 I'd like to call the meeting to order. It is 5.05 on Wednesday, May 10th. Will we get any guests or any petitions either here or online? Does that make sure? Usually online. If there's anything, just raise a hand. The ATAC stake, well, then we will go directly to Gary for our facilities update. If you had anything you wanted to add, in addition to your written report? There really isn't anything that I would like to add. We've got a lot of things going on down there with the renovation of a nurse suite, our staff lounge, potentially some classroom improvement this summer. So there's a lot going on down there. And I won't be here to see it, but I'm excited to see where it goes. Robin, I'm sure it will tell me next year. All right, great. Did you have anything or are there questions about the facilities for Gary? Any questions online for Gary? All right. Then what about an update on recruitment? Again, thank you for your report. Anything in addition to that? We had a couple more kids accepted since I wrote this. So we are now over 150, which is good. That's a threshold for some state funding. We need that for six semesters to get some additional money. So potentially next year can be one and two. That's great. It is. What programs saw the additional students? So the Versify to Ag is really grown, is now full. Auto has a couple of spaces that we're holding for some kids. It's always one of our most popular programs. We've seen a growth in Ed Services, which is great, and dental assisting. Dental assisting is a two-year-old program, so it's always nice to see those numbers increase. And the same with Ed Services. That's great. And digital film also saw a pretty big increase as well. Congratulations. That's great. So any questions on, oh, do you want to talk about current enrollment before I ask for questions? Again, I know you had a great report. Thank you. We're at 143, which is up from a couple of years ago. I think that's probably where we'll see numbers steady out and be around the 150 to 155 range, which is good considering when you look at all the numbers that we have to pull from from our sending schools. We pull on a pretty decent percentage of students. So it's always good. So here in the room or online, any questions for Gary on recruitment or enrollment? OK. QIA Group, we're going to get right through this. So we'll go to our reports. I know there is discussion of the attendance policy that was enclosed. What points did we need to discuss on that? So attendance and the discussion around it, we started in leadership team two weeks ago. It extended into our staff meeting. We thought that it might be a short conversation, but we knew that it had the potential to really take off, which it has. And we'd really like feedback, as would our staff, on two questions. I pose this to the staff. And we're going to meet again, of course, to come and boil what we've talked about down into something that we can put on paper. What is an absence, and why does attendance matter? And I think that I don't want to speak for the rest of the district, but I know that this is a district conversation as well. So some of the feedback here tonight could possibly be used in other areas. So I'll open that up for anybody to give feedback on. So I guess my first question is, there's not a policy in place on what attendance looks like for the school district? So I can speak for the tech center. We have, there was a policy before COVID that kind of laid things out. COVID, as we know, messed everything up and all semblance of normalcy. So we're trying to come back to a firm policy. And right now, in our handbook, around 20 absences could get you dismissed from program. Of course, that depends on a lot of factors, medical issues, that type of stuff. But there's really not a firm laid out policy. And I think that's what we are going for, and we're trying to hammer out with the understanding that there's always gray area. But why is attendance important, especially at RTCC? And then what are we going to consider an absence? Those can be loaded questions, potentially. But I would love the feedback. Yes, Anda? Yeah, maybe just curious about, when you talk about attendance, and maybe this is what you're looking for, Clarity, are you talking about daily attendance, or like period or class attendance? Do you differentiate between those? Or is if someone misses something or they count, is that one of 20 total? Does that make sense as a question? Since we're a full day center, we take attendance in the morning. And of course, we note when a student's late, or when they leave early, and that type of stuff. And now the way that we do our scheduling with ELA, with humanities and math, attendance is taken during those blocks as well. I'm unsure what the schedule is going to be like next year, and how that's going to be handled. That's for Nika and the rest of the team to decide. But I think, in my discussions with her, she would like to have something vetted so that we can move forward, so she can have that July 1, or as close to July 1 as possible to move forward with. And that's the old policy laid out, full days, absences versus tardies and early dismissals. It kind of got down almost to the hour, which I would be open for discussion on that. Do we need to get that exact? Or do we just go with days? And what's a day? The discussion was actually a pretty good one around the idea that, hey, for preparing the students for work on actual job sites, then maybe our attendance policies should kind of mimic what private industry