 Yeah, I was having an issue getting online for some reason, but we're so you're with us now. Here we go. Yes. Yes in spirit Any adjustments to the agenda? We'll go without the timekeeper for now. We seem to do okay Public comment. Is there anybody from like public that would like to comment tonight? Back to approve the minutes of Monday, January 25th, 2021. There's a full board regular meeting I would make a motion to approve the minutes as a as submitted. This is done Thanks, John Seconded All right. Thank you any discussion If no discussion so moved Thursday February 4th So moved seconded All right, so moved and seconded any discussion on those minutes. All right here. No discussion so moved We're on to reports to the board Amy you're up Good evening everyone So you have my report in hand and We're in the thick of budget as you all know, that's my favorite time of year. We've had some really Strong, I think informational meetings that have gone well and been well received based on feedback We've received but I think we have a good template and outline for districts as we move forward with Budget informational meetings throughout the spring We're down to just one budget left one district left to approve a 21-22 budget at the board level and that's Granville Hancock and we're moving on and Stacey You will see what we hope is a final draft here coming up for your district and so I'm also really proud of the fact that we continue to project slight Surpluses and most of our districts and at the SU level And that all other than one district so far that's approved their budget We've been able to get expenditure budgets to drop from Fiscal year 2021 to 21-22 One of the things I'm keeping a really close eye on is our S or two Monies they haven't announced how much we'll receive yet around COVID relief, but we know that the focus will be on Regression and how we're gonna address that through a recovery plan We're still also waiting from the agency of education to give us details around what needs to be part of the recovery plan So we've started to identify some strategies that we plan to implement to address regression For next year in the year afterwards Across the SU and then that will be tied back to social emotional learning and support and core academics Don Jamie one of the parameters are they using to define regression if I could ask Well, they're gonna look at our universal assessment data at this point, but the other data points. They're looking at is attendance And They're looking at other social emotional Data points beyond attendance like office discipline referrals things of that nature So those are some of the data points. We're gonna have to provide And then say what are our strategies to it to address things like truancy? You know, our district's been in person for the most part since last September 8th There was an interesting op-ed from secretary French today that indicated only 50% of elementary schools are even back To offering full in-person learning at this point across the state and it's about 20% That are offering full in-person learning at middle and high school level So I think that you know what other districts are seeing is significant issues around social emotional health and truancy as as an effect of that the Be happy to let you know and don you know Ryan hack reached out to us From Sharon. He's on the Sharon energy conservation group and Ray could tell you the mouthful of what that group Actually, what their title is do you remember? No, I don't Jim it was a long title But they there's many of you now in your towns across the SU have different energy conservation groups that are addressing energy usage and So they've hired a full-time person to support the towns across the SU most of them And they're interested in that person providing support For the schools and so one of the things I wanted you to think about Between now and next month is whether or not the SU would be interested in energy committee That would be made up of some board members Interested community members like Ryan faculty staff, and I think students This is a real opportunity to engage students in this work to work on a plan around things like solar how to be more efficient in our usage and Then they could propose a plan to the board around how best tackle that and maybe provide some options So I was interested in just gauging your guys's thoughts on that and whether or not we might want to address that next month around appointing a committee and then finally I've invited I'm proud of the fact that you know one of the things secretary French addressed in his policy statements to superintendents this spring was the idea of Supervisory Union sharing resources and specifically in backroom resources and so We have been engaging some informally around the central Vermont Supervisory Union fiscal office supporting Tara and myself Around all things fiscal management specifically around the revenue side of the budget That's an area if you look in the audit that we've struggled with in the past And part of what has you know run us into our deficits often was on the revenue side Not just on the expenditure side and so Chris LaCarno is here tonight He's their chief financial officer the executive board of the SU Voted to enter into an MOU with CVSU and I mentioned this in my board report That would allow for us to receive fiscal services in Support and the trade-off is that we will lend them Ray Baloo to do some technology support and this is more higher level strategic planning running problems by each other and It's certainly technology is a strength of our Supervisory Union. So it made a sense of doing some trade-off there and We've capped that time at no more than 25 hours a month on average and the MOU can be an Agreed upon a mutual consent around Us no longer having the MOU in place with a 60-day notice. So the executive board did approve that And we're excited about that. So Chris is here tonight Chris if you just want to give a little wave so people can see who you are and Chris has been working behind the scenes on our revenue sides of the budget with Tara This current year and so I appreciate all the all the volunteering Chris has been giving us and there's no money Trading hands across the SU's It's just trading of resources. So It spoke to what Secretary of French was hoping to see take place and they said they may actually provide some type of incentive For SU's to do this type of work. So I'm always hoping that maybe they'll support us to financially to pursue these types of opportunities so Chris is here tonight and He's just sort of taking it in I wanted you to be able to put a face to a name And when we talk food service, he has experience around food service for Quite a few years Chris how many years you've been there now 21 21 years. Yeah, and so he And So in case there's questions about how does the funding work if we were to set up an enterprise fund within the SU Him and Tara have been talking about that, but he can certainly help you guys answer those questions as well And then I'll take any other questions or thoughts folks may have Can I just see some of you have your cameras off just thumbs up if the idea of an SU wide energy Committee makes any sense and whether we might want to pursue that okay So I'll try to formalize that some more and have an idea to you for next month around that Serum and Meg you're good. I'm not really excited about it No, I think it's a good idea, but I don't have any more time to put into more committees. So Don't look for me to volunteer for it Yeah, and I think the makeup could be just even at the SU level. It's just a couple born members who are interested I don't know if every district needs to be represented necessarily because I think there's other stakeholders across these district That might be interested. Yeah, just just to pipe in quickly. I feel like when we've had conversations around energy Some of us are more versed in that than not and it would be great to just have a committee of people who kind of speak That language a little bit representing all of us or thinking it through for us Yeah, but you're right, Sarah. I don't think I would volunteer for another committee either if I value my family at all And my thought about this was we've sort of We've talked about it, but I really need a group to create action on it You know they mean the plan and like all of you it's it's sort of it's been going down the list of priorities And that's not because we don't think it's important There's just another work to do so the idea is we really need a champion for this work of energy across the SU They can really get to work on that would be my thoughts around it nice Mika I Wanted to go back to the Observations related to regression and I think I How long are you going to follow the Potential effects of In terms of you know student performance and and problems how you know just this year until everything's normal again or is it kind of be an ongoing You know an ongoing kind of Review So I think part of the regression plan Mika is going to require What is the data management? Process that we're going to use to measure it over time. My concern is not the immediate or next year I'm really concerned that we still have some students Specifically at the primary grades that have not been in our buildings for a year now almost right because of VLA and so What we're finding is our teachers are working incredibly hard in the virtual learning Academy but the growth of students and outcomes of students is Really aligned to the support that happens at home Is what we're finding so if we have families engaged to help support the virtual learning that's happening Even though there are real-life teachers that it the outcomes are Different and we are measuring those data and we're going to share that data with you at the SU level and At the district level. I thought it was important for you to get a snapshot of What is data looked at like virtually where our students just attending virtually versus also the students in person? And so you see those data points merged and also separated in your reports next month. Okay, great All right anything else for Jamie Yeah, this is done. It's so Jamie on that last conversation Do I understand then that you can drill down to? differentiate The regression patterns for people in the seat as well as people from doing homeschooling and things like that I can't do homeschooling. I can just do virtual learning So the students who have disenrolled and went to homeschooling. I have no access to their data Certainly when they choose to come back We'll do an assessment on them in a probe So homeschooling isn't required to do those same assessments. Is that okay? They have their own benchmark assessments that the AOE asked them to produce but now I have no way to track them Okay. Thank you Jamie has secretary French discussed Integration of homeschool students and what that's gonna look like in terms of making sure everyone's on the same page I'm just wondering like how long How far out we project there's