 Welcome to Montpelier Civic Forum. This is yet another in a series leading up to Town Hall and basically explaining to you why you should go to vote on Town Hall even though we have no contested races. And tonight we're going to talk about the schools and it's going to be a good conversation. I'm going to speak with Andrew Stein who's running for a term of how long? Three years. So we've got Andrew for three years unless there's a massive writing campaign. That's right. And Andrew, you've been on the board for how long? I haven't seen you, which means you were appointed. Since September. In September, what made you want to get on the board? So when Peter Sterling was considering resigning, he and some other community members approached me. And it's an exciting time for Montpelier Rocksbury schools, right? As of July 1, we became a new school district. We have a new superintendent. We have a new elementary school principal. We're going to have a new high school principal. We have a newer business manager. And so we have a brand new district with an administration that's in flux. And my background is in public administration, public policy, public finance, public budgeting. What is your college education? So I... And then past college experience. So I... Post college. I studied international policy and economics and then I had a Fulbright Fellowship, lived in China for a couple of years. I'm a former Freeman Foundation scholar and Middlebury College Sustainable Study Abroad grant holder. So I've done a bunch of independent research, primarily looking at how market-based incentives and economic policy can help influence environmental policy. So looking at the intersection of economic and environmental policy. And then I was a journalist. One of my then-girlfriend, now-wife and I moved back from China in late 2010. We moved to Vermont, which is where she's from. And where I grew up as a child, visiting in the summer times and winter times on vacation with my family. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both of us went to public schools. So we placed very high value on public education. And we moved back to Vermont and I worked as a journalist for the Addison County Independent, which I loved. I'm so excited about moving to Vermont. Is the Addison County Independent still in existence? Oh yeah, it's doing great. It just brought home a bunch of awards at the New England Newspaper Association. And it's a wonderful twice-weekly publication that supports a very engaged community. I had the great fortune of covering the five-town region, which centers around Bristol, Lincoln, Starksboro, New Haven, and Monkton. And I also covered environmental and energy issues there. And after I was there for about a year and a half, there was a nascent digital publication at the time called vtdigger.org. And at that time, the Addison County Independent and VT Digger were sharing articles. And a number of the articles that VT Digger was running from the Addison County Independent were ones that I had worked on. And- Now how long ago would that be? That would have been summer of 2012. And that is when I shifted over summer, early fall of 2012. And I shifted over to work for vtdigger.org. So you were on State Street? At that time, we were on Main Street. We were above one more time. And then we moved to State Street. And then I subsequently, I left and I took a position as what was previously- And you were the first staff people. I was the second ever full-time staff writer. The first was a gentleman named Alan Panabaker. And then, and obviously, Ann Galloway, the impetus behind all of this was truly the first full-time member. And she's just done such amazing job with it. Yes, and the vision that she set out years ago when I interviewed for that job has really come to fruition now. And it's wonderful to see I'm a regular reader. And I greatly value the work that her and her team do. They have a really, really talented group over there. So you had a side glance at that point into the legislative process dealing with education? So at that point, I really focused on healthcare and energy issues and public finance issues. So capital public. So public finance and not do education in this state. Right, yes. So there's certainly some education there. And when I was at the county publication, there was lots of education. And that was, those were some of the assignments that I enjoyed the most. But my wife is a public educator. So around the time that I went to work for vtdigger.org, my wife was shifting from higher education. She had been a visiting lecturer of Chinese at Middlebury College to public education because she had such a wonderful public education in Vermont. She graduated from CVU, went to Williston Central School and that was where her heart was. And she is a prolific language learner and educator. She's a polyglot. She speaks numerous foreign languages. And so she certified, if I'm not mistaken, I believe she certified in Spanish to teach Spanish, Chinese and ESL. And she could probably be certified to teach French as well. And she's passionate. We're always talking about public education issues at home. And so I did leave vtdigger, though, to get back to your original question. I left vtdigger and went to work for Doug Hoffer when he was elected in his first term. And he, Doug Hoffer being the state auditor. The state auditor, that's right. And he hired me into a position that was then called the Special Investigator, is now called the Government Research Analyst. And that was a great opportunity to examine a broad range of issues from consumer access to healthcare information to the state's competitive bidding practices to the return on investment that the state gets from leasing out its iconic mountain sides to ski resorts to executive compensation at the designated agencies to... Did you do economic development in terms of its return? So we did a little bit of that, but that recent report that you're talking about was actually produced