 meeting to order before I start I'd like to welcome Mia Smith who is our new student representative for the board welcome and I'm sorry we keep you waiting so long in the very first night but we are thrilled to have you we really appreciate your input and you know what let's just go around and introduce ourselves to Mia and I'm Jan. I'm Carl Wickey I'm the Worcester rep. And I'm Adrian McGee down the middle sex rep. And I'm Scott Thompson I'm Rebecca's father. Jonathan Goddard from Berlin. And we're missing Cari Bradley and Karen Bradley who are not related at all from East Montpelier and neither of them was able to be with us tonight. And I apologize if some of you came at 7.30 that was a really long meeting and we're going to try and move through this agenda because all of us have been sitting since at least 5.30 some people since 4.30. So revisions to the agenda. I'm gonna well you're mine you can do that later. And public comments so people are here for specific discussion. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda sorry to approve the minutes of August 22nd. So moved. Scott and a second. Carl any comments changes edits all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. That motion carries. Do you want to do your student report first? I mean part of the student report is about the flag policy so why don't you do everything that's not about the flag policy and then when we get into discussion if you feel like you need to leave you can do that. Does that work? Yeah so not about the flag policy. That's you know that sort of second on our discussion agenda. Well I wasn't at the last meeting so basically we have to recap everything that happened since school started. Okay so just like generally like fall sports have started the musical has also started last week we had the Lotus late days for the eighth graders which only happened in winter but they happened this year because of snow problems right. Well we've always had to cancel them the last few years. So that happened. So this is replacing the winter time. Yeah it's like a make-up. Which is successful. Got it. And the middle schoolers have Danish penthouse and they just came and visited last week or earlier in the school year and homecoming just happened had the pep rally and the author of the 57 bus is coming in tomorrow to talk about she's doing workshops all day and is available to talk to students. That would be really good. Sorry 57 bus? Can you give us a little bit? 57 bus is a book that just came out and it's about a transgender person and there's another it's a journalistic novel and it's by Doshka Slater and it's about a transgender person they were sitting on the bus and another juvenile came and lit her skirt on fire and it's about him being tried as an adult and about her experience being I haven't read it but it's supposed to be. And then also every year the biology class does their water quality studies so that's also happening this week and next week and then the rest of the stuff we have is about the flag. And do you have information from the students in the 10th grade class? Yes I do. Okay. Questions? Will you see a man? That's great. Thank you very much. The first thing are on our discussion agenda is the diversity inclusion and equity belief statement which is on page. Is it not in here? It's not. It was in our own. Yeah. And I guess we had left it last month were there things that people wanted to change were we comfortable with it we just kind of wanted to let it sit for a month and I don't know if anybody can drag up last month's agenda or we can wait until October maybe we should do that and put it in the agenda and put it in the packet. Especially if Kara is here. Yeah. Can we do that? We'll just pass on that and put it in the packet for October. Sorry about that guys. Okay so the next discussion item is the flag policy and last month we met before school started though and so there was a discussion about the black lives matter flag had gone down over the summer people were concerned about the safety of it and so there's a discussion about when it would be put up again in the midst of that conversation the board decided to try and to draft a flag policy so that we had some guidelines and procedures to follow so that the administration could follow when the board was presented with options to raise certain flags and so I drafted it's a rough draft I didn't even write it as a policy yet I just kind of put some ideas together it's on page seven of the packet that and I'm going to read the beginning of it it's the policy of Washington Central and I didn't know whether to put that or U32 that permission be granted by the U32 school board so that you know I didn't know whether to go the whole supervisor union or just U32 be granted by the U32 school board for flags other than the United States and Vermont flag to be flown on the U32 campus and then I listed some criteria used to make the decisions for flying flies the request to fly the flag must come from legitimate student groups which must be able to articulate the importance of flying the flag the flag must represent ideas that are linked and supported and support the current U32 mission goals and student learning outcomes and the flag must bring no harm to other groups of students at U32 and then I had a paragraph school administration in consultation with U32 board and school community will develop operating procedures that include criteria for for reviewing requests from individuals and our groups to raise the flag and I just made a bulleted list of possible procedures the definition of a flag versus a pennant or a banner where the flag would be flown might it be flown on a separate flagpole flagpole sorry then the United States with a Vermont flag how often the request for flying the flag could be made would be must be made to the school board is it annually or some other amount of time when the board takes requests the number of flags that can fly at any time can the school board limit the number what happens when the US flag is flown in half mast which was a problem right at the beginning of the school year specific criteria for making flag flying decisions and decisions for flying flags in the atrium because they're already a bunch there and then some questions that came up Kari looked this over and these were a couple of his questions and my questions too do we need to make this policy generic for all Washington Central schools instead of specifying U32 and there's a note here the Washington Central Policy Committee had a brief discussion about this at their August meeting and agreed that the U32 board should draft the policy and the policy committee will look at it and decide if it should be an SUY policy and we're sort of in limbo depending on whether we become one supervisor I mean one whatever we're called yeah sorry one board and then do we actually need to pass this policy now or do we want to wait and see what whether we consolidate or not and on the back of that page Kareem Streisberg Kareem sorry my niece is Kareem Kareem Streisberg did a little bit of research and found a district in Ontario that flew what did they call it the First Nation flag and they just in a pride flag in a pride flag they had I thought a really articulate explanation of why they flew that flag and what it meant to fly it so I just included out now in the back as just there's their other schools wrestling with very similar issues and this just to me was very articulate Ben Heinz contacted me right after this board meeting and said that his 10th grade democratic roots class was really interested in discussing this issue and talking about talking about it with the students and I think Lucy has that information I know they had lots of discussions I think they did some surveys and I said that they were welcome to come and present their information so I think that's what Lucy is going to do yeah do you want me to do that now or wait a minute