going to be this kind of regression regression catch up period and what that looks like if anybody's Thought about that yet. Well, I don't know if it's gonna be a component of the recovery plan I'm still awaiting guidance of what they want to see in the recovery plan. I think we all are I do know that the S or 2 money for this that's gonna support this work is supposed to be across two fiscal years So my sense is they at least have identified is gonna take a couple fiscal years to address it What we what we await is is exactly how much are is awarded to us and how can we use those funds? Which is tough because you know, it's already It's it is already in March 1st And I'm already like all my planning now is for summer and fall, right? Like that's where my focus is so it would be really helpful for us in regards to our planning to be able to identify What funds will have and how they can be used because then we could start really strategically making certain We're using those funds appropriately and not being reactive to it. All right anybody else If not, we'll move on to curriculum and instruction Good evening everybody. I I just wanted to speak especially to the last question because part of what helps support those kids that will be reintegrating Are the strong and effective systems that we're trying to establish within the MTSS? So one of those things That I wanted to speak to this evening is just that we just concluded our Assessment window for January. So I'll be having detailed reports next month in regards to how Students have progressed since they came back last fall in addition to that I've been trying to build a principal capacity in working with a few Kind of more intentionally around their data processes and How they're interacting to come up with plans and set goals for students as we are working very hard to close gaps I'm really looking forward to sharing with you more in detail as I mentioned about the progress of students and Have done kind of a deeper dive into our star 360 Data to kind of see how things have progressed over the last few years And then the final thing that I've been really focused on is starting to work with a group from the high school to try to develop a intervention System to try to address some lagging skills that teachers and our assessments are picking up on We're trying to tailor make that Sort of for the student profiles that we're seeing in grades nine and ten So I'm really excited for us to pull together some proactive strategies in that area Are there any questions regarding my report? Thank you Amy. Thank you Director of no special services director Hello, how was everybody tonight? You have your my report I wanted to inform folks that we are pursuing to to try to hire a school psychologist I gave you some data. There's any question on that data before I walk through it a little bit Don I'm gonna ask you hold off on your data report into the discussion area if that's okay, okay? So anyway, the report opens up as well what our intentions are to try to hire our own school psychologists instead of contracting out I Gave a little history of the child count of December 1st and some of the disability categories and some of the numbers represented in those categories and Overall population in how many students are currently being serviced through special education and it's about a 25 percent overall Population breaking down staff in the end or I'm sorry placements Where our students are? What programs and then how are we supporting those folks? The special ed speech and language pathologists early ed occupational and parent educators Any any questions so in my closing on the Evaluations, you know, we average about 90 a year and currently we're about You know a little over a hundred thousand dollars in evaluations so fees And if we bring somebody on board if we can Locate somebody we would hire them under a teacher contract. So it wouldn't be close to a hundred thousand Don It's a school psychologist going to be just Special education Special education funds or Yeah, but there's a 20% rule. So, you know, we can certainly Utilize both that person skills to help principles and so forth in 504 and EST plant plan kids We certainly would if there's a crisis situation Bring that person in to support our community With the number of evaluations that that person has to do You see that actually going to be time to do that well Maybe not, but we would put a big dent into that you know Overall, we would encourage that 90 90 evals a year Having said that we'll probably have to farm out some of those in specifically some more involved Evaluation such as a might be a not, you know kid who we're looking at for the autism spectrum or other really complicated cases I Just wonder what the amount of time it takes to do an evaluation If that person is going to have any time at all to help with counseling of regular education kids Yeah, I don't see this position as a You know quote therapeutic counseling Position I see it just strictly evaluations and when You know, if there's a crisis Situation in our buildings than that we would we would support that person to help out the schools Don this Tucker do you hate this being a one FTE or a partial FTE? One FTE All right, any other questions of dawn, okay director of technology and communications Good evening You have my report I'm trying to bring it up here. I Would like to say hi to Chris and from CVSU and Hope that he found the first thing that I worked on for CVSU to be of value And from my report I want to highlight that Assessments are scheduled to start next month s back in VTS a we do not have a final answer on that But at the moment, we're still planning for that to go forward and then a lot of what's in my report is relates to PEBT and We've had a couple of schools Go through I reviewed what they sent back they were confirming notes that we had and And preliminarily it's it's possible that the total value of the benefits here a hundred and seventy thousand dollars Across the SU across 2021 so it's not it's not a small amount of money and and Finally, we've had a lot of meetings in the past year and I would be happy to entertain any question This is Stacy. I just wanted to note that of those 200 meetings, I think Ray Participated in just about every one of them Thanks, Ray Thank you, Ray The work is its own reward. That's how I say that and to be perfectly honest, I've learned a lot That I never would have known before because I never attended the meetings really so Thank you. All right anything else from Ray guys Tara business manager report Good evening everyone So you have my report that was sent out with your other reports. I'll just provide a few updates I sent to the SU board earlier today draft three final draft of the SU audit The only change from that draft in comparison to the one that Jamie had sent to you back in January Is that this draft actually has the assessments out to the member districts in it? So you'll see that the deficit for the SU has been wiped from the page I think it was 19 on the PDF if you look at that Other than that we have received first draft audits on all districts And we are on second and third drafts on several of them And they should all be wrapped up by the end of next week And as we get the final drafts in I'll be sending them out to each of the boards for your review And then any questions that you have we can get together or you can ask me at your board meetings Whichever works easiest for you all I? Provided the March due date updates for you And then I just want to give a huge shout-out to Ray For all the work that he and Bill had both done on the PB ET Data collections and getting the information that we need and attending all of the meetings and getting all of that together And working with our food service managers to try and make that process as smooth as possible Without a lot of guidance from the agency of education because they haven't received a lot of guidance from DCF so they made a lot of assumptions and got some really good materials together for us to be able to Respond to the submission request when we actually get it. So they've done a great job And then otherwise I gave an update as to the CARES funding Jamie touched on What the expectations are that we're going to be able to use the s or two funds for So that's in there and then the discussion items that I wanted to go over with you On my revenue and expenditure report I added a column on both the revenue and expenditure pages based on some Board member feedback that it would be nice to be able to see what was in the report last month versus what I Changed this month So you'll see that is now part of the report as far as changes are concerned for this month I just updated the revenue and expenditures for covid cost at the su level and then Don and Tracy have been working diligently with butler's bus service on the special education transportation And it looks like we're going to have about a $14,000 savings there So we put that into the expended expenditure savings And then uh solar presentations I know we all have seen the encore renewable presentation When jessica presented at the su level in that each of the board levels And then we had received a request from green lantern that they would like to be able to provide A presentation to all of the member districts who are interested So if this is something you all want to do if you want to table it if this energy committee kicks off Then perhaps we can put that in the hands as one of their projects But otherwise I just need some guidance and feedback from you all as to what you want to do about the solar presentations And then lastly, uh lary from competitive energy who is who we do our fuel oil and propane purchasing through Reached out to us to let us know as you've all probably seen in the media that Fuel oil prices and propane price prices have increased substantially So we locked in on our contract for fy 21 22 Our fuel oil price will go up to two dollars and seven cents From a dollar 50 resulting in about an increase of 66 000 throughout the entire supervisory union And then propane will go from A dollar 24 9 to a dollar 54 9 resulting in about a 3600 dollar increase based on the current usage that we have So those are my updates not entertaining any questions that you have I'd just like to say Tara. I think we should push off the The energy stuck to the energy committee. It seems to be a suitable place. There would be my My suggestion on that Anyone else? I agree with that Kathy. I think it's specialized Information and I would love to have a committee take that on agreed Yeah, I I agree with that as well. I think it makes good sense if we're going to Form a committee to have them start with Something you know meaningful to jump in with All right, so can I get a thumbs up that everybody's okay with that? You have a direction then Tara? Thank you all Policy committee. We just met before prior to this meeting Um You'll see the policies attached to today with your documents Um, it's just for a first look. It's going