 Did you hear that? Yep, thank you. Rochester Stockbridge Unified District Court of School Directors special meeting Tuesday, January 12th, 2021, getting used to that. 6 p.m. by Google Meet agenda. We've called to order significant adjustments to the agenda. We need an executive session at the end to talk about some of the details of the negotiations with the town of Rochester Select Board and new information we've just received from our lawyer. I also this is not the discussion items is not in the order that I sent it in so we're going to have to juggle around. I want to get to consultation with lawyer first so that's going to become 3-1 and I want that to ride into the amendment and then we're going to get after the amendment is all dealt with and hopefully voted on. I'd like to get that done first while we're fresh and then we'll go on to the other recommended recommendations or the action items and then the future action items and then the pending items. We'll go through all of them tonight but I feel like with Dina here we want to talk about this item first so 3-1 will be consulting with lawyer on the amendment. Even two things. One is Carl has his hand up and the second one is is that there should there should be a motion to amend the agenda. Oh okay we've never done it that way good enough we'll do it. I move that the agenda be altered by moving 3-4 to 3-1 and renumbering the rest of those and by adding an executive session at six we'll put it between six and seven to make that seven. Could I have a motion to do that please? Oh Carl raise your hand yeah go ahead Carl. Can I request that 3.1 the consultation with the lawyer be in executive session? Well we've already talked with her at length in a public meeting on these topics. Okay I just did I you know it's it is it is a sensitive subject and you know sometimes we want to talk we want to talk in in executive session. Yeah what I've heard is that yeah as I say because we already did talk about it it's already public it's already out there and all of it. I find I have no problem speaking in public. Okay thank you. Can I have a motion to to adjust agenda as suggested? So moved. By Megan second by Jenny. Jenny thank you Jenny welcome both of you. Good all right well then let's get to this. Would it be useful to look at the amendment and ask questions from it or do you have some general questions those of you who wanted to talk to our lawyer do you want to start off with that? Carl raise your hand I see it. Yeah I wanted to understand specifically I think part of what confused me so much at our meeting last week was that my recollection and understanding of numerous conversations during the course of the developing of the merger agreement and then post the merger agreement was that while there could be while there could be a requirement that for example a certain number of board members board members come from a certain from one town or the other that because it's a unified district all the votes have to be taken in a unified manner. The same with bonding we cannot we cannot have we can only bond as a combined district we could not have a bond article that was only voted on and paid for by Rochester to cover Rochester buildings. We could and similarly in Stockbridge because again the the rationale that we were given was that it has to be you know because it's a unified district everyone in the district gets to vote on things so I'm curious why my misunderstanding is so big and then secondly does that then also mean that I misunderstood the issue around bonding could we also be amending the mergers of agreement the merger of agreement to allow there to be a bond that was voted on and paid for by all all towns in the district an option to have a bond that is voted on and paid for by only the residents of Stockbridge that would concern Stockbridge located property and a bond and a bond option that would only be voted on by Rochester residents that would concern Rochester situated property and would only be paid for by Rochester residents that was one of the things that we really thought we wanted to do at the beginning in the in the articles of agreement when we were first talking about it because the concept of Stockbridge paid for Stockbridge Rochester pays for Rochester and we were told that that that you know no no you have to you have to vote as as you know you have to vote as in a unified manner because you're a unified district would you like me to respond to that I think that's why you're correct yeah Carl those are actually very good questions so one is that no for a bond issue that's different the issue is and I put up on the screen there they're two specific parts of title 16 which talk about election of board of directors there's the one for your initial board and then there's 706 K which talks about your election of district officers after your initial board was seated you can in fact it's interesting when you look at the one for the initial board of directors it says nothing within this provision shall limit doing it at large so there's an assumption of when you initially do it that you would do it separately that you would you would do it separately you can amend under title 16 under the union school district provisions under title 16 you can in fact elect your directors nominate and elect them from the town to represent the town into the union school district what I pointed out to the committee how you're set up now makes that very difficult if you want to do that because you do things in a non-covid year by floor meeting while it's doable it's an unwieldy beast to do it by floor meeting right you do all of your business by floor meeting so you can in effect modify that the bond the bond issue is different because what you're talking about and within the bond issue within the statute itself talks about how it's to be voted on and you're talking about property which I also had a brief discussion I think by email about some confusion of some of the articles of agreement the properties so the Stockbridge school and the Rochester school are properties of the union school district they are not properties of individual towns and it's not a representation issue so I think your questions are very good I will say that I think there are more union school districts who do the nominate from the nominate from the individual town and then at large you can in fact do nominate at large and vote at large so there are different ways that you can in fact do it so this is I would say not a standard that you would find it's not a frequent occurrence that that it's done this way I know there was some confusion about whether or not one of your other union school districts within the SU does it does it this way they do not first branch I think was brought up to me first branch does it where they nominate by town and then do at large we have I've seen one of our committee members shared with us the section of Granville Hancock Bethel Roylton and Chelsea Tunbridge and all of them have nominations and elections I believe from from the town from the individual town so that's great Granville does I have to do separate ballots for Granville my recollection is Chelsea Tunbridge which would be first branch does nominations and and then I think does and does it by at large but it is possible to do it okay elected at large yeah I see what you're saying yep nominated locally all right um yeah okay do you have further questions on that Carl I don't know if that helps Carl um I have further questions more on on on the uh the the bond side of things and whether or not um the fact that Carl will get gets right a first refusal but I will put those together and into an email and send and send that on because that's really not germane to this discussion well it's it's it's going to be because there is some talk about bond votes and this very issue about you know individual bonds is one of the items that comes up later in our hot topics list um so you know having more information on that is is is very appropriate um so that's not something that I've prepared a formal opinion on but if you want me to like I can do yeah it's not an action item for tonight but it is definitely something we want to talk about tonight and and bring to you later uh somebody else raised a hand was it Megan or was it Amy it's me I'm sorry Megan Megan thank you yep I just want to just thank Carl for bringing it up because being on the study committee I felt what what we just heard is very different than what we heard during the study committee and I'm glad to hear that there is wiggle room to uh adjust these in a more fair and balanced way so thank you well one of the things we've discovered a little bit and Dina will point this out when we actually look at the amendment is there is language in the articles of agreement that's sort of like hey wait what's that and you realize it's about the setup of the district and that in the articles there's this often a distinction between how things are set up initially and then how things can go forward and that that's part of this issue now what we heard maybe that's what you heard before I don't know but did you say Dina that was 706k was what was the it was something in the law that was the one that said going forward oh you're muted Dina sorry I'm more comfortable on zoom and I also have a dog who's like seriously another night meaning yes so hold on and he's right here it was 706k under title 16 which talks about and I can bring it back up hold on and let me mute myself I have a yoga teacher who's the dog walks in the middle of the class pretty much regularly it's just something to get used to okay do we have further questions general questions before we get to the specifics of this I just have one I just have one question that came up last time I guess mostly directed at Dina I did get a response from Jamie Kanarney after the last meeting but I just wanted to confirm that that we can make an amendment to the agreement without I guess confirming that we wouldn't need state approval since this is a document that was lost by the state so in terms of the provision that you're talking about making an amendment to which is article seven of your articles of agreement you do not need to have approval from the state board of education there is an exception to not having to get state board approval so in order in other words you have to get state board of approval if you're going to be modifying so if you decide that you're you're going to be modifying how you deliver and support and maintain education for for kids so if you're going to say we're not going to do you know kindergarten through you know sixth grade in our own school you would have to be getting state approval for that but not on this issue I'm sorry justine just want to clear that up Jenny are you taking notes as is usual yes I'm taking notes thank you thank you thank you justine for the question though we did talk a long time ago about getting people to do that for you so you could be engaged but we'll get to that another night good further questions for dina on this item so I think we've established that dina has established that we have the right to do this or that we can do this the next would be how we do this and what are the specifics um no and we've lost dina so um I think this is a good time lindy why don't you put up the oh wait I have one more we'll talk about the the the the the generals I did have I was want to have a follow-up specific question about I want to make sure I understand dina what you were saying we amend the article's agreement to do this we get we get a you know vaccine in herd immunity and we're back meeting meeting in a in in a in a in a regular format you know town hall style style meeting what this is binding us to do is to have each of our town clerks at different sides of whichever facility we're meeting in and the Rochester people line up on the Rochester side and the Stockbridge people line up on the Stockbridge side correct or we would have or we would have to re re-re amend the article's agreement to say that we're restoring it so I yeah it would be something along the lines of you know checking people when they came in or or or doing something if you maintained doing everything by a floor vote one of the things that I pointed out to the committee was that if that I said I think that if you're going to do this you also have to put forward bare minimum are you going to do the election of school board directors by Australian ballot and that would be as I remember Dean you saying that has to be a separate article yes so the second separate amendment so it's a it's a it's a separate article for the same vote so so in other words Carl this year under act 162 last year I think it was act 94 92 we get to have a one a one-year Australian year without having to to to warrant it and do a well change change the way we ballot we'd have to you can't you you you have pre-covid right Dana we had to either be Australian or be floor vote you couldn't you couldn't you had to change your bylaws or change your your charter or whatever it is formally you couldn't just do that on a whim you actually have to take it to the vote of the electorate and and it says that within your articles of agreement in order to put Australian balloting in place so if it was a non-covid year this year and you were doing the floor meeting and you put it in place at your annual meeting you put the vote for your annual meeting it would be starting in 2022 okay so if we had a so we would either need to can we can we have an amendment as part of this process that does not have to go before the voters to move uh the election of officers to being you know the sole Australian ballot item or is that we have that we have to take to the electorate correct we say here's here's an article at the annual meeting that says will will the towns of stock where the voters of our of our said approve voting by Australian ballot for officers of the board so yeah so there are three things primarily which can be voted on by Australian ballot right so it's public questions elections and budgets right i think white river unified school district votes on their budget perhaps by Australian ballot or they vote on their directors by Australian ballot and their budget is it a for me i'm not i apologize i looked at your stuff not theirs so um i had provided and and that was part of what i wanted to to bring up to the board which is i had provided that article a proposed article two and the language is very specific under title 17 that you need to use um excuse me about having an article that would be voted on this year that would be in essence having you do Australian ballot starting in 2022 you have to take Australian ballot both under your articles of agreement and under title 17 to vote of the electorate okay i think sorry why did what are those two different things what's this article 17 so no i'm sorry to take to do Australian balloting under you have to under title 17 which is the election laws okay you have to take that to that has to be a vote of the electorate okay so it also happens to say it in your articles of agreement that any you know any if you were going to change from a floor meeting process it references the provision of title 17 about having to go to the electorate for that so to be clear we probably need to talk about two separate amendments here we had the first amendment is whether we're going to separate out the nomination and election of school directors per town and then the second would be from now on or from 2022 we will be doing Australian ballot for election of school board members this is great so yeah so i so i want to be clear and it's a sort of what my job is that words are very distinct to me what they mean so an amendment is when i use the term amendment i'm talking about your articles of agreement yes so you would have to be amending well you don't have to but you you asked me about amending article seven so that school board directors were both nominated and voted on by their town of residence by the qualified voters in their town of residence that's an amendment to me title 17 which talks about invoking and taking to the electorate the decision of whether or not things will be done by Australian balloting yes it is not an amendment to me that's that's a it's a provision under the law so i want to be very clear i get confused people what what do we call it then that second thing is it a motion is it a article is it a it's an article for for it's an article for the electorate the qualified voters or for the electorate to vote on great so to be clear we have an amendment and an article that we need to discuss tonight and approve or disprove or disapprove of both and i think within that there needs to be just some discussion about you know do we do this Australian ballot thing now or do we you know put it off to later the idea