what are you doing yeah so basically the survey was done just for people who don't know like the background is down on all the 10th grade students they're all in a class called democratic groups and it's not like advanced your CP everybody's in the same class so I just took some of the most important for like revealing I guess results from that survey so 76.6 percent of students in the 10th grade agreed with the decision to raise the black lives matter flag 32 they're also asked about a separate flagpole being installed for different student flags 34 percent strongly disagreed whereas 34 percent also agreed so it's a little inconclusive on that one but I thought but definitely the most interesting one the question was the student body if they should vote on whether to raise any particular flag and 77 percent of students said that they either agree you don't strongly agree that students should get to vote on a flag racing so I thought that was really interesting wait let's say that again so the students would vote whether to raise a flag or not okay sorry and then another question it said it is fair for the school board to determine what constitutes harm to other groups and 46 percent of students agree with that and 30 percent disagree so again kind of some inconclusiveness could you could you repeat that when I'm sorry I missed a question it's just that the statement was it's fair for the school board to determine what constitutes harm to other groups so I think that's sort of starting to talk about like the flag policy as well as the diversity inclusion policy then the last one which I know has been talked about before the statement was student flag should be flown in the atrium not on the flag pullout side 41 percent of students disagreed with or strongly disagree with that and 33 percent disagree so the vast majority of students do not believe anything flies into the atrium so it's just sort of some information to work with like the board can still make their own decisions but the students definitely have some pretty clear opinions about the flags in general so let me so that one the flags that are flying in the atrium at this time was that in reference to those flags I think it was just the flags in the atrium right now aren't they just flags from exchange students exactly so that's what I'm wondering yeah is this question reflect those flags already in the atrium I think they need because the question was where did student flags should be flown in the atrium I think it means flags from like student groups whether that be okay thank you for that yep the other groups at school so kind of student sponsored flags yeah okay okay thanks that just cleared it up yes I think that it was because they wanted it outside because the wording of the statement was student flag should be flown in the atrium not on the flag pull outside oh I understand yeah I don't know if I read that part but I think yeah they wanted on the pole instead of the atrium and so those were kind of the most forth forceful questions yeah the other ones um were a little bit more Megan not as concrete with what the results were thank you very much yeah do you know if the all the classes had discussions about this before the kids took the survey um I don't on your view yeah they they all we discuss it fairly early I think it mainly just had to do with you know time left in class obviously so the survey took up a very small time of like it took up probably 10 minutes max max at the end of class and before that we have like a 30 minute conversation about it so yeah I think all it was with the reason why you got vague answers on a lot of them was because the all of the questions could have been interpreted with hypothetical situations that I think a lot of students that has it thank you I can't see so my hope is that we can have a discussion about the kinds of things we want in this policy and then draft a policy this isn't even a first reading it's just kind of a discussion about the big ideas of this policy and I am one person who drafted it I tried to take information I took information from our conversations last month and tried to reflect those so well I guess my first question would be is and maybe the board and I wasn't here for the last meeting so I might have missed this discussion but is it necessary that we have a flag policy I mean that's that's a question that's right down that's my larger question is do we have to have one does Montpelier High School have one do other school districts have them I mean I think it's I think it's a valuable you know we don't need another committee necessarily but I think it's a it's it's certainly a question worth exploring because certainly we as a board don't need a policy for everything that we do nor does the administration need a policy for everything that they do so I think you know we have some freedom in terms of our decision-making ability and so that's why I asked that question do we have to have one yeah may I student Stephen I forgive my bad memory I'm made worse by the hours that we've already spent at this well I mean you know in the cafeteria do I recall that Essex High School had a policy I believe that Essex is the one I think you're right is they had drafted one I'm at Brattleboro Brattleboro and I don't know the answer to the Montpelier question they have a policy they do have a policy okay so that would be something to look at to see if they do have one but it's still a question worth considering I would say from administration standpoint on that the clear our instructions are the easier it is for us to carry out the wishes of the board that's that's for us it becomes a super gray area if we don't have clear guidance so that sounds like a policy is useful I'm saying for administration's desire would be to have more clarity yeah I'm just thinking about I think well yeah no I and I have I should have said this I think we'll have our discussion and then I will open it up for public comment does that work for you unless you have a clarifying question like you did so just we'll have our discussion and then I do want to hear from the public so any other comments or I think it's a terrific start yeah good job it's been 30 a month and four days and we promise to have a policy within two months or perhaps deciding not to have policy but we did we did target two months at a time for it so I guess I'm sort of questioning what our next step is towards refining this towards a final so my vision is that I would take all the input we had tonight draft it so that it sounds like a policy instead of kind of this and bring it back in October as a first reading if we all agree and there are no substantive changes we could pass it at the first reading if there's substantive chance changes sorry we would have to wait and do a second reading that sounds I think so that's kind of the timeline and our next meeting would be the end of October a month from now so we'd be close to two months and Adrian you did something really good I thought which was to share the draft policy with with Ben I believe yep and he has been using it in his classes at least his current events class so Scott went and talked to those kids right I did yeah wow so we're trying to get some broader involvement yeah but um they were they were so articulate and and really impassioned um and and you know unafraid of just sticking out positions on you know the side that they were that they were advocating for but um but I think the policy um the draft policy really helped to kind of the discussion to coalesce around something real and not just a kind of abstract yeah yeah and it I mean I guess I have a question the students strongly feel that they should be able to vote on whether a flag is flown and that's an interesting thought that had not occurred to me at all is that something we include in a policy do students have to input into which flags fly or does the board decide because it fits the mission or does