to go out to the boards each individual board Um We'll gain some feedback there Any questions Anything else the committee wants to add I'm not on the committee, but I had a suggestion in the policy scope or uh, yeah part two policy scope of Is there a reason why? School directors school board people are not in that named in that I mean it says and others or something but not limited to but I thought that we should be held to this too That'll be something good to bring back and talk about at the committee I think we touched on it, but I I think we should circle back to that Yeah, so um, this is mika. Um, I'm on the policy board and um I ask a lot of dumb questions. Um, and one of them was you know, exactly. How do we bring this feedback? Uh, you know discuss it and bring the feedback back and where it was I was reminded that we are still very much in the draft form. So Well, jamey's gonna help us compile Um, you know all the individual comments. We don't have to act as a board at this point to Pass this or anything like that. Um, we're gonna, you know, really have an open discussion and try to bring back as You know all the comments that we get from our individual boards Uh, so that we can have a really full um discussion about possible changes and revisions to this policy Um, as you can imagine, it's really important that we have something that um, we can all really report And the policy committee knows that I think that the the board is where we should really start with a lot of this So we should be trained and held to account as everyone else does So another question that I don't know if it's a question, but as I was reading it through and and um So it's it's very much anti-racism And and it just kept popping into my head. What about all the other isms in our world? Are they Come or do you see where these are they are they covered in this policy? and we're we're gonna try to um And other members of the policy committee, please chime in but but um, we wanted to become For example with um a crime legislation a lot of times it becomes unenforceable because it's so broad We really want to focus on anti-racism Both for that reason and also because there are statutes now that require us to have anti-racist policies and uh curriculum specifically And the idea is to get this one done in past and then to um reinvigorate our equity and diversity policies as well Very much mirroring this All right. Thank you Yeah, this is done. Yeah started with this originally started out as an equity policy and got uh Formulated into the anti-race All right guys So this was just on here for for discussion bring it back to your boards discuss it with them and then come back Then they're the committee member will come back to the committee with the feedback All right, so we are on to discussion items um special education data report Don did you have some more you wanted to add you gave a lot of additional numbers that we didn't hit on prior in your report That's what I was indicating earlier. I know I you took probably uh, I probably you already probably gave gave them the punch line But yeah, well the the the numbers that were provided to me by missy berbine who Organizes all our evaluations and schedules evidence. She pulled it together for me It's for your just for your information. Just so you can see the the scope of what we what we do in the district for evaluations um And it kind of you know 10 points of different schools as well as What what you what you see over the last three years And I'll just add I mean part of the goal is as we get better at Within our in our our multi-tiered system supports the idea is if we're really investing in early intervention We should continue to see The need for comprehensive evaluations to decrease When we talk about 25 percent of our students population needing to be service via an IEP you know most most research says that three To most five percent of our students have a specific learning disability And so what I would say is is that Our inability to intervene quickly and swiftly Sometimes has created the gap that then results in a special education evaluation In order to to service the students because teams of teachers are at a loss of how do we best support the student? and so what we're looking to try to do is better Better train up and provide pd for our teachers So they feel like they have the tools needed to meet our students needs But also make certain we have interventionists that can intervene early and quickly um So at a targeted level so doesn't necessarily have to result in a student getting two to three grade levels behind Before we intervene and so that's that's part of what you know when we're talking mtss. This is a piece of it Is how do we better address intervention earlier? And add an add an implement with fidelity right now one of the things Don and I've been looking at Is a lot of our interventions still was only implemented sometimes Two or three days a week And we know research says a minimum of four times a week for 30 minutes To try to intervene and gap and gap fell and so one of the things we're looking at and what I've been talking to with principles And what Don about is we have to make certain we have staffing Implemented in a way within schedules to intervene with fidelity This idea of we we provide intervention once a week that that just you know Just to say we intervene well, that's not intervening. That's not good enough We can do better and we have the resources to do better And so we're looking at how do we better deploy our resources To make certain our students are getting intervention with fidelity Don Yes I'd like to thank you This is the first time I've seen since I've been on the board the total student population and total student special education population Um of the district And I've asked for it I asked for it before Um actually before you get on the board before you became the director and Have you Do you know what the cost per pupil is for special education? Have you divided that out? No, no, but I can I can get that to you, Bob I'm just I'm just interested And I just just want to piggyback on what Jamie had said too about Implementing this with fidelity and you know as the and this is for another meeting because I don't have all my The information but the state is going to move away from that adverse effect Uh to qualify kids in specific learning disabilities. So it's we've got to really Shore up our mtss Because that's how we're going to prove For lack of better word adverse effect is if they're not students are not able to progress with that tier two intervention Sorry, um don you're using some terms that I don't quite understand adverse effect and uh Yeah, uh even uh, there's in special ed world. We have we call them three gates The first gate we suspect a kid might have an or a child might have a disability And so we we hire a school psychologist Um to do an evaluation to determine if there's a disability Uh, the second gate is adverse effect. How does that disability adversely affect that child's academic performance in one or more of the basic skill areas? And so we gather data We have to have uh prove At least three out of six criteria To see if that that specific or that disability has an adverse effect in one basic skill area or more Uh, the third gate is need so If the need is to provide specialized instruction Uh, because you cannot provide that in the school's comprehensive system of educational support So all three of those gates need to be in the in the affirmative. Yes Uh to qualify so the adverse effect is really looking at a basic skill And it could it could affect a related service too such as speech and language ot um and others Is is there a graphic of that somewhere? Yeah, I can pull it out of for you I would love I would just love to have that as a reminder whenever i'm looking at the SPED budget Yeah, exactly what you do I mean, I know I I as I said, I was a special education poster child in my time, but I didn't really know what they were doing to me um, but uh, uh, I'd love to see that Thank you. Um, I have a I have a pretty detailed Flow chart that you I'll start with and then if you have more questions, uh, I can put some more meat on that skeleton Yeah, not not too much. It's nice to you know a page or two at most just to give me that That thing it reminds me exactly what we're doing here Sure. Thank you. Um Along those lines done. Um, I am with Ethan. I don't uh, understand this area of it all too well I would love to understand it better You do a great job explaining it. It's just that it's completely beyond my bailiwick. Um, but I did want to know especially I I guess Looking at this data What are the goals? Is it to move away from so is it to move more kids out of this need? Is it to Like is there an objective that we can measure some level of success of the mtss using the same data schema? Yeah, I think so. I think that what our goal is if we should keep, you know And that's this it's the push through the the the state as well It's to show up our mtss so that we We you know in the funding source too is going to change so that we are able to um, you know You know focus on more kids And not necessarily the disability and as jamie is a big Advocate is like we don't want to identify kids By their disability And so we want to help kids and support them and I think with the with the funding formula changing eventually and uh this adverse effect We're going to be able to work. Uh, you know kind of uh meld regular ed and special ed at some point Yeah, so we we can work with all kids We want to see and we want to see your numbers get go down uh, how But you know, we all we know that there's going to be children that will will have disabilities And we're going to have to serve them great. Thanks for that Jamie I have a question um this You've talked about this multiple support system um And basically I think does it start with an est team? That is part of it bob. Absolutely. So part it's the est process. So the idea is High quality universal instruction have means to track data, right like over time And then teams of teachers bob are meaning to say this student is still struggling in reading Well, what about reading? Are they actually struggling in so as we become more proficient analyzing data We need to say well, are they actually struggling to encode like chunk words? Or do they have an issue with comprehension? And then that team of teachers is going to make a recommendation for intervention Like it could be level literacy intervention, which you've all heard Um, Amy toff talk about or it could be Orton gillingham, which is going to focus on phonics Right and decoding and encoding words. So that team makes a recommendation And then we intervene with the interventionists and then we progress monitor that student a minimum of every six weeks To see are they gaining? And one of the things we talk a lot about is rate of growth They they they have to grow More than an expected rate in order to close the gap In education often we would say all right, this student's