by my successor, a young gentleman named Kristoff, who recently left to take a position in Rhode Island with the Office of Management and Budget there. After, so I bounced around a little bit, after the state auditor's office, I went over to the tax department and the agency of administration, first under the Shumlin administration then under the Scott administration, working on, I was a research economist. So when there are policy changes that affect revenue sources, I would estimate the impacts on Vermonters as well as on the state budget. And so one of my most proud accomplishments in that role occurred last year when the Republican Congress and President Trump pushed through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that really scrambled Vermont's tax code, personal income tax code. And what that was going to lead to was a $42 million increase on families in aggregate tax payments, because the way that we adjusted for household, the way that we adjusted, the way that we taxed household income based on household size, was based on the federal code. Was based on the federal code, exactly. So this is the idea that we tax an individual income earner earning $80,000 a year differently than we do a family of five earning $80,000 a year, because that family of five earning $80,000 a year doesn't have as much money to go around to support those folks. And so our tax code accounts for that. We have a very progressive personal income tax code in the state of Vermont. Now were you around there for two different ones. One, the effect of internet taxation, the ability of states to force internet taxation, were you around for the modeling of that? So remote sellers, is that what you're talking about? So all of the internet sellers selling into the state of Vermont. Right, exactly. Yeah, so this past, I was around for that, and this past summer the Supreme Court overturned a previous decision that they had made. The US Supreme Court or state? The US Supreme Court overturned a previous decision that they had made that the previous decision said states can't, they cannot tax, they cannot compel remote sellers to remit sales tax for goods sold into their state if they don't have some kind of physical presence in that state, essentially, that's the skinny. And they went back on that considering how the economy has evolved over time this past summer. And on June 21st, actually, they changed them. So now the state of Vermont is able, as well as many other states, are able to collect sales tax. And that benefits our schools because now the sales tax in the state of Vermont goes 100% to the education fund. The impact of Act 46 of the mergers, were you involved in estimating that? No, I wasn't, I wasn't involved. I mean, that must have been a monster. Yeah, and that would have been more, I don't know the extent to which the tax department was involved with that because I wasn't involved with that particular issue. The agency of education, I imagine, was quite involved with that. Another thing, though, that was fun to work on was working with Treasurer Beth Pierce on her Clean Water Report, looking at ways to fund clean water initiatives. Has the Department of Taxation your part of the Department of Taxation? Not anymore, so now, I know, I know. This is a horrible winding road. It's like we should possibly put your resume on the screen if anyone's interested. So as of December 19th, I, well, there was a transition period, another Montpelier resident and a mentor and friend of mine, Susan Mezner, who was a long time economist with the tax department, and then was deputy state auditor for, auditor Hoffer for the first three terms, decided to retire from full-time state employment at the end of December, and I have since moved into that role as deputy state auditor. So you're back at the auditor's office? I'm back at the auditor's office. I was gonna ask whether with Beth Pierce, you had had any role whatsoever in estimating our liabilities for pensions? I have not had a role in that, no. Because that's a big major project of her office? That is a major role of her office, yeah. That's a big project. Why don't you step forward? You're one of three people on that board who holds a unique distinction. Would you tell our viewers what that distinction is that you hold on the Montpelier-Roxbury board? We spoke about this beforehand. I do not have children. Is that the distinction? Absolutely. Tina and Lisa also don't have kids. Now, we might have kids in the future. We're discussing that, we're not certain. So for me, I never saw running for school board as something that you do because you had kids per se. Both my wife and I are major supporters of our public school system. And as somebody with a background in economics, there's a lot of empirical evidence that shows that investing in public K-12 and really pre-K to 12 education is one of the best investments that we can make in our society. And at this, going back to, I think the question that you asked initially about why I decided to run. Absolutely. I wasn't sitting at home thinking that it was one of my life's goals to run for school board. But I realized when Peter and other community members approached me about the position as he was planning to resign, was that I had a skill set that could really benefit the community. They appealed to my- And what is that skill set? A background in public administration, public finance, budgeting, public policy, and a shared value and commitment to see our schools prosper and to invest in our schools in a way that produces the best outcomes for our kids. It's important to consider affordability in all of that and return on investment. What is affordability in your view? So that's a very good question. There's a lot of different ways of defining affordability. It depends on, there's no perfect answer to that question. That's a very difficult question. The affordability, so there's the affordability for taxpayers, right? Can taxpayers afford this? Fortunately, we