does. And so a lot of the discussion was kind of focused on that, which I thought was a really kind of neat idea. In terms of district policy, we followed the state law. At certain days, we've got to send a letter home to parents and let them know when another threshold is crossed. And we actually have to report the students, the ones that are compulsorily have to be here off to the court system, try to get the court system involved. District-wide, we actually have very good attendance. But the problem is that the handful of students that we have that need the court involvement, the courts are overworked, so hard to get into, and they don't typically follow up. And so at the district level, we want to put things in place that are going to help deal with those specific challenges. But I thought where they started the discussion in terms of let's mimic what they would experience in private industry was a really good one. There was a lot of good feedback from that conversation. And it's interesting to hear their input. And as professionals, we get 18 sick days and three personal days. So should the student policy mimic that? And there's a lot of really good conversation. We have a lot of really good people from industry that really shed light on the whole industry side of life. And I think working with a lot of businesses in Vermont, they have to be more adaptive to absences as well. Can they do work from home? Maybe not their full job, but if they're sick with COVID, I know a lot of businesses were looking like, well, can you do some paperwork while you're recovering? You know, not be fully absent, so it wasn't considered an absence. Is that something where I know the high school is very based on Google software for Google Docs and Google Classroom, so kids that are sick potentially could still log in from home, maybe get some work done. Is that something that RTC could implement? If it's a medical absence or a health concern absence in certain circumstances, can we work with the student and the parent? If they have high speed internet, is there things? I know tech is more hands-on. It's really beneficial to be in the classroom, but that might be one thing to talk about. We expect so many hours or days in the classroom, but if a medical condition comes up, we can help. And there has been some of that that we've done. Excellent. But it almost depends on the program that the student is in. Right. And there's always book work to do and some reading and reflection and humanities and math that can be done. They do miss that hands-on instruction. You know, we're potentially looking at ways that we can make that up. If a student were to miss three hours in a week, is there a time that we could get them with the instructor to make that up? I mean, it's hard to recreate labs, but a lot of the talk that we had was around safety. I mean, some of these things you have to be in to really get to learning. So how can we meet in the middle and figure some of those things out? Yeah, okay. So Sam and anything that you wanna add or ask? Yeah, sure. This is a pain point in our business right now because we don't have the privilege of letting everybody work from home. So our theme right now is to, we're redoing our policies on sick leave and PTO and with regard to the pandemic and just need for bodies to be in the building. So I would say it sounds like you guys have talked about it and I've had a good conversation. I just say my two cents would be whatever it is, make sure it's accountable. So it has some rigor to it and you can uphold it. Otherwise it's just gonna be frivolous. A little bit about if they establish kind of a threshold that beyond which there are potential consequences that there's a need for some sort of new process that the student comes in kind of explains why they have the absences that they do. But I was kind of thinking about it on the drive over was the idea that in the workplace, one of the ways to possibly to determine if students can exceed that threshold is we apply the same rules in terms of family medical leave that we do for employees, right? So if they've got that sort of documentation then that would be reasonable and probably acceptable especially if we're trying to mimic what happens to our place. I mean maybe you flip the script. Maybe you say for good attendance, you get XYZ, you get Friday afternoon off. I don't know, you get to have fun. You get to have a gift card to wait and grab. I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there. But maybe there's something that you could do to reinforce coming to school besides being that much farther in education to be ready for the real world but a lot of businesses are doing incentive programs for good attendance, going above and beyond. I mean, do we flip the script and come up with a reward system for lack of a better term for attendance? Incentive, yeah. I think I'm a little more old school on this and that I think when there's a culture that is one that kids wanna be a part of and it's open and there is motivation to attend. When there is enthusiasm in the classroom, I hear a lot about the amount of absences that teachers do have. And they're like, well, our teachers aren't here. So, and that trickles down to the students. And so I think when there's that culture where I want to learn, I wanna be engaged, this is my future. And I think for the tech center, we have that more because so often that student is going directly to the workforce. And so to be able to get as much as you can get in those days, and the day is