 And I'm assuming you're all here for student council? Yes. That's great. When we start, will you guys introduce yourselves? That would be awesome. Agenda revisions, public comments. I actually, maybe else, I got two letters. One from a gentleman named Richard Maisel from TALIS, expressing dismay over our vote of the lawsuit. And I can just pass the letter around. He wanted each of our responses, and I told him to watch the video. And he did, and then he responded again. And so I'll just pass that around. And then I got a letter from Walden Teachout, who was on the Rumney board expressing concern about a procedure that, or sort of an operational procedure that the school is not open on Sunday, and she's concerned about that. There was something that went on. And I think what I'm just going to say to her is that the athletic director, if he needed something to happen on Sunday, he can do that. There's nothing preventing him from saying, I don't know. The field flooded on Saturday, and they had to play a game on some championship game. He could do that. So I'll. Was that the nature of her concern? The initial concern was something about a middle school cross-country championship that wasn't VPA sponsored on a Sunday. And so the school said, we don't do events on Sunday. So I'll just pass those two around. You guys can read them and then pass them. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of October 24th? So moved. Karen and a second. Carl, any comments about them? I have two. I have two too, but let's see if we have the same ones. So on page three of the packet, about halfway down, after the bold part, the paragraph starts Adrienne McGean invited to comment, and then it says, Tim Frazier stated that he believes if a separate flag pole was provided for other flags that this would be an issue. This would not be an issue. Not be an issue? That's what I wrote. I thought that joke did not. Yeah, it would not. You see that? 1024. I have it written here, if you want. Section 3.3. And there is some bold. He's right. Not only an issue. Right, you just need to put not. I'm sorry. Yes. OK, and then the other was the next page. Near the bottom, the section that starts discussion. So I would rewrite that to say that Kari disagreed that we have an obligation to defend the alternative governance structure. Many of us voted for it initially to express unity with the collective court. And then that's fine from there. The unity with the collective court. No, sir? And then on page two, almost two-thirds of the way down, you just misspelled my name. It's OK. 3.2. Yeah, no, there's an A at the end. You're not a big deal at all. Anything else? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. We have the student council here this evening, which is wonderful. We love having students come to our meeting. So why don't you guys, you want to pull your chairs forward? And I think we should go around and introduce ourselves before they start. And then they can introduce themselves. And Matthew, if you want to come up, feel free. You don't want to leave you out there alone. Why don't we just go around? We'll skip these guys, because you know them. Do they know you? I don't know. I'm Carl Whitkey, I'm the list I represent here. Hi, I'm Cari Bradley from East Montpelier. And I'm Adrienne Megida from Middlesex. And I'm Karen Bradley from East Montpelier, and we are not related. Cari and Cari. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm Lucy, if I can only add a statement. I'm Cale, and I'm a freshman. I'm Bruce, and I'm a sophomore. I'm Jesse, and I'm also a senior. I'm Evan, I'm a junior. I'm Evan, I'm a junior, and I'm Evan, I'm also a junior. I'm Wayland, and I'm a junior. OK, thank you. All right, hold on. Andrew, if you want, you can turn the lights down just so there's a dimmer light. So if you want to dim them just a little bit. In 2013, when Act 77 was passed, schools in Vermont were committed to years of hard work to develop the philosophy of proficiency-based learning into functional systems for education. Since then, we have come a long way with many headaches and long days. But as a result, we are constantly making progress towards that better system for learning. Throughout this process, the administration has been exceptionally receptive of student feedback and involvement, which we are always grateful of. In this time of constant flux, it takes the cooperation, patience, and trust of everyone for constructive change. We truly appreciate everyone to appreciate the work and effort being put in every day behind the scenes to move toward a better future. Thank you for allowing us time to ask questions and do feedback. So now on to that. We are still deep in the developmental process, and there are concerns that need to be addressed for the class of 2020 and beyond before scheduling the interview. So these are sort of the main issues that we've observed among students. Mostly, there's just sort of a general sense of confusion despite the work that the administration is doing behind the scenes. A lot of kids just don't really know what's happening. So the three main concerns from a student's perspective are GPAs and how they're calculated under the new system. The discrepancies between departments regarding how many times you need to achieve proficiencies and different things and what that looks like. And then also, the main one is graduation requirements and standards. Kids are just sort of generally confused about what to graduate. So for students to be found, it's a lot of confusion when students are running their GPAs. Many students are still unaware of whether their GPA is going to be calculated and included in a final transcript. Over the class of 2020, a letter will be included in each student's profile so that colleges understand why GPAs for this class may be lower. While this is a fix for 2020, it should not become a norm for future classes. In speaking to a student at CDU where they're also trying to incorporate the proficiency system, we learned that their GPAs calculated with different parameters. Students graduating from CPU are able to obtain a 4.33 GPA on their final transcript while students at U32 is nearly impossible to achieve a 4.0. While we can't make comparisons to every school in Vermont, as we're not always saying, we'll be competing against them all over the colleges. Although colleges use GPAs to compare us to other students at our school, GPAs can also be a factor between the size of between two applicants as well as for scholarships. Especially since transitioning from the previous grading system, a 3.0 GPA does not appear to reflect the work and effort that the student has done to achieve that grade. In the future, it's important to develop a system in which students can have competitive GPAs. Right, so last Monday, some people from Student Council met with the heads of departments here at U32. And we asked them questions about what they believe for their department. And it was like the standard for a lot of times we have to meet the course requirements, like how many times we're competing with proficiency in that course. And we found there was a lot of discrepancies between these departments and even in the departments. And we believe that for proficiencies to work here, U32 students should even know exactly what supports them in each course. And we can do that by standardizing each course, not necessarily to make