do have, in this state, we do have an income sensitized progressive- What is an income sensitized progressive tax? Right, so our property taxes have several tiers based on your income. And so not everybody pays based on their property. And many pay based on their income. Most for monitors do not pay property taxes based, do not pay education taxes based on their property. They pay it based on their income to some degree. Now, through court rulings of the past that still hold, we have pooled our education funds so that those who are close to, in the N.E.K., to Canada, or those who are very South, are not, who have no real property to speak of, relatively speaking, no property value, so that their school districts are dirt poor. Is that the bottom line of what you're saying? Is that we pool our resources together and in order to shield those of us who have a lot of property or those of us who have very little, there's a complete mechanism for balancing that out. So, well, there's two things going on here. There's the education fund, which has evolved quite a bit over time. Act 60, I believe, is what established it in the late 90s and there was Act 68. There have been a bunch of acts since. And so the way that education is funded has shifted considerably over time. It's essentially based on per-people spending in schools. And it comes out of a central education fund in theory, in practice, money shifts between districts, is my understanding of how it really works. In terms of, so what is it? Sorry, what is the exact question that you wanted to answer? What I think I'm saying, you see, I don't even know what I'm saying. What I think I'm saying is, we're talking about affordability. Does that in your mind include city school taxes? So that you have the city tax, you have the school tax, the combined tax. In our particular case, our school tax is sitting square in the middle, pretty much. Our city tax is at the very top, near the very top, so that the collective tax is pretty high. Which is- Our municipal taxes are fairly high compared to other similar sized municipalities around the state. Absolutely. Which has, as well as our housing values, are pretty high. So if we're looking for young couples like you and your wife- Have to add housing. Housing is critical. We absolutely have to add housing in the city. We essentially have a 0% effective vacancy rate with regard to our rental and our real estate markets. And if we want to be able to afford a high quality of life and we want to have a more diverse community, which I'm hearing from a lot of community members that that is something- What does that mean? I think a lot of community members would like to have some more cultural diversity here. Again, what does that mean? It means having people from other countries, from other backgrounds, from other ethnicities, other religious backgrounds. There's certainly a feeling that I've heard from Montpelier residents. Some ideas that have been floated is, wouldn't it be great to have a refugee resettlement program in Montpelier similar to Winooski or Burlington programs like that? But when you've got zero- But when you don't have a place for these people to live. And I actually think that a program like that would do wonderfully in a town like Montpelier. We have a very supportive, very tight-knit community. It's a very walkable community. I mean, you have your hardware store, you have a couple of drug stores, several different grocery options- And a pet store. An excellent pet store, might I add. All within walking distance, we've got a lot of great jobs. And I should say, I am on the city's housing task force. I haven't been able to participate as much as I'd like to in recent years. But we are fortunate to have a mayor who's very committed to the idea of adding housing. And we have a number of city council. District employee and Watson. That is right. Physics teacher at the high school. That is right. And math teacher. But also with regard to the issue of affordability, if you're able to add housing and add residence in a way where you net positive revenue, where adding those houses doesn't take 50 years for the state's infrastructure improvements that add sewage and stormwater and other utility expenses, if it doesn't take 50 years to pay something like that off. If you can pay that off in a short period of time and start netting positive revenue, you can take advantage of what are called economies of scale. So if you have certain opportunities that you want to achieve, it can cost less to achieve those opportunities when you achieve an economy of scale. Now as we speak as economists, let's go off on economies of scale. What's your feeling now that Washington Central will ultimately become one district? And the politics of the merger and consolidation play itself through. Do you see us ever merging Montpelier High School and U32 to get economies of scale moving, to get more students critical mass to be able to offer more course offerings? So this is a hot button issue, as you know. And it has been in this community and in the surrounding communities for a long time. And there are a lot of different perspectives on this. I think we're already seeing some of those economies of scale being leveraged with regard to sports teams, for example. And whether, this isn't a direct answer to your question, whether there's ever a direct merger or whether the two districts, well, Supervisor Union and district are able to share resources, I think there are a lot of opportunities there. I mean, we're so close proximity-wise. If there are certain programs that in Montpelier, we just don't have the number of students to be able to offer that in Washington. Such as fine arts. There's all sorts of art programs. I mean, I went to a high school that had about 1,500 kids and the art offerings that I had were twice, maybe three times what are offered in Montpelier. Well, they've often said that U32 has humanities down very well, but they're deficient to some degree