already kind of short. I mean, it's nine to two and we're cramming a lot in there. So I guess that my opinion is gonna be different in that I think attendance is mandatory. I mean, obviously if you're sick or if you have a family medical leave situation, my appendix burst and I'm gonna be out for this amount of time or I had a death in my family, those to me are all unique situations that are brought forth to the administrative team to be managed and approved taken to make up the work somehow. So I think that attendance should be more rigid in the expectation because where I work, you don't go to work every day, there's patients not being taken care of. I mean, the snowball effect is huge on being there every day outside of the normal kind of things why I'm not. So I would look more to something more strict on expectations for my feedback. The work could be something like at the end of the year. You've had perfect attendance all the years so during the recognition ceremony, right? That celebration or perfect attendance for four years, I mean, that should be something that's celebrated and recognized. When I agree with Ashley, you're setting the expectation of what's gonna have to be met in the workforce. If you're going for the nursing degree, it's expected that you're gonna be there. Even if you continue your education and you go to a university or a higher education purpose, you're expected to be there and have attendance as well. I do know there used to be a perfect attendance policy of some sort, but that was another thing that kind of fell with COVID. I don't know exactly what benefits they got with that perfect attendance, but it was something that they used to calculate every quarter, kids who had perfect attendance for the quarter would receive a certificate. I don't know if there was something bigger than the certificate, I can't speak to that. But my first year here was coming back from COVID and they were like, we can't do this because we can't even expect everybody to be here because we're having them out for five and 10 days at a time. So it was there at one point. I just don't know how high of a reward it was. Well, the students might not understand this now, but if you put that on your resume, going into the job force that you had really, you got recognized for good attendance in your tech center, in your school, as someone that's looking for employees right now, that's a major, like, oh, you showed up, oh, great. Thank you. You're in this pile, yay. And explain to them, like, this is what employers look for when picking a candidate to come home for them. And that? So I like this discussion, we're definitely having some little conversations down at White River Valley. It feels like the days of perfect attendance that were gone, right? I don't know if that's the exact right goal that we should be setting. I think, so I think there one, because I think you miss something and you have no control over it. And then that idea of even trying to get there by the end of the year is gone in October for some reason. But I do think there could be a band of somewhere where that's considered excellent attendance that there's gotta be some wiggle room in there because I think for a variety of reasons, people are gonna miss something. As we all do, right? I don't think making 177 days or 175 is gonna be possible, but I think setting some sort of expectation of this is what we're aiming for. Someone mentioned earlier, right? Like there's just thinking about sick days and personal days that adults have, something in between there that recognizes that, I think would be good. And I think thinking too about, I like the comment about rather, it's about the culture. People, kids wanting to be there, students wanting to be there and learning everything. So how do we continue to lead with the why behind it? This can't just be a compliance piece. There has to be the purpose of wanting to be in the building and getting all of the training and the learning that the students are getting and continuing to sort of lead with that rather than this is just about compliance. Cause I think students at this age are gonna start making different choices if it feels like that's what it's about, rather than about their learning and growth. How close are we to capacity with students? Are we at capacity of what we can take? We're about 50 off. Okay. So I guess I should have premised this conversation. We have a few kids that are struggling with attendance. We really don't have attendance issues like we have in the past. The other reason I ask is if we're at capacity and people got turned down from coming from a different school and we chose these students that are here and they're not meeting that expectation of coming to school but somebody else was waiting to come in. Like I, you know, I said expectations again, like you're being picked to come here. Like we're choosing you to come here. We expect you to come here and participate. I mean, that may be another way to frame it up when we're doing the. I mean, there's definitely programs that are maxed out. There are not all of them, but there are programs that are maxed out. So those programs would be good examples of that. Yeah. Like you should most definitely be here because there are kids who didn't get in because. When applied for taking 12, you're one of the 12. Congratulations. Here's our expectations. You know, these other eight couldn't get in but you are expected to show up again as good attendance as you can. Medical stuff all that happens. But just kind