the board decide that it would be okay to fly it and then the students vote yes or no once they've gotten the board's blessing I would go the other way around to mine but it would make more sense I think ultimately legally the decision would lie with us as a board so the students therefore but there's certainly no reason that we couldn't take a student vote as input towards the decision-making process that seems like a very natural process to me and that that order of operations leads to a legal decision and then we decide whether it fits and then we know we can take that vote and decide how it fits so that's an interesting thought I would almost say the opposite because it would be a truly democratic vote if we approved and we said yes this in fact meets the criteria to go to a vote of the student body after we said yes it meets the criteria right and then do you approve as a student that was what I said then we let the democratic person I guess I could see that you see that it's it's a viewpoint that I hadn't thought of at all yeah and that almost gets into a procedural right this is the step we're going to take to approve or not approve right I mean it gets into the very nitty gritty of what a potentially a procedure might look like and we might make suggestions to the administration about the procedure we don't tend to usually write procedures we write the policy um and the administration although they might appreciate such thus writing the policy furthermore I think I'd rather let the administration decide whether it is appropriate or not and then they could come to us if if it was cloudy or if it was just unclear or if it was that difficult of a decision I think we need to trust in our administration all right you mind if I weigh in not at all so I think that there's several things we might want to consider and into some of the way we think about our policy the first we would help prepare any student group to come before the board like that I think that that's like we're not going to be the arbiter of whether or not they should come before the board but I think that our job is to make sure that they're prepared when they come before the board and I think that that would be our role or should be our role not deciding on whether or not a student group should come to the board I think that that would that would limit the democratic process our job should be to help prepare kids to come here so that they are fully aware of what's going on I think the student vote issue there are certainly we're a democratic society we want to create democratic process but we also run the risk of the minority voice never being heard in that situation and I just think that there's checks and balances within a democratic society to make sure that the minority voice can be heard and so we would just want to make sure that we created some type of mechanism around that right I mean that's why we have you know three branches of government because there's a redress you know and it within our society we hope and so I just I would just caution us just I think it's great that there's like it sounds interesting the the numbers is that there was a high number of students who would have approved it and there were a high number of students who wanted to vote for it right and so those are both positive about this and so I'm kind of thinking out loud because I hadn't thought of these same ideas either but the other piece I think might be good in doing a vote is that there would need to we would by nature the board could approve if we did the board approval first and then before we go to the student vote that time period that exists between when we actually vote when the board says yes this is something that the students could consider is the educational time that we might need so so to actually put together the here's what our community needs to grow through whatever the situation is whatever flag that we choose to put up we would have the what we missed in this this scenario that we're dealing with now with the Black Lives Matter flag is that we're doing our education after the flag goes up this would be something that would have to be there like students couldn't vote on something they weren't educated about and I guess that was my assumption because we had talked about that over multiple meetings that that that we are stepping into the educational piece prior to going the route and you know and I think that that's the learning experience you know that's the that's the teachful moment that we're looking for when we do so our voices are heard prior to something happening which is what we want in democratic society right so that was my assumption that that was happening prior because i'm wondering if this process had been in place and we had said okay and then the students voted on a Black Lives Matter flag without any education whether this vote would have been the same or not correct and it might be we don't know but i think you're right the education is really important in that piece i'm just several things but i'm not sticking you out on a live there you know i just i think i'm already out there i think we're all out there we're on uncharted territory here um so jonathan we still sort of haven't you know we've talked about the policy but whether we need one you missed the meeting bill and steven spoke pretty firmly about needing a policy that it really helped them right make decisions yeah as they do with other things they rely on policy and it's kind of our job to set policy and then they carry it out right yeah i mean i'm not opposed to it i was just reading yeah no i think it's a good one that's that's all it was and i don't i don't hear strongly that we don't need it i think or i think our administration has asked us for it and therefore we should provide it yeah okay okay you guys have comments or questions or suggestions this year's coming gone well that one night i think you've done a wonderful job all parties is great listening to everything and a lot um one question i have is what gives any one of you the right to make a law i guess on paper of what's right and what's not why isn't higher authority for every school have it all black and white so that everything's equal why should Montpelier do this and youth of the two do this and Rutland do this and a little loss there because you live in Vermont we're only i do not happen to view the previous meeting dealt with this issue extremely pretty i feel bad for you guys having to view with it and i i think i mean it's it's double x sword i think the beauty of u 32 is that we have a culture and we have a community and we've built a personality around the school and the students help that and the teachers the administration the school board and you will find that all schools have different cultures and personalities just as towns do and states do and i think all of us are individuals and a collective individual u 32 forms the school and it's not necessarily going to be the same we have different clientele different people it's a really good question the only thing that concerns me is i do with every single kid's vote but as a parent they're not 18 their vote really shouldn't count i apologize but it's the way i feel i love the data i think it's great but you know i still tell you what time to come home um hi again i'm ania i'm a tenth grade student here um and i think a huge issue with this is i mean frankly the lack of you know a feeling of safety in school often um because with things such as school shootings and you know horrible acts of violence frequently happening um i think that there's often a very tense you know or around politics and debate and things like that because you know now if there's a very vague line between you know right and wrong and death and things like that and um i think that they having a right to do this i don't think it's you know something that's like oh why do they have a right to create this policy or law um