 usual one in that, because this is the board's reorganization meeting, typically the superintendent leads until we get to the point where they elect a chair for the year. So I will call the meeting to order. It is 6.31 p.m. and then in terms of today and the work that will be engaged in tonight, let me pull up my notes, big thing is that it's about reorganization. The board is going to determine who the chair, the vice chair, the clerk will be for the remainder of this year. We will welcome our new board member, Chelsea Sprague. You also are going to hear from the elementary administration on student progress and from the high school administration on the status of their standards-based report cards. In terms of community engagement, the board is open to hearing comments from the community. If there are folks that would like to speak, I think it's probably easiest if you raise your hand so that I can actually see that in the listing of people that I have in front of me. And typically, when you're called upon, it's important to state your name, the town that you're from, and then we generally try to keep comments to about three minutes. So do I have anyone for comments to the board? Seeing none, we will move on. And we are going to have a presentation from our elementary principals. I see we've got Erica and Pat. I believe David's here too, but I don't think I can see him on the screen. To talk a little bit about how the students are doing in terms of ELA, in terms of math, it may be a little bit of a comparison between how their students that are in remote session are doing with the students that are in full impression and the students that were in hyper. So I'll leave it up to Erica, Pat, and David to take it away. Thank you. David is going to present our presentation for you, and we will each take time to share some of those slides with you. Thanks for your patience. So I know most of you, but those of you that don't know me, I'm Erica McLaughlin, principal at Randolph Elementary School. This is my 16th year. It is my honor and privilege really to be working in this district and for all of you and for our community. It's been, it's awesome working here so long because you can, you can really get to know the families and the children, as well as the staff. And it's really, it's nice to have that historical perspective and see where we've been today. I can't imagine having done this work in a pandemic in any other place without the people that I work with. So I just want to acknowledge all of them. And then hopefully David can introduce himself or Pat and then pull up the presentation. Hi, I'm Pat Miller. For those of you who don't know me and I'm the principal in Braintree. And, and I don't know, I've been in the district a very long time. First as teacher and then as the principal. Click David signed on. Yeah, so come in. You didn't hear him. I can see David. So I know he's in the meeting. I can actually see him. I don't know if he can hear us or not. David, can you not if you can hear us? He said he couldn't hear me. Chris, he just texted. Yeah, it looks like he can't hear any of us because he's not nodding. I'm just letting you know that I did see him. I still can see him. That's good. Thanks, Chris. Are you able to share your work or no, my power is not super high. I just said the same thing to my husband. I'm like, turn all the Wi-Fi off everywhere else. Everyone, I'm mostly seeing letter tiles. I'm not even really seeing that many faces right now. I don't know why I always have good internet. Oh, here we go. Perfect. Perfect. There we go. Awesome. So the slide you have in front of you, others on the board may have remember this from before and because we have a new board member, I thought important to go back and just let you know that the OSSDS had an assessment plan and a schedule in place for years now. And as you can see in this slide, we have a variety of assessments in place that we utilize throughout the year so we can monitor student progress. I'm hearing other schools have really relied on the SBACs if that's the federal statemented assessment that we have. And those schools will be in a hardship because they don't have SBAC data from last year or likely really solid data from this year. So we are fortunate that we have done the work to have an assessment calendar and schedule where we can take a look at our students and the progress that they're making. So any good assessment plan and schedule will have a mix of assessments from, you know, the normed reference assessments, the local assessments, state federal assessments, and that's what we have here. Erica, you can't hear us, so I'll text him when you want to change slides. I'll have to text him and just say next. Okay, go ahead. You can text him. So the assessment that we're going to share with you today is the Track My Progress Assessment. That is an assessment that we give throughout the year and when we set the benchmark for that assessment, we aligned it to the SBAC, which is that state assessment that we have to give each year. And the reason for that is because we give this Track My Progress Assessment throughout the year, it gives us kind of a predictor of how our students might do on the SBAC. We started this using this assessment in 2018-19 and we've used it ever since, so using it for four years. It's important to note that this year has been a more difficult time using this assessment as any assessment would be just because we have students in the remote sessions also taking the SBAC and we do know that there have been some families that have assisted their students in this assessment from home and others not. And in the students that take this assessment at school, some of them have been in quarantine and so there are some students that were missing this administration. So it's not as pure as we have had in the past. Okay, next slide and Pat, we'll take it from here. Yeah, our district goal is usually that we aim for 70% of our students to be proficient in math and ELA. So that's the target. This graph shows our math with just one assessment on Track My Progress, which we call TMP. Data for all three elementary schools, we do our data all together for the three schools. This data shows our students across our three schools have had a decrease in proficiency by about 10% from last winter. However, our students' scaled scores in all grade levels have continued to improve. Currently about 47% of our students are proficient or greater. Okay. How many students did you say were proficient or greater? 47%. 47% and you're shooting for 70%. Okay, we need the next slide. There we go. So this graph shows our literacy Track My Progress, the same assessment data for the three elementary schools. It's just in literacy this time in grades one through six. The data shows our students across all three schools again and it's a decrease in proficiency by 6%, a little bit less decrease than in math. However, the same thing, our scaled scores at all grade levels have continued to improve in literacy as well as in math. And currently, 42% of our students are proficient or greater in reading. Now, I don't know if we're going to be able to hear David. We're checking on that now. Can you hear me now? So I'm talking on my phone and we're presenting on my computer. This is not ideal. Okay. So we wanted to be able to compare our students in our full remote classrooms with our hybrid students. And so we had Crystal put this data together. The orange line are our remote students. And from fall this year, from fall of 2020 until this winter, 2021. And the blue line are our hybrid students, those students who are now four days a week in school. And you can see that that in math, on average, our remote students are doing just about as well as our hybrid students. We have to take it, I mean, with a small grain of salt because these are hybrid students, we don't control the testing environment as well as we do at school because their home with their parents and parents are sometimes too helpful. But with what we have, looking at this, our full remote students are not doing badly. And again, on average, are doing about as well as our hybrid students. In reading, I mean, it's a similar situation. And while there's a small decrease in the number of students, both hybrid and full remote who are proficient, it's commensurate from fall to winter again. So same lack of testing control problem. But we are, we're actually pleased with this work. Any remote kids do you have? Is that a huge, that's probably not a huge sample size either, I'm guessing. That's correct. It's not a huge sample size. We can see the numbers here. So of our first, so 17, 34, 36. Yeah. So there are 36 who are represented here in the reading. And of course, we're missing, sorry, 48 total. There were 36 in the fall because there was no first grade scores. So 48 total. And we're with six who didn't participate for a number of reasons. It's a really good question though, Ann, because sometimes one or two students, when you have that small group, can really skew the data quite a bit. And when we reviewed it with Crystal, that's exactly the case in some situations. So actually, this is really good. And again, bored, especially if there's questions during, this would be the time to ask as well. One of the pieces is that, you know, there's been this decline a little bit this year after a couple of years of increases. So the question is, is how much of this is due to COVID and the new environment? There's lots of considerations, actually. And, David, if you want to go to the next slide, and I'll start the next points of discussion, really, which I think it's a nice segue, actually, because all across the nation, you're hearing the rhetoric, our children are behind. And others would say behind who the whole world is in a pandemic. And so, really, what are we talking about? And I am fortunate to be the state representative of the National Association of the Elementary School Principles for Vermont. And so I literally have the honor and privilege of talking with principles across our country. And all too often, I'm hearing about schools that haven't been in person since March. And when I hear that, I feel grateful that while we were in hybrid for quite some time, and now four full days, our students had in person instruction, those highest meet students, even in the summer, and then others moving forward in the fall. And so when we look at that data, yes, I'm sure that there's pause for some concern, but there should also be pause to hear that there is scale for progress in all our grades. And we are still having in person instruction. And so when you, I only say this to add some more context to this discussion, that not only are we needing to consider our students' academic growth, but also taking into consider their social and emotional needs as well, because our children have endured a lot. And next slide, and then it's David. So, you know, even with students at home in hybrid or full remote mode, they've had to overcome quite a large number of obstacles. They've learned how to deal with different modalities of learning, switching from one to another. They've learned how to utilize a variety of learning platforms. And sometimes, you know, we're a little bit ahead of the teachers in cases. They've learned how to learn synchronously, you know, while their families are at home, sometimes helping them, and sometimes being less than helpful, especially with people who have a lot of siblings in the house. They've learned to complete their own work while taking care of siblings. I have a lot of kids who, you know, they're questionable whether they're old enough to be taken care of each other, but they've managed to do it. And families have done their best really to make it so that they could learn at home and, you know, they could get to work and everything. And, you know, all of that is by the, you know, coming to school with kids in school. And it's like we don't, we have so many roles that we've never had to have before, you know, don't share, don't get too close, and wear a mask all day. And yes, it's not fun, but it's better than trying to learn from home. You know, they've learned about problem solving, and they've become really much more global citizens. They've been connected to the world in a much different way. You know, they've managed to say, I should do something, instead of I want to do something. And that's hard for kids, especially our elementary kids. You know, they've learned what happens when a parent loses a job. They've learned what's happened when a parent is home trying to do their job with them. They're trying to do their schoolwork. And they've lived with the grief and fear of people being sick that they know and love. And it's been a tough year for everybody. And we think that on the whole, they've done really well. Yeah, I'd like to wrap up by just saying, I was honestly myself, and I know Erica and David agree was really surprised at the growth in all of the grades given all that the children have experienced. In the last year, there was a lot of challenges, as you know, the continued focus as Erica mentioned on social emotional mental health needs of children will be of particular importance, especially as our full remote children begin to come back. And by the fall, we expect them all to be back as one, which we haven't had for the whole year. Many of our children and families have experienced one of the most stressful years that they'll ever experience in their life. So we'll continue to work towards meeting all of the student needs and assisting families with the as many stressors that we can. And our data has been consistent throughout this and we'll continue to monitor that for growth along with areas of deficits that we can help in. I think that's it. So thank you very much. And I would open questions up first to board members. And then we'll open it up a little bit to community members. I just wanted to thank all three of you for the presentation. It's really helpful to see kind of where the kids are at. I do request though if you are able to send the presentation to us, it was just really hard to read the numbers in there. And I'd love to just be able to see that a little closer up. But thank you again. Sorry. Oh, no worries. Normally when we're in person, catch it, we hand it all out. So I should remember that from last year. Yeah, we should have sent it to you earlier. Other board questions. Another sort of technical question just so that I can better understand the material. So when you say scaled score, because it sounds like you said overall, there was a decrease and yet there was an increase, a slight increase in the scaled score. So can you just clarify what that actually means? The percentage is based on the norm of the assessment versus the scaled score is the individual student's measure. So as a student, you would get a scaled score. And then the teachers would then later take a look at the progress that you as an individual made as opposed to the normed percentage. So norm is usually comparing the students to a large group of students in the same age group across the country. Right. Yeah, the scale scaled score piece and Erica has hit it right on the head. That's really useful for showing personal growth. It's kind of like the raw score that you get on the testing and you can compare it to the last raw score that you got and see if things have gone up so that that number isn't adjusted by anything. So it's a really good way of telling what the personal growth of individual children are. So just to clarify, so when you say we've had a 10% decrease in math, that's comparing us to a national norm group. And then when you say our scaled scores, that's comparing the kids to themselves and that they've all improved. Is that basic? Am I understanding correctly? Yeah. David, do you want to elaborate? I think that the question is this, that we're aiming for 70% of our students to be at or above proficiency. And that number has slipped by 10%. Right. That percent is the percent that went down. So instead of having the exact number, it dropped 10%. Yeah. One of the questions that might be good for Crystal is in terms of the norming. My belief is probably that that when they're comparing our students to the other students around the country, that's the norm score from before COVID. Agreed. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, you can kind of think of the raw score as, hey, you know, out of 100 questions, I got 32 right this time. And then the next time I took it, I got 47 right, right? You see growth that way. With the norming score, it's really kind of seeing what the average is and where you fall in in terms of that average of everybody in the same age group in similar circumstances. But my guess is, is that that norm, the norming was probably done for data that was pre-COVID. Yep. Any questions from community members that may be out there? I want to thank David, Pat and Erica for the presentation and just the same thing with our high school administrators that are here that I can present in a moment, just for the incredible work that was done this year. It has been around the clock since last March. And so you're looking at a very, very perky group who are probably very tired after the last year. But thankfully, there seems to be a pretty good light at the end of the tunnel and then next year is going to be a much different year. As we get ready to switch over to the high school, I think it's important to talk a little bit about the fact that the state is in the middle of setting up what they are calling educational recovery teams, which we will be talking about at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday. And that's the state is recognizing that because of COVID, because of hybrid and because of remote sessions, that kids have fallen behind where they normally would be. And so it is setting up structures and systems to get connected with ways to get the kids caught up that have fallen behind because of COVID. So with that, Elisha, I think Katie's here too. And I think I saw Lisa as well, though I can't see you on the screen. So to talk a little bit about the standards-based report cards, which have been some pretty significant ongoing work for a while. Yeah, thanks, Lane. Thanks for this opportunity. We've made a presentation like this for a few years in a row this time of year and we're asked to come back and do this again. We weren't asked to present on specific student achievement data, but we're more than happy to come back and do that at any time, like the elementary schools just did. So I think the way we're going to work this, Lisa, you said you might present while I talked us through the slides and then during the Q&A portion of things, or even along the way, if you want to stop us and ask questions, those can be fielded by Katie or Lisa or me. Lisa is our head of lower grades and Katie is our head of upper grades and both have years of experience working at the school and we'll be ready to field any questions as well as I might be able to. So let's see how the logistics going to work here, Lisa. You'll present and should I just, you'll just get a sense of when I've talked through a particular slide and move us forward. How's the view for everybody? Can you see the, and you're a couple slides into the presentation now, Lisa, but can everybody see the text adequately? Is it big enough? Okay, and we're also happy to send this to you as a link. So as I was mentioning, here we are to talk a bit more about the proficiency-based graduation and grading and reporting system. It's been a few years now since the Agency of Education asked schools to adopt this system and so we'll talk through for those who may be new to this presentation some of the mandates that we're responding to, but pretty quickly we'll just get into what it looks like at Randolph Union and one thing that's new this year is the Agency of Education has, is prompting schools to reflect on our progress so far and have asked a few questions and shared some resources and so we've done that reflection with our teacher leadership team recently and so we'll share some of the thoughts that they have about where we, the state of this reform here at Randolph Union and where we're consistent with what the Agency has been asking of us and where we still have some places to grow. So by way of overview, let's see, and that's a very small slide for me, Lisa, so I'm just going to go back to my hand. Some of the major takeaways for this evening are in our opinion and the opinion of our teacher leadership, this system is a better and more detailed way to look at student achievement than traditional reporting and by traditional reporting I'm referring to what probably most of us knew when we were in middle school and in high school and I'll talk a little bit more about the differences as we go along but overall we feel like it's a better more detailed way to look at student achievement. Overall Randolph Union is well in compliance with Vermont Act 77 and meeting the Agency of Education's expectations in key areas. Teachers and students use this information in a variety of ways to understand the student as a learner and competitive colleges, colleges of all different types are accepting our students and understand our new transcripts. Our transcripts have been using a different way to communicate out achievement in this proficiency-based system for a few years now and it seems to be working just fine when it comes to post-secondary acceptance to colleges. The next slide is actually a quote from a group that's called the Mastery Standards Consortium and it's a nationwide consortium mostly made up of private schools and mostly made up of elite private schools, middle schools and high schools that are themselves engaged in some pretty substantial reforms to rethink what it means to measure student progress over time and one of the reasons why they're doing this is that they're noticing extraordinary grade inflation, extraordinary anxiety in their young people as they as they strive to as they strive to achieve. For instance, they stated a few years ago that over half of all grades given in high school in the United States were A's and that's a sign that this bell curve notion that we've had of achievement is simply not working the way it was supposed to and so we mentioned that to say that the state of Vermont is in good company when it comes to lots of thoughtful schools whose students are achieving at the highest levels and getting into some of the most competitive colleges the state of Vermont's public schools are in good company with other schools that are thinking this stuff through and Randolph Union is a member of this Mastery Consortium. We won't go into detail here but for your reference and for the reference of our students, our new teachers who come into our school, our families and for others we have a proficiency-based graduation handbook that details our system with a lot of specificity so that's on our website and that the handbook portion of things for people to have a look at and the next slide takes us into a proficiency-based screenshot of a proficiency-based report card from last year. It's an English class and you can see that there's writing, there are a few things listed there, writing, presentation, reading, discussion, language and then habits of work and habits of heart and I don't know about all of you but when I was in high school at Harvard or when I went away to college I would typically get a letter grade at the end of a semester or at the end of a quarter and so I might have been in my English class and earned say a B or B minus and that tells me something, it tells me I certainly have, I'm good at some things and I have work to do at others but it doesn't give me the kind of specificity that that this kind of a report card does because I might walk home with a B on my report card and again know that I've got work to do in some areas but I don't know exactly what areas those are from the report card or from the rubrics that the teachers are giving me. I don't know if I'm good at writing but struggling at reading, I don't know if I'm good at discussion but struggling with grammar, I don't know if my being punctual to class is affecting my grade or if my frequency of participation is affecting my grade all of that and all of that kind of mystery that surrounded the grades in the old system is clarified a bit with a proficiency based system where you get an additional level of detail and the challenge that comes with that and one of the questions that Lane asks us to continually reflect on and it's a very good one is in our efforts to provide more information are we providing too much information and what is the right amount of information and what is the right amount of work to ask of teachers in terms of the number of grades and the number of assessments that we're being asked to do at this level of specificity so while we think it's good that there's an additional level of detail in the proficiency based system so that the child can understand herself as a learner we still have some ongoing work to do to make sure that we're communicating the right amount of information so that's actionable and it's efficient for teachers and they don't spend all of their time grading and and no time planning lessons there's there's a balance that we're still seeking to strike as we as we continue with this work this is a screenshot of the proficiency based grade book we chose a grade book that has them the misnomer being called teacher ease it's not that easy for teachers but that's the system we chose for a couple of reasons one is that it allows you to look at an assignment and see what the grade was the holistic grade for an assignment in terms of its standards and it also allows you to look at the standards themselves and see how kids are doing in that in that view so that's a look at what teacher ease looks like in the online grade book so we'll want to talk for a minute about how students are are are helped to use this information how families are using this information how teachers are using this information and how our guidance counselors are using it this is a picture of a student at a tenth grade portfolio defense and we do this at eighth grade as well and then there's similar kinds of presentations that we ask students to do all throughout the year including student-led conferences you have a student here who's standing up and talking about his skills his his proficiencies and standards in his different subject areas and he's talking to his present teachers his past teachers and to some of his future teachers and he's talking about his goals for the future in light of how he's doing in his proficiencies the next slide shows just an example from from the notes of a tenth grader last year or the year before who was who was writing down what she was going to be saying to her panel and you'll notice here that the child is using some it's like it's kind of teacherly language the child is using the language of the standards and the performance indicators and the rubrics to talk about herself as a as a writer so it's that kind of knowing yourself as a writer as a student as a scientist as a historian as an artist that we're going for with this kind of a system the student says i was really able to get my writing organization down across the board this year and i think it's because i was finally able to conquer making a claim and a clear claim is easier to back up with evidence then do the reasoning or the conclusion making making it completely more organized so she's talking about again her own writing with some of the terminology that comes from the standards based report card or the proficiency based grading and assessment system and that's what we like to see as a student who's more and more knowledgeable and articulate about herself in each of her subject areas families use this information in various ways one way is just to ask us for more specific information for instance we will get emails from from families where they're saying well i see my my my son or daughter is getting a partial proficient in this area can you say more about why they're getting a partial proficiency in this area or what are the opportunities for exceeding proficiency in this class or on this assignment parents are using that kind of language to talk with us about about proficiency and different standards and performance indicators teacher teams are using it at a variety of of levels of course with the individualized student or with groups of students and teachers also pool their knowledge together to decide where they need to craft intervention so this is a snapshot of a ninth grade teams spreadsheet where they're the green or the students who are on track to complete the course that means they're they're at or near proficiency in the standards for that grade level and then the red is the some students who are not on track you'll also see down there and in the science column the teacher is projecting that some students are on track to earn honors in the course or high honors because