is you'll see from the warning when we get to it is that we're talking about doing this don't tell meeting day and not waiting for this to happen to the school board meeting that's what the warning says now so that's a discussion we can have as well are there any further questions general questions about this before we look at the specific amendment first and then we'll look at the um article second any further questions not articles sorry what's the word well yeah i mean yeah they're both technically in a warning in articles what is the amendment the article for an amendment the other one is the article for a vote yeah that's how i would phrase it article for amendment and i want to be very clear Ethan that if you put these two articles out they're standalone articles yep yep and so you may wind up with Australian balloting for your school board directors and not and not wind up with the residence issue or you may wind up with the residence issue and not Australian balloting yep and and as we discussed in the committee i think that the residence issue without the Australian balloting is going to make for a very long town meeting or annual school district meeting well they're usually ours we used to be very very very fast anyway because everything was Australian balloting so not much happened good um Carl you have your hand up uh yes thank you um i'm sorry i thought that the first part of that the changing of the articles of agreement to reflect residency i thought you said that you just said i didn't have to go before the state it does have to go before the voters yes okay so that was i'm sorry i as i as i as i stated my question i answered it for myself good you did one one of the things that came up carl is that you all did and i think it's caused some of the confusion that has built up to this crescendo of where people don't necessarily understand the specificity of of how bad lawyers truly are but you're warning particularly and there are other union school districts that i dealt with in your original warning for the creation of your unified school district your union school district purposefully only put in some articles articles which have to go to the electorate and purposefully left some which are board decisions article seven has to go to the electorate so i want to be clear on that um and that's why your warning doesn't list out all 16 articles and in fact had had an article that said regarding the report and formation plan oh wow this is a big one we've been talking about for weeks holy small and and and that's what that's what that provision in your warning for the establishment of your union school district the legal purpose of that because you only have two articles that actually have to be part of your warning to to create a union school district and that's election of directors and it's the necessary districts that need towns and districts that need to be in there so that's also under title 16 under the 700 section which deals with union school districts so let me be clear because what you just said has a lot of influence on some of the things we talk about later and about the articles of agreement committee anyway and this is slightly out of order but i want to do it now are you saying that the articles that are in the warning in the report the ones that are not in the warning are ones that are at discretion of the board more mostly can you identify those i i would have to go through it and i was trying to find your your your warning for it and i know that my my office prepared the warning but yes what i'm saying is with some exceptions right that when you got to i believe it was the article 11 on your warning perhaps that has that you know we will be the school the school board will be governed by the report and formation plan yes which was approved by the state board of education what was left not in your warning with the exception of any voted warning you mean your voted warning for the establishment of your union school district with the exception of anything that has a separate and distinct statutorily um created reason to have to go to the electorate was leaving it to the board being able to make the decision well that doesn't answer a big question okay and and so i also probably and it didn't hit me even until i think one of your last emails last week when i said wait a minute um what that also causes and i want to be very clear is that if you take something which a board has the authority to make the decision on and you even and you decide out of uh that you want to do things transparently that you want to get some input from your constituents and the electorate and you put that to a vote of the electorate i want you to understand that that vote of the electorate is only an advisory it's not a binding okay because if the board has the authority the board has the authority if the electorate has the authority the electorate has the authority this is very that's why your warning looked different and i think i confused people and i think you know and and i you know when i saw what the warning was when you sent your email it made sense about some of the discussion we were having in the committee where people said hey wait a minute you know somebody switched stuff and did a switcheroo there was no switcheroo and i want to be very clear about that what was sent to the state board of ed is your formation and report that creates your school district and you had an appropriate and legal warning that created your union school district but there was that article 11 and they voted upon warning that established that some things were the prerogative of the board and not of the electorate so the problem of that well no i guess it is article seven in both that's what i was checking wait so article seven because that's one of the mandatory articles one of two that needs to be in the same in both okay good it needs to be in the morning that's why i'm telling you that's a vote of the electorate you all can't as a board don't have the authority to make that decision because that's great that's that would have been very confusing if that was a different number all right good thank you well that's that's a good one thank you for remembering that one dina all right are there further general questions about uh the law on this article on this amendment before we go to the specific amendment megan nope i'm good thank you denny no i'm good thank you good justine no thank you amy amy are you there you're muted yep if you hit control d that'll unmute you try that control d are you on a mac or you want to yeah control d command d right then you might have to go out and come right back in again to get it to reset sometimes that's the quickest way to do it okay or she's okay she's all right okay i mean if well what did i just do sorry i just got out no am i here yes okay touch screens yeah okay thank you thank you amy great carl i assume you're good yeah absolutely i want to make sure we're thoroughly through this and i can come on now i just wanted to uh ask so that means all of the articles that were warned to the board of education that we um were confused about are at the discretion of the board so most of our a lot of our hot topics are basically at the discretion of the board well we don't know yeah i mean i need a real i need denny to go through both articles so i think we don't need that that distinction so we'll really know i get it i think it's a in some ways it's an education about each article i get it yeah so i think that would be a really good committee work for us to do you know at our next meeting is to sit down and get an education on the distinctions between the two uh sets of articles right and the reason why they were done that way justine is that quite honestly the way it's looked at from a overarching rational is that you want to permit a board to have the flexibility to address certain things um and and that's why it was done because it is it it's not a small thing to take a vote of feeling to do a vote of the electorate on things right and that's why we do it for important things like directors right it's it's the checks and balances right absolutely the checks and balances that make things challenging so that it's not easy to change the articles or all of them um i think that's good great does that answer your question justine yeah i i understand the answer to my question i think i was just kind of getting ahead of things by asking what's the exciting news actually considering what we've been right so we can just keep going as we are and i did it thank you okay thank you all right dina i think we're ready to put up the amendment and let's let's talk this through um and as i say this is we have time tonight i want to make sure everybody asks all the questions they have so that everybody understands where we are oh my god that's so small i can barely see it okay let me try it um well that's that made them worse in that way um you do your slider at the bottom yeah there you go does that work uh i think so yeah it is bigger if you're on a computer screen it might be different on a touchscreen even that might be right it is definitely smaller yeah you if you all can see it okay that's all that matters so um so my understanding was that you were not you were going to be doing um a vote that corresponded with town meeting day but was not moving your annual school board meeting no and that's a thumbs up from carl as well i think i just saw it did you give a thumbs up that that's or do you have a question this is this was the intent and this is certainly something we can talk about the intent is that we um is that this piggybacks on town meeting day and gets done on town meeting day so that then it is available for the school board vote in may that is okay so so that's the assumption i worked on um and so it is noticed it's warned as a special meeting because it's not your annual meeting um the first paragraph is talking about it being on march 2nd 2021 the fact that you are using australian balloting to do this is because of the covid issue and and act 162 and amy has a question yep go for it amy um and bonnie maybe she can confirm this but um i assume that the voting will take place um at the rochester school campus and not at the town offices due to due to covid yes they've asked us that amy and we've already given them the heads up on that okay that that was one of the things that i had as a question and that can be changed i also need to know what time the polls are actually open and for for both um and then it so you also have shall the legal so here is the amendment to the articles is art the the the question whether or not the articles of agreement will be amended is article one in this morning and it is the language i gave you in your draft um i tried did share your draft a draft warning um and what i did so that there's clarity for the voters is it's a cross out of what you're crossing out and it's a bold and an underline of what the new language is it's pretty standard um and the change is is that the the three directors will be nominated by the legal voters of for example rochester and also the additional language is such representatives shall be voted on solely by the legal residents of rochester and removing at large and i did that as well for stockbridge so that i i'm not picking one town over the other but this is how your article listed rochester first and then stockbridge so i just want to make sure you all understand that and the language within article seven of your articles of agreement is all directors shall have equal votes on the board we had a slight conversation about that that's staying that has to stay article two of the warning is shall the legal voters of the rochester stockbridge unified school district elected's board of school directors by australian ballot i also did because i was not totally clear whether or not you want article three which is about budgeting doing it or public questions i can remove those if we're not if you're not looking to do your annual budget or all public questions by australian ballot all right well that's so we need some information we need the the exact wording if we're going to get it work on this tonight we need the exact wording of how voting is going to happen um and i'm wondering if someone has that from may from i'm more than i'm more than likely you did it at your schools i i did your warning remember that'd be the that'd be the most recent time yeah it was the last school vote budget okay so i can make those changes and that's fine you're telling me what those changes are and so there's not a problem with in terms of okay if we can still warn this if it doesn't have the exact language in it is that possible or we can still vote on this and sure yes okay i don't because i know before we had to vote on this uh as to be amended and we and then we we would sign a copy that has the proper language got you got you okay well good let's let's um and all questions are fair here um you know i really want people to have a a talk about this um given that at the at the meetings uh the the study committee committee meetings back in the day you know this was what i was in favor of um if it's legal i i i certainly think you know this is fine and i'm really glad that you know this is something that we're we're we're we're putting to uh the voters the piece that i don't you know i i certainly like the idea of telling them uh giving them the option to vote uh for for uh directors by australian ballot um because and you know and then make sure that our material and our because we'll have to have an informational meeting our informational meeting will explain how you know traditional town meeting this would mean having to to vote separately by town if you didn't adopt article two i am not in favor of uh the subsequent articles for public question or for voting um we were fairly clear um in my mind in in in all the discussions when we formed this that town meeting was important to both our towns and um going you know kind of going to australian ballot to make voting for electors or to make voting for uh board members more convenient seems to me to be a little bit of a a little bit of a backdoor slide i'm certainly willing to have have that discussion it's been as dina said there i mean you know there there's plenty of ways people get a colored card when they walk through the door um yeah absolutely and i am i am certainly fine with leaving it a town meeting too with putting that question on there and asking our voters here's what it's going to be you're going to have to kind of we're not going to make you sit in stock bridge in rochester sections like bride and groom at a wedding i wouldn't think but yeah colored cards for standing up and holding them um you know things like that but making sure our voters understand that they could go to australian ballot i'm like i said i'm against articles three and article four because i think talking about changing the way we we vote for our representation is not the uh venue or conversation to talk about vote for our budget or how we vote on public questions i think the point has been made i remember it being made that this is a outstanding tradition with stock bridge to have things decided in the school board in the meeting the school meeting whereas rochester and i've never enjoyed it particularly decided a while to go to go to australian ballot so i i would have to say i agree with carl i'm i'm fine with the ballots it makes things easier but if they voted down no problem but i'm three and four would go uh amy let's go around the board and just get on that how do you feel about this uh specifically articles three and four let's take care of them first let's get them out of the way um yeah i rochester you know prior to our merger had always done australian ballot so that's that is just how our town has done it um but i have had no problem moving to a floor vote um and i think that if that's you know something that's very you know it's a something stock bridge is really adamant about i think that's fine to to keep it as a floor floor vote um so uh for both those articles so i would i'd be fine with removing those as well okay carl before i get to you i just want to get around to everybody else here uh justine we're talking about three and four and whether we think they're there we want them or we want to get rid of them um i i think that um the floor vote i think from what i have talked to stock bridge members about um the floor vote probably is is in line with what the stock bridge citizens would want i know that a lot of people are attached to that uh format i'm not personally attached to that format specifically but i would i would lean in that direction to of getting rid of three and four yes okay megan um i am fine with getting rid of articles three and four and sticking with doing um floor vote for our budget and public