been getting intervention They grew three months this year. Well, that's great. They grew last year didn't grow any Well, they grew three months, but we've been in school 10 So we just lost another seven right and so that bob is where that's the next step to this system Is us starting to really look at our data By individual student right not like let's compare percentages of achievement Like let's measure individual students and make certain that they're all growing a full year's worth of growth But we break it down around every three months Did they grow a full three months worth of growth? No, then we just got to ask ourselves why And what what what can we do differently to ensure that the student's growing at that rate? And if they're not growing and we're providing intervention like don said with fidelity Then we got to say what information do we need that we don't have And that's we're doing more evaluation and probing with someone like a school psychologist would be helpful Because we may be focusing on reading and really the student has an issue with working memory right around executive functioning and so We should be saying what's the intervention we need to do to address working memory Not just continuing the same reading intervention and not seeing any growth with it I want the board to Do you want does the board know what an est team is? educational support team And you have a referral process for kids getting to that team Yeah, and the process has changed such now don bob that I saw with dawn's handrails That we we meet in those teams at each grade level cluster by weekly And we're analyzing data points. So you're not waiting a month to get on an agenda We're looking at our students every two weeks Are you seeing progress? Yeah, and I think you're going to see it in our in our data reports. We've been able to close some regression Um, do we have a ways to go? Absolutely, but teachers are working incredibly hard And you know part of what we had to create this year was that structure to even meet We didn't have it with fidelity in each building Uh, and so we focus this year on building the structure And really making certain the language that you're all asking questions about all the educators were using the same language So that we all when we all said something we understood what it meant All right Anything else on do you still have a question? I'm sorry. Andrew Andrew's hand was up to it Oh, okay, go ahead Yeah, I think he answered some of this jamie But I was kind of like I I think it's great to see kind of the scope of what the special education system is But you know, this doesn't really give us a good feel of how we're doing with it You know once kids are in the special education system right from what jamie's saying it sounds like we'll be able to look at student results data and That would definitely be helpful I was just thinking of other data things that we could look at like You know, I think with some special education students They have disabilities that are going to you know require them to get support, you know, like It's not going to necessarily show up in academic Performance and stuff. So one other thing I was thinking of was like if we could have parent Or family evaluations to see how they feel like if they're being supported enough Things along that nature Those assessments are done annually, correct Don The AOE does AOE sends out something to parents and I'm not sure when they do that But if there's a survey to parents to say how's your district treating your kid and how and how's the educational support Are being provided through special ed So there there is a there is a And that's that's that's a that would be good done for us to share some of those results There's nothing confidential in there. So we'll look to share that with you on an upcoming agenda I'm going to add it as a future agenda item and and you one of the things I have asked amy to do Um is that we're going to break out and start doing a better job tracking different Um cohorts of students and one of them is students serve the IEP's and what is that population's rate of growth Um, and one of the things we've struggled with Is a data management system that does that as effectively and as efficiently as it should We've been using Otis here for a number of years. I don't know if you guys have heard of Otis But as ray amy and I continue to dig into the data sets It's certainly not meeting our needs And so one of the things as we bring on a chief academic officer that we need to look at is Is the current data management system we're using Otis capable of answering those questions you just told Because right now we're like still counting students by hand That's not efficient nor what we should Pay administrators And so that's one of the things we're looking into Okay, so is the idea that there's going to be Kind of this special education assessment built into some of these other reports that we'll see down the line Or are we gonna like it seemed like we were targeting this month for looking at special education data Well, and so yeah, so we gave you this part Next month you should be able to see how they perform That data was still coming in so you'll get it when we show the rest of the su wide data Don started you have something Yeah, I wanted to know what's the 504 population Don could tell you that but maybe not off the top of his head. I know we know it You know one time I counted 90 kids in the district. I'm not sure if that's still accurate or not And I don't know uh, this is my just my perspective is that I think we're We're over identifying kiddos on 504 that really could be serviced better on a uh, the est team Uh, who's do we have a 504 coordinator? No bob that's handled at each district level specifically most of the time It's either it's assigned to like your mtss folks, right like at rud You have two mtss folks that oversee those Sharing district has an mtss person's a 0.2 that oversees some of those plans and that work like that At f bud. It's their student support specialist. It's a little different depending on the district At our sud it's the school counselor and at strafford. It's the school counselor Yeah, can I just add something to what I said there? We're over identifying We know they're the kids Students who have disabilities Who for example might have been on an IEP and they had their three year re-evaluation and they were determined ineligible for specialized instruction through an IEP And what I think the Philosophy was that well, they have a disability. We'll put them on a 504 plan How it should work is that you need to consider a 504 plan and have that that conversation But the team a 504 team has to prove how that substantially limits one or more of the basic life activities And again substantially is subjective But that conversation has to has to occur And I'm not sure if it it's been consistently considered that way in the district um, okay Who checks on the case made of jews and to make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing on a 504 Principal by statue that's in their job Ah Principal is the coordinator of 504 is by statue Are they doing that possible legally? Absolutely much better than we were All right Does that mean you're doing it? Yes. Yeah, they're involved in the data teams now I mean, they're they're actively looking at their students data and involved in those data teams. So I I'm I am pretty confident that they they're much better aware Before I don't even think necessarily they understood that was part of their role of responsibility So I think they're becoming much more proficient at that If there's 90 kids 90 90 kids the case manage I'm just curious to know if the principals are aware of Every individual kid on a 504 Well, I would ask you to ask your principals that But I I would say each district the awareness is probably a little different But I am confident that they are checking EST plans And that they're sitting at IEP meetings now And at 504 team meetings and I know that because I'm copied on emails often With them around correspondence around those things and Don is too So prior to this One of the changes we made around restructuring special ed is principals did not act As the lea And so what do I mean by that they were not at the IEP team meetings in the administrative decision-making Um position around how to how to best support students around funds That you all budget and so now We require an administrator to be the lea at all IEP meetings and they're required to attend 504 meetings from Okay, all right guys don. Are you sure you're good? um all right Anything else on this topic? It's not moving on to 1920 audit So i'm just going to jump in not much has changed since I showed you this with you in january other than like tira said We just we did bill out The deficit and reassessed it to the districts You can ask questions about this tonight You can choose whether you're willing to approve this or not tonight That's up to you I plan to have this to you in your packet friday and we didn't get it for friday and so We gave it to you as soon as we received it and so I'm totally cool with you waiting if that's what you want to do Certainly, you know, if you look in the audit and I please do look in the audit I would highlight one of the areas that we continue to address was Tracking how we're using monies with our federal plan And we've implemented periodic time studies. So in intervention is prior to this year We're not completing regular time studies to show that the amount of time that they were budgeted to provide intervention aligned And so now every two weeks anyone who's paid for by the federal grant Excuse me as part of their fte has to submit daily schedules When they're intervening and when they're not Because there's chunks of money built into the federal grant for positions across the su Then on a quarterly basis the supervisor union office is analyzing these time studies to ensure That the fte budgeted for the grant is going to be realized and received And so that was an area that was noted in the audit that I wanted to speak to you about those change those procedures all changed Effective July one, but remember this audit you're looking at is 1920. It wasn't 2021 And so you should not be seeing that next year All right questions about the audit Like this is dawn. I really haven't had a chance to look at it. We got it very recently. So I don't have any questions at this point Um, Ethan here. Oh Sorry Just wondering how uh, how they're treating us after the last meeting How are the auditors treating us? Tara they have been very responsive and working with rose and I to make sure that Everything that needs to be processed is getting processed Timely so that we can get this finalized So you're you're feeling better than Before our audit the team that we have right now in place for the audits. They're they're doing a great job Okay, because we're about ready to fire them last month and uh, I just wanted to see where we are Um now we still want to fire them Sometimes Good okay All