students can achieve in any course at that level of attainment at the end of the at the end of the course counselors like Bev and Cara and student services office they're they're looking at student achievement data through the at the course completion level and so this is an example at the middle of the year how for students who are applying early decision to colleges how we give those colleges a sense of how the students are doing in their courses so the course completion track this student is on track to complete a course with high honors another course with high honors and one course with honors so that information is given to the colleges with some teacher comments and that's the same information that lives on the students transcript later in the year and the good news is that colleges have no trouble deciphering these transcripts they're used to transcripts from all over the world at all different shapes and sizes and ours comes along with a school profile that explains exactly what we mean by complete with honors or or just complete and our students are getting into a range of colleges as they as they always have from private competitive schools like like Middlebury to UVM UVM School of Business Vermont State Colleges and lots of other state universities across the country this is a sample of some that students have gotten into this year and last year around the mid-year mark when we're typically asking Bev and Carla Bev and Kara for this for this information so in terms of this this spring and again we asked our teacher leadership to think about our system and where are we in alignment with what the AOE is asking us to do and where are we where are we different or not or not yet there so the the next slide is about where we find some consistencies the agency of education expects that every student knows what's expected of them and that there are clear targets for success and our graduation standards and performance indicators are very specific and we're continuing to simplify so that there are and so that there are fewer and and and as clear as language as possible and where we have redundancy that we don't need we're trying to eliminate that redundancy so that's something I mentioned earlier trying to find the right balance of of how much specificity to actually give but we certainly have clear targets for success we report separately on habits of work and academic skills so we want to make sure that a student understands that their punctuality to class their organization their ability to submit something in on time is important and we want to give them feedback on that habit of work but we don't want the students to get confused with doing well in that area and also mastering how to model in mathematics or mastering some content in social studies this this proficiency-based system pulls those things apart so that students can understand their skill sets in different areas that's something we've been doing for years and the a we also ask that we have a local comprehensive assessment system and where you have tracked my progress in the elementary schools we have star 360 at the at the upper grades that that complements along with s back the standard space assessment that's happening in the classroom for math and English and in other areas we're also finding some consistency in terms of students being able to work at different levels our student work is evaluated on a continuum from partially proficient to exceeding proficiency and students can achieve at honors or high honors in each class and also we report out on the proficiency level rather than a percentile average so i'll just pause to say a bit about that again when we were in high school many of us probably got a quarter one report card in in october and it had a great like a 79 or an 85 or a 92 on it and then in quarter two we got another number grade maybe it was an 86 and then we got another one which was maybe a 95 and over the course of the year those percents are averaged to be one grade at the end of the year now what the proficiency based system tries to do differently is instead of locking in that first quarter grade let's say i'm struggling with the new expectations of ninth grade and my first quarter i'm i'm really struggling and i get a you know i get i get a lower grade let's say i get a 77 well in the old system even if i was getting a 95 at the end of the year that's 77 from when i was just starting out would pull my average down into a b and the b may not actually be an accurate reflection of where i've ended up at the end of the year so we report we report out on proficiency levels and those proficiency levels typically grow over time and the more recent grades the grades at quarter three the grades at quarter four are the ones that count more in the proficiency based system because we want to honor that student growth happens over time and we don't lock in where they are at the start and average that in with where they are at the finish because it's actually not a fair representation of where they've ended up some where some places where we're not yet congruent with what the aoe is asking and where we still have room to grow and where i would suspect most schools have room to grow especially with this one is the idea that time is the variable what the agency of ed means by that is um is that students are allowed to learn at their own pace and that's all well and and good and important and we try to do that as much as we can within a still very time bound system we still talk in general terms and have the general assumption that graduation from high school will happen in four years we're not talking about students graduating in eight or nine years and some graduating in two we're not yet at that level of time is the variable kind of um perspective schools are very regimented in terms of our calendars our schedules our semesters our year long calendars and so um it's that's something we still need to work hard to pull off and even lane you know your your allusion to the the working groups will have to to develop in order to have some some summer or other sessions where kids can can can can continue to work on proficiency that's that's an effort to make the school less time bound to help those students learn at the pace that they need to learn at but it takes some really special initiatives from the state level sometimes to make that kind of thing happen the aoe asserts that students should have a proactive role in designing their own education and we value that very much at our school whether it's at the level of the individual project or the courses that students are taking but at the level of course selection students have a lot more flexibility in grades 11 and 12 than they do in the lower years where there are some required course sequences that students need to march through and we're not giving students a whole lot of choice necessarily whether they go from ninth grade science into tenth grade science there are certainly exceptions sometimes but students have a more proactive role in designing their whole program of education as they get older and then the other thing that we thought we should note in terms of where our teachers feel like we need to do more work of establishing consistency is that our clarity about what what students need to to know and be able to do also needs to translate to real clarity about what it means to achieve at honors level and high honors level and that across across departments we need to seek more consistency there so that's something that we want to we want to continue to work on from our teacher's perspective and they're right we want to we want to make sure that we have more and more consistency with what it means to achieve at different levels in the in the courses we think that in the covid era we have a proof of the concept to a certain degree as you all know learning was significantly significantly interrupted in the spring but what our proficiency based system did with all the information that our teachers are generating is it allowed the the spring teachers to communicate to the fall teachers with a good deal of precision about what the students either didn't get to what learning targets we didn't have a chance to cover or where they were achieving and where they still need some focus so that kind of conversation was happening from say your your ninth grade social studies teacher to your tenth grade social studies teacher so that there could be that passing on of knowledge from teacher to teacher with some specificity which proves some of the value of this sort of a system and then also the covid era with our our our more limited instructional time with students and the interruptions that are just par for the course it prompted us to simplify more and to reduce where we could the number of standards and performance indicators that we're that we're asking students to to be accountable for that doesn't mean necessarily watering down the curriculum it means simplifying what we're asking of of the students and again like I said at the top if there's a redundancy that we can get away that we can do away with we'll do away with it for the sake of simplicity and clarity and transparency in conclusion just to recap some of the points made at the top and then it'll be wonderful to have questions for for me and Katie and Lisa we think this system is a is a better and more detailed way to look at student achievement but there's more norming and more consistency needed and we need to keep working on that Randolph union is is in compliance and meeting the aoe's expectations in key areas and we have room to grow in others students and teachers are using the information to understand the student learner and there's a continuing need to simplify that so that so that there's additional clarity and in terms of post-secondary readiness competitive colleges are accepting our students and they understand these proficiency based transcripts and we think that's worth mentioning at the top and now because it was a it was a substantial concern for a lot of families when vermont first began this reform how colleges would perceive it so we just re-emphasize at the top that hasn't seemed to be a barrier in terms of communicating with college admissions about what courses students have taken and how they've done in those courses which above all is what colleges want to know and we can convert gpa as it's needed and so we have had no issues in terms of communicating with the college admissions officers and we know that's been a concern from our community so that's the slide deck at this point i think um lisa and um and lane we can open it up to whatever whatever questions or comments um we'd like to field yeah uh board board questions first so i'll jump in um thank you so much mr hawks and miss Sutton and miss void um last year i really enjoyed being a part of the senior project and i'm just curious is that i know last year it had to be put on hold is that something that we were able to um institute again this year and then my follow-up would also be with the portfolio defenses which i do believe that that ability to effectively speak to peers and teachers is a great skill for kids so are those um programs are they in place for this year or are they on hold katie why don't you talk to about senior project and lisa you could answer the portfolio defense question where we're at with figuring out what the end of the year will look like this year sure um thank you for that question ashley it's it's um we've we definitely wrestled with senior project and how we would handle it this year knowing the surmountable barriers with you know communicating and working with community members during a pandemic and how we were going to treat that um we are um senior project is in in full force um we began the year modifying timelines and deadlines and thinking about how we would best accommodate students throughout the process um throughout the year we've run into obstacles that have led us to find alternative pathways to students for students in senior project um one constant that we know has remained and will remain is that every senior will write their senior project research paper um and then the other components of the project we have it has been custom we've really needed to accommodate the seniors and the really significant obstacles they're facing this year um so the majority of them began by um engaging in the project as written with modifications here and there meaning that they they went through the project or plan to go through the project completing all of the components um but then as the year progressed and we realized that many of them were really struggling with these components as a result to many of those external barriers that have come with the pandemic a lot of them have opted for different pathways so now um there are some who are still engaged in all of the components of the project and will finish it as it has been written in previous years there are others who just have extended deadlines on the paper um but are finishing all of the other components of the project and then there are those students who are writing the research paper um to fulfill their their senior project graduation requirements so we've really needed to be flexible this year it's been a challenge and we are trying to balance out the barriers and challenges and trauma our students are facing with you know the importance of the project itself and what we've heard from alums and community members about the important components of the project that really lead the students towards success in their post-secondary lives so it's been a little bit of a balance this year to figure out how those accommodations will both support students but also challenge them and hold our standards and expectations high um so currently we're in a model where they are they're able to choose from three different pathways um as explained earlier um and it's been successful so far so we're just going to continue to support them in whatever ways they need and and hold the ground of every senior writes the senior research um project paper thank you yeah um so in terms of the portfolio defenses which normally happen at the eighth and tenth grade levels um there are a couple of barriers to doing that the traditional way number one students would build their portfolios in their advisory and this year because advisory is a multi-year structure at our school we haven't been able to have advisory the way that we traditionally would so you might have a seventh grade teacher with a tenth grade advisory and because