bond I mean the bond is a whole area where we spend all this money I don't think it's in the budgets or the financials and it's a murky to the public why would it not be in the financials debt service isn't the financials well the debts would be in there the ongoing payment would be it depends on the spend down of the bond right the liability assets she wouldn't necessarily be part of that typically but it would be the income and expense piece so you could add that in would that be a charge for the finance committee I don't know it doesn't always spend money you know in a bidding process it's probably not a real active duty right because what you're going to do is during a bonding period you're going to earn a bond cycle when you're really looking at the bond that's when it might become active but then once it's in place it's just debt service because there's nothing you can do about it at all decisions have been made there's no monitoring to do other than to make sure it's getting paid but I mean during the period of using the bond you know in the next couple of years for instance but I don't know there's not a lot of board action for those points for are you thinking when the district would go out to bond that the finance committee would be involved or is it more modern not really a technical process but it does matter for things like when we made the decision this last time about bonding we had to look at the interaction as it relates to taxpayer responsibilities between our operating budget and our bonding and what is realistic in this particular year and they definitely wrapped right up together and actually about this where you're going that's another really good point another place is like how the confidence in the estimates that under underlie the bond just what we were basically just talking about if you don't have confidence in the numbers that you're using to build your bond proposal then you end up in these discussions about how do we finish the project so I'm just trying to flush this out a little bit so because I don't know how involved the board should be but it sounds like is there a point in that process that you think the board should be involved or this committee should be involved with reviewing the district's actions it would be total hindsight I don't know but I'm thinking that it might have been helpful had we had a finance committee at the time that we were debating the bond that was sitting down and getting a sense of where those numbers came from for the project estimates and I think the administration was looking for that I mean I think they welcomed that during the development of the bond right there's a point after which you're just like okay now just let us do our work but there's a lot of confidence building going up to that point and then because it's all prepping to go to a vote just like an annual budget goes to a vote you have to build confidence along the way in those conversations in this last bond cycle we were throwing around a lot of numbers 3 million, 5 million what would this, what would that and that would be a position where the finance committee could say 3 million would look like something like this or 5 million might look like something like that to have a better picture of for how do we need a committee to do that because that's going to be talking to contractors about projects or is that our responsibility to get you those kind of the details of the details of presentation format rather than the numbers of the board I mean I think it's kind of a perspective expenditure that's not that seems to me a little different than kind of like people who sit down and get a handle of what the books look like so I guess I'm still getting well I'm just sort of getting at this oversight idea and not personalizing it it's not about what a great job Andrew is doing what a great job would he be doing it's about what structure does the board have in place to provide some oversight that when we go to the public and say we need 5 million dollars and that 5 million dollars that we spend to build these 7 things what is enough oversight is it enough that we've just said it's been presented to us by the administration and they've said that or is there a role there for saying that's a place where we should put a board committee on to and maybe it's an ad hoc committee at the time to dig in a little bit deeper into the confidence in the estimates that we've actually reflect more on monitoring of an existing budget that's where the discussion came from but that's different than the prospect of if you think about both Libby's and Bridget's comments about the administrative role versus the board I think in monitoring we're asking the board to become smarter so they can do a better job monitoring but in building a budget based on we effectively rely on the experts the professionals to build it to have good numbers coming with good estimates and we don't have any we don't want to get involved to the level of second guessing the quality of the estimates effectively what's it going to cost to hire one more position in ART or whatever we don't want to get in there and figure that out same thing we don't want to figure out is to report at least quarterly to the Montpelio Roxbury Board of Commissioners to ensure transparency and comprehensive discussions of financial matters by the full board so I know that's a broad statement but I would say think if this works that you could say if you had a concern at this particular point about something we wish as a board the bond for the playground or we wish we knew more about what construction you could ask the finance committee to investigate that and that would be not a continual thing it might just be something that came up would you do that with this for instance where we see that the bond the pre bond estimates were off we ended up getting bids we understand that we want to take some action to put some things back in but we got to find new money for that send that to finance committee to work with the administration is that a role for that when you would do that I think there's an easy fix to this why don't we just add six other financial matters charged to the committee by the board so if we've got a big bond we want the finance committee to send a bond to this for you the financial matters and the board's request yeah let's do one through five okay good jam she's really nice Tita, Andrew, Libby I think you guys saw one email response from Grant