right, but not yet. Good. Thank you All right guys any other questions the audit Do we want to take this up tonight or do we want to push it to next month's meeting to approve? I know don mentioned he hasn't had a chance to look at it And I haven't really had a chance so I haven't I I've looked at it, but I'd like some more time I did have a question real quick. Um You know, my impression was that the overages were mainly the In the special education side, but looking at the audit. I wasn't really able to see that Um, it was pretty close. Andrew is actually almost a 50 50 split as far as what the deficit was at the end of the fiscal year So when we did the allocations, it was really close as to what was the su's deficit versus what was special education Okay all right, um, I guess like It'd be good to have kind of a summary of what areas we went over on, you know and An assessment of why that happened. I mean some of that I kind of know about already you Seem like half of it was kind of a financial office side, which we kind of knew about but um That that's my only comment I would agree with that like a bullet point sheet or something like that would be very handy as well as the numbers Okay, any other questions So jamie, it looks like we want to push it to approve at our next meeting Yeah, and that's what I was going to recommend so Um, I reckon next this is dawn our next meeting. I guess was scheduled as an executive board so we can either amend it to A full board or we could Allow the executive board to approve it after each town has had their their individual boards to ask questions I mean, it's we can do it either two different ways Kathy what do you think? Um, I think we should do it as a full board Um Can we should we change that meeting to a full board meeting? That's what I'd recommend. You're all pretty good about attending lately anyways, so I think the virtual platform helps right with our full board attendance because you're not driving So that has been a real classic All right, so we're going to change our next meeting jamie and you can take care of that to a full board meeting And we'll have a plan on approving the audit that night guys So any questions and stuff you need to get answered that you don't think you can get answered that night possibly send them to terra Or jamie and get them get them resolved so that we can make a decision that night and get it approved Okay 7.3 future of Food service Hey, good evening everyone the long time you're here I'm the assistant director of one planet and also been working with our child nutrition folks For almost a year now. So I guess to start off just hopefully you've had a chance to review Our report and just wondered if anybody had any questions on that before we jumped into concerns and discussions about moving forward And I can't see everybody on my screen here So if you have a question, please just Speak up because I can't see everybody either. So definitely speak up if you have a question tonight Well, it sounds like they don't have questions Bill before you start, I just want to give the board a little so what I'd like to do tonight under discussion is get a sense from you Whether or not you would consider acting on one of our two proposals Next month and we'll get to you about what that is and it's really stay status quo Which you don't have to act on which we're going to advise you not to do Or consider moving food service personnel to the su and what what we'll talk to you about is the why And then how that would work financially Okay, and what we think the benefits of that Would be and so that's the idea tonight. We're not asking you to take any action on this tonight But sort of looking for you to say jamie stop. This is like four meetings now. You've brought food service up or Continue to talk to us about it because we understand that maybe we need to move in a different direction around it Does that sound good not asking you to take any action tonight? Okay, sorry bill No, no, that's fine. Give her the direction jamie. I'm sure the board appreciates it So I really just want to highlight some some concerns and sort of what we've discovered over the last last year Jamie and Tara and I have been talking Fairly regularly We had a nice meeting on friday afternoon with your child nutrition staff I guess the the first thing actually that I want to say is that we're all really proud and pleased of our child nutrition and nutrition services Folks these folks have been working really hard. They have been on site Preparing meals doing meal service in a totally new and a totally different way With a program they're not used to for almost a year now And we just want to take some time and just take a moment to recognize their efforts Recognize the fact that these folks have been on site At their place of employment For a year as we've worked through this pandemic and we just we just want to make sure that the board is aware that These folks are doing new things working really hard and looking for ways to make changes These are good folks and just want you to know that they're working really hard for you and our kids out there Summarize sort of our concerns at this point despite the increased oversight despite what we're doing With with compliance the meetings and the conversations we're having with nutrition services With the consulting we're doing across the state. We are still projecting deficits for all our programs at this point We can't count on the soft moneys to buoy those budgets We have gotten some equipment grants which are going to help with larger purchases The big math part here September through november we were looking at five dollars and ninety six cents To produce a meal at our highest reimbursement rate On the summer food service program. We are still a dollar and sixty four cents in the whole per meal per site That as you well know Can't continue to happen And project being in the black or even breaking even for nutrition services What we are hoping for and what we're talking about and what we want to look at Is not only having the robust educational program and those goals were listed in the report You were just talking about some of those goals that relates to to don and the special services department We want to make sure we're pairing that with with robust and quality nutrition services We've discovered at this point if you don't choose to take any action That's okay We you can certainly continue to operate quality local nutritional programs that are compliant and well liked By students one of the concerns that by statute it is supposed to be Consolidated but the state hasn't been bothering us with that at this point I do need you to understand that these operations will likely operated a deficit going forward Our concern around that as it relates to goals Is that if we are constantly having to retire deficits and absorb that It might be that we would have to look at the educational programming side of the budget to reduce costs to cover those costs The other option we have and we've talked about Is moving nutrition services crew underneath the SU This would allow us to be more compliant with our audits This would allow us to be more efficient in terms of paperwork menus ordering. It would It would certainly save some money on ordering It would also allow us to shift staff around Uh, I also believe jamie was talking about on friday. There are a couple folks at this point that fall underneath that umbrella that don't reap the benefit of Of the master agreement for support staff. They would then fall underneath that And we would like to continue working to try to do the best Program we can for the best amount of money In the most sustainable way for you as we continue to look and evaluate What we should do going forward Yes, don this is don Um, one of the things that I noticed was absent in the plan And Has anybody explored the opportunity to campus the community and Getting people signed up for the free and reduced lunches That would allow us to get more reimbursement under federal money, which would help bring in some revenue I don't know that's been looked at or not Don we did a second push for free and reduced applications in april So our hope is one of the recommendations when I went through The first summer food service training when I first came on board Several of the food service directors in the child nutrition program had talked about the electronic free and reduced application And how that takes away That stigma that you know, I'm going to be giving my financial information to someone that I see every day So one of the things that I'm hoping that we're able to be successful with in this next fiscal year Is to actually move to that electronic application in hopes that it will also Get some increased Participation on that application and then it would be done centralized and kind of take that that stigma away from it But we did see a few come in but we still have pretty low participation in it Right, I would suspect that if we would have reached 100 saturation point We would see a substantial increase in federal monies coming in. I mean that that's another way to offset costs So it is the issue is right now. We are 100 free And we're being reimbursed at a higher rate Then the regular child nutrition program and we're still projecting a deficit Wow, so that's the reality of this. I mean the You know to be you know, I like to be pretty frank. We are really at a at a breaking point of sustainability with food service at the point of If we do nothing you're looking at across the su A reduction of for enforced around four full-time off team a year per year to offset the deficit Because when you look at the food service for food service deficit across the supervisory unit as a whole It's over 300 000 A year when you add up what you've been running for deficits And so that's my major concern and so I use it as f te because Essentially as we are up against the threshold in a lot of your districts as you know around per pupil spending Then we're going to have to look to offset costs somewhere And there's no way for us to generate enough Revenue right now in food service without decreasing our cost To make up the difference because every meal we sell right now We lose a buck 50 on and that's at the higher rate of reimbursement Our average per meal plate cost I think this is a really important number and bill. Thank you for doing it It's on the last page if you look just above five on b The average per meal cost from september to november across the su was $5.96 a plate That means based on our reimbursement of everyone being free We lost a buck 64 per meal question Um I hear it. I mean I heard it the first time you mentioned it at At some of the other meetings The biggest part for me is the selling this to our towns The idea that you know, there's there's been a lot of concern and of course that's you know We're still rebuilding trust in the su people looking to the su as something that's organized and looking out for them As opposed to something that's chaotic and unresponsive