them all the same, but at least make them the same for the course. And graduation standards. Currently, the path to graduation, especially for the class of 2020, is very unclear. Students do not know which graduation standards they still need to graduate and what classes will test those standards. This needs to be communicated to students before they make their schedules for next year so they can plan out their schedule so they can graduate. We risk more students not graduating if they do not know what they have to do. Also, students sort of don't know, and teachers don't know what's gonna happen if kids don't meet all 41 standards. And that's been a thing that we've been talking to Stephen about, and it's just helpful in sort of providing information about what he knows right now. But teachers in the departments also don't really know what's gonna happen. So it's sort of important because it's inevitable that some kids aren't gonna meet all the standards and we need to figure out what's gonna happen if they don't. Yeah, and so the possibilities we've been talking about are being able to demonstrate to a small group of people who are including your TA and the teachers in certain courses to determine whether or not the student has or has not met proficiency before the possibility of some summer school classes. Or outside projects that can go before that panel that we talked about. Any questions? That's sort of more just us sharing our concerns about proficiency as a student. On the slide before you said I mentioned some realistic standards, did you say one more? Where it says, yeah. It's just the general feel from students is they're getting bogged down with having so many, having to hit so many of the standards, both transferable skills in from the student learning outcomes. So it's basically just that students don't know where they are currently, so they can't accurately say if they're on track to graduate. And the bar has been raised quite a bit from having just an average of a D in all classes to being able to be proficient in these four weeks. Yes, we're all doing it right now. Yeah, you know that. Any other questions? When you talk about GPA, are you getting, I know you're getting here on a proficiency scale and three is proficient and four is above proficiency. Are you getting grades for content and grades for transferable skills? For GPA? For a GPA? It's just your course grades. So the GPA is just your course grade? Yeah, it's not specifically the transferable skill at Fine Preference and that, or a student student learning outcome. You want me to clarify? Yeah. So course grades are calculated from the content standards, not the transferable skills, and then the course grades are used to grade point average. And so transferable skills are reported separately for every class on a report card and they're consolidated into a score for the transcript. So the transcript will show student scores on all 41 standards and when we say 41, that includes the six transferable skill standards as well. And so when you guys say you can't, it's almost impossible to get a 4.0, what does that reflect in terms of grading? It's just we found that there's a really challenging dimension like we all know that it's harder on this new proficiency scale than it was to graduate with a ABC scale. But it just, in a lot of classes, the level that you have to hit to achieve a four in each standard has been raised. And then in order to get a four as your class grade, which is what gets calculated in your GPA, that's even more challenging as you need to hit however many standards to make that three. You need to have more fours in your standards than three's total to have your course grade flip. In each individual course. In each individual course. And so a lot of the time kids will be kind of in the middle of their fall at like a 3.25, with a 2.22, but that doesn't necessarily give an easy opportunity for the 4.0. It's just you would have to get a four in every single course to get that 4.0, which at the moment, I don't know, a single student is even close. Can you get a 3.5, or is it either a three or a four? A three and a four for your class grades. I'm your reporter, so that's all it'll show. So if you're at a 3.9, it still shows it's great. No, no, no, that rounds up. So in the calculations, it will round up at a 0.6. So a 3.6 rounds up to a four. On course grades? On course grades. Yeah, so if you averaged the standards and it came up a 3.6 or higher, then it rounds up. And so do you know how CVU gets a 4.33? So there's total, so for their classes, they get graded again on the one through four scale. That then gets converted back to ADC grades for their final transcript. So it's like just in your task, right? It's still, for their graduation requirements, it's still based on a credit system, so they have proficiency in their classes, but then their GPA and final transcripts are basically the old. And will that stay past 2020? That's what they're doing for the class of 2020, I'm not sure what's going on here. Okay. That issue existed prior to proficiency, right? That some schools have, the top is a 4.3. Ours was a 4.33. It was, okay. So if you got an A plus, you got a 4.33. If you got an A, you got a 4.0 in the old system. And I would say that for other schools, so nationally, grade point averages are calculated in a variety of ways at most schools. So there's everything from a zero to four scale. There are zero to five scales, where four to five is used for honors or AP classes. There's weighted GPAs. There's a lot of different ways that GPAs are calculated, even within the state of Vermont. There's multiple ways that they're calculated. And that's, I mean, that's why the school profile is actually really critical, that you've been working, that administrative team's been working on here for explaining that to universities of what the school does. And it's been 20 years since I worked in a university, but every university had a conversion system to bring everything back to a normal reference. Well, I mean, not like a norm reference in a bell curve, but it's a norm like they knew how to compare across schools because schools have been doing different things. There isn't a consistency between high schools. So they do that at the college level. No, I've actually worked in a system that used a thing called quality points. They didn't even calculate a GPA. And it was a quality point system on a 16 point scale. And then they reported quality points. I never, honestly, I worked there for a year and I never understood what they were doing. That's a good thing. Yeah, and so. So I'm hearing concern that kids used to be able to get a 4.0 or a 4.3, and now it feels like it's not possible to do that. And that's, and the concern is that the colleges will look at that and say, oh, they could get a 4.0, it's a possibility and they're not, therefore they're not as strong a student as maybe you feel like you guys are. Yeah, or even if you're not looking necessarily at GPA, you could just look at your course grades, however, GPA is calculated differently by each school. If you just look at the total number of course grades and the number of reasons for it, as each kid dropped in those classes, I just feel like sometimes that isn't necessarily reflective of the amount of work he's doing. And we have a fixed graph for the class of 2020 which is basically the letter explaining what like the