surrounding right and wrong because obviously they do have bias opinions but like i think we're in a situation where we sort of need it in the sense that like regardless of political view anything like that in school i think the students generally feel a bit frustrated with um almost a feeling of silence or whatever you know like they feel like things are being introduced very quickly without much consideration of their views and things like that which in my opinion are valid because i mean you know we are human beings and we do um have feelings and things like that and flags or something that represent those feelings and can help unite us and give us a greater feeling of safety or you know a greater feeling of discussion something like that regardless of whether or not you agree with what the flag represents i think that it's something that like needs to be talked about and needs to happen um and the students very much that need to be involved in it in my opinion thank you i have a comment i don't mind you with jenna for my god from this one earlier i brought along um for carrying forward the canada thing i brought a form that one of a school in canada uses that has a very low bar actually for the um raising of a flag proposed by a student and i think that that's actually a really good way to start um if you want to improve uh children's sense of agency and authority over their own lives then you start with their right to say something and one of the ways they can do that is by advocating for themselves to have a flag raised now you don't have to have a complicated policy i don't think i think you you have minimum standards for decency essentially you you want to comply with the laws and regulations around hate speech and things like that and you also want to not be particularly offensive to particular groups but barring harm to another group i think that you might think about really opening this up and letting students come forward with ideas about what flag they might want to raise in this particular instance flags can be raised for each flag is raised for about 30 days and so you may want to consider whether you really want the board to be making those decisions every month when uh if there's a low bar and the principal finds that the what the student is asking for meets that bar then the flag would get a month when the word could be raised you might also think about whether you might want to have certain flags at certain times of the year like for black history month or something like that where you have actually sort of a built in curriculum around what might be happening those are just some ideas that i had and um there there actually is a policy that i can provide you at the end of the meeting with it's not that long but it just is very basic about what what student would be asking for and then there's also the form like i said that i would love to i would love to see it i you know there's very little out there yeah there's a lot we're actually really lucky because a lot of the flag debate that are happening in the country right now have to do with the confederate flag so it'd be nice if we didn't have to worry about that um but that seems to be what what most of the cases around flag policies are having to deal with these days that brings up a great point um what's to say that a certain child in this school wants the confederate flag back on the pole what gives you the right to say no so that's exactly why we want a policy so we would go and we would say does it meet the mission and um student learning outcomes of our school does it fit with all these other things i don't believe you can do that because but my boy actually brought up a great point when all this was happening last year and said well i'm overweight and i want a flag that has a fat person on it because i get picked on at school and we were like what and you know so you couldn't say he can't do that and there's only 365 days in a year there's not enough flags everybody would just start creating flags out of my boy they want to hunt and fishing on because that's his life how is one skateboarding flag they would just sit and create one all day long and that sounds like what jennifer's talking about a little bit maybe you could have a hunting and fishing one i mean i you know have guns in school so is that a lawsuit well it's a flag that this is a flag and i think that we we have gotten so caught up in in a piece of cloth and that you know the piece of cloth if it makes somebody happy you know i think that the bigger lesson is sometimes in life you know you're going to be dissatisfied but you can't ran on everybody's parade all the time and and i we just keep moving away from the fact that it is a flag right you're wrong i did no work on last year and i believe it's in the minutes or notes and i can interview a lot of live people right in vermont that are all our age with kids and everything and every single one of them every single one of mine give you names and everything we're very very disgusted so i'm i'm not looking to start a debate at all i'm just you know saying that we're getting really wound up about a piece of cloth and i and it's you know i there has to be common ground that that we can work together and decide this policy um but i i also see the point of um there's so much media out there and so much access that these flags could could skirt our our very um decisions that we've made or criteria that that we've come up with um very cleverly and and it could turn into something so is there anybody who hasn't made a comment who would like to i mean i have my corals of what was just said but i don't really think it's the um so i just to be more exact my personal suggestion and i feel like it's it's a general you know i feel like it's a good average from what i've from the people i've spoken to in the tenth grade and in our classes and the discussions we've had um i think that we want you know to be able to vote on things like this just not only for the purpose of being like oh you know here's what we think about this also just so that you know we know that this is actually what's happening um because again with the black lives matter flag for a lot of people you know not i mean we're students and oftentimes unfortunately aren't very involved in politics things like that and so um we don't see things like memos and things like that that are talking about these things and so it just sort of came out of nowhere for a lot of us and um i think that got a bit overwhelming regardless of whether or not you agree with it um and i think it would be important just to have the vote so that you know it's like oh we're all actually discussing this and putting our opinions into this and it's not just like you know an obstruction of free speech or whatever you know so i'm going to take all this input and try and craft uh policy and i will pass it by kari who's not here tonight or maybe someone who is here also um and it will come back in october and at that time we can pass it we can change it we can take you know there are a lot of things we can do but we could pass it if people are comfortable with it by then okay and i really appreciate all of your input thank you very much for that and let me get back to my agenda here board goals are on page nine so that these are the board goals we've been looking at the diversity goal i added these are kind of the final goals and i guess why they're on here tonight is to think one more time about the community involvement which is community engagement which is the third goal and the executive committee really wants some specifics about what we want and i have he's a paper where i put the discussion from the executive committee hold on a second so on you before you leave one quick second because i wanted so one thing i think is important about what on you just said is the awareness factor and and i think that that's like from your comment that's what jody and i were just