questions and i think australian ballot for our candidates at our regular town meetings i think that works fine so i'm for removing articles three and four good jenny um i'm actually neutral i'm not sure um which i favor so i could go either way um i think that it doesn't hurt to put the vote out there um see what the communities want so i guess i could go either way interesting point that we sort of leave it out there and see what how people are feeling these these days uh let me get back to let me get back to carl because he had his hand raised before yeah i i i i wanted to make it clear that you know um and maybe it's just the lens that i'm coming into this conversation uh tonight about which was about you know amending the articles of agreement to change the way we elected we we elected representation and then so i mean certainly i think that if people are interested in in in those questions i'm not i and i i am more attached to um to uh floor votes for the budget because at least in stock bridge there have been times where um you know commentary has has occasionally added money or we've we've we've made adjustments to the budget based on what on on what families have said on the floor we we you know obviously the amendments can't be you know we're we're amending this specific line but we've discussed items and we've either added or or decreased on the floor to compensate for changes that the board would then you know um amend the budget for or uh instruct the the the principles and administration to uh change things for so i guess out of three and four i would be most um interested in in taking off three the budget piece because i've seen value in that i have not in my in my 15 years of being on the board really seen um a lot of public questions being modified um uh on on the floor so we can leave it on like but like i said my my biggest objection was more that i was looking at this conversation about how we elected our electors and then so kind of didn't think that it was appropriate to be asking budget and public question issues but if we want to just reopen the whole australian ballot question we can do that as well i suppose amy and then megan um sort of uh a little bit to what carl's saying on maybe this is something we remove from uh this warning because this warning is to focus it just on the electoring the electing of school board representation and maybe we have the committee revisit this um at another time or for our our school meeting in may maybe this is a better um yeah better time time to do it and get them you know after we but i think your idea of focus i think makes a lot of sense to me let's focus on this really important amendment here um megan i think you was it yeah you had your hand up yes um i also i'm just i really i think we should allow the voters at our annual meeting to just to have say in these two articles but i am partial to keeping the budget um on the floor because i do like having our two towns come together and have a discussion once a year the best we can to you know have each town our people being heard so that's just all i really wanted to say i i would add to that that being an emerged uh district uh it's it's possibly sometimes the one time when we really get the two towns sort of together exactly really discuss and so that gives it for me a much much stronger need to put in there um uh i i think i'll should we how do we do this can i make a motion that we uh strike these two from current um from the current article or could the current warning um to add them or just i guess right now we would strike them and then put them in later can i ask a quick question sure jenny absolutely and do you know your hand by the way um i think i do sorry i did not that's fine it's just i can't otherwise i can't know sometimes that i'm missing somebody please go yeah i was just i was just wondering if articles three and four if that was something that the committee had come up with or if that was something that that dina had put in to be kind of all encompassing yeah this was dina this was definitely we didn't we didn't talk about this she put it in there as an option so and actually i mean obviously article two is from dina too because she knows that it's needed it's needed to make this to make this work dina is that correction i have to make a motion that we strike these two from the warning or just take them out if we i'm just going to take them out because it was my proposal because i didn't know what you all were looking for i just want to i don't believe we have a formal motion on the floor even so we don't have to amend anything i think she takes them out and then we move to accept uh the the the news can we do a thumbs up thumbs up that we're fine with moving these for now i see a carl i see amy um justine you can also say it verbally um justine are you okay with moving these two right now i thought my thumb was right there but i can't see everybody okay thumbs up i don't know how this works where i can see i love zoom i don't like google makes no um megan i am i'm good thank you good jenny jenny just gave a thumbs up okay i don't know how i get to see all of you all i get to see it sound like i can do gallery in here all right good they're out of there great so let's get back to um the amendment um questions on this and i think the wording is the same uh go to the three dots at the right choose change layout who was that was that curl yeah that's so you can try to get uh uh and and you can see more people what do i look to add others no you're no go to the three dots in the lower right hand corner yeah click on those click change layout and then you can go to tiled and you can actually even select it so it's more than 16 people i don't have change layout are you on a touch yes are you using google chrome uh yes at another time even we can we can do it yeah no you can show me your screen and i can show you mine and we can figure it out type of deal i really would like to be able to see other meetings oh wait that's right i think no still doesn't do it doesn't give me enough oh well tough luck i'll just have to ask you to be verbal um okay do we have uh further questions on this uh warned this morning that we had to have in front of us so um i i can go good okay so i guess my initial initially my my reaction was that um i was concerned because the students in our district um need to be represented equally by all members of the board regardless what town you come from and um so i felt that it was really important that residents from both towns evaluated who was going to uh be responsible for for the management of of educating our kids i felt that it was something that um everybody needed to really evaluate who was going to be the candidates but i thought you know quite a bit more about it and i do understand um you know there is some feeling of minority um and inequity um and you know it does seem that this is um what a number of other towns and districts are already doing um so that made me feel a little bit better about it that we're not just um uh do you know creating something new um so you know i do hope that everybody does understand that no matter what town of residents who are from you are representing all of our kids you are representing the kids in both towns and the education and uh the the um management of this uh so um yeah i guess that's that's it thank you amy i think that's a very good point uh for the comments or questions justine i i think amy that was a really good point to bring up thank you but no other comments or questions okay megan nope i agree amy excellent point thank you jenny nope i agree thank you carl amy thank you very much for your words i think your uh your concerns are spot on and you know i i really you know i i really hope that you know that that trying to you know that as as we all try to accommodate each other we can all move uh tour i i see i want to say a more perfect union but then i i feel like i'm super cheesy but now i just said it so there you go but no i think trying to be accommodating and and uh as you know i think we all should try to be accommodating of each other and so i think that's you know it's good to voice that opinion and it's good to take this action both okay are we are we ready to move this warning and to vote upon it i move we uh uh accept this warning as presented okay do we have a second second justine i think that's justine get the second on there you've done a lot of work on this um uh for the discussion i'm going to just call the role on that just to make sure uh carl i oh no i'm not voting yet this is just discussion i just want to make sure anybody else oh yeah i'm sorry i i am done with discussion okay amy any discussion no i'm good thank you justine any further discussion no thank you jenny any further discussion no i'm done good megan further discussion no thank you okay this time i'm going to call the role on this carl i i amy may i uh justine i jenny i ethan i excellent thank you all very much um i i i well the other things you know this is a good thing we've talked about it a lot and i think it's a good thing all right um let us move on then uh okay so what can i interrupt so one is uh jenny is still i believe your clerk so i'm going to make the changes to to the places of where you're going to be doing the vote um and uh you all are i'll i'll email jenny and jamie canarny as well and people have to go in and vote it and jenny you've dealt with these before but if you have questions you'll let me know okay thank you dina one one one question that has been a little confusing to the stock bridge people is they keep saying well we want your warning for our booklet for our information but they don't right this is a separate ballot that will be at the place but it will not be um it will not be part of the town report is that correct it doesn't need to be part of the town report because it is not your annual meeting of the school board um and i understand what they want it if you can get it in there with an explanation from from the board as to you know what this vote is and what it means um and why it's being you you should be able to i'm assuming they'll let you put that in there um you know you all can just do what this is what this is to amend the articles of agreement i just got an email from jim shan saying we have till the 19th to get that information so i say public any publicity is good publicity personally um so uh i think we will do that once the warning is finalized and signed we will get it to them by the 19th with a little explanation of why we think this is useful wait i call you go ahead that's what i was going to say that's you know it's the the town of stock bridge looks at that booklet is is basically all the towns you know all the towns business um and that's what they're going to be looking at when they think about their vote on the second so i think having you know much like there's a statement from ec fiber that i used to have to prepare um though you know a statement of here's what this ballot is it's a separate ballot um and here's why we're doing it you know nothing more than a paragraph we don't need chapter and verse and history of blah blah blah just you know here's what it is here's the article you know there you go okay great in my expectation ethan and and jenny is that uh what's it tuesday i should be able to get you both the warning in the ballot by thursday friday until you should be able to send it out to them good yeah well i'm assuming you all will be able to go and sign it wherever you need to go sign it yeah uh the 19th is next tuesday so if we got it to them by monday or that would be remember the the let's let's let's pause for a moment and talk about the logistics of that um we would really need to because the the the the stock bridge town clerk doesn't you know we'll close um friday at noon and we'll reopen till till tuesday morning um you probably you would probably really behoove us to have that um on thursday dina if we could thank you for reminding me of that carl you're right because monday's um if you can get it to it if you can get it to to jenny or or lindy because i know we like to have jenny getting those things and and and putting her her mark on them first before it gets passed around to everybody um we can do that and then you know if you got it to us if we had it you know beginning of the day thursday we could easily get it you know get it to them on time so if if we can do that rather than friday that'd be awesome absolutely thank you for for laying that out for me so it's going to be lindy and jenny uh it's going to be two documents it's going to be the warning and also um the you can well the warning you can put out the ballot and we might as well put the ballot out as well so people can see what a sample ballot looks like and dina are you going to check with the rochester town clerk to verify uh their voting day and time for what they're doing because i think they're doing it actually march first i just read the email it's 10 to 7 are you doing it on a meeting day oh one at a time please is their vote on town meeting it's march uh march first so this is one of the issues is that our town meetings are at different times um that is during the day and ours is at night um so i don't know if that matters in terms of gathering the the votes or are for this but that is the reality okay so i need to i think you're saying one is the day before march first and one is on march second it's it's the tuesday night correct rochester is always the tuesday night amy i just received an email um that states that rochester is holding on strength march first march first from 10 to 7 right monday march where are they voting they're gonna be voting at the high school okay so then then the the the first paragraph would read you know the residents of rochester voting march first 10 to 7 blah blah blah high school blurgity blurg way and the voters of stockbridge voting at stockbridge town offices march second 7 to 7 i think or whatever that happens to be you know address what is whatever it is route 100 so on and so forth right we can have to do we can have the warning have the specific locations in time for both places right we don't have to have separate ones do we dina no you know the warning would deal with both um just so i'm also clear um carl is that and for the remainder of the board the vote is not going to be commingled while it will be a majority rules the vote itself will be reported out by um by town uh sure any you've often had important points of order for us uh um procedure if you'd like to drop in yeah i was just trying to save you guys some time because you hit three major points and kind of took it around about to get there that we had already kind of discussed the difference in meeting time rochester is the night before stockbridge that's it and that it will not be commingled it will be tallied total tallied and i can't remember what the other one is but you guys got there thank you yeah so i'll call on you sooner because you you often have that clarity for us thank you i appreciate it right so you know it still is the majority of both towns combined passes or doesn't pass i just want to know the result can the result not come out until both have voted so i yeah so that's a so you will know tomorrow before lunch time hopefully whether or not that's going to raise any issues because i was not aware that they had two different dates so let me talk to wilsonning at the um at the secretary of state's office to make sure that if this is a problem that's going to happen for a lot of union school districts based upon what the legislature is going to come out with um and uh you know where some towns may vote this day some towns may vote that day um and the legislature hasn't come out with the dealing with that issue um yes i do need lindy uh confirmation from the town of stockbridge clerk as well what the polling hours are all right i just i'll send something to lory right now just to confirm because normally it's from the floor and they're both very good i mean my expectation is and my hope is quite quite frankly for your town clerks and for the polling officials is that the majority of your um constituents and electorate would actually do absentee voting or mail-in voting request an absentee ballot for all of their voting true you know i think we're we're still in the same place we were in may so the time of the meeting actually is irrelevant except there'll be informational meetings because everything will be australian ballot for this year yeah your informational meetings i mean we can talk about that if you're if we're going to be going for it your informational meeting if you're going to be doing things by australian ballot doing this by australian ballot for your annual meeting i would strongly um suggest that you all do a remote informational meeting obviously well no of