in terms of advanced placement classes. Montpelier has advanced placement classes but doesn't have enough kids really to support the humanities offerings as they do up in the hill. Yeah, and with regard to this question, it really is, so I approach this position as I have the technical skillset to help the community plan and execute its vision. If it can articulate its vision. And that is really important. It's important to engage, but for the community to articulate its vision, the community also needs to be engaged in a manner that can help it think through these issues. And I think that this is really a huge issue that the community really does need to think through. And it's not just one that we would have to make. It would be a bilateral decision, right? There's a set of communities in another supervisory union right next door. And then we have our community and Roxbury. And so even if Montpelier said, yeah, we wanna do this, we would also need partners on the other side to feel the same way. But there are a lot of decision points here that would need to be accounted for. One thing that Montpelier families would have to consider is, they might have Montpelier families would have less control. The voice of an individual Montpelier family in a school district would be a smaller percentage, right? It's one family, if you have two school districts of roughly the same size and they merge, one family therefore has half the voice, I guess, you could say. That's a potential. Now when I've talked with those who are in favor of this proposal, they say, well, Middlesex and Calis and East Montpelier, they're our neighbors. It's not a bad thing for us to have more people. We can talk it out. We can work things out. It's not like they're approaching the world from a very different vantage point than the city of Montpelier. We're all in the same community together. And I definitely hear that. I think it's something that, so as I said, we're in the middle of a big transition period in this city right now, transition. And they're an even bigger transition. And they're in an even bigger transition. And right now, if we were to have this conversation, I don't think it would be very productive, but I think it is certainly worth something that I think it's worth a discussion at the very least over the next three years. We need to let things settle down in Montpelier and Roxbury and we need to let things settle down in Washington Central. And we need to see where both of the school districts are. But at that time, a conversation, if anything, it might revalidate for both communities that, hey, we have it pretty good. This is working really well for us right now. It might also lead the communities to a different conclusion. I'm not certain what the right answer is. I'm not- Well, there is no right answer. I don't think there is either. For Montpelier for years has struggled with small class sizes. And the idea that the inefficiencies of very small classes. The school in Roxbury, it's not popular to talk about, but you've got 28 kids in an elementary school that are dedicated through the next three, four years, something on that level. Is there an efficiency in keeping a school open that only has 25 or 26 kids? I haven't looked at Roxbury's situation closely enough yet, just having been on the board for six months, I haven't drilled down into Roxbury specifically. The district gets, so first of all, Roxbury isn't an island in and of itself, although geographically it is a little bit further. It's not an adjacent town. But- It's a half an hour school bus ride. Yeah, 25 minutes, half an hour. If we look at all of our resources across the district, that merger isn't such a bad thing for our district. Why? What bleach is that conclusion? That building is in excellent shape. That building is in much better shape than our middle school, for example. It doesn't need the type of work that our elementary and high schools need even. So we're establishing a capital fund to pay for a bunch of improvements. Our high school would've paid for a bunch of improvements and we're in the process of paying for a bunch of improvements. Let me stop you right there. There is a second school issue coming up, which is the capital bond issue. And would you explain the difference for us in terms of having periodic bond issuance where we do a big $3 million bond vote and having every year 260, 270, 280,000, what is the thinking on that? You've arrived pretty much at the same place at the end, don't you? Well, it depends on the project. And it also depends on interest rates. So when you bond for something, you're paying interest on it. You're taking out a loan, right? You're taking out a loan from the community, from a bunch of purchasers of that bond. Now what we're bonding for is school improvements. We're not bonding for staff. Capital improvements. Capital improvements mean we're bonding for construction work on the schools. Okay. Yeah. And so some of this construction work can be done in a phased approach, like changing windows and doors. Some of it, for example, the playground, you need to spend a bunch of money upfront at once. And so in that case, and with regard to some of the improvements at the elementary school, bonding for that all at once was something that the board felt made sense and something that the community made sense. The community ultimately voted on it, right? In the case of the capital fund, the idea is we just took out this big bond, right? And we're paying debt service, okay? So we're paying off that loan. At the same time, at the middle school and in some of our other buildings, we do have some other capital needs. I mean, just on a small scale, we're gonna have to... Well, we're talking about things such as bathrooms, we're talking about gym backboards, we're talking about painting a playground, we're talking about a gym roof. Right. And so the idea with the capital fund is putting in $200, $260,000 a year. A capital fund, it's different than other funds