writing down was that when you talk when we're thinking about community engagement that awareness factor is really high and we found that because we we're trying to get better right at our own communication and we've gotten a lot more positive conversation with our parents from some of our more recent pieces so trying to there's some stuff i'll talk about a little bit later but a regular update of progress in school that's there now for parents to be able to see a we just sent out a note to our middle school parents because we're going to talk to our middle school kids about something right but it's that awareness that that kind of precursor to it and i think that that's what i hear a lot from what on you was just saying is that just we want to know what's happening to us and we want to be more aware and we haven't been great about that because we've been dealing too many things at sometimes right but but i think we're getting better at that and i would just encourage the board like when you think about community engagement that's the big piece that we're starting to see a lot from and i think that's what tim and dan said the first time i came to this meeting was that if they had been aware they would have been able to come in and talk about this earlier too so it's awareness for us so to figure out how to make people aware yeah just get ahead like it's a few minutes ahead that we just never seem to get get one step ahead you've got a one step behind right and i think that that people didn't know what to expect and and that's i think that's where we alleviate a lot of fear and a lot of misconceptions and you know you know i'll own my part of it you know we haven't been doing that at the school level well and we're trying to get better at that and that's what we've been doing and last month we talked about sharing information and forming the citizens getting support these are reasons we want community engagement the why sorry to get support for our decisions to get buy-in to make people feel included to get information out there so that people can make better decisions to achieve a better educational experience for the kids to make people's lives better including students families and folks not directly involved in our school to maintain community involvement and to achieve better outcomes for our students and i guess if we can figure out maybe one or two two or three of those to really focus on and then try to get consensus around the whole su about them what we really need is a regular supply of controversial issues you're right that's what gets people out yeah they're shaking their heads some of us aren't retired yet right personally with that direction do you have a i mean i think what steven said is pretty sums it up pretty well um is that is that what community engagement is or is that just a piece of it i think it's a pretty important piece i hesitate to try to encompass all of what community engagement could be yeah so yeah provide input on the purpose of board level to really engage engagement people aware i actually think all of those are pretty important okay i'm gonna send that back to them that's where we were track resurfacing let's switch subjects here so um that's not written correctly it is a track rebuild rebuild yeah resurfacing would be easy this is digging the whole mess up we're doing drainage the track itself has reached its end of life um well every every bit of work that we do want it now is just patches and not it's not going to give you that and it's just so so some of our indications from um a few of the engineering uh early engineering reports were just that just the subsurface this where okay i'm going to go off in areas i don't know enough about to really speak with any expertise but the subsurface is not in good shape and so it needs to be done from the bottom up um that could cost us anywhere from about 750 000 to about 1.1 million in our early estimates of that um you want the good news yeah we can we can do this without bonding we are we are going to ask that some of our fund balance the surplus that you see in your financial statements we can move that over with some good spending on our capital funds we can save back enough money to where we do not need to bond this but we feel like we would be able to move forward with a with the project and be able to pay for it with our our excess fund balance i hate to use excess but but the excess fund balance above above what the board wants us to have on a routine basis and money that we can save back from some of our just thoughtful spending yeah what is the time frame for this so um we need to start moving to the engineering phase so we would have to have some approval around this we might need the finance committee because the finance committee and the capital committee were merged so we would need some conversation with that of course it's going to fall in the time period that begins um with the next budget cycle um which anybody's guess is to who's going to be approving that or putting that so so we will we will um the project needs to get started now um so that we can begin planning because it's one of those things where we graduate with a bulldozer waiting at our backs right to tear it all out so you're thinking this summer it's going to be i don't think it's no it's not this summer it's the fall of summer i believe is the time 2020 i believe i'm already off a year i think it's this summer it's a summer it's a summer it's about an engineer yeah coming in the last meeting but is it june or is it waiting till july one no it's wait oh well because of the budget well yeah capital funds are are really sit sit separately somewhat from the budget so we could start the project yeah but i don't know no i think it's 2019 yes it is it's this summer because it's reached the end of its life yeah it's it definitely has and there's no alternative service dirt yeah worked for years it did but but there are honestly there are very few tracks of our quality in central vermont and so it gets used quite a bit by both the community by um by the state in terms of just being able to use a facility i mean we have everything from the state troopers here using it for their physical their physical tests to the community members that you all you can always look out there and see somebody in the mornings it's a it's a it's a resource that's well used and we we posted the state track tournament division two multiple times yeah several years in row because we're about the only good track left and ours is still not great shape maybe we should start renting it out and put it right there i would say that you know we we've always had the conversations about using the building itself but you know our our fields and our facilities outside of here are used quite a bit as well and so without risk of exaggeration we're we're going to be able to pay for it it will take all of our capital funds across you know across the time period as well as money that we've saved but as we have done in the past couple of years we underestimate the revenue that we received from our tuition students and that's where you see a lot of our additional fund balance has been built from right and it looks like we will be seeing some of the same this year but we've still got to play out the numbers but it looks like we'll still have that and that's been providing the cushion that's the kind of project that you want to do on the tuition students money because that's not something that's necessarily operational for the school and so that's where we've been able to save the money up over the last couple of years and george i don't know if you've been at the meetings but they have resurfaced that track a number of times yeah it's been resurfaced since its original build it's been resurfaced twice yeah and that they've sort of done all it was kind of like the bleachers you've done all that you can do and now you have a start over so what are you looking for from