course i'm just saying if everything is australian ballot do you still do australian ballot on the day the meeting would have been or do you do it on town meeting day because we can choose because this isn't our town report we could pick we i think we can set the date we want this australian ballot to happen right can't yes you can right but let's take me to the dean and then i'll get to you yeah you you can but my understanding was is that you thought that it was beneficial to have it run at the same time when people were going for their town meetings but australian ballots putting in the ballots for that yeah okay um amy and then and then charity yes right i understand i think that this conversation there will be some people who are still going to vote in person and there'll be people who vote by mail in but there is some new people who are going to vote by australian ballot in person and the idea is that we have it at that same time and not a separate day that they have to come back two days to vote got you for this okay um and you want to get this in on time so that it can be mailed out with whatever the town is mailing out for absentee ballots at the same time because we ran into that on with the november election we didn't have stuff in time so they it had to be a separate mailing okay good and charity do you have clarification on this yeah i just want to reiterate what amy said because that's exactly what we came up with during the committee meeting when we discussed this was that it would be most beneficial to keep it at the same time as the town meeting so that you do hit the most of the electorate possible because that's what they're familiar with and we're giving them a minimal amount of notice on this so don't change more than we absolutely have to on those timings good thank you charity um all right okay so i will talk to the secretary of state's office um the elections division about the difference in the dates and and how that impacts and i will let you know as soon as possible uh the latest you'll get this if we're all good to go we'll be up by thursday um if there are any concerns obviously from them i will let you know the moment they tell me right i mean i would assume that could they just like counter then seal the results yeah i gotta i gotta talk to them carl and see what's permissible because it's it's since you're not co-mingling they are counting um they count at the town itself it's whether or not they can delay the report out until the next day perhaps or the day after so i need i need to have that conversation with will sending or with jp up at um at the secretary of state's office and like i said i will tell you as soon as i know this is a whole new issue because typically everybody votes on one day um you know your your appointed date that you do it whether it's town meeting day or not um so let me deal with them on that i will let you all know um euthan as soon as possible about that and um i'm assuming other than that unless there's something else somebody wants to throw at me well yes i if i may because the next thing on the uh our this a away committee meeting hot topic articles articles um one b because we we found this to be a very important one this is what you addressed before it's um article 11 is confusing and conflicting this idea of that the reports uh govern us um and i think it speaks to what you talked about about the difference between these two uh articles of agreement versions of the agreements that are in the report one the warned article and two um the um uh the vote sorry the voted article and the report articles euthan i have one one logistics question before i move forward yeah um so when i get that dina i'll print it and sign it and then um i'll bring it to you lindy is that correct yes jenny so you and i can coordinate a little bit and then i can get it to rochester on my way home and then someone in rochester can get it scanned and back yep is that the best way to do that yep right if you can have it if if it can i mean i would be i would be able to be at scf um before four lindy is that is that too late for you uh so i'm in the limbo of virtual from home and virtual at school and thursday i have several meetings that'll keep me on until like five thirty or six so i was hoping to be home for those uh while i have that luxury um okay can we kind of like you were getting it from jenny i thought you were coming in i am i'll be there most of the day i'm just trying to beat home before my 330 meeting so i can be all right you and i can figure that out carl separately we don't need to do it now and i'll be there before that okay i'll send you an email thank you so this this dean of this is just i i do want to let you go but i also just think that i want to make sure that everybody understands and this justine what we were talking about before this distinction between the two versions of the articles of agreements and i really would love from you dean obviously the amendment takes priority but i would love from you some outline of how they are different and how they different and what are prerogatives of the board in particular okay so i mean i can i can do that i mean basically you're asking me for a legal opinion of what the effect is of what your warned vote was um to the underlying articles of agreement and who has the the issue uh who has the power i guess um i can do that it's going to take me some time to lay it out for you um it's not i i can say it but there's some things i think that you're all going to need to understand i think there's no rush i think there's no rush on this this is but this has been as justine i'm sure wants to talk about right now this has been a major underlying confusion um from people who have been looking at our articles ever for years now and i think the more clarity we can give this and so time to do it right is definitely important uh justine what did you want to say yes i just want to uh propose a clear question based on article 11 which states that the report the provisions in the report and formation plan shall govern the unified district and with that being stated in that manner uh my question is what are the implications um the legal implications of the board then changing this plan because it kind of turned you know as a conundrum because we whatever the plan is the board just decides whatever that is and that falls under article 11 that's how i understand the meaning of that so just to oppose that and include that in your response that would be helpful okay i i i can do that um i can answer number six on your future action items very quickly by the way there is no alternates and there are no proxy votes okay so i can i i mean if these are questions that you want me to take a look at by all means um i'd like some time to take a look at them if that's okay um yep these are these are as we said these are the issues that came up as we started talking about the articles of agreement and um um obviously yeah we we're we're gonna sort of talk through them um for the rest of the tonight but i just because one b article 11 was the next one but i think it sounds like we're gonna wait for your full report on that and that's going to be very important to the both to the a away committee and also to obviously the board and to our communities right so one of the first things i would do and and and and and i and i say this because it is confusing and conflicting is that i think i i would i would come up with different names for them you have an article 11 which is in your articles of agreement and you have an article 11 on your morning and and those are two very distinct issues and so referring to them both as article 11 and i understand very confusing that that's where some of the confusion came from so um you know in terms of the i i guess i would say you know the board authority the provision regarding board authority versus your article 11 in your articles of agreement i mean that's that's basically what i'm telling you is the simple need to flesh that out better for you all so everybody is on the same page about that can but i think that's part of where and it just may be because of of of my profession where language can confuse people oh this is we have people are paying very close attention to language looking at these documents and that's why we we pulled them apart and asked the questions and i think the more clarity you can give us okay and and we've also thought that it would be very useful to um have this where these articles are posted on our webpage a little bit better identification so if you could actually do it on with the articles there you know or annotate the articles in some way i think that would be very useful and we might even put that up there we might decide to put it up there for clarity because people looking at these articles and you even you know select a select board at Stockbridge looked at them and was like huh right yeah it's i understand it which is which is why i will lay it out i can lay out what that means for you all great that would be extremely useful and i will try and not do it too legally is because then everybody hates me um well as long as you explain it we'll understand justine you want to follow up yeah one more little thing there were there were some questions from community members and board members about um the board of education and their interest in our plan and um whether or not it will affect anything if our plan changes too much i just think it would be helpful dina to speak to that or include it in your response okay i mean i can as i mentioned before the the one place where when you're going to do your the amend your articles of agreement that goes back to the state board of ed is maybe in one of your questions here if you were talking about uh it may not be in language again is important number two in future action items because i'm not quite sure what real realignment of grades means but if you were to decide that you were um uh going to do you guys provide up to grade six right and up to set a seventh right seventh then has school choice am i correct on this collection yeah okay um if you were for some reason going to decide that you were not going to be providing an education or maintaining that that may be something that triggers the state board of ed um to be able to do you know if you decided you wanted to go completely school choice right dina the example that's been laid out there is this this option um was the idea of splitting the grades between the campuses highly hypothetical but the idea of four five six maybe stock bridge you know pre-k through something pre-k both places it's a plan that's been talked about and is quite a hot topic item would that you think um that i don't i don't that that i don't believe but i i will firm this up but i'm going to tell you i'm 98 percent 99 percent willing to say that is not going to be something that the state board of ed is going to be um curious about or looking at what you're doing for your articles where that may become a bigger touch point for you all maybe whether or not the can that's a board authority issue and i will lay that out for you whether or not it is that's the essence of um of two is is wanting the public to have some say over that is so say about that okay um can someone please send me this and and if you have a list of questions that come out of your further discussion that are specific and can give me some more information on this that would be helpful for me um okay i'll send it to you right now okay and and and add any further further questions yeah if there are further questions that come up during your conversation by all means please let me know um carl yes go ahead transition to dina talking about providing analysis of the uh existing articles of agreement i'd like i'd like us to to get her opinion on article five specifically um uh clause b clause d this is the surpluses and debts and special funds um the articles seem to say that um you know they acknowledge that we have um restricted funds coming in and um from from both districts either um appropriately because the the the stock per district apparently was made properly and had restricted funds for the stock bridge building the rochester restricted fund that was supposed to have been created with the sale of the denny lion uh uh daycare uh never really got that never really got put together and handled properly so those funds are kind of are kind of limbless but both b and d talk about um how these funds will be used for their uh uh pre unification intention and i want to make sure that we understand and that our taxpayers and everyone in our communities understand how that is and then secondly if something is is deficient in in the articles of agreement or deficient um in in the current situation what would be the appropriate task to to to restore those funds to their appropriate restrictions so that's uh rochester uh scholarship funds and rochester uh real estate funds and and stock bridge you know 100 some whatever building funds are all appropriately protected and and assigned uh assigned adequately in the articles of agreement um you know because i i worry that as i look at that and as we we we talk about some of the some of the concerns that that that we're finding looking back on those documents and knowing that those funds at least on the last report that i got from the business office were kind of all commingled into into a district restricted fund knowing how to to to separate that out and give them to the appropriate places would be a great piece of analysis okay so can i also ask you a question um stock bridge has a scholarship fund which was set up as sort of a trust initially was it a trust issue no that's or rochester rochester has a has a scholarship fund that we think is held by the town and amy's one that could jump in and correct on that particular piece um stock bridge came into the came into the to the merger with a six figure restricted building fund we had been accumulating be because of our conservative budgeting and and and frugal administration we we had been accumulating surpluses into a building reserve we used a bunch of that to pay for getting our completely repairing our room for placing our furnace um jim shans did yeoman work fixing our incredibly out of code uh kitchen hood um so we we went through that but and in article five was was written definitely with the intention that each each facility got what you know maintain control of and restriction to the funds that their taxpayers had allocated to their to their facilities you know the stock bridge didn't know didn't didn't have any financial interest in in dandelion daycare um you know that money was supposed to go into into a restricted fund for for rochester and that because of the timing of the closing as i recall or some deficiency in what the business office provided as a motion that the board i don't know it was it was complicated and it became kind of a uh uh uh uh it needed that that definitely needed a resolution but the stock bridge piece the stock bridge piece um seems to be still kind of commingled and understanding how article five works with that and how we can we can we can cure article five to uh to make you know the restricted funds be attached to the places they are that the rochester uh scholarship funds attach to the places it is that you know the the the stock bridge um funds that are held by the trustees of public funds are are used you know the their restrictions are respected around their use around stock bridge students so i want to take a look okay so what would be helpful for me and i think amy and i probably from about a year ago have some emails on some of this um and i will go and look about it um at least on the dandelion side of it um what would be helpful for me carl is honestly having a list of what the funds are that were there amy you have that for rochester certainly and i don't but and carl would you have it for stock bridge uh i have some information tarah has all the information all that information was in the uh was in the uh uh study committee's report so that was all done through dina's office so so balances uh uh were certainly i mean y'all reported about events so you had you had some basic information so i'm sure when you go back you'll you'll find that but and and i'm not you know that this is separate from the the articles we considered earlier but like i said as we're analyzing the problem the problem that articles of agreement i think five you know it's pretty clear on where on the fact that debt is is just going into the district um pre-existing debt was just dumping to the district but understanding how the the restricted funds are managed is important okay i i i i i i understand what you're saying and you're probably right for the first go around that study committee did have a lot of language i think about at least laying