of like, hey, you made it. Good job. But now this is what we expect. Any other feedback for Gary? Besides for my opinion. Yeah, I've always got that. Yeah, you can just come in and give me all your opinion. Oh, I don't know if you want that. I mean, I only have like seven weeks left. So. So come on in all you want after seven weeks. The door is open. Yeah. I don't have anything else. You know, I appreciate the opportunity. My first to last one here. My door is always open and call email with whatever questions you have or feedback to really help that place hit its potential because it's special. And I think we're just, we're getting to where we're gonna see it. Great. He's been doing a really good job of getting things set up for Nika in the fall and kind of foundational parts and pieces that need to be in place. And so it's very grateful for the effort and the work that you put in. Thank you. Lane, did you have anything in addition to the enclosed reports that you wanted to share? Or touch upon? Basic stuff. They're, you know, financially, you know, we keep track of the financials at this point in time. 10 months of the fiscal year it up. So we would expect about 17% of the budget to be left. They're at like 35%, they are well on the black. So that's, they're in good shape right now. Eventually you're gonna touch on the reserve request for a new vehicle. Typically what happens, why that's here is it's appropriate under the state regs is that the advisory board, you know, at least is considered it and gives a recommendation to the OSSD board that that recommendation is considered a little bit later. So one of the things that they're doing is they're looking to replace an Acadia SUV. I think it's like 2006. Yeah, and it's... It's pretty beat up. Yeah, it's got some body integrity issues with Rust and whatnot. It is more than time to replace it. So just so folks know. Put your order in now. Yep. Yeah, it's, yeah, there's... 10 months later, some of the other... We had two years, two years wait during the middle of the COVID. Yeah, some of the other replacements, it was crazy. It's gotten better, but it's not perfect. And as I think Gary kind of alluded to is the, a lot of the facilities work that is going on in there right now, they're swapping the staff room space. The staff are great. You said, yeah, go ahead. The staff room, the faculty room space for the nurse's office, to give the nurses a little bit more area as well as it's in a more private location. So that work is ongoing. They began a discussion, which has long been needed about the seven bay garage. Some people may know where that is. It's out in the field there. It's used for storage. That old garage is, it doesn't have a foundation under it. It's literally bare ground. You know, there's holes in the walls and chinks in the boards that surround it. The roof is starting to come undone. And so the discussion is, you know, do we just remove it at this point in time and not replace it or do we replace it with something else? So they're in discussions right now that they do want to continue with the storage, but the storage needs are different depending upon the team that uses it. You know, in some cases, you know, it needs to be much more, you know, waterproof and temperature controlled. In some cases it does not. So I expect to see kind of movement on that and that'll come back to this board for approval once a plan is in place. But pretty much, I think the only other thing to kind of put on people's mind is that as the legislature is looking at transitioning to providing construction funds, potentially, this complex RTCC and RUHS, you know, where when the state did its study were found to be the buildings, the closest to the end of their useful life across the state. And so we've been having some minor discussions about, you know, fighting and building a new facility to house both. And so I think one of the things that we'll bring up at the board tonight is to see the interest that's there and may be able to start moving forward, at least on some studies to see what can be done. You know, looking for potential space, get some architectural advice in here, get some architectural drawings done of what it could look like. Starting to have some very direct communications with the community about, you know, what they desire if this happens. Does anybody inquire to BTC what their future plans is with that facility up there? We've actually discussed that. I think actually I'd even brought that up a couple of years ago at one point in time. There's the possibility that as they're looking to give up some of the buildings and some of the space up there because they don't need as much, that, you know, it could be possible potentially to buy, you know, a good chunk of that space. The problems that would have to be examined as part of the study is the fact that they have done, you know, it's been deferred maintenance on a lot of those buildings. So, you know, getting in, you know, what would be the cost of actually purchasing it and then what would be the additional cost of renovations and things to get it up to our needs and to deal with any of the deferred maintenance that's happened. So it's definitely a good possibility, but there's a lot of discussion, a lot of study that would have to happen around it. Just being at tech school for the tech center, you know, it just would be kind of cool if, you know, they had plans on doing something different and you have the automotive, you have the ag, you have, you know, mechanical engineering, you've