top, maybe the quartile of students GPAs were in the school so they can compare like the top level of GPAs in that school. But if this continues, it's not really, it wouldn't be the best, I would suggest either grading, having the grade point average be current or either that or just having them cut off maybe on a different scale instead of a 4.0 scale or maybe just converting back into better grades just for the GPA. I heard something. Also the communication aspect, it'd be great if this was communicated to some of the students. Just even if it's an email to the TA saying this is how it works, just read this to admit to them and then if they have some questions, here's some more to give. Something like that. Because people have no idea, I was asking TA like different questions about how GPA is calculated because people don't know. And many people aren't asking questions even though, because we're more focused on the academic side of stuff and we're not representative of the whole student body and so other people aren't gonna be asking these questions as well and so, they just don't know. And I don't think that's correct. I heard an interesting comment. When schools switched to proficiency, the hope was that the bar would be raised and that kids would have to learn more in order to graduate. That the reflection of A's and B's and C's didn't necessarily reflect what they knew and were able to do. It took into consideration how hard they worked, whether they handed their homework in, whether they participated in discussion as opposed to being proficient in a subject. And so there's a difference now between working hard and being proficient. And I think that's where some of this is I'm working really, really hard to get all the stuff I gotta do, but what they're measuring is proficiency. And it's a huge mind shift and I'm in education and I've worked in the Harvard district. And it's just this huge mind shift to, it actually doesn't really matter how hard to work. It's what you can show you know in the end that's really important. And so it's something to keep in mind, but it's hard, it's really hard to be thinking that way. Yeah, I'd say also just for the four aspect, not for the three aspect, but that teachers kind of treat a four differently for different teachers and subjects. Four can mean simply more work at a level of three or it can mean higher level work. So there's not really a consensus on what a four looks like, which itself is really hard to decide. And I think with more professional development and more time and more communication, that's going to become clear, it's really hard. It's really hard to get consistency even within departments. And I think in fairness to the kids, the definition of a four has been a really hard thing. Like I mean, they're correct. That's one of those areas that's just been very difficult. I think what we also, I've talked about with the kids and with teachers is that we didn't really define an A before and the relationship between an A in one class and an A in another. We just assumed because we've been using those letters and that the amount of work or the level of expectation was the same, but I can probably ask any one of you guys that, an A, you knew how to get an A in one class was sometimes more difficult than getting an A in another class. And so we had the same issue. We just didn't talk about it before. And so now we're having to talk about it, which I mean, I think for you guys, we need to kind of sit down and say, okay, what's the first message that we need to get out? And what's the next one? Like how can we start getting these messages out in tidbits that people can digest, right? Cause this is a lot of stuff. And I think that you guys are, you're just now kind of getting the overwhelming part of it that our teachers felt two years ago when we first laid it on them. You're now seeing like, oh my God, this is a huge change. And so, I mean, I know a few, we spend every week together with them asking questions. And so it's helped us move forward and do all that. And I would just say some of the things that are happening right now. And I think that Lucy and Jesse heard this the other day with the department heads is the criteria for graduation is one of our highest priorities. We want that available to kids. And the other piece of that is where are they on that continuum of 41 standards of meeting those? Because we don't think it's next year that they have to start worrying about schedule. We think it's next semester. And so we want to make sure that by next semester kids have their plan kind of in place. Like if I don't have these proficiencies, what do I need to do next semester? What do I need to do next year? And for us as a school, what do we need to do in the summer? Because we don't want kids to be at a disadvantage in all of this and so. I know like at the beginning of the year for seniors they give us like a sheet of the classes like let's say I'm taking financial it or something. I think you guys like gave out something like that for proficiencies like oh you're missing a good science proficiency so that kids can know. Right, it's like which standards have not been demonstrate proficiency or have almost been demonstrate proficiencies and then which classes test those certain things. It's like what you were talking about at the department head meeting with the template thing would be really helpful. Yep, yeah. Are you looking for something from us or did you just want to kind of inform us and have a conversation? I'm just wondering having a conversation. Okay. Continue to work with the administration to get a detailed sign up. I really liked your presentation. I liked how you kept it simple. A lot of times with PowerPoints people loaded up with all this different information you just keep nice and simple and understandable. And I'm assuming that the problem with the issue with the curriculum are being hashed out as far as just expanded stuff. Yes, so what Evan's bringing up is that one of the things we're seeing is while we have 41 standards, did we really teach all 41 of them and give students the opportunity to see all of them? And we, as we saw last week or two weeks ago when I did my presentation, there are some that are neglect really. So statistics is one of those. Engineering in science is another one. And so we have to ask ourselves a hard question about the class of 2020 is, do we hold you responsible for something we didn't teach? I think we're probably gonna have to have a conversation with the board about waiving a couple of these aspects just so, you know, if that's necessary for us. I mean, it's kind of part of the, that's our fault for not getting that into the curriculum fast enough. And it's part of the process. It is? Yep. But we weren't teaching engineering before either, right? So that wasn't a part of our coursework. So now we at least acknowledge that it's not there and we can start building it in. Thank you for having us. Thank you very much. It's always wonderful to hear from students. You guys are very articulate and thoughtful and we really appreciate it. You guys are my work here. So thank you very much. You're welcome to say or you can go. Thanks guys. Oh, hey, you guys, I'm not here tomorrow. So don't come to call back with me. You good? I can log off. That's a great announcement. No, you can log off. Do you have a general idea of when the first drafts for the