out what it was in the presentation what i was also saying was more along the lines of um you know if there is something you know mrs smith passed away in 1815 and she established a trust for you know for the benefit of the stock bridge school for you know buying books for kids like i that's what i'm curious about if if that exists but i can talk to tara it's not trusty money um is managed separately by the stock bridge trustees at least in stock bridges situation and i work with bill ederton each year to talk about how that money is spent towards um stock bridge students so it's managed completely separate and the only thing that happens is the check that is deposited into the account and usually it matches right up with an invoice that's being spent on at least since i've been there on um last year it paid for new books in classrooms that's just one example that that nine thousand dollar transfer annual transfer on our budget also comes from the the the stock bridge trustees of public funds and that's the wittcom there's a wittcom trust you have that information um it's eight hundred some thousand dollars i want to say probably bigger now i haven't seen statements in in in in a few years um and that i just i don't mean interrupt us because i think this is important but i think we do have a lot of other things we want to talk to absolutely and and and so we'll circle back to my initial point is i would like a detailed analysis of of article five in the r-side articles agreement ten dot five dot seventeen doc which is what i'm looking at that talks about the um surpluses and debts and special funds and getting some clarity around because language again indicates to be used for said purpose unless otherwise determined through appropriate legal procedures the used for said purpose legal language is really pretty much kind of really vague and mumbly and business office is reflecting that according to what the the uh auditors say as a co-mingled fund so understanding how to cure that to meet the intent of article five in the in the in the articles of agreement um and and and the steps we should take um to to do that is is what i'd be interested in seeing just like i'd like to see the clarification on article 11 good okay so if somebody can just email me ethan after you all are done basically a listing of everything that you all want from me i will work through it oh uh okay if that makes sense and and it may be uh jenny if you're taking meaning minutes if you could make sure that i get a copy of the unapproved minutes just so that i'm i'm aware of what the discussion was that would be great yep we'll do that thank you very much good i i don't have a problem you know going through and if you all come up with more stuff that you need me to go through um i think a you know knowledge is not a bad thing so this speaks to our action item too but we'll get to that i mean i charity do you have a point of clarification yeah i do because this is one that i brought up and it adds right into what carl said um in our committee in our very first subcommittee meeting we discussed this and the long and short answer of it and i do not mean to be derogatory but it is basically the bottom line it is the board the rsud board's responsibility to demand of the business office full and accurate accounting of the two article items that carl is mentioning and when we were in that first committee meeting the subcommittee meeting um that's kind of where we left that one was that terra at the board's direction needs to provide proper and accurate accounting of why those numbers have not been shown accurately or there is question as whether they have or not yet so my understanding and dina correct me if i'm wrong it is the board that has to demand that of the su business manager so i think we did talk about this in your in the committee meeting and about to and it falls under i think the future action item number five i may have talked about it um which is that to the extent that the board feels that it needs additional information that is a request of the board through the superintendent for his business office to provide more information um that's not something that has to be put in your articles of agreement i want to be very clear about that that is um the same way that you would ask if you felt that you needed to drill down on on testing issues to the extent that it didn't you know violate confidentiality of individual students the board has the right to ask for the information that the board believes it needs to have to to to manage and do its business so yes you know where that breaks out that's a discussion between i think the board and the superintendent that doesn't i don't believe that involves me from a legal perspective that's how you know that's the board asking the superintendent for information well i i have a note and i think it's i think we like i know and we've been relying on aiming for a long time to sort of be working through the some of this stuff um and maybe that should be coming from the business office because they're supposedly managing the finances good great we will look forward to that report on five from you dina thank you i i think all of this carl what you just brought up charity and and and the rest of this as we are going we're going to go through all of these things and ask any questions is this idea of action item number two to set in process a regular evaluation of merger and an evaluation of the articles committees that create standards and questions and has a report due to the public on a regular basis one year two year three years obviously we have started this articles of agreement committee it was created um you know a little bit in the sense of what's happening with the merge unmerged vote coming to a head in march and that we take some action to maybe change some minds about their vote but i i think what's really clear is that this is something that needs to happen ongoing so that we all because i i really feel very strongly i don't understand i didn't understand these articles and i sort of let that ride and that's not acceptable we really need to as a board need to know exactly how our articles work how how they make sense and all of that um so i guess what i'm looking for tonight and the idea that these would be two different things oh by the way dina i i mean if you want to stay on great um there's obviously going to be more questions but i i think i think we're done with you i think that would be awesome done with me i think we have plenty i might have i might have chosen a little more politic verbiage but who are you kidding carl you would have set off with my head too no i'm fine with that i just did i just needed clarity whether or not you needed me to stick around i think that's good and i think that us looking through each item as we go and say we need more information from dina on this is a very useful framing up um item for us tonight okay so i am going to leave and thank you all and have a very good night thank you dina much of your time dina it was wonderful to see you again happy new year happy new year to you as well yes it was nice seeing you out so um uh what i would love from the board tonight is is a motion for both of these but let's talk about this a little bit more um obviously the articles of agreement committee we've created ourselves our our mission was to look at the articles and improve them help to improve the strength of the merger as we looked at them and obviously one of the guiding principles has been clarity um are there changes we need to make or other things that just need to be clear so we've been doing a very you know i think quite thorough job of that and i think we all agree that it should continue this idea valuation of the merger is kind of a different thing um and that is that i think this is something we need to come up with as a set of standards how do we know this merger is working or how do we know it is not working and i you know i think we could say oh well you know it's it's classes going together on field trips back when we could do that it's um you know it's sharing faculty but i i i think there's actually tougher questions than that about whether people feel this is um something you know how do we evaluate this how do we evaluate the merger i think it's the real question um and i would like i would open that up to questions of how i think what we need is a set of standards um sort of like what we're doing for the uh approval um for jamie where we had a whole list of how is the superintendent doing i think we could really do with having a committee that set up a series of standards for how do we know this merger is working and um uh that would be another committee hopefully i would not be in charge of that committee i'd actually think the administrator should be part of that a little bit because they understand this so you know a lot of what goes on in between the two mergers um but let's so i'm opening this up for discussion right now carl you have your hand raised and then i'll go around and see what people have questions about um yeah no i think um i this kind of this this kind of jives with uh some of the like strategic planet strategic planning five-year stuff that uh the vs pa talked about where you kind of need to have a rubric for all your stakeholders for your parents for your taxpayers for your students for your staff and faculty you know just kind of you know because all of those communities have different ideas of what is successful school is yep yep and you know i would really love us this plus some sort of some sort of you know marketing um you know communication outreach effort to let people in pittsfield and and grandville and hancock and in our communities know what we're offering i think this to me is much more vital work of the board than than then some of the the the the issues we've been wrestling with because you know really at the end of the day making things you know making things work making this a school that a parent says i want to send my kid here you know i want to move you know i moving up from massachusetts i want to buy the house in rochester or the house in stockridge and not the house in barnard or the house in sharon um you know i think fine and i think you know the marketing piece is secondary to having you know that successful that that successful school for for those key those keys those key stakeholder communities so i'm behind this idea a lot i don't think i'm going to share the committee because i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm way way over way way uh underwater with my job right now but um i i certainly would would participate and give feedback to it well i think that's that's what we have to figure out tonight for the because we have an articles agreement committee all of us as far as i understand are willing to go forward with that i think we need um you know we have we have a vision of where we go i think you know clarity and strengthening it how do we how do we do this how do we how do we assign a committee and who wants who wants to do it and if we you know if we punt it well that's another thing you know we have a bit of a reputation for pushing things down the road and i think we need to be careful with that um uh and if if i mean i would love to ask our staff anyway i want to get around to other people talk about this i can talk for too long justine what do you think i know you were on the committee i was on the committee i agreed with that uh number two absolutely i uh something that carl mentioned about outreach something that's been popping into my mind is that we're hearing a lot of the same voices over and over it would be nice to find ways to reach out and in other other ways through for this particular process to maybe hear some other voices i'm not exactly sure i don't have a bright idea on how to go about doing that but um i think that the committee uh that has the job of evaluating should should be reaching trying to find a few creative ways to reach out in it in different ways i don't know maybe to hear some other voices than what we just hear all the time the people who tune in they tune in regularly and then a lot of people don't really know what's going on i think um megan hi um i think really trying to get a firm idea of from our administration staff students families community members without kids with you know with with kids is really the most important thing to to understanding how successful our merger is because it's it's um to go forward i think that we're going to need definitely more voices to the situation um i i hesitate to to put myself i i i cannot put myself up to lead this i we are we are at a meeting level that is taking up a bit of time and also a job as well um but i am all about giving as much input as i possibly can um lindy let me i'll get right to you oh yeah go ahead lindy no it's fine you could have finished with the board i was just gonna say i'm happy to participate because i really think it's uh important piece of the process that hasn't happened yet i think there's it sounds like because i was not part of the rochester stock bridge community when you guys went through the study committee and you know the merger process sounds like there were a lot of things presented to the board of ed in addition to what was in um the articles of agreement i think it's important to take the time and go through what those promises were i've seen bits and pieces i have to be honest i would push it towards the higher priority level in my day um and i think it's an important process i don't think we can pick the outline and figure out what questions to ask and things like that until we all take the time to do due diligence whoever's part of this process to figure out what was promised i mean field trips are great sure staff has been amazing but i'm sure there were a lot more promises we say hope so than those items that is on the agenda um it's actually the next meeting of the aoe committee was to look at the 706 meetings and to look at all these things that were thrown out there as possibilities and and to evaluate them and to bring those to the board and say hey here's the list boom boom boom of all these things um i i um so this is something we're gonna do we're definitely gonna do so then in my experience i would say you would take please you would take those things and then you start to create your strategic plan around those and start we need to get a baseline of where we're at with all our stakeholder groups on those areas and maybe there's some others that were missed that were not presented or shared with the public that we would need to add to and then we would start to create this you got to take the baseline first i guess is what i'm saying um and we need to figure all those things out of what all those pieces of the puzzle were i can think of a few but i i know i'm missing a lot so i don't want to ramble and then we get the baseline of where we're at and then we start showing evidence of other things because there's perception there's reality and then everything in between which goes to caro's marketing point too and i'm starting to jump in and as he jumps in again but lindy what i wanted i just wanted to say that that point about baseline i would really love to hear and and this is something that as soon as you said that i'm like oh my god i have to interrupt um i would really love to hear what you and bonnie think or how you would envision what would be the perfect little little little set of schools you'd be running here what how would you see that be you know under you know as we talk about our vision and our marketing ideas you know you guys are the people that are there you know our parents you know our kids how should our how should our schools be bonnie you've raised your hand nope you're muted bonnie bonnie you're muted oh she's saying really important things too bonnie you're muted there we go um caro i'm not ignoring your question i want to i want to think on that for a bit but i wanted to go to something that um justine said and then tie it to something that lindy said i think this this type of initiative could be really really powerful in a school or it could be absolutely devastating for a school and i think where it becomes powerful is if we do the work up front i think lindy called it baseline and i think justine said though she said she didn't have a brilliant idea that we'd have to figure out a way to get all the voices because you could judge the success of these little schools carl that will be running you can judge them from multiple perspectives and if we don't agree right from the beginning what's the lens we want to use some people would tell us we want to run schools that are that are um as inexpensive as they possibly can be some other people would say we want to have a school that's outstanding in this or we want to have a school