got a nice gym, you've got the pool, you could bring in a swimming team, you could, there's a lot of possibilities right off the interstate, right up on the hill, so. I didn't know if. Yeah, no, like I said, I think that the big thing is to see my goal tonight is to try to get the OSSD board to charge me with beginning that study. And then those are questions that will be a part of it. Cool, yeah. Does that refer to Act 250 for your school? I have no idea. Here, I think the initial plan that has been talked about, actually started some conversations with the community at the beginning of the year about it, was the idea that, you know, we need a place for the kids to continue to go to school while construction commences. So, you know, one of the ideas was having the engineers to come out and do a study, you know, I guess under Act 250 would be like the watershed studies and things that would have to happen about how it affects the drainage, especially around the river here, but it potentially to build on what are now the athletic fields, so that this complex can still be used while that construction is happening. When that is complete, move the kids over, this complex comes down and the athletic fields are put out in front of the building here, which will give us an opportunity to really revamp the fields and make sure they're up to snuff and they're safe. Those fields have been fantastic, but there's a lot of maintenance that they really need to make sure that the ground hasn't become compacted, which leads to injuries when the kids fall, and so it would be a good way to kind of start from scratch. And then, you know, if we're gonna spend 170 million, 175 million on the complex potentially, you know, do we wanna spend an extra 900,000 to put in a turf field with lights and, you know, be a central location within the state for people to come and have their, you know, their big competitions and kind of end-to-season events. You know, it could be a game changer for a lot of things. There's something that the Brunswick School could use as well if we play in the turf and the bigger fields and potentially collaborate. The turf is great. It usually lasts about 10 years, the schools I've been in, where we put it in. It does require some maintenance. It does have to be replaced after about 10 years of use, but it drains incredibly well. There's, you can use it year-round. The lights are fantastic. But Vermont, one of the nice things is that even if you've got the grass, it heals really quickly. It's one of the nice things about Vermont. So if we had the lights out there, as long as the neighbors were in agreement, you know, we had an agreement with the neighbors and when they could be on and when they needed to be off, that in itself would be a big boom. It seems like Randolph's really trying to increase their rec area with the mountain biking and the pool and the basketball courts and just everything in Randolph, you know, he's got the track. They ever get the hotel built, you know? This would be an ideal place to, like I said, central in Vermont to do those big sporting events. Yeah, that'd be great. All right, so you touched on financials. Thank you for that. We do have a consent agenda. I say we're going to have to pull the two pieces apart to approve the minutes and then unless we want to vote on the reserve fund requests, unless we have additional questions on that, we want to keep it together. So we can either keep it together or pull it apart. Anybody? I'm keeping it together unless there's an argument to pull it apart. All right, then let's move forward on the consent agenda. I need a motion to approve the minutes of February 8th and to approve the reserve fund request to purchase a new Acadia to replace an aging Tahoe. I approve that request. You make a motion. I'll make a motion. Thank you. Is there a second? I'll second. Thank you. Now I have to ask if there's any questions before we take a vote. Any questions on those two things? Here, sorry, go ahead, Sam. I just had one quick question. What's the reason it has to be an SUV? So we transport a lot of students and a lot of these programs are very mobile. So an SUV works really well for that. We have our pickups and our newly acquired one ton duly with the dump box. That Tahoe gets used quite a bit to, especially for our dental students and their externships and our work-based learning coordinator also uses that to go and visit businesses and take students on shadows and that type of stuff. And it doesn't require a special license? It doesn't require a special license. That's kind of sad. I'm more of a Ford guy myself, so it pains me to see this Acadia, but I'll trust Howie on his judgment. It would be nice if we could have kind of an activities bus where everybody could have their license and if we could halt everybody in a program at once, but I think that might be a little ways off. What we do, just to put it out there, we can talk with Nick about this as follow up. Our, we're one of the few districts that still does its own buses. We don't contract out. Danny has the capacity up there. He does the training to train the bus drivers to get their CDLs. Perfect. If anybody is interested in going through that training with him, you know, he does it regularly as we have new staff come on that need the license. So, yeah. As you on must keeps dropping the price of Tesla, I hope you guys keep one in mind. We'll charge you the electric bill. How's that? Noted, Sam. We'll plug it in at your facility. All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and take a vote. So all in favor of approving the consent agenda, please say aye or raise your hand. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That was unanimous, Robin. Thank you. Any other items we need to discuss as a group this evening? Is there any other trade programs that maybe students have had shown interest in that we don't provide that we should talk about implementing in the next few years? Plumbing has been brought up to me, not so much from students, but from more like a need in the community of having plumbers in the area. But is there anything else that? Plumbing and HVAC, definitely. HVAC, yeah. There's been some discussion, but I don't know because the potential is there. I don't know what the student interest would be in the past. The HVAC has been discussed before, but with the added component of solar panel installation combined with heat exchangers, right? Because that's a growing industry at this point in time. The other piece that's been discussed is the electric vehicle certifications and being able to get an electric vehicle and how they could start, how to do those network and those repairs. Okay. So, yeah. Can you talk about implementing solar to if we were building a new building that, yeah. Yeah, we had actually examined it for the district four or five years ago prior to COVID. It's hard to keep all the time straight anymore. The problem at the time was Green Mountain Power and the regulators had a limit on how much you could generate on a site. Okay. And so when we looked at that compared to what our needs were, it just wasn't gonna be cost-effective. If we could build it and cover all our needs at once, that's awesome. And so one of the things that I've asked the facilities directors to do this actually a couple months ago, so I gotta follow up with them, was to find out if those regulations had changed in terms of how big a generation site you can have. Good. Any other classes? I mean, I know in my line of work, having announcers or people that know how to speak articulate on the air is getting few and far between. To put that into a younger generation, podcasting, live streaming influencers, it seems like there's a big interest in the younger generation to explore that. Would that be anything to revisit as far as maybe like with digital? I think that's why you see such a bump in digital platforms. But maybe implement how to speak and how to prepare like what you're gonna talk about. And we find there's a big disconnect with people coming to us be like, I love talking. Yeah, but you know, to be ready and prepare and I'm not gonna say. And some of those things, what I've recommended for next year is that the work-based learning coordinator teach at least a day a week. Yep. And teach those things. I mean, I was an ag teacher for about 10 years and an FFA advisor and that's what we really hammered on was public speaking and all of those soft skills that people are looking for. Perfect. So I mean, I've recommended that kind of be put in for everybody, not just one particular program. Well, and there's like WCBR in town, they do our high school basketball games. It'd be great if like a student was like calling the game or just practicing and using that platform. I'm with DEB, we do games all over the state as well. We're always looking for help or to teach people how to do it. So, and then doing their own podcast and stuff. It's a big media shift in the last three years podcasting. So, I know kids have interest. Is there an FFA program here? There is. Really? That's great. An diversified ag. Okay. Is it active? I mean, there are some incredible life skills. It's getting to be more that way. It's great. Ryan and I, I was the pre-tech instructor last year for those that don't know. So I was helping Ryan kind of build that. I had a very successful program in Iowa and I know FFA's a lot different there than here. But I've been talking with him because he wants that program to be. I mean, it can only be as big as his actual program is, but wants it to be active and successful. So I've tried to give him some guidance and input on that. And I think it will get there. That's fantastic. I love FFA, it does so much for students, but it'll get there. I agree. That's exciting. We're preparing for an FFA conference. Convention, we'll be here next Friday. It's great. Those public speaking opportunities at FFA are huge. So that's great. Thanks. On a related topic, we're recommending for hire another math teacher who has a significant background in business and will be able to teach accounting and entrepreneurship and using spreadsheets and other things that will be related to all the programs. And so while we're adding these extra English teacher and extra math teacher, we're hoping to build more of these skills that'll be universal, like you said, public speaking, right, and also entrepreneurship. Excellent. A lot of, it seems like a lot of younger people are having that frame of mind of being an entrepreneur versus just going into the workforce. Yeah, they're calling it the gig economy. Yeah. Even talking to seniors who are graduating this year, friends of the family, I'm like, it's like, I'm gonna go into business and marketing. I'm like, great, what are you gonna work for after college? It's like, myself. Great, you know, it seems to be like a shift. So, sorry, Sam. I know you're looking for workers. I know, I know. Um, so is there any reason for an executive session? No? All right, well, with no further business, we can adjourn at 5.45.