where at the end of the year, we wipe them clean and you have a centralized fund balance. This is the balance that you have left at the end of the year and then those funds start anew each year. The capital fund is different in that you can keep money in it from year to year. So if you put $260,000 in it this year and $240,000 in it next year, you have $500,000. And if you have some improvements that you're estimating are gonna cost $500,000 rather than taking out a bond and paying interest on it, if we set aside a little bit of money and pay for it in that manner, the idea is that it'll cost taxpayers less because we're not gonna be paying interest on it. And for these types of improvements that we can plan for and are a bit smaller in cost than the new playground, for example, and some of the other renovations at the elementary school, this was proposed by our business managers a more responsible way to pay for these, a more affordable way to pay for these for the community. So these will not piggyback when in the eventuality that the major bonds that we took for the roof of Mount Pillow of Main Street Middle School, this was before the playground bond, when those bonds expire, we're not going to issue major multi-million dollar bonds and then piggyback this on top of it. None of those decisions have been made yet. So I don't- But was the thinking that these would be an either or, that this approach would- The thinking- The preventative maintenance in a sense. So it's not as expensive and you don't have to do the entire roof. Yeah, I mean, that is part of the thinking. I mean, really part of the thinking is we also have a new facilities manager, right? Andrew LaRosa, who is doing a great job and was out front on, we were one of six schools that weren't required to test for lead in the water fountains and we did test for lead and very thankful for that, that our administration took the initiative on that. That's going to be a capital expense, for example. Shouldn't be a huge capital expense, but making sure that we don't have high levels of lead and the drinking water fountains in our schools is very, very critical to the board and to the entire community. And most importantly, the health of the community's children. But what this is really looking at is Andrew and the team have identified some capital expenses that we really do need to address as a district and we don't want to necessarily bond for them because it'll increase the cost over time. So the idea was, here are these expenses, we know we need, how can we pay for these? How can we do this in a responsible manner? And the proposal is this capital plan, creating this capital fund and paying for it in a phased approach. So the two approaches will not be on top of each other. This will be... So if the community, for example, at some, if the community, for example, wants to make a major investment years down the road, there's nothing to stop the community necessarily from bonding for a major capital investment while still having that capital plan to pay for these smaller capital improvements. About 10 minutes ago, you spoke about a family in Montpelier, if we extended that family's influence would be less. Now you speak of a community sitting on the school board. Do you really feel that you have a touch with the community that doesn't involve families with kids in the school? They don't attend the meetings. Do you feel that you really have touch with the entire community in terms of input? Even those who do not attend because they don't have children. Does the board reach out to them? So I mean, I talk to members of the community who don't have children all the time. I also talk with members of the community who do have children. I live up off of Terrace Street and both of my neighbors have young kids and many of my neighbors are kids in our schools. Many of my friends have kids in our schools, but many of our friends also don't have kids in our schools. This is a very supportive community of public education. I think one of the reasons is that if you look at our community demographically, it's a very highly educated community. This is one of the most educated states in the entire country and this community, the city of Montpelier, is one of the most educated communities in this extremely educated state. So I have a lot of friends that don't have children who are interested in issues facing our schools and we talk about them regularly. Am I able to talk to everybody in the community? No, no, no, no. Do I have a perfect feel? Is there a way that the board can reach out beyond the parents who are sitting there at your board meetings and giving you their constant input as stakeholders? Sure, and I think in some regards we're doing that right now by having this type of conversation in this public setting. I think it's happening a lot on social media. I think it's happening, I think just by so going back to talking about me being in the minority of being one of the three board members that don't have children, I think by having folks on the board who don't have children, not everybody. I mean, to me, it's kind of irrelevant if you have children or not. It's about the approach that you take to public education and how do you value public education? How does it fit into the community and what does a specific board member bring to the board? That's my own thought, but getting back to the input issue, I think there are opportunities for the board and the administration to solicit feedback in a more effective way. And that was something that we were actually talking about at the board meeting the other night in terms of areas of improvement heading into this next year. You talked about the health of children a little while. Let's talk about the safety of children. That's been an issue since Parkland last, well, it was an issue before Parkland, but it was highlighted by Parkland. What are your thoughts on school safety and the measures that the board has urged and that the administration