us though i think it's just right now it's making you aware and um and then we're going to be coming back with several um action items around moving money into the capital fund and starting to to use the fund balance do you need the finance committee to meet um i think it's karen karen oh are you on that also i am so because you haven't you guys haven't met for a while we might you know what we might need that committee to meet around the capital piece so that we can lay out the full plan sure because we're going to have to do bids for far stuff and so um i will send the i will send a note to you so that uh if we need to have the finance committee okay and you could also send it to karen and karen and we'll work with them just so so we get a good thanks we gotta do some work yeah great what's the life span good question right world so so of the track that's out there it's been over 20 years that for for the base i think it was even prior i i don't know if it was done in the last renovation but it resurfaced twice within that 20 yeah yeah winters take a toll on on tracks around the web and is that basically what we're looking for going forward about 20 years that's i would imagine same life expectancy we're all hopefully a better base construction there's just a hopefully a better base construction to it there were some faults found in some of the construction techniques but that may just been a technique at the time so we're paying $50,000 a year for the truck if it's a million dollars yeah i think it comes out of that yeah with the state okay we're the only game in town i'm sorry i didn't hear what you said well if you're talking about the fields and facilities um so we read in our basketball court and i can't remember the numbers on that so um that was just half of it one gym not both of them with the bleachers that was over i think that project was over $200,000 for bleachers and um and floor and then just one of the gyms um the gyms are used every day all day first we use them we use the outdoor quite a bit i mean they're weather dependent they ski on it in the winter yeah i think it's used all your realm yeah but um i that's a decision for our finance committee to make thanks somebody to think about that he's a when we break it down $50,000 a year for a track there's something to think about thanks um financial audit i have something in this packet i don't know what i have no idea what that is i'm sorry i did not put that on i don't have anything in this pile of stuff which oh the board orders you might pass those oh i'm gonna let that one go because we usually get the audit not in september right yeah they thought maybe looking over this agenda that that was a mistake for some recent okay i'm sure it is because i have no idea why it was there i mean and i didn't catch it i'm sorry i was at a wedding um and then 3.6 is the act 46 update which i think we just had it i don't know if there's anything else we need to say down on the action agenda is approval for joining the legal action so we can when we get to that we can do that it won't take us long to get down there um and i think other than that we've heard everything we need to hear um reports to the board central vermont career service karen went and she's not here no she didn't she didn't end up going i went i went to the rev yesterday and i do have a report for her and she maybe went a month did she go a month ago anyway maybe okay go ahead that's great okay so um so i attended the rav meeting at the request of bill uh gamble um so that we have representation there because rav the regional advisory board okay for cdc right so that's the their oversight board i don't fully know that i'm a voting member of that board like this is the question around like how it's constituted and all of that so i also just so you know i made a plea that they changed the times that the board meets so that our board members and or our superintendent could attend because they are going to be making some pretty big decisions so the um the program overall so um the agenda for this meeting was dominated by um a presentation from the a design build team from the central vermont career center this is a group of teachers and their administration who have been working with um this let me get the right company here truex collins um to uh to look at the possibility of cc cdc moving off-site to another location i'm reading from their information here due to spaulding high school board stating in may 2018 that they are looking at occupying that wing of the building um so they've done multiple meetings from may to august and the team researched state board rules tech technical education regulations and other various resources and um and they determined through that process that if they are going to look at a build new or renovate site that is off of the spaulding campus that they would need to employ um a company to help start that process they asked so so the motion was made at the meeting to ask the spaulding board to designate $88,000 of the fund balance really for the tech center the the career center to begin the study the timeline that they lay out is a three-year timeline of uh designing acquiring funding and then build you know going through the design and build process for um for the school um it's super ambitious the three-year everybody agrees a three-year timeline super ambitious because the funding that they would be going for would be through the legislature um most possible that would be their their preferred method because bonding a new building through the town of berry might not go over really well and so um so there's a lot of discussion that motion was made I abstained in stating that I didn't know that I represented the views of this board because this was news to us I didn't know that I could represent the views of this board more my superintendent so I abstained from the vote they actually tabled well I didn't have to abstain they actually tabled it because there weren't a whole lot of people from the sending schools that were there there were a few industry members and most of people were um the cdcc teachers which they don't vote actually on that group um so what my plea to them was if you're going to be making decisions like this you really need to have meeting times that can accommodate enough people to to to make real decisions here because and this was what I understood this is why I'm a lot of detail here but you know one more controversy right uh for us um if that board voted to ask the spaulding board to release that money and the spaulding board voted against that motion the spaulding board then had to send a letter to the aoe explaining why they would not approve that I felt like I was in a position to force another board to do something which I didn't feel like I had any authority from you guys like what your feelings might be on this kind of topic to be able to even get involved and so thank goodness they take it because it's a big decision they are looking at doing an october 25th meeting at a more appropriate time this is instead of four o'clock but uh but it's also thursday october 25th you can say one's not board meeting is october 24th right yeah so um so so it was a lot um if they proceed if at some point in time in the near future they do vote to ask of the board to release the money and the board votes and they do release the money and they get the $88,000 to begin the process at that point in time they're going to develop a planning committee that is made up of sending schools and um members of administration and faculty at the career center so a lot going on over there I will say this that there are early documents that talk about some of the process one of the earliest sites that they have already mentioned is the potential for a site near the airport in berlin which I don't know how it all works this is where I have no knowledge nor ability to know right now what governance looks like for a program