And i'm just saying how you know if this is yet another thing that the su's taken on it makes sense to me you know if we're not doing it and but but But how do we sell this? I think one of the things we can talk about euthan is that we can begin and we've started this over the last year The child nutrition team can just be that they can work as a team We can have people instead of having eight separate entities that are all creating menus All creating production records all doing ordering all making adjustments all trying to establish traditions and be programmatic We can begin to think about this as it as a team of people As well as trying to put people that have different skill sets in more of a sweet spot So that we're not duplicating work as much At this point every almost every piece of paperwork and almost every function Other than some that i've taken on that That sort of go across the board Each one of your your nutrition directors Does the same thing Every month in terms of their their compliance and and their preparation to do meal service So one of the things we can do is if we need to move staff if they're under an su we can do that If we want to move toward an aligned budget Are just not an aligned budget excuse me aligned ordering Aligned production records in theory we can have a team of one or two people creating menus One person taking care of the ordering Which will make us more efficient? I'm not telling you here at this meeting and i'm not saying and trying to say this that We we're going to do this and and everything is going to be coming up roses, but this this is this is the stuff No, it's worth it. It's worth it trying. I guess here's here's what i'd like is i'd like um when i go to my you know Our towns i'd like an article i'd like i'd like it to be public knowledge That's facts that dammy just said You know that we're getting Unreimbursed more than ever before and we're still losing money on this Some of the some of the deficits numbers that you all came up with that you gave us I think it was six months ago or so I just think some publicity Would really help this issue So it isn't just oh by the way the su is taking over one more part of something that's traditionally been You know a school thing and been well handled Um, so I just think publicity would really help to get this these numbers out there Yeah, and if the board you know has has a list of items you're you know You're welcome to send them to to me or jamie or terra and happy to get you that information At this point we probably have more data on nutrition services than we've probably had in about a decade For those of you that are really interested in numbers I can give folks a lot of numbers if people are concerned with the programmatic side and how it affects children I'd be happy to talk with you about that Uh, okay. Uh, I've got lisa floyd and then we'll go to andrew junes Hi, thank you bill. Um, and thank you for presenting this information. Um, I think that presenting things the way That you have tonight Is really going to be helpful. I think that bringing to our communities This idea that we do have some challenges that we're facing In regards to this would be helpful And I think that we need to do sort of a full-on exploration of what our options are And and bring forward a lot of detail I know that in many communities There's a lot of emotion wrapped up in the food service But I also know that You know, I think it was the abbey group that submitted a proposal earlier in the merger process And I know that it wasn't the time because there was so much that was changing Um, but they will work with your With your staff and they honor your your community values and they buy vermont foods and and support Um, local nutrition. So I'm just excited to start to know more about what our options are and to have data to look at Thanks, Lisa angry so, uh When we were doing the merger in from our Bethelon Royalton into um, a single District, you know, we kind of when we were doing the budgeting for that We were penciling. Oh, we're going to be a larger entity. So we'll get, you know, five percent savings on blah, blah, blah and You know, I don't know how much of that actually Um Materialized so if there's any way that you can look at like the contracts that you have and actually You know, say with this will be purchasing this amount and we'll get be eligible for this discount from this provider and have actual specifics on what money could be saved by Going that would definitely help sell things like having actual concrete numbers as opposed to these You know assumptions that we're going to save money as a larger entity Um, oh Oh, yeah, I have one other point. Um You know when we say that our we're losing money on every meal that we sell I feel like that's always been the case, you know, we've always had In our just speaking for our district like we've always had 53 thousand dollars As a subsidy towards food service in our budget and the deficit that we've seen in our food service budget it's been because we're You know, we haven't been budgeting enough as a subsidy Towards that and so it just winds up as a deficit or you know, we're spending more than we expect to in food service so, um I guess my question would be more like how is this different? Than what we've had before Where we're subsidizing from the main budget to the food service budget Uh to address your first question andrew you do receive some bulk savings Through rud buying in bulk I project if we bought as an su and ordered as an su that would include All the breakfasts all the lunches All the afterschool snack the one planet Usually does and the normal summer food service program that we usually run That would get us savings I'd have to check I would guess rud is probably saving maybe maybe two and a half to three percent Depending on your purchasing This would I project get us to six and a half to perhaps six point seven five, which is an additional savings Over what any any of the districts um have and we're also hoping that a few of the efficiencies that we gain By working together and continuing to work together will will help us with that If people are interested in specific budget numbers what you're looking at, you know, we can certainly share those Share those with you and those projections. I do want to mention Just for those of you that that like numbers and are interested in numbers One of the things that's challenging and hard to do is you project your budget project your numbers and your deficits A lot of this system is very dynamic Don brought it up. What is our free and reduced lunch percentage? What are food and supply commodities Doing what is our participation rate and these are all questions we've we've been asking this year What are our highest participation lowest cost meals and how do we do those? How do we think about? Using that information to offer a menu And make tweaks locally is necessary so that we can always have the highest participation We can with the lowest cost. We've also talked a lot about at breakfast I'm a big breakfast guy. I could always have you know two eggs toast, you know bacon waffles. It's great. I love it And the kids love it too And that's one of the things we don't want to lose if there's any special traditions We have at any of our schools which goes back to Ethan's point. We actually want to look to grow traditions But we also want to be responsible and think about okay We could do a big breakfast if we're losing three dollars or four dollars every breakfast Even though the participation's high we're really going in the hole We're advocating for more of a grab-and-go sort of breakfast model at this point again Jamie terni are not promising by pulling this underneath the su that everything is going to be completely roses As far as is the money goes But it should allow us To at least put a budget together look at a budget and and help the child nutrition people look at those numbers and think about what they're doing and And do a better job than what we're currently doing. That's that's what I guess I would message to you I think we can do a better job than what we're currently doing Ethan I just follow up on that. Um, I I think it's worth I think it's worth a try. I really think it's worth a try I don't think we can hurt the one thing and this is following up on what lisa said With the emotions involved. I think it needs to be really important that that doesn't come across as You know shaming the people who are at the food service at each, you know school and saying boy, you did a lousy job Um, you know, this is we're going to take over Um, I think it's you know, and I'm hearing I'm hearing integration And teamwork and and those terms and it's just that the message has to be sold in a good way and of course, um, um We will be looking after a year. I mean the way it was presented to us at our last meeting was We were um You know, this is a trial program Give it a look and come back with some numbers next year and of course if the numbers aren't any better Well, then, you know, at least we we've done some assessment on it But I definitely think this is worth a try. It's just got to be handled carefully Just so the board knows bills in terra have been meeting with our food service Folks regularly and I met with them all on friday And the response I've received is that they're appreciative that we're that one we're talking about the problem That we're trying to do it in a collaborative effort and that They are actually getting real numbers now Like I had a food service person director email me and say this is the first year We've actually been given numbers so that we can analyze it to try to do business differently And so that's really what we're trying to do here and as far as You know selling it. I think that the one thing that we can say is is that As an su we have taken great leaps in regards to coordination our coven 19 coordination We launched a elementary wide schedule That all school is implemented from day one and that our principals meet weekly now Without any su guidance to coordinate efforts to ensure that there's continuity around the system So I think we're gaining in that department And I think coven 19 is a tangible one ethan that folks could link into Around the power of the su wide approach around that one I think another point that you could um You could say to your your local board ethan is that And again You you can continue to do things this the same way What they shouldn't expect just to see different results And I do think along your line of thinking There's a chance here that we're we're hoping we're going to get Get better results than we are having and then there's going to be the assessment part. Okay. Are we are we pleased with this? How much better do we think we can do or or do we need to need to think about? You know something else Stacey go ahead Um, I think you I you mostly answered my question But I did want to just reiterate that this you know that there is this um Kind of pervading attitude in many communities that you know, they're