that's outstanding in that i think this could be really exciting work but what i would strongly lobby for is that we do the work up front so that when we're done with some people have called it a rubric some people have called the division were crystal clear that this is what the two communities want for their youngsters i i'm i'm gonna go on a little bit of thin ice here i'm not criticizing i'm just making an observation we we don't in my opinion talk often enough about our kiddos and often enough about our schools we we've kind of been enmeshed as we know in a number of conversations but i think at some point soon we need to get back to talking about our youngsters and the hopes and dreams that the stock bridge and Rochester communities have for their youngsters and i think that is really the essence of this document that we're talking about uh megan i'm good thank you uh no thoughts do you yeah i think i agree with everyone um i don't think i right now at this moment of time could commit either two or four being on the committee but i think that everyone made some great comments and i think that it's definitely something that everyone would have some enthusiasm over especially the public and amy excellent can you hear me yes okay i'm now on my phone i've moved to a lot of different mediums tonight to try to continue on with the meeting um i i don't have a lot to say because i kind of need to ingest all this right now um i really you just said really means a lot to me um and so i do think that going forward we need to do this very wisely and thoughtfully um i i do see that um evaluating um you know slash celebrating uh the merger is is an important piece to really understand what we um what we can do what we have done and you know what the future should look like on i do think i i think that is is important and i guess that's all i'll say for now thank you well of course that's all you know i love it leaves us without a committee um not not from you amy i'm just saying for all of us i know i'm i again i and i know everybody's feeling busy but this is this is one of our recommendations now i i really think this idea i mean i can personally i can look at this list parents taxpayer students staff uh administrators uh i i can i can i can have a pretty good idea about being several of them for one um i can have a pretty good idea what the baseline is for some of these people and i think that's a good way to start looking at it what from a taxpayer who has no other involvement um how how is the merger successful for them um for a student you know how is it successful i don't think these are i don't these are esoteric questions that are floating out in the ether i think they're right in front of us and you know if nobody's not going to do it well then how we have a committee and maybe we'll do it there um you know we'll take this on um because um you know i i just uh you know i we we need to do and i know people are busy believe me i know how hard it is but uh uh we need to do this work and if and and this is it isn't i guess i i just don't i don't see being on the board it's just necessarily you show up you know once a month um so i do want to just i want to push people a little bit that this is the kind of work that needs to happen if it can be flexible it can work it you know it's it's how you make it work um but if we really want a successful school we have to answer these questions we can't just we can't leave it and and as we say we we have a reputation for putting things down the road and say yeah well that's a great idea let's not do anything about it um so i i'm challenging you all uh that probably will shut everybody up nicely um so um uh but you know this is this is this was not this is not a future action item this was an action item um i i think the AOA committee will certainly keep meeting um and uh and maybe we will take some of this on i i would i would like to charge our administrators with at least an outline of this i think you could certainly look at our staff our administrators are you know and come up with some rubrics for us um ten so Ethan yeah i'm gonna be rude and interrupt and i'm in i think it's really important i think we've talked a lot about developing a vision and that we need to and i know we've talked about it for years so i'm definitely there at least as long as i've been around i'm definitely in i think it's important work i think it's how you shape our schools so i'm really excited about it i'm gonna encourage before we get to the stakeholder piece we need to go to what we're all the promises yeah and that's before we don't step but if that means we need to go to the AO you know the articles of agreement meetings and talk about it for 20 to 30 minutes every time you guys meet then that's what we do well i think that's that's what i mean i think the AOA committee is getting a really clear sense of of what we what our charges and what our parameters are and i think you know this is it this was absolutely the next thing on our agenda to do that and maybe once we get that list then we come back and say okay by the way this is what we're supposed to be doing are we doing this and then everyone in the board can sit there and say you know and i really don't mean to you know it's just i'm i'm stepping up here um and putting a lot of time into this and i know you all are busy but i'm putting a lot of time into this it was very moving to me to pass that amendment just now because we worked hard on that and i made a lot of calls and a lot of emails and a lot of days when i thought i was going to be doing something else i ended up sitting on the email all day long working on these things so i just got to say this is my level of commitment here to our schools and i challenge you all to look at each other and you know look at your life and say where can i find a little extra time because that's what's going to take to save the state doesn't care about a small school like us we've got to save ourselves and so it's going to take work and if you don't want to do the work then maybe it is time for other people to take our place you know maybe that's part of what you decide and that's a perfectly logistic you know logical and and this is a lot of work but i am challenging you and this is coming out of the a away we've got this work it's right in front of us we can do this but we got to step up so tim you've had your hand up you have a point of clarification for us uh not really clarification but i was glad to see at least uh that one get moved forward tonight good um but i also would like to know if the board is looking at this budget and adding the transportation part that's going to be needed to do what you're just asking lindy and bonnie to come up with because that's going to be an important piece that's going to be 50 60 thousand dollars that's going to be needed to cross transport between these two buildings so um you know we can all jump up and down with our pom poms and say this is great but there's got to be movement forward and continue moving forward and uh we don't have to rush to stop what's happening in march in stock bridge we need to make sure that we can provide education to these kids at a reasonable cost that makes sense for everybody and if that happens you've got a year and a half to get the stock bridge people to say no to emerge and uh i can understand both sides of it not just the people don't really need to be too worried about it because we're in pretty good shape with this marriage but if we can get that high school off the backs of taxpayers get the threshold further away from pursuit cost i just i want to hold off for a sec because we have more work to do tonight and this is sounding a little it's it's very important but it's sounding more like a comment and when cherry was breaking in it was something that had to do right with what we were talking about in this moment i and i don't want to stop because i hear what you're saying okay well then well if we're going to continue with the uh the articles of agreement committee yes then you're putting more stuff onto that committee than what was our charge and that was what happened with the building committee too so let's make sure that we don't do that no get through one thing first no i'm not i'm not i'm not we're not coming up with these rubrics we're talking about we're talking about what we were already talking about which is jerry mentioned last time let's go back and look at the 706 meetings so you know and the notes and all that stuff that's what we talked about we were going to be doing next anyway so um i feel good about that um all right well then i think lindy has given us our charge for number two and that is that the a away is going to come back with um uh uh what the promises were for the board to look at and then that's going to be a promise that's going to be our our baseline and we're going to have to spend some time on creating this evaluation and then we'll we'll move from there and i again i just i challenge you people to step up because we i you know i'm i'm doing the board chair and i'm doing the committee already on the a away and that's that's what i can do all right and i'm volunteering i'm volunteering uh bonnie to help too but she's probably in it i know she's in it with us but i'm just saying that we usually volunteer each other together i i usually come together as a package yes i understand that good good and this is charity i just have a point of clarification yes thank you so in number two where it states set in process regular evaluation of merger the concept behind that and i'll openly admit to everyone this was my idea and why i want to clarify it was the intent i had there was to say today april first we're going to start the process of evaluating the merger as it stands at this very moment it is not and it was not my intention to have this be a fishing with a group of people to figure out what's the mission statement of our rsud i just want to be extremely clear on that that this was intended to put in place an evaluation process because the current language in the articles only gets us to year five this was intended to take care of putting a place a process in place moving forward eternally and that it is a evaluation intended to evaluate the merger at the time of the evaluation on whatever set of timeframe we decide to do it on and look at that on a continual basis i just want that to remain separate from looking at what the mission statement what the program guidelines or curriculum platform is of our school those are two totally different subjects yeah i don't think i yeah no no i hear you i i don't see it as as those last things you just mentioned um i i see it as very much and i think we've talked about this taking the 706 um those things thrown out at the video devaluation making a full list of those and then you know and i think we're already doing this taking a hard look at at where the merger is now that's really sort of what the a away committee is doing and maybe we're already doing this um uh i know when i hear people saying well this is about publicity and selling ourselves i don't think that's that isn't what we're talking about here um we're talking about being very honest about what we're how the merger is working right now as opposed is that is that correct is charity even if i can jump in for a second i want to make sure i got her point yeah yes exactly you understand it and i'm seeing heads shaking from other people as well that they understand where my clarification point is and yes yeah i don't i this is this is you know this is a brass tacks look at where we are what was what was said what was said what's what's what's in the articles what was just mentioned and and then put it out there and say right this is what this is supposed to look like um what does it what does it look like and put those two right next to each other right hold on a living process yeah so that's why this was in this was my vision in asking for this was that it will be a living process because what school looked like for me when i had my 25 year old as a first grader is not what it looks like now for my youngest kids that are fourth graders everything evolves there's no way around it so we need to do this in a standard time frame so that we're capturing the changes of academic evolution the changes of society and is the merger at that point in time set up in a manner that is working and successful or do we need to look at a particular piece of the merger and say how do we make this one piece work better and whether that's going to come from subject matter from your administrators from your families from the state when it comes to academic standards who knows because that in itself is why we need to do an evaluation on a continual time frame to evaluate those exact changes and make sure they're fitting the merger now charity just because you you know you were you are the you know in some ways you're the heart of this committee um uh the coa committee i'm feeling like we didn't quite specify this clear enough like we should say we should come back with a more clear we want to report in one year we want to report in two years um uh and i guess that's maybe why i'm feeling a little wishy-washy and maybe why nobody's stepping up to the committee is that it's not really clear what we're i mean it's clear what we're asking for but i'm not sure what we're asking for tonight i don't think we're there yet to be quite honest i think we're at a point now where i'm going to be very frank and i apologize if anyone's offended by this but we need to decide tonight are we going to put this in place and then maybe the a oa committee decides okay here's what we're going to recommend the board say is the timeline and how often it's going to happen but that i think is the most that we can go to start with because as lindy pointed out once you get what that time frame is going to be then you can start gathering your data to put into it look back at what else was promised i don't think we can start this process with a 50 page long set of protocol it's going to start out very basic and as the first time this alluation process happens that's how you're going to get the guidance you're going to move forward with in essence this already is going to happen because in the existing articles year five rsud board is required to do this yep yep so so uh what then we're looking for do we want a year from now to go in a full report you've got a requirement of two years from now well i know i'm saying two years do we want it in six months i'm just saying you know maybe we want it sooner than that sounds like we do in my honest opinion and i'm sorry if anyone's offended in light of what i have seen over the past three years for this board and how everything is turning out with timing right now for you to provide a very good representation of what this evaluation should be in two years you should be starting it now to present it in two years i would suggest you have it presented at least six months before that two-year deadline which gives you 18 months from now meaning you should start now okay so that's a specific channel that's a specific question that we're going to put up all right carl okay first of all apologizing for interrupting verbally earlier you said use your words and so i was trying to do that um i was trying to chime in at the beginning to say that um that that that point two to me says that you know the board is going to move to a continuous improvement model to instead of a here we're going to set a three a one-year goal a three-year goal a five-year goal we're instead going to move to to to a a you know a different model the continuous improvement model and i fully fully support that and what i'd like us to figure out is taking that from from concept to to to policy what is it what is a continuous improvement model look like in policy and how can we put that forward on to our administration because i think that yeah trying to say okay let's wait till a problem develops and then let's you know figure out you know over the course of a year how to solve it instead of moving to you know more incremental more more quick response model is is is important figure in how to do that is should be our work moving forward um well i think we have a very clear will will the board present to the public a um comprehensive uh uh evaluation of the merger in 18 months that's a that's a motion alex entertain anybody gonna move it isn't that already in our articles agreement no five years the two five years this is 18 months this is charity's challenge which is to have it six months ahead of that okay um um i i i i would admit i would uh support that if we if we did it to have any if we did it to have a budget cycle ahead of that so that we would be able to have at least one budget to when we identified some issues or some problems implement some