we're not crossing cohorts um that hasn't happened so instead we're running morning meetings which are sort of taking the place of advisory we didn't want to call it advisory and have it be something that it really wasn't so that structure for portfolio defenses isn't in place however um we've been discussing these at our leadership team meetings with teacher leaders from grade level teams from departments and thinking about the most important components and really we think it boils down to a couple of different things students being able to take stock of what they know um knowing themselves as a learner and being to reflect on the areas where they struggle and where they need to grow and then additionally being able to communicate that um to their teachers and to people who they you know want to present their best work to or this self-reflection so it's a combination of things um and we're still working out the details of how that will happen but grade level teams seem to be interested in taking on the challenges of pushing that reflection and ensuring that that happens thank you thank you other board questions hi can can you hear me i switched computers um i have a question about the report card report and the committee is there a committee that works on the report card and assesses the effectiveness of it and since the big switch a few years ago like has that been an ongoing process since then and is it still ongoing or is it like okay this is this is the end and this is our report card and this is it that's a good question um jelsie thank you it's our our leadership team serves that function which includes our department chairs so they so the head of the english department math department science social studies that that group plus our grade team leaders is the is that committee and so that's the group that's been saying we need to try to to simplify what we're what we're asking and do we have do we have the right number of standards and performance indicators um and so each year there's an assessment of of that but we don't have a separate committee which is something we could we could consider because great you know moving it outside of that teacher leadership group couldn't invite more participation from more stakeholders so that may be a suggestion we want to note tonight if that's a suggestion inherent in your question um so we don't have a separate committee for that but we have a leadership team that's continually trying to make those that report card and the and the teacher and the online grade book um a better tool is it modeled after another report card somewhere out in the world or is it just like an internal brand off and sort of thought process yes um it's it's modeled after work that's been done across new england for several years and there's an organization called the great schools partnership and the agency of education leans pretty heavily on their resources if if one goes to the agency of ed's page there's a lot of links to the great schools partnership documents so there've been schools in in new hampshire and main and other places that have been wrestling with this reform for longer than vermont has and so we were able to learn from them about the pros and the cons of what um what a standard space report card ought to look like and then there are a lot of a lot of vendors out there who have the online grade book the standard space report card whether it's those those big corporate power houses like power school or more mom and pop things like this organization called jump rope that certain vermont schools are using so there's a lot of there's a lot of this work happening um on the both on the tech side as well as on the school side so we've been able to borrow best practice from from all over the place um as we put this together but in the end each school district was responsible for basically figuring it out on their own and so i would say it's a little bit of both okay thank you other other questions from board i i just was um wondering it sounds like the teachers have been fairly heavily involved in giving feedback and in tweaking this system um um seeing as they're the ones who are using it and and i know and i i'm actually really glad to hear you talking about you know trying to figure out the balance of how much information do students and parents really need to know and how much because that involves a lot of significant time and energy for teachers to be inputting all of this very specific data about where a child is on on very specific skills and concepts when a lot of times parents want to know and i i noticed um that you've made it a little bit clearer in terms of you know writing presentation uh i forget what the other there was just four it wasn't like 500 and and that must be one as a as a parent in the system speaking from that hat that's a little refreshing because before it was just like so much information it was almost overwhelming and maybe and i just kept thinking i i don't need this level of information i'm glad the teacher knows it but i don't need that level of information the the basic level was good enough but i would imagine for the teachers it might also be helpful to know that level of of information but at the same time you've got to balance that out so it sounds like you're getting feedback from teachers and teachers are helping to continue to make the system work for both them and the families that they're interacting with and with the student yeah i think it's just a statement like that i think it's important for teachers to have had the time to work on it and then reflect and then simplify and see what really works well for them i think as important as the teacher's understanding where students at one of the things i really love about this system is that our students know where they're at so for example for years we've taught writers who are great at establishing purpose supporting a claim with evidence making really beautiful paragraphs but their punctuation and grammar might be lacking and when you average a grade and they're still getting a 93 the incentive to actually work on those specific areas is is not as great as it is now when we have students who don't want a BP or a PP in a single performance indicator so i think that communication between student and teacher is so important and this grading system really allows us to give that information i the only thing i would add is is in a way i'm i'm like as as overwhelming as that information was it was kind of nice to roll it out like that so that at least the community could see kind of like what the teachers really see more of the back end of it and like all of the detail that actually goes into that like MP in writing is broken down you know into so much when you actually look at teacher ease and dig in um but yes it's so nice to now have it more simplified so that you can just look at it and be like okay writing MP now i'll go to the teacher ease end and dig into that if i really want to look at some of those performance indicators and i think it's also allowed our teachers to really be thoughtful about what it looks like to pare down what do students really need to know what do parents really need to know about how their students are doing what is essential and what isn't is a part of i think our ongoing you know wrestling with this so good um questions from anybody out there in the community chris you got your hand up go for it hi um it's chris armstrong um i have a son who's going into the high school next year so um so i going over the whole um standards-based report cards i definitely see elijah i appreciate you pointing out all the ways that it's helpful because i'm initially going into it i was not a big supporter of it for a lot of the reasons that you mentioned and so i definitely see how it's helpful for that information and um the thing that i still struggle with is i wonder um talking about what what information parents need i know that that before went like when i went through high school it was a lot easier for my own parents to push me into a certain track i wasn't necessarily the person who um wanted to to take the cp courses or wanted to do those things but um for them i think it was easier that they could ensure that i was in that course and then they just had to kind of keep track of this how i was doing in that course now finding myself with my own son i i feel like um it's not clear what he needs to do to get that cp credit or to be on that track it's like okay so do a little bit more go ask your teacher what it is and i feel as a parent it's really hard for me to help push him to what i know that he's capable of that he might not want to do at that time um so so just feedback on that that's that is something that i'm finding to be a struggle um same thing when it comes to grades and when it comes to transcripts um i think it's great that colleges are accepting the transcripts but then it's also hard for the parent to really be pointed towards their own children and try to help support them in what they need to be competitive to the colleges that they might want to attend if if we don't know what the colleges are seeing so we're getting the the report card as standard base but we're not necessarily seeing what the colleges might see and so um and i get that there maybe that's something that we can figure out and there's rubrics and we can kind of piece it together but in this effort to not give too much information but but also have meaningful and tons of information i think that i as a parent have lost the ability to really nail down what does he need to do to make sure that when that college transcript and not just colleges but also and that kind of goes into a second question of how about scholarships are are we finding that the kids are still competitive with scholarships so that because and i and i get that it's changing the system nationwide is changing and it's becoming more more obvious that more systems are doing this and they're adopting the system so it's becoming easier as we go along but during this whole transition periods where some schools are not doing this and some schools are are are are we going to have this phase where the kids currently in the school system as we try to figure this out might suffer in some of those ways where parents aren't don't have the information they need to push them along that way um and you know like you mentioned that that you don't really do you know it used to be that you could go into 10th grade science as a ninth grader if if you you're capable of kind of doing that you mentioned that you don't really do that now and it's the same kind of with math um but how are our kids competitive against kids that are still in a school system where they do that and where by the time they get to to be seniors they're taking courses that are by their nature more more complex and harder and they're getting the same grades but but when the college goes to way the two they see that well this kid took calculus and this kid took 12th grade math you do you see what I'm saying so so I feel like I get it I understand I I appreciate that there are some great things about it those were things that as a parent I'm starting to notice and have concerns about and and I want to really be able to to be clear when I talk to him and not have to sift through all that information myself and try and figure out how the colleges are going to view it how the college is going to view it um and so some more guidance you will start to get a transcript once once your son is in ninth grade I think even at the end of eighth grade we create transcripts so that we're you know can keep track so you will start to see the format that colleges would see fairly soon um and I'll just take a stab at a couple of your other course trying to take note of your three or four yeah sorry I was I was listening to your whole presentation taking notes and I was like I got to save it all at the end it's going to come out as a jumble so that's great I'll say I'll say a few words and I'm sure Lisa and Katie would like to jump in um I think you know in general uh you if you want to to to turn something from the words on the page into a GPA um and you want that GPA to be as high as it can be you want a child to be achieving high honors and so the question needs to continually be for for the teachers of the course what is needed to achieve at high honors in this course or what is needed to it to exceed proficiency in these performance indicators and if you don't get an adequate answer to that question an administrator should be told because we we expect our teachers to have those opportunities in every course but it does actually make it I think more reliant upon the the the student maybe in partnership with the family certainly in partnership with the teacher to tap into that motivation to achieve at that level because the system that you and I knew when like I got plopped into that college prep track at Harwood at the start of the year I was earning honors before I did anything right I was in that class so I was an honors student in September this system doesn't allow that this system is an earned honors progression where you're in the course and you've got to earn your honors along the way by doing the best possible work you can do so that's one way of maybe reframing it as like playing a lot of reliance on a student to earn honors by the end of the course not earn it just by getting into it and I think there's some value in that in terms of in terms of you know everyone's work ethic and also in terms of our need to really connect to students desire to achieve strongly so that's one way that this system does flip the tracked way of earning honors I mean yes you earn it by your past performance and get into the next level of course but this places an ongoing need for the student to do his or her best work all along the way now when it comes to what you know what wide array of AP and other courses a student at Randolph Uni can achieve by the end of their tenure with us that may be something Katie wants to elaborate on there certainly are a lot of ways that we try to meet every student and family where they're at with their skill set and their needs so that if they want to be in Calc BC by the time they're graduating and also have taken AP physics and also AP world history and all of the other offerings that we that we have we're small enough school that we have to alternate some of those you know AP physics alternates with AP environmental science so we need to be really strategic starting in like ninth and tenth grade to make sure