number of demonstrations are like when that's gonna be signed for your outreach department? You're talking about the criteria? Yeah, we actually have our first drafts right now and we're just gonna sit down and I'm gonna bring it to you guys next week to start looking at. Okay, thank you. Budget draft. Who's gonna speak to us? I will start and then Stephen's gonna fill in a lot of blanks that I can't remember. How about we say that? To be totally transparent and honest. One of the things I wanted to talk before when I was specific to the budget was the process of the budget with waiting for the state board ruling on Act 46 right now. It's a little, we're in a little bit of a transition period about who has authority to approve a budget and send it to the electorate. If there is a merged, assuming merger happens, there would be a transition board which is formed with the clerk and the chair as you've heard in previous meetings. That transition board puts together a recommended budget to go to a new elected board past town meeting. That would mean that there wouldn't be a budget vote on town meeting day and that there would be a special budget vote somewhere in the spring. The AOE currently in their draft articles of agreement is suggesting that that gets done by May 1st. One of the things I've talked with the finance committee and one of the things that I've talked to all board chairs about this and I'm talking with all boards is trying to keep the budget process as transparent and open and feedback happening. So when we talked to the finance committee on Tuesday, one of the things that we wanna do is keep having budget meeting, talking about the budget here at the U32 meeting because one of the things that we're trying to figure out the new board will have authority over fiscal year 20 and that's what we're building a budget for. So what we wanna be able to do is we'd like to be able to gather feedback and gather information and we'll probably adjust from your feedback and then be able to give all that to the transition board who then gives all that to the new board. Another way of saying that is that we kinda wanna follow the process that we've used in the past depending on how things work out but we may end up being advisory to the transitional board and here's the work through the same part. That's a better and more concise way than I say in the current. Can you write that down so I can add that? Yeah. So one of the things that, when we started budget development within the administration, I asked all the principals to bring a budget approximately 3%. I wanna give you some information in current. I mean, I did this with finance so I don't know if I'm kinda walking on what you wanted to do. No, go ahead. So some things that we actually looked up Tuesday, Karen was asking me at the table which I thought was great. The consumer price index for September, 2018 overall is 3.3% and for New England. This is, these are New England region, okay? And for schools and government, in particular, it's 2.9%. And what that is is 12 months, a 12 month percent change so it goes back to September, 2017. So if you look on page five of your packet, or six of your packet, you'll see the overall summary of the budget and as we talked about in previous meetings, we were bringing you the first budget to level service budget which means we're basically bringing you a budget if we were to do everything we're doing now for the student needs we know what would the cost of that be in next year's budget? No changes in staff, no changes in programming. So the total of that is 3.13%. In some years, I've walked you down through this. I know the four of you have seen this before, this type of layout, so I don't know if you want me to walk you down through it or if you just wanna ask questions that are here. Some of the biggest things that I would point you to is you see the Washington Central Assessments for Operations, Special Education, and Student Transportation. Last night, that was based on a 3% increase. Last night, the overall net impact increase for Washington Central at the Executive Committee was 1.96%. So those numbers will change. And then up above is all the stats, is really the big piece is that health insurance is increasing 11.8%. And we have our salary increases at a point that we're targeting if you remember this year, we're in negotiations, so. Just one clarification, Bill, there's no level service, no change in staffing. That's not quite true. This does include a decrease of two pair educators and then a sort of increase or a partial increase of professional staff, teacher staff, or the alternative program. Right, but that's something that we've already done this year. And the 2.0 we've already done this year as well. So when we do that second grouping, thank you, Kari, is comparing last year's budget to this year's budget, we've already done those changes for this current fiscal year. So I should have been clear on that. Because what happens is the way Lori takes a look at everything, she does, when we do a budget and we do a what's changed in the budget, the denominators last year's budget, not this year's projected where we're going because we don't have this year's actuals. So every year that we've done that change, that change is a percentage change based on budget, not based on this year's actuals next year's budget because we don't have this year's actuals. So those were actually two positions that we'd budgeted for for this year, but we left those positions open. So in last year's budget, didn't we cut to, for this year's budget, didn't we also cut two pair educators from last year? I'd have to go back. Sorry, I can't. I'd have to go back. Okay. It was something with two pair educators. The main thing was that this is more in keeping with the best practices that we learned about it. I think that's right. And yes. So the other thing I would note in there is that your bond payment is going down. So that's reflected in there. And there's reflected the level, the same level of transfer to the capital fund that you've had in years past. We didn't change, it says zero, but you see right beside it says 437,000. That's what we've been transferring to the capital firm from the general budget. Bond payment's going down 22,000. 22,000, but is this the last year, or is this the last year? Wait, that budget reflects the last year? No, FY21 is the year without it. I think next year, we have a bond payment, FY20, and I've got to look at FY21. It's right on the verge of there. So we can get you the bond schedules, okay. So do you want to say more, Carl, from finance committee? Was there anything? Well, in terms of one important thing, in terms of the content, I asked if this budget does anything to, does it provide anything that might significantly improve student learning in keeping with goal number two of the SU board? And the response you might have been able to predict was, no, but money is not what's needed necessarily to improve student learning, it's more about practices, which is a topic we'll return to, but I just wanted to make sure that that's, we're thinking along those lines when we think about our budget. And if you look at page seven, we sent you this in the pack of the way this is broken out. It's broken out in departments and methods that we've used in every, in previous budgets for many, many years. At the finance committee, we had a discussion around