sort of some sort of attempt to solve them at an 18 month interval you're looking at okay we found some problems and we we don't really have any time to adapt for the budget cycle to try to even approach addressing them so i would i would rather if 18 months means it means a year and a half i would rather move move that we we have that evaluation done in a year so that we have a budget cycle to be able to to to address and adapt and at least at least you know present you say here's our report it identified these deficiencies here's the way we're addressing them in this budget and then you know let's see where we're at for our five-year plan i would i would move it forward if it's only a year and a half okay so we've got it up to a year to january 2022 um there will be a comprehensive evaluation of the merger presented to the public to the voters of rochester and sockbridge what's our feeling i will make that motion make that motion somebody second it we can still discuss it before we vote second seconded by justine jenny what do you think i think that i think that's a good point with with the budget cycle okay all right megan i think that's a good goal i think a year gives us a time to get it together um it makes it more approachable to think about the committee being on it and also it also allows for stockbridge to go for their town vote whether or not this merge will continue or not um and i think that after that we should be using our time to be really evaluating what we said and what we're doing and um making sure that we're hitting all our constituents good amy amy are you present i think we might have lost her i think amy said she was going between meetings so maybe she's dropped off somewhere okay all right well uh we can still take action um uh do we need a composition i i think this is something that um all right i really have to stop doing this but um well i i'm just trying to see if i sit down with bonnie and lindy and set up a framework a basic framework for this and the AOA committee sort of talks about what the framework would be um but i think actually well lindy and bonnie how about you know can we charge you can we charge you with this to come up with a basic outline so can we just be really specific about the charge happy to do it happy to work with bonnie and do it but i just want to be really clear because what do you need do do we are we have a we have a question so i hear from a year from now um but i also hear like we need where we're at right now what was promised and where we are with those things right now as well as another so i i'm just hearing lots of different things i think i have a pretty good idea in my head but i just if my my motion was intended to be a broad kind of strategic overarching kind of conceptual motion and it really wasn't supposed to be all about defining outcomes and and ends and means and goals and SWAT analysis and all that stuff it was just in general can we get to where we have some sort of report at a year because i thought that's what we were asking for i mean i thought that's what the 18 months before and i said i wanted a budget cycle in there i i am not interested or my motion was not intended to require specificity and and detail it was more intended to to to advise direction and intent if you're if you're taking it the other way i want to withdraw it that's why i asked i just you know one we've talked a lot of different routes so just if we can summarize what you're looking for happy to help but i just want to make sure i'm on the right we're on the right track that's all say it again please or i said it um that we were within by january 2022 the board would have a comprehensive evaluation of the success of the merger did i say that before jenny can you tell me what i said i'm just writing the specific words now as you write them as you read them i know i said that's okay that's helpful success of the merger comprehensive evaluation of the success of the merger by january 2022 okay and i heard like here's where we are here's where the deficiencies are and here's the celebrations okay um you know well we're gonna we're gonna that's gonna get filled out we're gonna know more bonnie um and then justine i think was that order bonnie go ahead so just just to clarifying uh just a thought how about if lindy and i take a shot between now and the next board meeting at drafting out what we think our charge is and then bring it at the next board meeting just to be certain that we're not headed down a path that people are thinking that's not the path we want them to go down so how about we sort of collect ideas take a draft show it to you ethan you can show it to whomever we can send it out to folks they can they can you know chime in and then we um have more of a conversation finalize the document i agree we need to be action oriented finalize it next board meeting and then move forward the reason i'm suggesting that is is i'm sitting here trying to wrap my head around what we're being asked to do i i don't i don't think we're gonna need till february 22 to do this um how about i may not be thinking that's enough carl how would i make a question carl please please hold hold it till we get to the other people raise their hand thank you um justine yes i i kind of want to bring it back to i i feel what we're voting on now is whether or not we're going to have some sort of form of evaluation i don't think we're voting on what it's going to look like or who's going to have to do what in that period of time i'm not sure who decides what that is but i don't think we're deciding that right now and i would like to know who decides that what what are our lindy and bonnie supposed to do what is the our articles committee supposed to do in formulating whatever this evaluation might look like who decides that and my my question also is that um the purpose of this evaluation that is going to come ahead of the five-year mark is kind of like a pre-test for us is that the reason that's my question really um my answer to that my answer to that is um no it's because we should be doing it we should be doing it anyway i'm not i'm not focused i know some people are focused on five years i'm not i i'm it's why we started the articles of agreement committee i knew it was a good idea um it's why we um you know we're doing this work and i just i i want to i want to i want to motion i want to motion i want us to vote on something um and and and we and i think you know we said we're not there yet i'm sure it even said we're not there yet we don't know exactly what this what this looks like but we want to we want to put something out there and we want to vote on it we want to make it happen and i'm i'm not going to let it not happen once it's once it's out there um so we have a vote on the floor we've had our discussion i think we go up um we go up and down the motion can i make a point of clarification please yeah charity sure so when i when i did this when i asked for this this was not an exercise that the administration is that i had intention of the administration doing yes you should get input from them but it was directly for the board because in the articles it very clearly through all of the attorney conversation we have had it is the rsud boards responsibility to make sure that the articles are being adhered to so this is a an activity that the board is supposed to be doing with input from all the various parties you're right it should not be charged to lindy and bonnie or whomever the administration is at any level it is the board that should be charged with this or a subcommittee of it if the administrators are part of a subcommittee that's going to do this that's fine but it should be chaired by board members just as the a oa subcommittee is just i feel very strongly about that clarification point no i hear you i hear you um and i think i think the way to do it is if we don't have a committee then we we we do a special meeting because that's how we've been doing stuff for a while we have a special meeting where we sit down and we focus on nothing but this um and i think that's the only way we're going to get and that's what people can commit to obviously nobody wants nobody else wants to step up to a committee but we can commit to um to being to being at a special meeting to talk about nothing but what are the parameters of an evaluation of the merger and and and we can bring a lot of information to that from the a away committee because we'll have looked over the documents um and uh um i think that's i think that's the way we have to do it good okay i've i've got that and i hear you charity thank you for that clarification because you're absolutely right uh so we're gonna we're gonna do us point of order yes again first of all when you ask us to interrupt you verbally please don't chastise us for interrupting you verbally i didn't think i can ask any i never asked to interrupt it verbally yes i have to make our opinions known verbally oh okay that's a few that's because raising hands didn't seem to be working but if you do it does carl it does work i'm seeing people's things when it comes up okay good you know i i will try to go back to using the raising the hands again okay and getting noticed um my point here is that i would like to offer a friendly amendment to the motion which is that you know the comprehensive evaluation that we asked for a year from now would be subject to the recommendations presented by the administration which has the person that made the motion you know getting the the point of order to offer the friendly amendment to uh to to to to address the issues that was being raised was was my intent so there's my friendly amendment all right we have an amendment on the floor um say it again carl please uh the original motion which let's see um the the sorry about that the the the evaluation committee would adopt the comprehensive uh the that language the comprehensive evaluation language um subject uh subject to the recommendations of the administration i was trying to caveat the the the original uh amendment whose language i didn't write i was taking from from yours to add in the the the administration could produce a recommendation around how that around how that evaluation would a take place and be what the outcomes they'd be looking at would be would they be too grand okay um well i think charity's point is that we we we we take recommendations from all parties we take recommendations from the superintendent we take recommendations from the AOA committee we take recommendations from our um our staff and then then my my amendment is with is irrelevant and i withdraw it in the original motion stands okay good um let's let's let's vote on this i think we're i think we're ready oh justine you have more sorry got you just one clarifying question if we're voting on this we're just voting once this will be happening one year from today and then uh uh maybe it will be on a regular basis or is that something we will vote on some other time well um every year we we could have an amendment where we add in a special meeting um that will be a special meeting will be scheduled to um start this process within the next month no i just meant um the the evaluation process we will produce it for a year from now and then every subsequent year after that or what is the regular basis for these evaluations good point i think it should be every year we we present an evaluation but that is not part of the motion we're making right now okay i would make a friendly emotion a friendly amendment to add the word annual to the evaluation term i would second that any discussion all in favor uh megan oh no no i'm good you're good for that okay jenny i am good and would also like to um i guess kind of put up put all of our cards on the table i'm not volunteering to be on that committee because i'm not planning on rerunning to be on the board in the spring so i don't feel that that would be appropriate for me to be on this committee okay good thank you um uh carl i'm good you're good uh ethan is good amy are you there no no any okay so the eyes have it so it's now annual the comprehensive value an annual comprehensive evaluation of the merger to be presented january well then it would be january because it's going to be every january so we have to remove that i'll i think we're we're loose enough here that we can just remove the 2022 it will be every january presented every january which will give us time to add it into the motion okay are we ready to vote on this motion good uh uh carl i jenny i megan i justine i ethan i okay so i will schedule a special meeting to start this process okay um we are at two hours um and we have gotten through our action items um we have dina when dina was here we have talked about from these future action items um i want to uh bring them up um and let's see what what what conversation we have here um this is a big one number one of the future action items um majority vote is always unfair to the smaller town and uh is waiting voting legal and i've asked two different legal people and it's not um you can't change the essence of a vote for um for big votes that's what i've learned so far um there's i think there's more questions to ask about this but i do think the issue is there of when you merge two districts two towns and one has less population um this is something we need to keep in our minds um and it's been a big it got we prioritized these by the way in the committee and why we put things one two three four and five and six um and i think that's that's why this is here is just to this it's an underlying issue we have to remember when we create our budgets it's an underlying issue when we do repairs it's an underlying addition issue when we um suddenly add a thousand dollars for something and one campus and the other campus you know it's it's that sense of fairness is a big issue what are the comments people have on this there's no action we can take on this tonight but i would like to acknowledge people's uh take on it justine i expected um maybe more information from dina and i would go along with that um for number one this is a conversation she and i have had um um and i've also with uh the other legal representation in um uh in mapeulia that i've been talking to bernie sorry i don't remember his last name right now um yeah and i i thought that he was going to look at this document and provide a response um i believe you obviously that that's not legal but i don't have anything to say about it or well i mean is is that what the board would like to do is to pass this document off to dina to have her action i mean i think we haven't read the document all the way through as a board and i think that's important that we do that at least tonight um because we didn't do that last time when we said we were doing our presentation um the next one obviously we we can um yeah i don't know how i don't know how to do this whether we should go and and see if we have any comments on all of these um or whether i should read them out i think we should go by one by one and then just um see if there's any more questions that will happen dina great thank you i think that's a very good clarification thank you jenny so the majority vote always unfair to the smaller town uh is waiting voting waited voting legal and do we have any further questions um there's another term i think waited is the idea that you know i i don't know i this is this is definitely a legal question megan do you have any further questions on that one before it goes to dina i'd like to hear from dina you'd like to hear from dina yeah i think um i need to definitely hear if it's even legal and then i'm not sure exactly where i fall on this i'd like to you know see where the budget falls out with are we really 50 50 i just i have some more questions and i also if it's if it's not legal then i'm just i just rather wait for dina to tell us if it's even something we should be talking about charity point of order your clarification uh i think we also had the question for dina that was raised by a couple different people in public comment in the subcommittee of is there a different mechanism to voting that we're not aware of that could work around this such as there was the percentage-based voting like if it's over 51 percent in one town and over 51 percent one in the other town meaning both towns get a yes does that mean a yes um there was that piece that we wanted dina to clarify as well and asked her if they're wanted clarification on is there another mechanism that would level the playing field more fairly that we're just simply not aware of got you good who hasn't spoken yet i'm i'm sorry i'm forgetting who uh is amy back on or is she gone no i guess she must be gone um just uh carl um the only thing is the only the only thing i i would add on terms of in in in in terms of waiting voting um you know charities comment