that we get the sequence of things right but you can have a pretty impressive transcript by the time you graduate from from are you if we're really strategic from early on and I want to do want to think it's important conversations in a great conversation and a lot of good questions but we do want to be cognizant of time a little bit here so if there's a quick follow-up for another minute or two Katie or Lisa if you had anything I think it would be you know good to respond but we will need to move on pretty quickly yeah the last the last thought I would add is that you know I also think we are very lucky to benefit from like the best in the business as far as our school counselors are concerned and that that council is so helpful and important too and they're really involved with students and thinking through their pathways through our course offerings so that they are on that competitive track if they really want to be and we also have you know sprinkled throughout the school of course we have our department chairs too who are actively working with their departments to think through those pathways so like how do you how do you lead up to AP computer science if that's what you're going to do and how do we create that pathway how do you get to AP calc ab and bc how do you get to AP you know bio how do you get to AP environmental science or AP written language and how do you balance all of that out like you Laja mentioned it's important to have those conversations early but at the same time you know we're at the ready to help to guide students through that process from the second they walk into the the door and I'll let Lisa expand yeah I think another important part of this process along with the school counselor is the advisor that's the person who's meeting with the student every day for the first four years that they're at Randolph Union and so when I had an advisory I knew what programming my students were interested in what their dreams were what their goals were and so I could connect them with Kara and essentially be a liaison between the student and student services so that student services you know we have two people who serve our student population in terms of school counseling and that's great it's actually good numbers compared to like state and national averages but it's harder for them to know specifically what students need so we have that structure in place and also typically on the syllabi that come out at the beginning of the of the school year the teacher will outline what a student needs to do to earn high honors in their class or honors in their class so that's a good place to take a look right at the beginning of the year and if you don't see it reach out and follow up and so I want to thank the three of you for spending some time with us tonight for a very detailed presentation on standards-based report cards and I've got to say because I think it's important to give the credit work credits do I'm not a fan of standards-based report cards but I am a fan of the work that has been done at the high school because it is probably one of the best systems right now that I have seen in terms of work towards that end the tremendous amount of work and the herculean effort that these folks put into along with the staff to create what currently exists was massive was intense and they've done a damn good job and so they deserve an awful lot of credit for that work I also have to say that there is significant value in the work that was done as the teachers go through and look at the standards and what the expectations are for students and have those discussions because it really brings to the forefront what they're engaged in every day with the kids so I do want to thank our three folks here tonight and I do want to thank the faculty and for all the really good work that's been done towards this end at the high school so thank you thank you the next piece here is the quarter quarterly facilities report I'll talk very briefly about this just so folks who have not seen this before kind of understand what this is this report actually serves a couple of purposes it's kind of our basis for kind of a strategic vision of all the work that we are trying to do around the district and why I say that is because it's got the numbers down the left hand side that represent the priority you know what's our biggest priority to get done in the next year versus the next two to three years versus four to five years out one of the purposes in terms of presenting this to the board is for oversight it shows in the first couple of columns the work that has been done the cost of that work and then more importantly for the oversight piece is I actually go out a robin goes out our business manager and we do direct inspections and so when you see our initials in there it means that we've actually gone out and looked to see that this work was actually done and the money was spent where it was supposed to be spent a couple of things about this report there are three items there that are in orange to kind of talk about because there'll be things that are on the board's agenda in the coming months the first I want to talk about is the central office we've spent a significant amount of time in kind of fixing things that needed to be fixed in and around the district for the last two or three years and most of that work is now done now we're kind of moving into this phase of enhancing one of the last pieces though in terms of fixing what needs to be fixed around the district essential office it's an older building the windows are starting to rot around the casings it is also the main storage unit for the district's records and we've been having some difficulty downstairs with maintaining the humidity and the temperature and the quality that's needed for those records and so Wes and Bob are taking a look with some contractors and trying to see what we can do in terms of revamping and putting the renovations into this building that we need and we purposely waited until the more important work in and around the schools that supports the students was done so that is that that is something that you're going to see probably with a request to tap into the facilities reserve fund to pay for some of that work one of the other last pieces on the fix it side of things is the Brookfield water they've had water issues for years we tried some less expensive fixes over the last couple of years they didn't get us where we needed to go they did improve things but not anywhere near where we need to be so we have approval from the state to begin the process for drilling into well and so we've got that work that's going on and that'll be a request relatively soon to the board to tap into reserve funds to pay for that work one of the smaller requests and again this is is fix it work is the athletic fields this is something that we talked about probably about two years ago and the athletic fields you know there's a safety factor that's involved if the fields aren't properly maintained what ends up happening is the soil gets compacted you have a harder surface for the kids to fall on if it's not the proper grass that's growing it doesn't provide the cushion as well that's kind of necessary for kind of the rough and tumble sports that we have out there and we were looking back and there has been no real maintenance or dramatic work that has been done on those fields to keep them in the condition that they should be so one of the things that we're going to be asking for as well again is about $30,000 for the first year of a three-year program to renovate those fields in terms of getting the aeration they needed in terms of the overseeding to get the proper grass growing that should be there and also you know fertilization irrigation isn't such a big deal in verman as it is in some other states but it'll be about 30,000 in the first year second year it'll be cut in about half it'll be about 15,000 third year it'll be about half of that again and then we will probably be able to get by with a couple of thousand dollars a year of doing the proper maintenance and again a part of the reason for looking at this is these are things that just all three of these things are things that should have been done a while ago and still need to be done to get us through that fix it phases and calling it so are there questions from the board on any parts or pieces of the the facilities report or any of these projects all right then the next piece here is to move forward in the board management and governance I think it's important to introduce Chelsea Sprague our new board member representing Brookfield who's here for her first time and did a good job getting connected in with the with the internet and being able to join the meeting so I welcome her and then our next piece on the agenda is the reorganization of the board every year in March after the town vote the board decides again you know who will serve in various officer positions and the first one is for the chair of the board which is currently open Laura was the chair for the last couple of years and was also on the board for 16 years and she is going to be having some relaxing times moving forward and so I'll open it up to the board for nominations for chair for the board for this year thanks Lane I would like to nominate Anne Kaplan to be the chair of the board I'll second so there is a initial and a second are there other nominations hearing none discussion Anne are you willing yes I'm willing I am not a great time keeper so I may sort of delegate that task to have to have some help just keeping track of the time but yes other than that and I take it if it's not working out I can always say you know what I don't want to do this anymore somebody else so other other discussion all right we'll close discussion and I will ask the board to vote all those in favor actually use the raise your hand button and that way Linda can get the names so Linda we've got Cotches is a yes Rachel is a yes Ashley is a yes Hannah is a yes Megan is a yes and Brian and Chelsea so it looks like it's unanimous so congratulations Anne and I will turn the meeting over to you okay so the next um board position open is the vice chair and that was Rachel yeah it is and Rachel are you interested in remaining in that position or do we we have to have nominations for okay so we're gonna have a anybody want to nominate someone to be the vice chair I'd like to nominate Rachel to continue in that role if she is willing Rachel are you willing I'm willing but I'd like to nominate Katia I'm gonna make it interesting Katia are you willing to be vice chair um sure I'm willing thank you Rachel so do we have some some discussion or do people have anything they want to say in regard to these two nominations or do the two nominees have anything they want to say so I'll say that that being the vice chair to Laura was a pretty was not a very demanding thing because she handled so much herself um so what I did was basically go to the agenda planning meetings um I think there's probably opportunity to do more um and maybe support the chair more and um and Katia if you are interested and have the energy for it I'd be glad to hand it over to you I I don't mind the position but again um I probably haven't made it uh probably haven't um maximize the position I guess so I can say as a chair Katia and not having been a chair before and having um um being more of a team player I'm gonna want someone who's gonna help me out um as the leader of the board to make sure that we are doing what we need to do to lead the board forward so may delegate some tasks to you or at least I'll be working with you and and looking for advice from you so it might be a little more to do um yeah and I appreciate the nomination Rachel um you know I definitely am looking for opportunities to increase my involvement in the board um it wasn't really ready to tackle the idea of chair this time so I definitely welcome the opportunity for vice chair to be able to just learn more about the ins and outs and be a little bit more involved um and you know support the chair in this role as well so was there any more discussion before we vote on these two nominees I think we need a second oh you need a second for both nominations how that works to have a vote um you would need a second um to vote on a specific person I'll I'll second for Katia if Rachel is willing to give up her spot I withdraw that nomination I appreciate it and I would have been glad to stay in the position but Katia's perfectly capable and maybe maybe we'll balance Ann a little bit better and I I think sit on the same side of some of the issues and and Katia walks the middle line a little better so so she may balance Ann out a little right so are we ready um to vote all right so all those in favor of Katia as the vice chair uh you can raise your hand and let's see if I can read these off so yes for Chelsea Sprig yes for Ashley Lincoln yes for Hannah Arias Arias yes for Megan Salt yes for Brian Baker and yes for Rachel Gates did I miss anybody okay so the eyes have it so now um and I don't have the list of oh there we there it is right there in the agenda so the next next up is the clerk um and it's currently uh Ashley Lincoln Ashley would you like to continue on as clerk I would say that if somebody else on the board would like to do it um since I am uh part of RTCC um I'd be happy to have somebody else take that on and I am local so that's I think one of the reasons why it worked out well for me but happy to have somebody else do it Ashley can you tell us a little bit about what you do as the clerk um I try to get Linda information on time sometimes it takes a few emails uh so I am the one who um you know during executive session I uh draft what is spoke uh you know the the votes and then um post executive session when we go back into regular meeting because Linda has often left I will finish out those the documentation of that for her and uh if Anne was not available to sign a document I would be the one who would go and sign documents um right now I do get often I get um the warrants that have all of the checking account um information that has to be signed by a board member so I sign those directly for Brenda um so there we don't have to delay and wait on accounts payable uh for each meeting we have any nominees for clerk is anyone willing I'd be glad to nominate anybody who's willing I work out of town so I'm willing and I'm right in town thank you Hannah I nominate Hannah why second okay and do we have any discussion any any more questions about what you were saying you would