losing local control And I think this could easily be seen as one more of those things I've seen a few su's do this and then complain that they're no longer allowed to use their school gardens for lunches And their menus quality is deteriorated and I would just you know, I would just Be really mindful that this is something that in many communities defines their identity and you know If we can offer something that has some flexibility so you can have your own like Noodle day if that's your thing or you can you know, make sure that your garden is available for you to harvest from If that's part of your curriculum or if you have farm to table work But just make sure that there's some flexibility for people to maintain what you know What what they consider the last of their local control while we do this because I think ultimately Money does speak and we see what's happening to budgets And if you tell people that there's a real cost savings here I think that we'll convince them But I don't want to do anything to take away from what's become really special about many of our communities So, you know, I think you again, I think you've heard that and sorry to Be the dead horse But I just want to make sure that that's you know, that's something that I see a lot of especially around this topic But I I think we've been discussing it for a while. I would love to see something move forward to test the waters on this And Just to just to reflect on what you said Stacy programmatically We are we are very interested and very concerned about your nutrition services staff They are very concerned about Where their positions stand or or what could happen? They are our employees and we're going to look to continue to take care of them Programmatically we want these programs to improve meaning that if they have a really cool tradition in in strafford We want to see if we can move those traditions to other schools If they've got meals at Sharon that are just really really doing well Really really easy to to prep easy to order low cost I envision creating a system where we're offering menus that are The lowest cost the highest interest we can And and I think the other thing is The food is the social time and it's the kids time and we don't We can't and this is another thing you can say to your boards. We can't have school without nutrition services It's not 1980 in Riverdale, New Jersey where you know Somebody's serving me lunch and that's just the way it goes. These folks are professionals They're doing a professional level service and they're doing this service so we can have school The last time We we had a weather day and we didn't have Or we we had some covet. Sorry. It wasn't whether it was covet The state was emailing me at 8 30 in the morning about trying to get meals out because they're so concerned about that Please rest assured. One of the things where we're not just looking at numbers We are very interested in people and we're very interested in the programmatic elements of this because It is it is a program and these folks are professionals All right, thank you. Jamie. What do you need from us tonight? Sorry, Kathy. There's some handrails Oh Yeah, I can't see the handrails on my good Don has us hand raised I guess what I'm here what I'm hearing generally is a an agreement to Look forward, but is there a way that you can Theoretically put together a program that we can review rather than We'll all come together and then assess it in a year. I mean I'm not quite sure I understand what you're asking me Don Do a theoretical merger and show us for the figures where we're going to save money Oh, yeah, I could I could show that to you right now that that we've already done that work I'm happy to share that. Uh, I do think that would be good just along with uh, what andrew said Any other any other questions or talking points? Uh, that that you want or that ethan has has talked about the that you want for your your local boards happy to happy to do that and I can tell you quick reference Based on the numbers that I have Let's see. Did I find it? Maybe I can't find it. Thank you find it So I think the next step would be to go out to each of the individual boards and have this conversation Um with that information. Yeah, and don I'll bring that information with with me Yeah, so I think that's what our next step is and see if we get buy-in from the individual boards And then we can make a decision. Does that sound great? Yeah Yeah, that sounds fine. So yeah just share cost savings that What don If we if we can show the cost savings to our constituent that it's logical. It's a logical step Yeah, I agree. We can't promise it and then it not come through All right, so Jamie you'll start getting it out to the individual boards and we'll come back and discuss it at our next meeting Yeah Okay Thank you All right, um superintendent superintendent evaluation update The committee has a meeting with um the vsba to go through the the data That they provided back to us. So um, we'll keep you updated on that. Um And we said we were gonna the audit nice I sent the Superintendent summary and a confidential email to the committee members just so you know, so you'll have that for Wednesday night Thank you next committee meeting Thanks, Jamie All right, the audit we are pushing that to give everybody a chance to look at and hope for voting on next month Um, so we're on to the interview of finalists for the w rvs u c a o of mtss And uh, it's my pleasure to introduce. Um miss andra adams and um This process that we put forward was um, there was a committee that was facilitated by andra bowen and ray balloon uh, we had committee that was made up of A student representative. We made certain that each district Had a representative either community or a faculty or staff That represented them We had five candidates that were interviewed and The committee moved to Ford for me for an interview on thursday And then there was also an opportunity for teachers and staff across the su And we actually did have one parenting guardian. We had opened it up for them too for a forum And we collected feedback from those 45 minute interviews and introductions as well and um It's my pleasure to introduce you um to andra as your finalists and so Dr. Adams is coming to us. She has a degree Doctorate in education um from harvard and has served as an assistant superintendent both in washington state And at cabridge public schools and what what I will say to you is is that I was originally very interested in andra's application But then also said to myself Well, andra had the interpersonal skills necessary to leverage change within the supervisory unit was my concern And connect with our constituents What came through the interview process is is that andra has really strong interpersonal skills And that I could really see andra Um Being a teammate and joined the wrv su team and support the su office And more importantly support our students Through assisting and servicing our schools teachers staff and principals And so it's my pleasure to introduce you to andra and andra's going to introduce yourself Give a little background around the why and then it will be open for board questions Great and even andra Thank you jamie. Thank you for that introduction and uh nice to meet you all virtually Um, I guess this is the way that we do business currently. So it's um, it's good to see uh, so many faces to tonight Um, and get just have a chance to uh, tell you a little bit about myself and then i'm um excited to hear You know what questions you have for me I think of myself as a longtime educator and leader who's worked um kind of spent my career working on equity and education across the uh The education sector and that has if you you know see my resume that has been in a number of different parts of the education sector But really with that that strong through line of thinking about particularly kids that are um underserved or marginalized in different ways and thinking about how do we ensure that they have access to And engage in an excellent education. So that has really been uh, what has driven me in the work that i've done Starting as a first and second grade teacher in seattle washington is my my kind of my first uh steps into the the formal education sector um, but then working uh globally um, both setting up sort of libraries in guatemala to sort of helping uh countries that are working on um Ensuring that their school systems. Um, we're getting rebuilt after conflict Countries that had left their girls out of education and helping them Bring girls in so a lot again the you know the different groups that have been left out of education And then most recently working in um in district leadership as as jamie mentioned both in washington state And uh in massachusetts where i am now And in in those roles overseeing sort of the the teaching and learning side of the house the curriculum and instruction With uh anywhere between kind of 10 and 18 curriculum and program departments underneath me For the the schools 18 to 22 different schools In those districts and a lot of the work that I did There was sort of revising our assessment system So you've you all have talked a lot about sort of assessment tonight and thinking about what information and what data do we need Um to ensure that we really know how kids are doing And making sure that art we've got good data and data that um can inform Good decisions both at the you know at the classroom level with students and teachers But and families principles and all the way up so i've done a lot of uh work around that i've done A lot around um also revamping professional learning for adults And so a lot of the discussions, you know, we're really focused on kids and what they need to do But a lot of it um is working with our you know adults and helping them Improve their skills and their capacities In a rapidly changing world and uh, you all have experienced that a lot in the last year How do you how do you suddenly teach very differently? Um, but especially uh I've talked a little bit about you know around the importance of culturally sustaining pedagogy and racial equity and And how do we support adults in in that in any number of uh in scenarios? so That has been an important part of the work i've done as well as um thinking about how do we you know update and revise curriculum So that it meets, you know new standards And make sure that students are getting kind of a rigorous and joyful Experience in in the in the classroom. And so that's the that's the work that i've done in the last number of years and so I um was really this is uh We have been my family has been interested in uh in uh in a relocation to To vermont and particularly uh, you know central vermont upper valley and And have been just sort of looking at you know, are there opportunities there that fit? sort of my skills and passions and so saw this This opening when it was first posted and just was really excited to see Something where a collaborative team was really focused on the importance of Ensuring that all