changing it, so it was centered around the student learning outcomes. An example would be social studies, global citizenship and world language would be under the global citizenship because one of the things that the finance committee has been good about asking is, how do we link the resources to our student learning outcomes? So we actually, Kari, we had one this morning, but I frankly just didn't get it here. That reorganizes around the student learning outcomes instead of- To do it that way. Instead of traditional departments. Next time, we'll- So we'll have that for you in December. And I'll bring you a, Steven's Craven, I'll bring you a tree diagram instead of using your favorite word. Maybe crosswalk. A crosswalk. I can live with that. You can live with that, okay. That would take you, how do I know from which departments went into which in the new, because one of the other big things is academic services. So things like library, guidance, health services, those are academic services for kids. So we were talking about putting those together. And we actually, right around the table there, I think Kari and Kari, you had left at that point, but Laura, Steven and I sat there and said, okay, how would this go together? Good. I actually have that. I just have a quick question about English and literacy dropped way down. It just seemed almost like you're losing a teacher. Really? Although it went from 978 to 927. That's the projected for this year. Right, projected for this year and then budget for next year. So part of this year is we have the Roland Fellowship with Alden Byrd. And so he is, we hired a full-time teacher to replace him, but we still pay him. So we get $75,000 from the Roland Fund, but it doesn't cover the full teacher salary. And it doesn't show up in this line. We essentially picked up part of Alden's salary and the salary of the person who is taking his classes while he's on his fellowship. So it will drop back because we don't have that person next year Alden's back in the classroom. Got it, thank you. And I think it's also important to recognize that there's a lot of assumptions at this early stage and one of the biggest ones is around the revenues and what will actually be the number of students and all of that. That's subject to change as we go through different drafts of this. Do people have questions? And what are you looking for from us tonight? Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about the next few meetings and how we might communicate and involve folks in this process. So we have a meeting on November 28th, just a regular U32 meeting, which I guess we'll be looking at draft too. Yep. We, December 5th, we have a carousel meeting. So why do we have our meeting November 28th? Because Thanksgiving is the third Wednesday happens to be the way this month falls, is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Is it November 28th, the carousel meeting? No, it's December 5th. Do we usually meet twice in November? We have been for November, December, December. Okay, got it. So that's just U32. Okay, I'm glad I asked. I think that'll be good to look at the second draft. So December 5th is a carousel, we'll meet afterwards. But we were thinking that December 19th would be probably our best opportunity to invite people in and treat it somewhat like a budget forum. We could do a presentation and then take feedback. If that made sense to you. And then January 2nd, we could potentially be ready to, well, I mean, that's getting out of ourselves. We don't even know if we're gonna be. Right, right, yep. But that's our next meeting. Those meetings are close together in terms of how many workdays are in between. Yes, yes. Really close together. And it might be, I mean, my suggestion, the board might be to go over a little bit more on the 28th and then on the 5th, have time to think about it and come back with any direction on the 5th. That was kind of a bit, Karen, do you think of anything else? No. And so, what would it look like on the 28th? Well, bringing the budget basically reconfigured to SLOs, probably it will not have a bottom line change to it. We, you know, once we get into December, then we'll start to get to equalized pupils and what that's starting to look like and what that looks like for excess spending. And we'll probably be bringing it to you. At that point, we may be looking at how that flows into, if merged, how that flows into an overall budget for the SU. Do we have the transfer of fund balance to our capital budget as part of this meeting? Doesn't look like it's on the actual agenda. We had already warned this one before. The Finance Committee has met on the 20th. Okay, I just wanted to mention that Scott, who couldn't be at the Finance Committee or tonight, did email some different points that he wanted raised and maybe the most significant one, the one that got my attention was using a portion of our fund balance to reduce the total tax impact. And we discussed that yesterday and the recommendation is going to be to use the excess fund balance in excess of the 4% reserve and allocate that for the track. So that we can get that done in 2020, actually next summer. So that would not leave anything to reduce the tax impact, does Scott have a question? And his thinking was that the following year, the debt service will be less. So we wouldn't have to make up that money in the budget the following year. Right? Is that a- That was his thinking. Yeah, yeah. We didn't, yeah, we could have left it at the track. So he said 3.1% for next year's budget is not easily defensible before voters, especially in light of our recent history of fund balance surpluses. I'm not, that was his comment. And then he had questions about instructional school-wide and other instructional programs. Yeah, that's this category business and- Will that come clear? I don't know. I mean, we're going to recategorize so it may become less clear, but I think it's a little bit forced for the trees. We should be looking at the bottom line, not where individual things are allocated. Some of these categories have been somewhat fluid in terms of, you know, office of the superintendent having special education services and things like that. Right, add it into it. And when you do the reconfigured budget, it might be helpful to have offices with superintendent and have it broken out. It's special ed. It's transport. It will be three. We presented to the executive committee that the Washington Central Assessments will have an office of the superintendent, transportation services, special education services. And that's following, there's new handbook two guidance in how we produce and have to categorize all our budgets coming from the agency of education that we have to, so we've gone to what- Okay. They're saying we have to transfer to in the next year. Okay. So that's what we presented to the executive committee last time. Other questions? Carl, are you good with this? Karen? Okay. Diversity, inclusion, and equity belief statement, which is on page 17. And the hope is that we can adopt this this evening. All right, there was one change, and I looked at this recently, but- Do you remember what it is? Scott had suggested that we shorten one of the bullets, the third bullet, I believe. All students- Oh, that's right. We took away all those words. More complex lines. Yep. Drop the word pernicious. Yes. Yes. And just to remind us, so this isn't