like to do Hannah do we have a second all right second at that Linda any discussion are we ready to vote okay all those in favor of Hannah Arias being the clerk for the board all in favor say aye and it looks like it's unanimous all are in favor and then so Ashley you had said you were the one before we used to assign the member to sign the official documents in absence of the chair but Hannah are you willing to go ahead and take on that as part of your duties as the clerk certainly okay so we're going to do that so then next up is to approve the schedule for regular meetings that was in our packet we have to vote on that the regular on on the meeting on a regular meeting typically because it becomes a part of your minutes so you're stating for the community you know when you're meeting and you guys have always done it second Monday just so they know yeah does it have to be a Monday and you guys can change it too do you have a preference Rachel um just Mondays just seem like they just seem like busy days anyway and then a couple times a year the Monday that we meet ends up being a holiday like in November sometimes in October um I don't know it's not don't change it just for me it's working okay so far I ran for re-election so but just I don't know is there a reason that it's always been a Monday I don't know do you know Anne it's always it's been a Monday since I've been on the board and I think it's and it's always been at 6 30 or has it always been at 6 30 yeah it's always been at 6 30 because we talked to one point about having it earlier um and I would vote for that um I would definitely vote for an earlier meeting um I think that these make for unfortunately I feel like our agenda planning um has not really stuck to the timeline that's presented to us which I think is something that as a board we should be doing better with as we are all you know working professionals so I would advocate that we look at an earlier start time um whether it be a Monday or a different day and that we try to be better about sticking to the um a lot of time that we have shared not only amongst ourselves but with the public so do we have a proposal for um I'm hearing a possible proposal for a new time do we have a proposal for a new day um Lane this involves you a fair amount do you have feelings in regard to yeah um in terms of uh days um to be honest Monday is a tough day um not only that it also it's a lot of the holidays or Monday holidays and so we're often in board meetings on Monday holidays and the pre-board meetings have always been on Monday so they're on on holidays as well um in terms of the school district probably the best day um not that the board can necessarily accommodate this is probably a Thursday um that's the typical um date for most uh for for most districts that I've encountered anyways usually a Thursday evening um you don't have the problems here that we had in Boston where it took time for people to get through the two hours of traffic to drive the two miles home um so you know they used to have their board meetings at 7 38 o'clock um you guys could probably easily get away with a 5 30 um that's when the high school typically runs open forums and those seem to be pretty successful people seem to be able to have access to those anybody else have ideas about time and and day I've always been united here go ahead no 5 30 would be a stretch for me because I work at a town but I can I can attend by phone um as I have before so uh six o'clock would be my preference and I'm fine with whatever day of the week Thursday would be fine Monday's fine shall we um do we want to does someone want to move make a motion for a new a new day and time or a new time only I'll make a motion that we move to the second Thursday of the month at 6 p.m. I'll second I'm sorry Katja it broke out so what did you say what Thursday the first I did a second Thursday every month at 6 and we had a second from Hannah is that right yeah okay uh any discussion on this are you starting next month or when I don't I don't think they'd be able to start necessarily until July 1st um would probably because you've already accepted um and I mean you could change it but you have already accepted the year calendar um right last last year when you voted but you could change it going forward on it might be good if you do that to wait at least a month just so people can readjust in the community wait uh Lane when you say the year calendar meaning when we reorganized the last year we we accepted the the meeting dates the meeting dates and then the topics of the meeting okay you guys usually at the beginning of the the school year you have uh kind of planned out what basic agenda is for each meeting dates and times and that's a public document okay okay yeah so the annual agenda yeah not just the list of the meeting date yeah so you you could change it but I wouldn't like do it next month if you did right yeah so that would mean starting uh July 1st so um Katja you're went away from your video but do you want to amend your your motion to say that we would start this by July 1st? Sure sorry I got kicked out of where the room I was in um yes starting July 1st so motion to move to the second Thursday of every month starting July 1st at 6 p.m. all right first reseconded reseconded by Hannah did we have more discussions thank you Lane for uh pointing out that we might need to push that start date back any other discussion on on this motion are we ready to bring it to a vote so all those in favor of uh moving our board board meetings to Thursday the second Thursday of the month starting on July 1st 2021 please raise your hand and I will see how I do watching everybody raise their hand and that is a unanimous yes vote is that okay if I just tell you that Linda and then you can just I can just say yes or if it didn't pass or you know to or against or whatever um well I have you I think you need to vote on the official signing of documents that is not really the clerk's duty um okay really the clerk's duty is to do the executive session and for some reason I wasn't here to take minutes that clerk would need to take the minutes okay but the site signature is a totally separate thing I think you need to make that official okay so that person was uh Ashley Ashley do you want to continue to do that since you were doing that um and or do you want to so I'm happy to keep on doing that I think that Brenda and I have a good you know back and forth um and it's easy so I'm happy to make that work do we have anyone else interested in being that person um so any discussion on having Ashley do that okay all those in favor of having Ashley be the person to sign uh the documents in the absence of the chair please raise your hand and the eyes have it it's unanimous um I didn't I need a person to make the motion and second it oh sorry okay so can we have somebody please make a motion I'll make the motion that um Ashley is the the signer in place of the do we have a second I'll second it catch them I'll give a second set then I have to ask for discussion have any discussion okay we ready to vote uh all those in favor of having Ashley be the person to sign documents in the absence of the chair please raise your hand and that is a unanimous for Ashley and now we have um we need to appoint the representative to the RTCC board uh Ashley you're currently in that role would you like to continue in that role yes I do enjoy that we have any other board members interested in being in that role or any nominations for other people or can we have a nomination I have to ask for a nomination correct I'll nominate Ashley as the RTCC uh member okay I'll second Megan Salt will second do we have discussion any other nominations no discussion are we ready to call the question all those in favor of having Ashley be the representative to the RTCC board please raise your hand again the eyes have it so Ashley will be the rep for the RTCC board then we need to have we need to appoint the teacher contract negotiating committee currently that's Brian Baker Hannah Areas and Megan Salt do you all want to remain on that negotiating committee we are currently in the middle of negotiation so you might want to continue that for continuity's sake okay I'm seeing thumbs up for that anyone dying to be on the teacher negotiation committee um again I'm going to ask points of of Robert's rules because I'm I'm going to need help with this uh do I have to then ask for them a nomination nomination to remain for the same folks to remain okay so do we have a nomination for the three to remain on the negotiating committee I make a nomination that the teacher negotiating committee remains as it is with Brian Baker Hannah Areas and Megan Salt do I have a second I'll second you a second we have any discussion no discussion all those in favor of keeping the negotiating team with the same three board members please raise your hand and it is again yes for a unanimous vote uh next up we have um the appointing of the support staff contract negotiating committee that's currently Ashley Lincoln uh myself and Katja Evans um is there restrictions to me being on one of these negotiating if I'm the board chair yeah okay for continuity's sake do we want to keep those that negotiating committee the same for right now what do people think I move that the current um three are remain the same for the negotiations for staff support staff we have a second get that Linda Ashley Ashley Lincoln seconded so do we have any discussion I have a question just for new board members that might um like Kelsey is new can she participate as an observer just to kind of see what goes on in those meetings if she's so interested or is yeah the yeah those meetings are open to the public um the way that we've agreed with the union um she wouldn't be like you know in any old days before covid when we were actually all together in the same room she wouldn't be sitting at the table with us because that's kind of announced to to the other side but she certainly can participate be a part of the meetings um yeah the other thing that we can do is I believe if I remember the ground rules if she decides that she does want to be a part I just have to give the union a heads up that hey we're going to have a fourth have a fourth person um and they as long as they agree she would be okay to be there and actually participate so are we uh ready to uh to vote on the support staff committee and negotiating committee and we have again a unanimous vote for yes Linda okay and then next up we have um to just have a check in regarding the the negotiations with the unions and yeah uh presentation and that's for 20 minutes but we're moving pretty slowly although we yeah we have about 20 more minutes worth of stuff to do so we can yeah I'll try to move I'll try to move it um in terms of that and again with the negotiations kind of updated it's just basically what folks are asking for where we sit and where the the when the next meeting is occurring we'll start off with the support staff we met on the fourth of this month the things that they are seeking right now in these early stages of the negotiations they're looking for an hour a week of paid prep time an increase in tuition reimbursement to the current uvm three credit course cost they are requesting that on days again they're hourly staff they're requesting that on days that we have snow days that they get paid for those days they would like monthly air quality surveys done in all classrooms and all buildings in terms of salary they are asking for a 19 increase over the next two years and the next meeting with the support staff is on April 1st so questions at all on support staff teacher negotiations we last met on February 16th they are asking for a retirement buyout for about four people a year based on our estimates that's about 97 000 per person that they're asking for for the retirement buyout they are seeking to increase the number of sick leave days they can use to take care of sick family members right they are allowed to use some of their sick leave if they have somebody who is sick at home asking for that into to increase from the current 30 days to 60 days they are also seeking to increase the number of paid family medical leave days from 30 to 60 they are looking for an hour of self-directed planning time each day they also would like monthly air quality monitoring in all rooms and all buildings and they are seeking a 13 increase over the next two years their next meeting is March 16th and i don't know if there's questions on either support staff or on teachers contract do we have any questions for lane and then in terms of uh kind of this the rift discussion i'm going to give me a moment to pull this up uh the reason that kind of had this discussion is because there were some changes that were agreed to uh with the union about uh which staff were included in the cba and which staff were not and one of the impacts of the inclusion of those staff members was the fact that the staff that are grant funded our rift every year until the money from the grants is assured and i just wanted to kind of explain this to folks so that they understood that there's a reason behind this in terms of budget and kind of what executive limitations can tell me to do and how to respond so give me a second to pull this up this will be about five minutes now i can't see you but can you see the presentation yes we can so um reduction in forest also called rifts um uh layman's terms outside of education you can think of them as layoffs and typically in education there there are three occasions where they're used um if student enrollments decrease right that's been a trend around vermont um is that uh as people have moved out of vermont um there's been fewer and fewer students in schools and so in a case like that you end up with more teachers um that are needed to educate those students and some of those students may be laid off they may be rift um another situation is when there is a a decrease in the budget so say that we went out um presented our budget to the town um it covered exactly what we needed um for our costs and the town voted it down and we ended up having to make dramatic cuts to that budget um to be able to get that vote to pass we might have to lay off teachers because we wouldn't have enough money to be able to pay for for all the staff um the one that's highlighted here is the one that we're going to talk about um just so that people understand where these yearly rifts come from and it's this idea is that when contractual obligations require the district to offer