students get what they need when they need it I think of mtss is that as really an equity driven System for improving the educational opportunities for our students And so this felt like a really good fit and I've had some you know, good conversations both with the committee with the forum on thursday And with with the superintendent and excited about the the prospect of Adding my contributions to the the work you all are undertaking So hopefully that gives you a little bit of an idea and I'm loved to talk more and have any of your questions Thank you Do they have questions? We have a really quiet bunch Till you talk food service mid-mid-mid I just kid I'm just kidding food. We like to eat Right. Yeah And uh, if I may Um I confess that this position, you know, jamie clearly had a very clear idea in his head What this position was And what he was looking for that was different than what we've had before in a curriculum coordinator Um, and this mt. I'm still getting my head around mtss. I mean, I think it What I do understand is great, but I don't totally get it yet totally Do you have a clear sense and and maybe I missed this in the beginning of your introduction and forgive me if I did um Do you have a clear sense of of What he wants you to do I I think so I think and I think it will evolve over conversations that I mean the thing about uh, you know mtss It um is that it's sort of an um It's the an evolution of a lot of pieces of the education sector that you know, depending on how long you've been Doing this, um, you've heard about and talked about for a while and it and it really brings um more cohesion to it Um, it thinks it tries to eliminate an um a number of the silos that you know have sprung up and always will exist in sort of Organizations because you you get sort of expertise and and people go in direction but you know, it's um it connects to the conversation you um, you all had earlier around special services and And students, uh, who are getting it, you know special education services and and making sure that we don't continue to operate Sort of in these separate silos, but is looking at it sort of as an ecosystem for education um, and so I have um And that is the the part that's where the equity part fits because it really is thinking about all kids Um and and ensuring that they are getting the supports they need when they need them They're not getting more supports than they need because we want to support kids to do the best, you know, that they can But we're not missing kids either And really keeping those Tight tight cycles of looking at data and talking about it. And so I that is that's a big a big piece of it But it spans. I think a lot A lot of the pieces that may exist, um, really well in either in pockets or across schools But brings it into a much more cohesive Way of looking at all and having all those pieces kind of talk to each other Thank you Lisa go ahead Go ahead. All right. Lisa had her hand up. All right. Thank you. Um, could you please tell us a little bit about a project that you have worked with teachers to implement and Whether they originated the idea or you did how that was implemented and how um, you supported teachers in doing that work and um, right through assessment So what's an exciting project that you've worked on with them? Great. Thank you Uh, yes. No, I think um, I mean my work, uh with teachers have been I think some of the most rewarding work because I think you really see that the um, you know The work get into action very very quickly. I think the most most recent work was designing an instructional framework So we in my last district we set a vision for what we thought great teaching and learning should look like Um, and we sort of use the descriptors of rigorous and joyful and culturally responsive and then um I worked with um, you know, numerous groups of teachers instructional coaches Um, and you know, uh, sort of our curriculum coordinators at each um at each curriculum area each department To define what each of those terms really meant for us So even we can sort of throw around the words but really um figure out sort of at what level What those words meant um and then worked on and the part that was most actionable around that was worked on a set of um Reflective questions that teachers would use when they are planning for instruction to really think about is this You know is this individual um lesson plan is this unit? Is it is it rigorous? Is it joyful? And is it culturally responsive? And thinking about what kind of questions would you ask yourself? Especially if you had if you were thinking gosh, I know that this is like the most fun unit My kids walk away from it. They're always talking about how fun it is But is it does it doesn't meet our standards? Is it rigorous enough and just had a set of reflective questions that Teachers could ask themselves as they were going through and looking over you know that unit that they may have Taught for five years, but we're you know now questioning the rigor of or something They know met meets all the standards of Of um of the certain area, but maybe didn't have as much you know joy in it And so what kind of questions could they ask what you know when we talk about joy? It means you know Students have choice and they have ability to collaborate and you know all of those They're not just you know laughing all the time So there's a there's a kind of a really deep definition of joy So but all of those questions I worked with um with teachers to sort of devise and rework And make sure I mean I think culturally responsive is probably the ones where we had the most deep discussions Make sure we were really getting at even the earlier discussion you had was it is it an equity? Policy is an anti-racism policy and there's a big difference there And so looking at our questions in the same sort of way Which which things do we particularly want to call attention to and those are like the deepest conversations I had with teachers And then going out and working with them using those questions and they said come You know come watch this lesson I looked at these two questions as I was reframing it And this is how it helped and this is where it's still missing and so I think I was probably the most recent sort of experience of working really closely with teachers to come up with something that they could use really regularly In their in their daily practice to help with their own teaching and learning Thank you. I love that idea of rigorous joyful and culturally responsive Lessons. Thank you. Thanks and uh Yes I want to How do you feel about the the Job responsibility That says that you will Take on any responsibilities assigned by the superintendent. Are you okay with that? Uh, that that is a great question. Um, I think I have often had that in my job description I have never found it to be uh Uh Something that I got was abused or un or sys or anything I got that came out of the blue Um, so I had I had not doubled a question that at all. Um, I think is you know, I think it's important I think the the job of the superintendent is, you know, incredibly uh, uh, challenging Um and to have you know, someone that you know can can be um a partner in that and that work can be uh A helpful support in in in different parts. I think that's where I think that that that line comes from that There may be a meeting that needs help. There may be, you know, a scope of work. Um So that that that was the um sort of the The spirit with which I took the the that bullet point in the job description Okay, I that's an important part of this job and um As long as you're ready for it I think that's important More questions guys Everybody's quiet now so Thank you for coming and talking to us Thank you very much Appreciate it And uh, the board and I are going to head into executive session, but we will I will be in touch with you later this evening Sounds great. Thank you very much everyone Thank you. Nice to meet you. All right guys, so I need someone to make the motion I make the motion to help me with it jamie to empower the superintendent to um hire andra adam's um And negotiate a set salary into your agreement. Is that what you wanted? That's pretty good. I think that's fine All right, and that's seconded. All right, so to enter into negotiate. Sorry. I'm taking minutes to enter into negotiations. Is that Or just to hire her pending successful negotiations. Yeah hire pending successful fine All right, any discussion? I'm gonna call for the vote. All those in favor say I Any nays All right. Go ahead. Thank you all very much. It's a really exciting night. I thank for wrvsu Um jamie, did you have another executive? Yeah for personnel, it'll be brief Okay, I moved to the executive session for personnel reasons second at 808 Okay The recording stopped All right Anything else tonight jamie Uh, just no action taken. Yep. Back in session at 8 17. Yeah With no action taken All right, I guess That's all I've got for tonight just to check the future agenda items Um, we're gonna definitely get you those clear Numbers and what I was going to propose is that we would actually show you What is the budgeting around food service look like? If we keep that status quo versus if we move to the su I think that that will give you excuse me You know real clear comments to work from So we'll have that for you guys coming up at local districts and then at the su meeting And then also the energy committee will be on for discussion and possible action Um, and then of course you've got data reports next month in the audit as well So you'll get your su y data reports And we look to adopt the uh the audit Jamie is there been any, um We have anything set up for uh support staff negotiations I'm awaiting for them to initiate Um, and we've been so busy. I haven't looked for us to initiate My plan would be that we kick that out from march So I was going to reach out to the negotiations committee and start to get some dates from you guys Okay, I expect that they're going to send me a letter after break That's what we had tentatively discussed Is there a date in the statute that they have to send it to you by? I don't think so You have to Like September I don't know that one off the top of my head All right guys One more one more topic Kathy just a second please Given given our given our disparity of how we're operating for town meetings Are we going to have an issue with reorganization? Or are we just going to No, I mean we would wait like we did last year and reorganize once everyone Every district is completed. That's what we did last summer. My sense is we would do the same this summer So my sense is that reorg meeting based on when you guys Are tentatively discussing Warning your meetings would be in june Right As always our son is ahead of a curve Well, hopefully we will um have all budgets passed in man, right you won't have to go back and re-vote That's the goal Easy All right. All right. All right. Uh, I'd move to adjourn at 8 19 second All right guys Good night. Thank you. Have a good night Thank you. Jamie. Thank you