on some of this I believe we're essentially going with one through six with a change to number six now what through five didn't we just say we're including six again but we're changing it to the I'm sure yes okay we're comfortable that Grant is going to be happy with what's coming across here that's why I had the impression I had but I wasn't okay do we want to improve this now or do we want to have someone type this up was it warned for approval alright now it's a it's a committee charge you want the other changes oh boy yeah changing CFO business manager taking up the hyphens removing everything after five and inserting a new six which is review other financial matters at the board's request I think this could come back in nice which brings me to a point this could come back in nice form for the next board that if it's not approved you'd have it it leads me to something that's going to make the bigger teeth again which is we're getting past Keith Green's thought he was thinking which room I can pull up and sleep in this is a quickie when Ryan and I were talking today and we were thinking about the last fiscal management policy in the last whatever policy and I went back to look in my notes which I have lots of I have lots of policies that I wrote all over right so would there be a time in which I could have a copy of all of the approved policies you think we should do paper policies even though they're online all the policies are online they're on our page I also believe I've shared with all of you if I haven't I've shared with some of you a Google Drive of all the policies so on the only hesitation I have from our point of view is I do love to have it in front of me in some form whether it's electronic or some other form if we're going to talk about that so it's okay with me if that's where it is but then you can't bring it up and remember policy X and expect me as the time to see you know what I'm saying I agree so it was just a discussion regarding how we access things in our discussions and deliberations and it is I brought the manual with me tonight because I knew that the budget execution the financial was all going to lay back to this finance committee charge and I might think I guess the discussion I had a while ago was just simply I am totally happy going paperless I had something like an access to actually discuss about tonight at our meetings I know the Norfield School District before they had merged had gone and they had purchased iPads for all the board members so that was their avenue to ensure that yes even though things were in the website during the meeting things can still be accessed by everybody not proposing right now that we budget for we could just make 10 copies of the policies but instead of us taking them home to the meetings you know it's like you have it there and you get it back then you always have it literally about right to leave the building sorry how's your readings did we resolve that no it's important to I don't think it was anything it's just a discussion I don't think today's action on or any action on paper that is in our current packet do they have tablets that you can't have I think I would like to say I don't think the discussion is done but I think we could think of that's the thing of ways to to handle this and it might be just having common packets that the board can access to meet because I I do agree it's important but I also think about it probably come to a at least bureaucratic way to do it yes policy readings and let's try to be well one of the hasty ones can be that we don't have the supermarket and expectations in the packet so I'm assuming we're not looking at it we went back Heather and I went back to the minutes today because Heather caught it this afternoon that it wasn't in the packet in the minutes it said that Steve was going to make some revisions to it I think that's true that's okay so we missed Heather and I missed catching up with Steve on that so that's our ad that's right you're bad at trying to be a good okay I have one question back is the time for questions on the second page under C1 yeah I'm just going to read this to you tell me what this is honor the time allocated on the agenda for long board meetings you want to be avoided exactly now I know your intention but what does this say it's been there the whole time I know it has I just meant that it reads this would have been the discussions we had in the very first reading a year ago it was really the intention is we do our best practice to how should we say stick to the agenda yes and my only question was does it say that I think it doesn't really make sense sorry see what the time allocated I mean I absolutely agree with it I'm just thinking I have the time allocated on the agenda well it seems like as if the time allocated on the agenda for long meetings I'm curious then at long board meetings get rid of the word for just make a two statements because out of the time allocated on the agenda period period and then we could do another one long board meeting should be avoided I don't know why not going to get it wrong thank you Ryan for your work on this two statements what would you do with that really I think we should not have the time allocated on the agenda and delete the rest if anything it implies that if there's time allocated on the agenda for long meetings we should honor it you should avoid it sorry about that it was it looked like there was some editing that got done and then got rid of 16,000 files I had ignored and yeah yeah I think one of the really good things it has to come back for the final yeah that's amazing that's amazing thank you Ryan again because it didn't change the substance of anything well actually then could the superintendent expectations policy come back next time also because unless you change something, unless you what is going to be changing I don't know what it was but if you decide it wasn't necessary a superintendent I see your point okay you and I will review that and see and we'll bring it back I think one of the meetings you and I asked the same was that question and amusingly you would have responded to be the first sign sorry sometimes I just need to be oppositional too oh really? oh it is not going to be a change and we're going to adopt it next time I need to know about that sure I got it perfect Ryan we'll talk tomorrow and then we'll review it and then we'll let you know this week do I have a motion to adjourn? move return I second that