that is administered by berry schools that is in our district when their district might also be merging and all like we are at the confluence of who's in charge at the moment so uh so that could be very complicated I felt like I have not even been able to give this report to bill this was just last night that I was at that meeting um and so I don't know what his views are on in terms of being a part of it I know that he sent me specifically because he couldn't go and he knows that there's a lot happening this is very new they did present to the um spaulding board a month ago for the first time that's when they heard about all of this and so I'm glad you're right there well we saw that jimmy and and the spaulding board is the one until when they needed to move so there's actually there were two members of the board that were a part of this and um and they were pretty adamant that they never said that they were throwing them out of that wing like there's a lot there's a question about that that's their problem has there is you I stay out that's right I just sat there twiddling my thumbs because I just don't I don't know I don't know the politics I don't know um what conversations have had I haven't read their minutes so I have no idea what was said or what it was not said about the the cbc and spaulding by their board members but it's a it's going to be a big deal and a big project I mean we're the second largest number of students in that program behind uh the spaulding students so um we will it will impact us in some way um so how successful were you with changing the meeting time um so uh they do want to I they were pretty clear that four o'clock was not appropriate before if we want actual members of our boards to be here and and that Tuesday can't always be on a Tuesday night you know there's there's some they they heard they they're moving the first meeting so Thursday the time is yet to be determined so but the jury's still I I've I've held that spot in my schedule um thank you but I think one one of the things that I'm going to probably need from you guys that this is this is going to be a big deal like I'll need some feedback around I'll need your questions like I don't know that you can even you probably are like I am right now like what feedback do I even give but your questions about this process um because there was mention of how does the cost if it's not funded by the state move across the sending talents right and that's a big question like if there if the only board that can vote on it is the spaulding board about whether or not this all occurs well you can't tax the other yeah you can't tax other talents right um and so it just it's it's going to be super complicated and um it's earliest stages um there's certainly a lot of questions about does is there an enrollment to support it are there you know there's only 150 students at the at cvcc right now um and uh and some of their programs are are not full even right now and so there are programmatic issues that have to be discussed there are building issues that have to be discussed there's all kinds of just out of curiosity is that enrollment increasing no but my argument would be that the programs don't necessarily serve the interests of our students in our communities right now but they they don't fully articulate what we need and we know that because some of our students are down at randolph because randolph tech has programs that are do satisfy what our students want and so maybe this is an opportunity that i think that i think that's a very good way to look at an opportunity right and so transform it's going to become it's going to be an issue that we're going to have to at least weigh in on at some point in time thank you and next administration thank you thank you guys thank guys just looking at the clock it's time for us to hope so yeah thanks so much for coming yeah um administration report kind of just i think unless there's something joker has one thing that i would like to uh to mention i just mentioned it a few minutes earlier we put into our grade books so all our classes all of our teachers are doing what's called a current course performance that is now going into all classes and it's meant to help our students and our parents and our ta's know how our kids doing in class are they meeting the expectations this is the only thing you can do you're either meeting the expectations or you should seek assistance right and so the um we sent out a note to parents uh last friday no sunday thank you sunday because i see went down i didn't get it out right so sunday um and uh in the informative of this our teachers are going to update it every two weeks we just spent some time today in our staff meeting updating it so that those uh those scores are more accurate for students and it's meant for students if they said if they're getting seek assistance it is the trigger for them to go to call back with that teacher to talk with that teacher about what they might be missing in their class or looking just in the grade book to see what assignments they may be missing i noticed teachers today made some comments so if they put seek assistance they put a comment in there that said kind of more specifically what they might need to do um and so we're we're trying to create a more proactive approach to the proficiency based grading which is confusing when parents look at a large number of things is there one simple thing i can look at to make sure that my child's on track right now and do they need additional help what did you call it we call it current course performance current course and is it part of power school it infinite campus and it's actually the way that it's done is the on the in the portal which is fairly confusing right it's the first score you see um after the name of the course so it we put it right up top so that when you see the name of the course you see if my child currently meeting expectations or should they seek assistance and so it's just we're gonna we're gonna try it as a way to communicate with our families and our students and our ta's because i don't always know as a ta what classes my kids need to go to call back for talk to teacher it's gonna help us do some of that work so they don't seek assistance the ta the ta is also going to be looking at as well so um when we so another tool that we use for scheduling callback it's called enriching students it's a scheduling software it will show that score for those classes um for all my kids so when i go in to schedule them i can see like oh in english you're meeting expectations oh in math you should seek assistance and then i can have a conversation with the kids like okay you need to go see this teacher or call back i can help them do what they need to do uh to get caught up in the class so yes so it's just it's one thing we've added in and we got i you know it's one of the few emails that i sent out that i got back nothing but positive remarks for i got back from about a dozen parents with just to thank you you know this is helpful we appreciate it and so it doesn't i'll tell you right and so so that that seems to be a good start for us steven is there any way of being able to tell how often parents are logging on to yes there is we can see how often uh we can see how often teachers update their grade book we can see off and students access the portal we can see off and parents access the portal as well uh-oh now it's specific parents um and so we're gonna and we're gonna keep updating so this this week when i send out the update will also remind parents so if you don't have access to the portal here's how you can gain access to to make sure that they have that access as well that's it i could go on with some other stuff but i did put my report about math 180 earliest piece if i just as a quick i do have baseline data i said i put in there that i would give baseline data when we had it got it um so our students took the the entry test into