has taken? So we are following the administration on this. Our, my understanding of the situation, which is largely anecdotal, which is through our superintendent, through my wife and talking with other public educators in the community, and I have a number of friends who are public educators, is that Montpelier is a little bit behind in preparing for some of these events. And I encourage community members to look at the board materials from this past week from the meeting on. Which are on the website? Yeah, which are on the school district's website. So that would have been February 20th. The superintendent provided an overview of what the district has done and is doing on this front. And there is a need, and we've identified this as a need, talking about community input to engage the community on this issue. This is, I mean, this is a tragic issue. The fact that we're talking about how to train educators in providing emergency tourniquets, and we're talking about emergency buckets in classrooms. I mean, this is- What is an emergency bucket? There, if there were to be such an event having a bucket with that, you know, people might go to the bathroom in, for example, and that also has supplies to get out of like a second story window. And- Well, you have to buzz your way into the schools now. Yes, but that, unfortunately, there are, yes, you do have to buzz your way into schools, even in schools where you have to buzz your way in, there have been these tragic incidents, these shootings. One of the biggest concerns of the board is how do we do this in a way where we can reduce the trauma just in the practice of this? Just practicing doing these drills. This can be very, very traumatic for students and for teachers and support staff. It's a very, very difficult thing to address. You know, how do we deal with it with our youngest children in elementary school? And, you know, how- Well, this has been an issue since I ducked my head underneath the desk because of a nuclear attack, I suppose, back in the 50s. That all, so I had to do that when I was a kid, too, but that all seemed so surreal to me. This is much more palpable. These incidents are occurring at a much higher rate than fortunately, we haven't had a nuclear incident in quite some time, but very, very unfortunately, we're experiencing these tragic school shootings. Have any community members approached the board yet? Oh, yeah. To armed teachers? Oh, no, I haven't heard that. Would you be in favor of arming teachers? No, I'm not in favor of that. Why not? I don't think that the solution to this problem will be solved by putting weapons aimed at killing other human beings in the hands of those who educate our children. I don't think that that is the solution to this problem. I don't know what the solution to the problem is, though. I just do not think that- As if there's one solution? Yes, I just do not think that that is the solution. I am ardently opposed to putting guns in the hands of public educators during school days. Now, public educators outside, public educators who are engaged in hunting and things like that, that's a totally different story. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about restricting anybody's First Amendment rights here. I'm talking about- Second Amendment rights. Second Amendment rights, thank you. Second Amendment rights. I'm talking about, yeah, certainly not their First Amendment rights, either. I'm talking about not having guns in school days. In the school setting, yeah. You talked a little while ago about this being an extremely well-educated community. Yeah. What happens on the test scores of segmented populations like food stamps, minorities, and the like? That's a really- Where we find that there is a real significant gap. So that's a really good- And a persistent gap. Yeah, and that is something that, so when I, Libby Bones steal our new superintendent and grant our business manager will tell you that I'm a huge pain in their side because I'm constantly requesting data and I'm very thankful for the information that they're providing. I have a lot of data requests and one of the ones that, and our district has not done a great job of keeping the type of information that can help us evaluate progress- What would you- Very well. What would be an example? I would, so I'm very, so first of all I would defer to the educational experts on what is the best way to track outcomes but I think it's really important to track outcomes by socioeconomic level and I know that's something that the board is very interested in and it's really important that we're not allowing our, that we're not allowing students who are at a socioeconomic disadvantage to start with fall behind. For Montpelier to show progress on that front would be a major achievement and I know that's something that all of the board would like to see happen. I can't think of anyone on the board who wouldn't want to see that happen. When we've asked for data on this front we're told that it's coming, the data isn't consistent across the schools which makes it very difficult to track this type of thing. We want data that's not just test scores too. It's important to have information about graduation rates, job rates. There was a really interesting study done on this this past year by some US Census Bureau employees and I believe it was an economist from Harvard and an economist from Brown and they mapped what's called income mobility by region across the United States and I believe it's called the Opportunity Atlas but that's a very difficult thing to do, right? Tracking that type of thing, you need access to very confidential and sensitive information and obviously the board isn't gonna do that. Well it's also lunch, too, no, it's also overtime. Yeah, it's looking at it over, I think it was a 30 year period. So some of the questions I have is what outcome measures should we be looking at? I'm not an educational expert, right? I'm coming into this role with experience in public policy