the staff their contracts before the money to pay for those positions is assured so in other words um in the case of these rifts uh the contract requires us to actually give teachers their next year contract by april 15th but the problem is is we've got a number of staff that are funded by grants and we typically do not hear back from um the grant agencies uh typically the federal government on whether or not we are actually going to receive the money to pay those staff until mid to late june and so when a staff member receives a contract and they've signed it and the board has approved it that contract is guaranteed and we are obligated to fulfill all the terms of the contract that we signed into with them so as of april 15th regardless of whether that position exists if we give them a contract regardless of whether the grant money comes through we are still obligated um to pay them um for the full amount of that contract and so how this relates to these these rifts that happen yearly um actually the executive limitation that we're going to talk about um very shortly there are two pieces of this that control my actions um right the biggest one here is the superintendent shall not cause or allow the development of financial jeopardy right so we've got five hundred thousand dollars worth of staff that are funded by grants if i don't riff um these personnel um prior to april 15th um the district could be in a pretty severe state of financial jeopardy because we are still going to owe that five hundred thousand and not have any way to pay for it if the grants don't come through um the other piece that is also a part of executive limitations 2.1 is that the superintendent shall not expend more funds than have been received so if i offer these contracts to the staff um i am in effect locking in the spending of money um that we do not have yet that is not yet assured um and so i just think it's important for people to recognize um that the rifts they're not intended to actually cut the positions um they are to make sure that i am in compliance with uh the the policies that are laid down on me um and that uh in 99 percent of the cases you know that grant funding comes through you know it's not a hundred percent it's 99 percent but if uh you know we did not do those rifts and we gave out contracts um we would be in a state of financial jeopardy not knowing if that money was going to come in and this has been even more important to consider given that we're in the time of covid um and uh the economy is not what it used to be um the last thing i'll say before i close this out is this idea that the timing of the rifts is dictated by the contract um i know last year we had a couple of folks that were a little upset on the fact that they got the rift notifications just before April vacation um that was strictly due um to the timing in the contract we had applied for the grants we were hoping that we were going to hear uh that the grant funding had come in before April 15th so that we didn't have to put out the rift notices but of course uh you know April 15th came um we had to put out the rift notices because that's what the contract requires um in uh because the grant money hadn't come through so you know there people were a little upset hey we got this just before April and i gotta say this it had to do with the fact that we were trying to do the right thing we were trying to hold out as long as we could to see if the grant money came through and was assured so that we didn't have to send out the letters at all um but the board should expect that we will talk about this at the next um um meeting because those rifts for those grant funded um employees you know will be due because of this process so that's it for the the rift presentation unless there's questions from the board so lane you said this was because um we changed the the change in the in the contract so they added these positions into the contract yeah so they're in the board not the board excuse me the union actually made a very good argument at the time and and i agreed with them um prior to me starting what was done with these folks was um they were given special contracts and basically there were some small wording in the bottom of the contract that said you know these these positions are grant funded you know implying that if the funding didn't come through you know we could cancel your contract and because they're on a special contract and not included um that means they don't get the benefit of the teacher's master agreement so they were outside of the teacher's master agreement which meant that the district could cut them at any time if the grant funding didn't come through now the the union came in and made the argument that hey you know a lot of these grant funded folks are working directly with kids and are licensed by the AOEs so by the AOE so because of that they should be a part of the the collective bargaining agreement they should be a part of the union and they were right um based upon that argument but the piece that happened is that when we made that inclusion right we ended up in this kind of catch 22 or okay you went you're in you've got the CBA protections but it means that I have to rip you every year because I don't know if I have the money until after I have to give you your contracts um and that's going to put the district in a state of financial um liability so hopefully that makes a little bit of sense a lot of words in a quick amount of time um and so yeah that is that's a yearly thing we had one year where the grants actually um were approved prior to the April 15th date in a couple of cases and we didn't have to put out rifts that year but that's very rare typically we don't receive you know final approval until until mid to late june at best any other questions for lane about the rifts okay so uh the monitoring reports we have uh the EL report 2.3 and 2.6 and I believe we're on uh those we have seen already so we need to vote to accept those um do I have a motion to accept EL report 2.3 or do people have any questions about 2.3 before we make a motion to accept it I make a motion that we accept both EL reports 2.3 and 2.6 Megan is going to second any discussion about the reports seeing no discussion are we ready to uh accept the motion to or vote to yeah vote to accept the motion to accept the EL reports 2.3 and 2.6 we have unanimous vote except for Chelsea unless you haven't oh we have a unanimous vote so the motion passes next up lane you're going to speak a little bit about uh what's going on in the in the legislature yeah and I'll keep that that brief because I know we're running a little bit behind just so because uh we've got a couple of newer folks on the board on those executive limitations reports there is evidence you know you think about them like a research paper where there's evidence in there that documents that in some cases you can encapsulate the evidence within the reports um themselves in some cases the evidence is on the outside those reports after you receive the first one the evidence is always sitting in a binder here in central office so if there is ever any question that the board has about the statements in there it's always a good idea you can always come in this is part of the oversight duty ask for Linda to see those those binders and and take a look in the look in them to make sure that everything is there that folks may need um in terms of the uh advocacy part in terms of what's happening in the legislature I put a pretty detailed kind of presentation in the superintendent's written report on that because there was a lot of lot of different pieces in motion um in the state legislature that's directly um geared towards education so the only two that I'm going to talk about a little bit um because I think they're really important they may have an impact either on our finances or on our actual structure in terms of the school day and the first one is senate bill 100 which is for universal school meals if this ends up becoming law it's actually a good idea but again it's kind of this unfunded mandate piece here is that they're seeking that all public schools provide free breakfast and lunch to all students at no charge which is great but the problem is is that the cost of this and it's written directly in the bill this way will be borne by the local school districts um in our case um we will still you know should this go through students that qualify for free and reduced lunch if they fill out the paperwork we'll still get um reimbursed partially from the federal government for that but the potential cost to the district is probably in the three hundred thousand dollar range um of of new money that we would need to spend and then the only other piece unless there's questions on the other other parts of legislation that we're in the superintendent's written report is the education recovery um from COVID-19 that we kind of spoke about a little bit um what's going on right now is the senate education committee is hearing testimony um regarding you know what it would take across the state um to stem any kind of educational losses that have happened for the the students and the children here because of COVID so they've heard the testimony on it but they have not taken any real action at this point in time but this has the potential of changing the structure of the school day or a school year for a while because the only way to catch students up that have missed out is to provide them with more time so it's possible if grant funding comes through for this if there's some funding for this is that you know we would be running some summer schools and or extending the school day for for students in need so just to keep that in the backs of people's minds i am actually hoping that they do come up with something for this one because there will be shortcomings due to COVID that that will need to be addressed and unless there's questions on on any parts and pieces of that or what was in the the broader superintendent's report those are the only pieces i'm gonna gonna touch on okay so next up we have um the consent agenda uh and that involves the uh approving the minutes from the meeting on February 8th uh approving the minutes from the budget informational meeting on February 24th and the minutes from the annual meeting on March 1st and the administrative contracts which um linda sent out a second email with an updated one and i'll and i'm gonna i'm gonna ask the board um as part of the contract approval um we also do have a teacher contract for our band teacher for next year for the high school to include in that but i do want to introduce heather lawlor who is here you know we're talking about the administrative contracts heather is pat miller's replacement pat has has decided to retire after many years of incredible service to the district um heather comes to us she's got a bachelor's degree in english two master's degree one in ed leadership one in ed technology um she's served in a number of administration administrative positions um in windsor central supervisory union including principal of redding elementary and the associate principal of woodstock union high school and middle school um she is the top choice um of the search committee um in terms of their recommendation to me and me to the board and um they are incredibly enthusiastic about her willingness to take over um brain tree elementary and i don't know if the board would want to invite her to speak um but she is here and she's a absolutely wonderful person ashley raise your hand or was that an accident uh does the board want to hear a few words from heather yes i'm seeing that yes so go ahead please heather and heather i apologize if i put you on the spot good evening everyone i say hello to you from my home uh so please forgive the the humble surroundings um i'm so excited to join your team i had the pleasure of serving on the integrated field uh review committee so i was in your schools in january and february of of right before the covet shutdown and i got to meet i got to meet so many of you and your and your leadership team and i was in brain tree i actually got to be there which was so exciting because as you may know interviewing in this time you can't go inside so i got to see the children playing chess and i got to see the teachers really engaged with their students and so when i saw the position posted i was excited to apply and i'm so thrilled to be your top candidate and i hope you will approve me tonight and if you have any questions i could answer quickly but basically you know i live here in vermont i'm dedicated to uh being a school leader and i'm excited about joining joining your team and getting to know more of you and learning more about um what you want for your students and serving you as a leader great thank you very much does anyone have a quick question or shall we keep moving forward looks like we're ready to move on so um are we ready to um have a motion to pass the the um consent agenda as it is do you want us to do the minutes part separate from the contract payments or i think we can the consent agenda i think we can pass it as a whole yeah i just know that sometimes we have lane has requested that we break things out of the consent agenda this one should be should be fine the one thing that i would ask you to do because it's not on the consent agenda right now is to make a motion to add the approval of the teacher's contract to it and then what you can do is then you can move to to accept the consent agenda as a whole okay so can we have a uh motion to add the the band teacher contract to the contracts that we're approving can i just make this one more quick question to lane i guess i know um it's not really with policy governance the board is um it's really your decision on who to hire but i just want to make sure that you know going with um lisa and katie that we are there's no procurement process that needs to be followed to um kind of replace elisha you know being that we're on tax money just making sure there isn't something that needs to be advertised or followed through because they're currently existing in those positions um there really isn't much that's changing they're already there the big thing that is changing is that elisha's position at the high school is not being replaced what we are using those resources for is we are shifting them over to res and the reason that we're doing that is to provide uh erica with an assistant principal over there and part of that is to help out after used to be they were under that co-principal model where you know