the math 180 program and it's uh it kind of separates kids out into whether or not they are at a pre multiplication stage uh course one which is um more of a pre algebra uh phase and then or course two which is kind of a later algebra um component to it um and so the students that we identified as needing to take the test over 37 kids that we um we put into this program so far they're probably going to be some more that that end up taking this screening test but 65 percent of them uh were at the pre multiplication which we were just talking about we need to have more data as to what that means in this program i don't know that it means they can't do multiplication right that's just the term that this is right but right i think that's the important part is this 65 percent of our kids were at the lower level of this 30 percent of them were at course one and only five percent were at course two you're talking about those 37 kids those 37 of those 37 kids was this a particular grade level is this across so this is primarily um primarily seventh and eighth grade although there are a few ninth graders that we're using this week as well basically looking in the middle and and i would also say that it's being used in special if and regular students as well and are they doing it in that in i don't remember what so we have a course time so yeah so this is a good thing so the math strategy right the DMT report was they still have their regular math class and then this is an addition to that that's called math strategies or math skills there's two different courses that are used for this program and i'm curious as to how many of those kids are also getting reading strategies course i can find them for you you know don't spend a lot of time doing it but it's always interesting to see kind of the overlap kids that just struggle and finance i don't think we have there's a um reported here about the fund balance somewhere oh it was in it's in this full packet it's in this and i saw it here um and there's not a lot because it's just september but it did highlight the um fund balance that's pretty healthy right now was that line up towards the top of the 1.166 million is that set aside for the track no we have not set aside the board will have to approve to move money to the capital fund okay so there's no capital fund or the no it was on the um it says board approved budget projected fund balance it's up towards the top of ours 132 that's capital fund i think that comes from down here so i didn't mean to ask you a question here do you want to look it's right here it's on page i didn't see anymore tonight 90 that's ridiculous okay so you are after audit beginning balance that's what you're looking at so that's that's our oh that is our overall fund balance right now right now okay yeah with and and then there's already adjustment so so that's where we started the year and then there's some adjustments here as to what you would see down at the bottom where the unrestricted fund balance is the one point one point oh nine seven right so that's the that's the actual amount that you would have available great where's that's where we started thank you yeah so we need to appoint bill kimball to be our board rep proxy for the um be high and visit annual meetings unless someone knows for they're going to be there are you guys going to make the motion i'm not taking too much time here i'm going to appoint bill kimball to be our representative unless i haven't thought of the fact that somebody else might raise their hands to my name bill's name i thought that was you carl no i learned tonight that i'm going to be on the new the following person okay so i heard the motion is there a second sure john then any discussion on that all those in favor say i i i propose i will do this in a second um approve the lease of a van numbers on the van yeah yeah i just did that yesterday nobody's too much going on huh yeah they made that decision i know that it was a chrysler pacifica that's a teal from mid-state that i have no paperwork can we wait until next month or is that going to be something that should i go find okay so the next one is to approve the joining the legal action to oppose the state board ruling enforced into a merger may i speak to that it start tonight um i i i don't think we can really vote on that tonight um because cari and carin are here and it would i think be just a even if we were to vote for it which of course is my desire it just wouldn't be the same it wouldn't have the meaning i need to convince cari i have cari i mean cari sent that statement i emailed carin this morning or last night late last night because i didn't think george was coming either and so i emailed the three of them and said i am not comfortable voting on this with only four people and give me your feedback i mentioned i think we would have had a tie yeah so cari sent me that statement i didn't hear from carin and then george ended up coming but i agree with you i think this is a really really important issue and that we need the full board in order to vote on it and they wanted our decision by september 28 they're not going to get it and i don't think it makes any difference in that group that's organizing that lawsuit they're they're moving they're moving forward i gather um i it's you know i think the lawsuit tends to free people out but it's i can't even talk anymore how about if we just save this whole discussion until october because it's 9 30 at night we're not going to vote we'll rehash it again in october okay so we just table it till october i'm up for that are you guys okay with that george you're looking yeah i don't want to point with that okay okay okay so we're going to table that and then the next they were a tabling rescinding these policies because they didn't get passed at the full board meeting five point so that should actually be five point four so it's five point three we're going to table this so we are down to approve the board orders is there a motion to approve the board orders so moved carl a second all second questions all those in favor say aye aye post that was a very quiet ask the first question do you approve future agenda items i'm just going to let that one go right now board communications since cars not here all different porch forum i was really delayed on that last month i'm sorry it was the beginning of school and it just all got away from me but i will do that um so we will see you in october we will talk about that we'll have the plan policy we'll have the diversity statement um and hopefully it won't be 9 30 when we're done thank you very much we do need to talk about oh the band sorry the band um we have bits from 802 Toyota and whether the Chrysler dealership is down she knew that one it's a 36 month lease i don't remember exactly the numbers it just came in yesterday there was like a 40 dollar difference Chrysler pacifist we have to come out in the parking lot it's a 36 month lease it has to be done through you 32 because it's super right you can't hold the lease can't hold the lease and it's for special education is it in the budget it's in the special it's in the special special ed it's paying for it paying for it from washington central through you 32 just like you do for our building yeah so we're just voting to let you use this as a pastor pretty much but not a pastor it's that you're the ones that can hold the lease right we'll hold the lease but you know but the supervisory union will be paying for you so what do you want the motion to be to award the lease of a 36 month lease for a band are you getting this Lisa to miss the Chrysler so moved second Scott and we don't have an amount can you put it in the minutes tomorrow would you guys be okay with that do you want a 36 month amount or do you want that monthly charges both both both yeah be great yeah all those in favor say aye opposed that motion carries thanks anything else it is time to go be our adjourned 9 30