but more on the revenue side, the environmental side, the economic side, socioeconomic side and less on what are the best metrics to gauge educational outcomes? I mean, I know some of them, right? Like graduation rates and we can look at test scores, it's not bad to look at test scores but something that we don't wanna be doing is just teaching to the test. Some of the greatest successes that we've heard from past students is the experiential learning. Matt McClain's program. That's one of them, yeah, certainly. That's the community engagement where kids go out in shadow and kids in turn and things like that. Right. Real life. Yeah. Let me take you to another outcome and that's how few kids we have going to the career center over at Barrie and to the Votech track that leads to two years of Votech that leads to an awfully good employment outcome in life. Why don't we have more kids going there? Why do we still terminate kids who aren't going off to more college in either the academic track or the VOED track? Why do we have that general education track that ends at 12th grade? Is that realistic for a kid to compete these days? I really don't know the answer to that question. I don't know too much about our enrollment in that program right now. I know that we do send some of the funding for that program comes from our school. I don't know what our enrollment is for. Well, if the funding comes from, then we're sending kids because kids are company funding. I don't know how many kids we're sending. I don't know what percentage of a certain class is going there. But if we're driving towards a higher rate of high school graduation, regardless of where it leads afterwards, is that really all that desirable? So we certainly don't want to be just aiming to have... Our aim shouldn't just be graduation and getting kids to graduate and just aiming toward graduation rates. We want to help kids accomplish whatever goals they want to accomplish. We want to foster their interests, passions, and talents in our schools so that when they do graduate, they're lifelong learners, and they can pursue whatever type of career and whatever type of life they want so that they're engaged and active citizens. I think that's an important role. You're touching upon a very philosophical debate, which is what is the role of schools? What should the role of schools be? Well, the board should be the ones who are discussing that level. The board is not out there. The superintendent is taking and operationalizing what the board is setting out in terms of what a community considers to be education. I'm not sitting on the school board, but for those of you collectively, isn't that what you're trying to do is to figure out what that baseline is? I think it is. I do think that is the case. We're a new district. We're establishing a range... We have to establish all new policies, right? We're in the process of doing that. But one of the biggest things that we need to do is we do need to... We do have a general 5,000-foot, like one, two-sentence vision for the district. But we really need to set out, I think, a little bit more of a specific vision. What do we want our kids... What are our goals, right? And that is the role of the board. That is definitely the role of the board. And we need to have those goals clearly established so that we know what outcomes do we want to use, for example, when we're measuring the set. So you need the goals, and then you need to establish criteria for how to get to those goals, and then we need to say, okay, well, where are we? What's our condition? How close are we to meeting this criteria that aligns with our goals? And then when we look at the gap, we say, well, how do we close that gap? And I think that is something that the school board definitely needs to do. And that's something that... I think we should be engaging the community in that discussion, too. That's not just something that the board needs to do. That really is something that the community needs to do. And my understanding is that after the budget, that general area is something that we're going to begin to address. How boring are those meetings? I think they're pretty interesting, actually. So the other night, for example, we were talking about what is the school safety situation. That is really important. At our next board meeting, the board is very likely going to be adopting an equity policy, which is... What is equity? So in this case... In this case, what is equity? In this case, what we're talking about is creating a welcome and respectful environment that, in our schools, that celebrates students' differences, racial... But haven't we been doing that for decades? So what this does, though, is this spells out clear roles for the administration as well as the school board in ensuring that hiring practices meet those goals, as well as professional development for our current staff, and ensuring that certain... Sorry, that certain... That these issues are built into our curriculum, curricula, rather, and I'm not speaking very eloquently on this, sorry, and ensuring that there are policies in place to foster this type of environment within our schools and that they're acted upon. And it is the board's role to evaluate that. It's been a fascinating conversation. It's been a great conversation, and I thank you for stopping by, even though you're running unopposed. I am. For how long a term? Three. Three years. I won't see you for another three years. Well, I'm happy to come on back. I'd be happy to have you back. For you guys, I'd be happy to have you watch the other shows because every one of these is really, really good. And particularly, Jim Murphy's show on the school budget and Watson's show on the city budgets. The two candidates for parks, the city council candidates, they're great shows. But most importantly, show up on Town Meeting Day, get out and vote. Make it a habit. It's the lifeblood of our democracy. Make sure your friends get out there. And thank you very much.