a policy, it's just a statement of beliefs that could be used as the basis for evaluating a diversity policy if and when we want to take up that work. Bill was counseling us that we might want to not rush that process. Are people okay with this? Let's just adopt it right now. So is there a motion to accept the, to adopt the diversity, inclusion, and equity belief statement as written in version four? Carl? Second. Karen? Any more comments? All those in favor say aye. Opposed? That motion carries. That's great. Thank you for your work on that. That's great. I'm gonna skip over the flag policy. Krista Dye, D, I always say it wrong, is doing teacher conferences and she wanted to come, she thought she'd be here at seven. So we'll just, we can go through these reports and when she comes we'll go back to it. Central Vermont Career Center. We heard a little bit last meeting. So George, Steven, and I were present. And they had to really just give you the short version. There was a lot of discussion about what needed to be done and there was support for a very smaller vision and program development, maybe exploration. And needs analysis. And needs analysis to be done. And to try to do that this year so that there could be a plan for where is. So Central Vermont Career Center could really look at what's the direction they're trying to have they're going and then if they, if that, once they have that, what do they need to support that moving forward? So that changed about a week and a half ago. It was last Monday of October. I think it was a good meeting. I think folks really got to understand and understood where there was a lot more clarity about how the proposal came to start to look at a new building and that with a step back to saying, let's look and see what the needs are of the students and how many, they've had, as everyone has in education Vermont, a big drop in student enrollment. They're, is it 170 or 150? Is there, are there numbers now? I was thinking 160 was the number that I'd heard last year. Yeah, so somewhere in that area. And I can remember just five or six years ago they were over 200 students. Thanks. And next meeting, are they making them? So you guys. Yes, they did. They did rearrange their stuff. Great. So we have those on our schedule. December. December, I think. I'd have to go through my notebook. Yeah, I didn't even put on the calendar yet. So that's a good reminder. Great. Reports to the board, Central Vermont Career Service, I think we just heard it. Students. So you just heard from the student council. But this weekend is Little Shop of Horrors. So our theater program has been here until nine o'clock, pretty much every night this week, working to make the play happen. So there's gonna be showings on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So you're doing a student matinee for us during the last band. And Cross Country, one girl from the team, and the entire boys team is going to, before the varsity boys team is going to New England this weekend on Saturday. And so they'll be in Manchester. Include you? Yes. Congratulations. And then also, as you guys knew because of Krista, parent-teacher conferences are happening tonight, so a lot of teachers have to stay late today. But those are super helpful. Winter sports are all starting to get on, too. And then also, next week there is a field trip for the green team to the Youth Climate Leader Academy at, I believe it's at Holbert. And it's an overnight, I'm pretty sure. So the green team's going to that. Is that just students, or is that? Just students, right? And maybe they're invited. Yeah. You just give them the keys. To the band. Send them on their way. But it's a student group. India. Green team is a student group. And on Monday and Tuesday, there were some students from the athletic teams, and they were at an athletic leadership conference. And then last week, what's that? I think it was last week. We also had Sweethearts and Heroes come, and it was this presentation about bullying and what causes it, and also how to stop it, which I really enjoyed. I thought it was super interesting and definitely different than other presentations that I'd seen, so that was good. And all the, did the middle schoolers see it too? Yes. So middle schoolers and high schoolers saw it. But yeah, that's basically what's been happening at school right now. Thanks. Questions? It's next to your administration. So I would add that we had our sports dessert last night, and one of our own, Lucy Wood, received the... Yeah, you could have said that for her. Yes. Look. No, no, no, no. She had a little reward last night, so... Congratulations. She and Andrew Prompton, actually, were our two recognized students last night. Congratulations. Thank you. That was quite an honor. So our outstanding student athletes. And I think they mentioned most of the activities that were going on right now. I mean, since I last saw you guys, it's pretty much been filled with those things that the kids were just talking about. I think there was one, you wanna... Yeah, Meg Allison just let us know that she won a grant for some money to bring in some speakers for seeking social justice. Great. And we also, I'm participating, Bill and I actually, are with Jim Knight. There's a conference that's over in Colchester that was today and tomorrow. And so we're with a group of teachers from throughout the Supervisory Union. And working on coaching and coaching strategies and presentation strategies. And so I would say that's been really good. But I would add on my ride up, one of the teachers that I carpooled with was reminding me, a group of our teachers went to Tyneesee Coates last night. Yeah. Do you wanna... I don't wanna. The sports dessert interfered with some of our kids going, but we did have one student go as well. And it was just a presentation over at UVM. He's an author, if you know. And they were super energized by some of the things that he was talking about. I don't know what they were saying in the school today, but I know that those... I know Jen was this, was energized. Yeah. What has he written? Between the world and me. He writes about racism and also just race in America. He's really good. We read him in Advanced Expo last year. And it definitely changed my perspective about a lot of things. Also the case for reparations is in the Atlantic. And he's written a couple other things. So I don't know if there are any other questions. I mean... Questions? Yeah. I would just add that we have probably about, probably about 12 to 15 teachers from ASU in the professional development that you were talking about for coaching. It's pretty much anyone that does some sort of peer to coaching support for teachers. It's a big one. They're taking to take that money at once out of the system. Yeah, I'm kidding. That's a lot of subs. And five administrators out there. So those are five of us. Yeah. Three central office and two principals. Wow. Finance committee. Do you have any more to add? I don't think so. We're gonna... Well, there's the financial report that's in the packet. Yep. What was that? It's on page 19. Yeah. But you basically covered it, you said we have this extra over the 4% Yeah. 100,000, yep. Yeah, I don't think there's anything else. What are all these slides in the packet with that? That was it... What it was was the multi-year budget and looking at it, and Adrian and I were looking at it earlier. I wanna