erica was at res and the other two principles would spend a lot of time there and leave the smaller schools a little unattended when we shifted things to make sure that there was a principal always present at each of those schools and dedicated to those schools she lost out on that support so it makes sense to be able to shift the resources there to support that and that person again through the discussion process through the same hiring committee that worked with heather to gain heather has the recommended melinda robinson for that position so again they're already in those positions really what's going on is elisha is position is those resources are being shifted over to res if that makes sense okay any other questions before we make a motion to add the band teacher contract to the administer to the contracts that we're approving in the consent agenda i move that we add that band teachers contract to the list of contracts in the consent agenda we have a second second seconded by brian so all of those in favor please raise your hands so the motion is passed unanimously to add the band teachers contract to the contracts in the consent agenda can we have a motion now to pass the consent agenda items so moved second moved by kacha seconded by brian any discussion all those in favor please raise your hand again that's unanimous so the motion is passed so next we're on to the reports from the superintendent principles uh financial report and other incidental information which we probably should talk about because that's planning the staff appreciation which comes up really quickly and i am trying to remember what we did last year on that and it's going to be a little different this year probably yeah so i can i can talk a little bit about that i don't know if there's questions on on the superintendent's report or not in terms of the financials we're in very good shape we actually robin and i were comparing you know where we are this year to where we were last year at this time and we're actually in a little bit better shape than we were last year the only thing that stood out to me on the financials was a bit of a deficit in terms of cafeteria in terms of meals but when i checked a little bit further that was because they're about two months behind that updating the receipts which they're working on so we were actually in pretty good stead there in reality under covid we are spending less money than we normally would in a lot of cases is what we're finding when we looked at the financials today so we're in good shape there in terms of staff appreciation we were kind of in the same boat last year and what the board just as a reminder had done last year was they went out and purchased gift cards for the staff and purchased them from you know local businesses to try to support the local community as part of the process and so that's something that you know as you guys discuss what you'd like to do is is a possibility and last year it was chef's market so any ideas on staff appreciation was it like was it well received that gift gift cards everyone likes the chef's market yeah of course i don't know is chef's market still in business right now i thought okay i'm there's one that changed so yeah yeah downtown delhi's not but chef's market is but the new sandwich shop that's in the delhi place is right the wish just tried today yeah if we do the same idea with supporting um downtown um businesses is their way to like share the love with the downtown businesses so we're not just you know we're either choosing you know i don't know how many we could choose from but if either people get a choice of where they get it from or you know we have a certain amount from each so that that's a little bit more spread out among the businesses yeah i think i think it would be easy enough to do the board would have to decide you know which which places would be on that kind of on that buffet i guess is the best word would it be appropriate to ask if we had maybe a couple of volunteers that wanted to come up with a suggestion how quickly do we need to turn this around if it's it's march now and we have april and then it's the week of may so we have a couple of people who want to take this on and maybe come up with an idea and how much did we all volunteer yeah so i do this for gifford every year um we give we have 18 locally owned businesses and we offer gift card gift certificates to each one of our employees during the holidays and there's a timeline when you have to use it within one month and we coordinate directly with the businesses how that is utilized so i'm happy to work with kaca on that um and again i think the idea of choosing a few businesses to to spread that out um as people all have different choices but keeping them to a locally owned you know not shaws not kidneys you know um more of like the huggable mug um black crème that kind of idea i think would be really nice and we could um as part of helping out with that if it were helpful if if you have a context of which places are possible um we could also send out a survey to the staff about you know who goes where if that's helpful to the the discussion and the work um would be easy enough to do okay so will we do we need to um have a motion or to create a group uh a group of athlea and kaca to to put together uh a proposal if you're if you're giving the if you're giving them the authority to just make the decisions and run with it you would um nominate make a motion um if they are just coming up with ideas and coming back to the board with it i would say you probably didn't need to what what's the um rule of the of the board we want to have them just come up with ideas and bring it to the next meeting since that should give us enough time that will be April and the staff appreciation week is May um Ashley you've done this before will that give us enough turnaround time okay yes so uh so is it the will of the board to just appoint Ashley and kaca to come up with a list of possible local places to provide staff with um a gift card to purchase items from there and then the budget for that lane is that coming from the school board budget is that coming from i i believe um you guys it comes out of the line that you have um but i can double check with robin um last year it was based upon what you typically spent for the the um the kind of the brunch luncheon that you had for him in previous years and so we can get those numbers actually linda if you're willing um to send those numbers to to ashley and kaca um that would be helpful so they know what they're working with um and you also can decide if you want to increase it um i can find out you know what remains in that in that board line um and we can always come up with more more elsewhere if needed you know within reason and then i'm i'm just going to bring up one other thing that it's not on the agenda here um but laura roshott served a long time on the board and i'm just wondering if we want to add in maybe a you know letter sort of card of appreciation and maybe i'll give card for her as well yeah this might be a bigger discussion um because we've had a couple of board members you know we had paul we had in howard um and linda and i were actually talking about it um as part of following up on um you know recognizing staff that had made you know a certain number of years of service and things like that of um you know creating plaques for them to send out you know as another possibility but i'll leave it up to the board um to decide so we had we had talked about that a little bit okay maybe that maybe we can put that on on an agenda for the next next meeting okay gotcha you got that written down okay um so next up we have the board evaluation and we didn't actually appoint a board evaluator and can i i have one other thing that's not on the agenda and shut me down if i'm not allowed to do this but i'm just wondering about um lane that was so helpful that you sent out that email earlier about the vaccines and teachers and staff i just wonder if there's a i don't know follow-up or conclusion or anything like that yeah actually that's a that could go along with our kind of our incidentals so um the the state like a lot of states is moving to try to vaccinate teachers to make it more possible to get kids back into school um full in person um they reached out to us they actually called us one morning and said hey you know um we it was like the day after the governors addressed last tuesday when they kind of announced this plan and and i give them a lot of credit because it sounded like they were kind of knew it was coming but we're also a little surprised by the announcement so they were scrambling around trying to make things happen we were originally set to get vaccinated on the 11th um they called us up a couple days later and said no we're moving you to the 19th and so what has happened is they gave us some special codes for the staff to log in with um this morning um so the staff have been busy kind of signing up to go and get their first round of vaccinations on the 19th the only problem is is that um you know they don't they don't have enough space to do everybody in one round um and so i'm sure all the slots have been used up now um so those of us that were busy today will have to wait till the next round but my guess is by the second round whenever that may be that you know all the staff who want it will have been um vaccinated um i believe we had 359 staff members that met their eligibility requirements so i sent that information over to them to plan um to the union's uh credit um they did reach out i haven't had a chance to respond today to them um asking to kind of sit down and say hey you know with the as the warmer weather approaches we know you've been talking about you know going back to five days uh full in person and now with the vaccines it seems like it's much more reasonable so they're reaching out to start having a discussion about what that would look like um so i you know i think um in terms of next steps uh for full in person you know it'd be nice to get all the kids back um things will still be a little bit problematic at the high school level because of the additional spacing requirements um so my guess is april vacationish one will need time um over the vacation for the facilities crews to move uh things around for the new configurations that'll have to happen and two it should get us to a point where hopefully the weather is warm enough that we can kind of permanently schedule some classes outside under the tents and that'll free up some more space in the building um so between the vaccinations um warmer weather um coming you know the hope is is that you know before the end of the year we've got everybody back if we can do it um path isn't clear yet um again it's from aunt lord knows when it'll actually get warm um but uh you know the the hope is there and it sounds like um you know i appreciate the union reaching out it sounds like the heart's in the right place to make this happen so that code went out already to all eligible yeah that came out um came out today um probably around noonish um yep thank you okay so board evaluation since we didn't have anybody appointed we we all recognize that we're we're a little bit behind schedule um and we had a lot of sort of reporting so there wasn't a lot of discussion necessarily um so i think i'm going to pass through that um and then do we have um something that we need to go into executive session regarding it looks like we have a personnel issue okay so do we now adjourn our official meeting no we have to keep this official meeting open and we're going to move to executive session to um discuss a personal issue do we have to have a motion to move to executive session yes can i have a motion to move to uh executive session to discuss a personnel issue i move that we move to executive session i second that for brian do we have a link yes give me give me a moment i'm actually looking to see if there's a link if not i'll send one um good so that we move out here i'm going to create one right now two seconds okay so we had a second do we all so did we vote to move into executive session uh typically you would yeah okay so we're can i see hands and i'm seeing everyone that's unanimous that we move into executive session at eight fifty four p.m. and give me one more second megan rachel hannah chelsea's on here already wow somebody updated the that's awesome all right so your links should be hitting your inboxes your ossd inboxes right now i move that we amend the minutes from our meeting on november the ninth 2020 to reflect the outcome uh oh man i should be writing all of this down as i say but reflect the outcome of the vote at the very end of the meeting after executive session does that cover it second do you want to add the date of that executive session i know you've found it it was 11 9 right 11 9 yeah just maybe add that to the got it motion should we also add the outcome of that vote that it was unanimous yeah unanimous probably and then did you do we have to um you mark the time too when we came out of executive session i did it was 939 okay i'm taking my clerk appointment very seriously excellent do we have any we have uh we have to move the other we have to vote that one first oh oh that's right sorry so do we have the motion to um add the vote to the minutes from the 11 9 executive executive session um it was seconded by brine is there any discussion further discussion on that are we ready to vote all those in favor looks to unanimous so the eyes have it the motion is passed we have any other motions coming out of executive session or any other i make the motion that we give and the authority to contact pietro to start negotiations with the superintendent on his contract all right second i got it yes okay so and we're ready to vote and it looks like it's a unanimous vote well okay oh and now i think we get to uh look over the agenda items for next meeting do we have to look do we have to do that no okay i move to adjourn i second move to adjourn it's a thank you very much for going yeah and lane i can just call down to the central office to get the number for pietro yep actually i if you want i'll shoot um i'll shoot lin an email letter let have a reach out to you with it okay i may have it too i can i may be able to email it to you okay all right brine did you second that move to adjourn who seconded that ashley thank you i i made the motion oh no not to adjourn i made this catch it thank you i'm eager to go to bed i'm going with your supper okay so that's it see you next time nice work