check this again and make sure it's the right multi-year budget because it has some questions on it. So I'll get that cleared up for the next meeting. The one that said town and East Montpelier. Why is East Montpelier? That's why I called. She asked me last night and since I was up in Colchester with a professional development, I didn't have a chance to talk about it. All right. So I will get that cleared up. So we don't know if it's the wrong title or it's just East Montpelier and it's in the wrong packet. We're on a table. Yeah, yep. Yeah, there was no action on that. It was a multi-year budget. Good evening. Where are we here? Executive committee. Yeah. Okay. You're interesting. Whoa. So we met last night at a special meeting to discuss the first version of the SU budget, which Bill mentioned is coming in 2% or less. Although there is interest in potentially adding a job coach, so keep your pride at that. Special code. Let's see, Act 46, we have a subcommittee that's working on draft articles of agreement bylaws and we had a productive session yesterday and plowed through the easy half of them and then we'll continue working on that. If there's a forced merger that would eventually, the thinking is that we would not use the default that we would propose our own version within 90 days of the plan, which is by February, some type of March. And there's another committee, subcommittee working on debt, but I don't think we need to. We need to move out of it. Which would be one of the articles, sorry, we're relate to at least one of the articles, but it's definitely the trickiest one. Also, we had a group that met a couple of times with the folks from Twinfield, but I think that's been suspended since the agency, no, the board had a provisional ruling that Twinfield will should go to the, Caledonia Central, with Danville. And then, let's see, it's been a little bit since we got a regular executive committee meeting, but I know we're making, we'll continue to work on our three goals, reviewing governance models, and we're gonna continue doing that this month. This school quality committee's gonna meet next week and talk about a goal for learning. People number two and... Communication, that's the other one. Community engagement. Yeah, I got nothing on that one. That's all that I can think of right now. Looks like your committee, do you? I have not much to add, I think you covered it. Matthew, anything? Questions for Kari? Thank you for doing that, that's a lot of work. Busy time. Yeah, you've been meeting a lot for that. Policy committee canceled their meeting because it conflicted with negotiations, and we're gonna meet in December. In school qualities meeting next Thursday. It'll be our first chance to debrief on the student learning outcome report and then talk about is there a goal that we can recommend for the next SU Board meeting? And negotiations? We've just begun to get started. We had an initial gathering, which was a training in the IBB process, the interspace priority process. Design room, that's all how it works, and bring the new folks up to speed on how the process functions. And... It's me and my son. Yeah, we've got a lot of things. Yeah, I need that, yeah, I need that. That's why we're... I missed the last one, because it was 7.30 in the morning, not 7.30 at the night, at night. That was... We're gonna get you home early, so you can go tomorrow. Morning. That was a planning meeting with the administration team, and we've got another one in the following week. 15, 15, 14, 16, 16. And then we will start the process, and after that, 26, is when we start. Whatever the first Monday is, the next Monday, yeah, I'm doing it. Yeah. Great. Was a good team, looked promising. Good, great. I'm glad you're doing the same process again. Questions for Carl? Thank you very much for doing that. Action agenda, we've done the diversity. We're gonna hold off on flag policy until we've run out of other things to do. There is a bid for an elevator that was on page 22. Is there a motion to accept the bid for $145,000 from Bay State Elevator? And a second? Carl. Discussion, anyone wanna give us any background on this? So it's an elevator modernization proposal bid that we're accepting. So it's the elevator that's in the atrium that goes between the middle school, the atrium and the second floor. It's just seen, it's... It's temperamental. Yeah, it's temperamental at best. So we just need to get it. There's a lot of work that needs to be done. As you can tell by the price tag, but it's part of our capital budget plan. And so it falls within the estimates that we already had for it. There's only one company that bid. Did we invite the bid? Three or, yeah, I think there were three companies that we contacted and Bay State had to be... We had to contact them all again. And Bay State's the only one that came through. They're pretty much the only place that will service elevators in this state. Do they actually serve us? Yeah, we need maintenance. Yeah, when we need maintenance, we call Bay State. Any questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. We have an end of year retirement. Sandy Shilu, she's on top of it here. Is there a motion to accept her retirement at the end of the school year? So moved. Carl, on a second, Karen. How long has she been here? You were going to ask me that. I could speak to that. She taught me how to drive. She was a student teacher her first year. Wow. So do you want to tell us how many years ago that was? 84? 84, 94, 2000, so 34 years. Yeah, she's been doing it for a while. Well, you know, I would like to say thank you. She has taught most essential Vermont to drive over the last 34 years. I just can't imagine doing that day in and day out. She taught us to drive too. She taught my kids to drive too. She actually was my daughter's TA. All those in favor of accepting her retirement, say aye. Aye. Opposed? And with great thanks for all that she's done for a very long time. It's good timing, because we're at the bottom of the agenda here. Do we have board orders? Are we supposed to? I'm not sure why they're not here. Well, we probably have two weeks ago. We did them? Because we met just two weeks ago. Yeah, but we'll have them. Oh, no, no, we changed. There's an internal change that happened, and it did not happen. So I'll make sure you haven't the next one. We usually put it in my binder. So I do change. We started about 68 weeks ago to cut. We had so many extra hands, it was like this disease here. So they aren't there? I would check where they are. Okay. So I'm gonna move back up to the discussion agenda, the flag policy. And last, actually, two weeks ago, we looked at this flag policy, which is on pay. Thank you, 18. And I took it and made the changes that were asked for. There were a few words that we took out of word use and made the policy, so it was just students that could request the board to fly a flag. And what I actually have, let me see the changes I made here. What were the other ones? Couple. Took out the word legitimate and just put in student groups. And that's about it. So this is the policy as set, the administration has procedures, and we adopt the policy. And if people are happy with it, we can move to adopt it because it's been warned for that. We don't have to do a first reading. We did a first reading last two weeks ago, yep. And so we can adopt it today if there are no changes. Or if we change a word or two, it's still okay. I guess I would voice that we had some discussion at the last meeting about the future possibility of a second flag call. This policy doesn't really deal with that because we don't have it yet, but I don't think it conflicts with it either, so. I agree, when I look at it, it just says basically flying, doesn't say where. And I guess maybe if in the future we had a second poll, we might want to revisit the policy to clarify how the second poll is going to be used versus the primary. But for the time being, I think this policy serves as well. Just looking at the procedures. So the procedures do say that the flags would be flown below the United States of Vermont flag or on a separate flagpole. If the way they're written right now. Are we in agreement that there should be a second flagpole? Or are we? I don't think we've actually discussed it as a board. It was brought up, the administration brought it up as a discussion in the administration about putting a second flagpole in. And what I remember hearing is that the thought is they would put in a taller flagpole where the U.S. and Vermont flag would fly. So when it went to half mass, there wasn't any problem. And then the present flagpole would be for other flags. Was that correct? That is the? The thought. Part of the thoughts, yes. The thoughts. I guess, I mean, I think that's a good idea. It came up last time. Do you want to say something? Or are you just? No, I'm just pouring over every time I'm in the thoughts. And I'm wondering about Krista. No, in regards to the second flagpole, or does it, as far as the rule? The policy. Because we don't really get to vote on the second flagpole. That's not really, you know, we've got, we've set a policy and then these guys get to carry out the policy. Yeah. I think the policy looks great. I think it looks like a fair policy. Thank you. Are you guys here for that? I was here for the whole thing in the beginning, but I didn't realize it was that sex or the power to us. Which thing at the beginning? Which? I was just joining, joining for that right there. Oh! You missed a great presentation by the student council. The only thing that I can see is that if you adopted and leave it the way you have it, it leaves it a loophole of if and when a flagpole was done. So I don't really like the way that's handled. I thought of that as well, but we could, we could just hold off on accepting a request till the second flagpole is. Or we need to move forward. We have other things on the agenda. We got a new person here. I think we would just sort of deal with, you know, figure out if we don't have the flagpole. We do. The other thing too is no one brought up again with the Constitution Laws Act. And if you're gonna have a lawsuit for putting something below that. Putting something below the American flag? Is that what you're referring to? It depends on what you want to read. And if someone has enough money to get a good enough lawyer to want to fight it. We'll cross that bridge when we come, so yeah. Cross it too fast. And I'm not saying that me, but there's enough people that you can serve something. So I think the easiest thing to do is put a flagpole and be done and move this away and then let separate sides, you know, to do their thing. And then they can form their own committee moved and then through what can go on the flag. I'll take your flag. Yep. How do you think it's going to work on the soft field? Is it wet? More discussion? So the last thing on the agenda is to accept this policy. So is there a motion to accept the flag policy as written? Carl and a second? Second. Karen, more discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? We have a flag policy. Thank you very much. Well, thank you. You wrote it with no examples out there. I know. It's my new job. The policy, right? I have to tell you, there are two superintendents or boards that are looking for what we adopted constantly. Good, great. Montpelier does not have a flag policy yet. I called them. They do not, and I have not. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Future agenda items. So the next meeting is on November 28th at six o'clock. It's just the U32 board meeting. Yeah, so when we have just the U32 board, we meet at six. When we have the full board first, we meet at either seven or 730, depending on how long that agenda is. And it's confusing. I apologize. So I would say there are two items and we'll make sure they get on there, but just so the board's aware. One of them is the capital transfer. So from the budget to the fund balance to capital for the track project. And then we also have a contractor pre-qualification criteria that the board will need to approve for the track bid to be done because the entirety of the project is greater than $500,000. And so we have to do some other steps that we didn't have to do with something like the elevator. That the board has to take part. The board has to actually do a couple of things. So that'll be in November and we'll also have the budget. But those'll be action items that we'll have on there. Just so the board's aware. Great. If you think there would be questions in working with John Helmengard from Library Designs, there's been an architect helping us with this and he'll be better than our civil engineer firm that's doing the RFP. If there were questions about this process, I'm sure we could probably get John or one of his associates here. He's helped us at the three schools we've done. Two of the schools we've done renovations. So do you think we need them in November? Would we need them at another meeting in the future? This is actually the most important step right now is the pre-qualifications. Because once you set those pre-qualifications, you go out to bid and the way the law reads, you have to accept the lowest bidder without any judgment unless a bid, unless two bids or more are within 1% of the overall cost of the budget. So what happened, the pre-qualifications is more important than the final step because this is where you say, this is what we want in companies and what type of companies we want to build a project this big. And they have to certify to that level before they're even allowed to come in and bid on the project. Because from our construction laws, very specific you must. It's not like other procurement laws that we have in the state of Ron. You must take the lowest bidder. So if they meet the minimum criteria, then you go with the low bid. You know, you can get into bid. They've got to meet the criteria. And then from there, you've got to go with the lowest bid. I would love to have him come. Yeah, I was curious how you'll present this information to us like what our options are. Yeah, so I think we could have John here. He's excellent at doing that work. And I asked that this be included in the packet ahead of time so at least we can have a clue about what we're talking about. Yeah. It's a small clue. It's no one. Yeah. John and Bill Ford drafted this. Yeah. And they could come right at six if they wanted or if that didn't work. I will check with John. You know, figure out what works for them. We can put them first if they wanted to do that. Board communication. We held off last meeting thinking that we should do it this meeting. Want me to take a step at it? You want to do that? That would be great. I think I did the last couple. Yeah. Yeah, terrific. Anything else? We're adjourned.