the whole idea of runoff you know could there be running off runoff voting if there wasn't like a super majority i mean right now we're split 60 40 so if we said that you know some issue got um more than 60 it would win because that would that you know that would be that that would account for you know the differences between our two towns and if it got under 60 40 you would get an automatic revoke i mean right now our taxpayers could challenge any issue um just by the the the usual reconsideration laws but could we could we put together you know some sort of structure or something that made made people feel more comfortable about that like like i said an ox you know if an issue didn't get 60 because that that's our difference you know then there would have to be like a runoff vote automatically versus a reconsideration appeal good good i think these are all good things to present to dina um anybody not i did not get to jenny did you speak on this jenny did you have anything to say on this number one she's there um then i'm going to move on we've got questions there for dina so can the public have a vote say in realignment of grades between buildings obviously as i mentioned before the example being four five six um and this this is i think this sounds like something the board could have a motion to say something about she dina said that was in our pardon um carl i can i can say pretty definitively that um because we talked about that um in the study committee some in light of the uh then the time like um teacher student ratio uh rules and what that might do to our district um no the the the the board can ask the public its opinion in a non-binding resolution the board can say will you know do the town support hosting um you know k through k through four on the rochester campus and five and six on the stockbridge campus um and get their opinion and um but it would not be binding um those kinds of decisions just like where money gets spent in a line item you know public can't edit a line item on a budget they can vote a budget up and down they can't the the public can't vote on where the grades are educated that's solely discussed a decision of the board but we can make a commitment to making sure we get that input we we can we can but but the the public the question is can the public have a vote say i guess i think more of a say piece of the question that's the public can have a vote the public cannot have a say yeah um so they they can we can we can commit to we maybe that should be rephrased we can commit to seeking the public's opinion okay and we have funny yes i was just going to say the same the same thing we have to be a little careful about about when we're asking for votes or things like that because those are they take a while to set up they're legal you can't do them at the drop of a hat i don't think this board or any board i've ever worked with or any administrator would ever attempt to make this kind of a change without having a number of public meetings about it and that's another way of seeking community input i think that what the board is committing to is not making a decision without seeking input from all the stakeholders parents community members etc so i my caution is just uh being a little bit careful about how the board might tie its hands around asking for votes on a number of things i think it's this is just a wrong word i think carl made that clear and and me i'm gonna make sure to ask i this isn't something that's voted on it's something that is the prerogative of the board correct i think there's nervousness that it could happen without full impact you know without full stakeholder input good uh just dean no comment thank you okay megan i think it's very important to have input from the public about if we're gonna be re aligning grades um i welcome this change well yeah good jenny i had to log off for a couple minutes because i lost you know can you state what your question was uh yes so this we're on number two and future action items and it's can the public have a vote say in realignment of grades between buildings carl made the clarification that is not a vote we have to like dean has said we have to be very careful with our language um they can't have a vote or say in this um as bonny rephrased it basically we we would get if we would definitely get opinion from all stakeholders um and i said we could get a we could make a commitment that we would get opinions from all stakeholders just so nobody felt like we were going to make any sudden decisions yes i absolutely agree i don't think that's i think bonny had said um you know that's not something that we that we would just make on our own so i agree with committing to getting input good megan i just answered you good sorry i'm getting a little foggy here that's okay thank you good um i think we're clear on that one just dean you're from the committee do you think we've gotten clarity on that or do you think we i'm all set on that okay good um number three is an amendment and again language we'll have to know about this that board must propose only budgets to stay under the threshold and again this is probably something we need to pipe past dina though i think she's going to answer everything on here uh carl start with you uh no i'm firmly against this the way the public gets to to to have their input on the budget is to vote it up or down i can see all sorts of circumstances where we may need to present a budget that goes above the threshold because of of some sort of circumstance some sort of thing we can't pivot from in a budget year um you know it's it's it's our job to make those tough decisions and we can certainly make a commitment and in stock which we always have made a commitment the one time we proposed a budget that went like it was under a hundred dollars over you know they spanked us down they voted our budget down and we said okay we hear you and we redid it but the board's ability to present a budget should not be should not be tied by by by some sort of you know calculation i mean right now how the state calculates a budget that is under penalty um you know we understand but should those rules change that could really hinder the option the you know the the the the options of the board and lastly and i think most most most importantly the board's job is not to pass a budget friendly tax friendly budget the board's job is to present and try to pass an education kid friendly student friendly community friendly what's best for the children friendly budget and saying well it has to but we'll do that but it has to be under under the threshold no sir you will not get my support on that at all charity we heard a clarification uh yeah i was just going to mention the fact that this was written in as a one-year clause in the original articles and that's what the basis of this was was to make it a continual clause a continual amendment in it um for the simple fact that we've discussed a lot of stuff tonight about voting and as we saw this year stock bridge actually voted down the budget both times but because of the but the voting platform uh it was it got passed so this was sort of looking at it as how do we find a happy medium and go in line with as carl himself pointed out you know the tradition in stock bridge that we don't pass you know over budget or over the threshold budgets justine do you have a comment on this well i um i i agree with carl and i also um think that the budget is voted on the voters don't want to approve the budget that's you know too high that's above the threshold they're not going to i think it's it's pretty um if this gets back to the weighted voting you know that that one town can't vote down this budget right now yeah i think those are two you know that you're right it does go with the weighted voting um i think that it puts too much of a parameter on what might be needed at a certain time i think that i agree with carl and that i'm not in support of um it being absolutely necessary that it stay under the threshold i think that's a good goal but i think that's too limiting jenny yeah i would agree with justine and carly um i think justine made a good point you know i think it's definitely the goal but i don't i don't see this as something that that would be an amendment it's more of you know we you know try our best to come up with the numbers and then um you know the town the voters are the the checks and balances of it okay mega yeah i'm gonna i'd like to leave the budget to be voted on at town meeting or the annual meeting and i think um jenny justine and carl have made very good points that i agree with yeah i think this goes this sort of goes back to one you know number one on these future action items this idea i do just want to just we have we have consistently been under the threshold this will be our third budget cycle i believe so i think we've been doing this and i think that's will always be our goal but i think it's important to you know god forbid something was to happen that we can present something that's realistic and have a fair discussion with our community to at our annual meeting bonnie would you speak to this for a sec i saw you nodding your head no i was agreeing i i can think of a number of situations where the board could be in a very difficult spot if they committed to to always doing this i personally think most towns would vote down a budget that was over the threshold uh but i think if the board takes too many of these statements and and you kind of put them together uh let's say we had to realign grades in order to stay under the threshold um where would that leave the board if we'd committed to you know we hadn't we hadn't done the work yet around realigning the grades we hadn't had the meetings uh we weren't able to stay under the threshold i just think you want to leave yourself the maximum ability to problem solve um in a way that you know is acceptable to your communities i i think locking yourself into this ahead of time poses some you know some pretty significant uh potential difficulties okay um good let's move on to number four in lieu of more equitable voting process can a one-sided large bond vote be prevented legal question is a moratorium voted by the board a solution moratorium on large bond issues carl you want to start with us again um this is a really really good question um it seemed like from what dina said before a bond is going to be a straight up or down vote um i i i i'm writing an email to her because i kind of think that i mean i could see that if i mean she made the point of you know the district's own own owns both buildings stock bridge doesn't own stock bridge building rochester doesn't own rochester's building but um because of that dollar buyout you could there there there you could see a scenario and i'm not trying to propose this is this is hypothetical this is how this is more building a legal argument this is not at all suggesting what could happen but you could say well we're going to completely improve all these rochester buildings we're going to propose a bond and then rochester votes are through and stock bridge votes are down and it goes through and the buildings get improved and then the board says well we're now going to decommission the buildings and send all the kids to stock bridge and then rochester get these two great new buildings for two shiny dollars so and i say that not not again and i want to emphasize this enough i'm trying to go through the thought process of the idea that somehow bonding has to be equitable because the the resources are shared when there's a voteable out for a majority to take their assets and run to vote to improve them and then vote to take them so i think about wanting to get that legal question really really really clarified um but i think that you know i i i i think that what our best effort should be is the state is already talking about um removing any kind of bond money from penalty calculations i think what we should try to do is maybe talk to our legislatures about saying in a union district couldn't we have a way that if we needed to do some work that was specific to a rochester building we could propose it just to the rochester rochester voters because ultimately that's their asset or stock bridge voters and maybe see if we couldn't get something done in legislature in the next year um and i am willing to take to take the initiative and leadership and you know i'll draft a letter and circulate it to the board and to you well first to you even and we'll send it to dina and maybe we'll see if we can't get something put forward because i really think at the end of the day if our board could say here's a bond that benefits everyone we're proposing it to the whole community here's a bond to do this at stock bridge facility because we know they can get that building for a dollar we're going to put that vote just to them and then it'll just be taxed to them here's a vote for something that goes to buildings that are in the town of rochester where they have the dollar buying option and we could we could we could bond it that way i mean that would go a long way towards towards making everyone felt feel that they had equity so i think uh garl i think the key part i heard is that you're willing to take this on and look into this yes i am willing to i will i i will commit to in the next week drafting a letter to our legislatures you know suggesting suggesting a particular a particular you know cure and i'll send it to you and then maybe you will decide we want to send it to dina and then what about what about this idea of a moratorium because there was some talk that a moratorium might actually be something a ball a board can do by itself without any moratorium being that the board would not offer any bonds any bonds for a given period of time that i have a problem with because um what if you know the uh there there there's a clog in in in in a propane line and something explodes and we now have we now have all this this this stuff we need to replace it may be more beneficial to replace it under a bond right away then under some kind of well we'll just do it because if you run a deficit you can the board can by vote of the board roll that deficit out into a three-year loan or they can bond it out so you can always bond it after the fact but again what i worry about is some of these things where the board might need the extraordinary power and we've taken it away because we're worried that the board might do something silly bonnie is that your agreement i saw you nodding your head yeah i think i think any of these statements we're making that we we will never do something each of them has inherent problems with them you can think through a number of situations where you wouldn't want to have limited your emergency situations where you wouldn't want to have limited yourself to that just as a reminder towns have to you know approve bonds so it's not like the board can go off and do something silly i mean i know we have this this perception of you know one town can um or we have this there is this reality issue where one town can out vote another one but seldom do boards ever i mean i can't think of an instance where boards propose bonds around things that aren't essential that aren't necessary i i agree and i'm i'm i want to make it clear i'm committing to putting together our case as to why we might we might want to have three different bonding options depending on our projects because i think that would probably address concerns in a lot of other towns across vermont and i i would write that letter and then we try to get through the legislature and i would i would i would spearhead doing that i'd go to montpellier if i had to or whatever cool thank you um justine do you have a further comment on this no thank you mega further comment i'm okay thank you jenny further comment i'm off that thanks okay good thank you carl i appreciate that um number five this may already be happening and i we we talked in the committee that we understand that this is happening but could there be a budget coded at the expense level to reveal accounting at each campus intent to reveal spending equity in real time at both campuses and i think maybe bonnie and lindy you can talk about this that some of this about identifying and in real time sort of when things are spending when this happens and certainly what terra presented us to us at last board meeting in a real time this is what happened this month um is is going towards some of that what would be your comment bonnie uh we already have expenses that are um accounted for in that in that manner um so i don't i don't see that that would be um a huge problem i mean it would be a conversation with jamie about you know when when information could come out what the timing is of the board meetings etc etc um but i don't i don't see a huge issue with that i don't really know what i don't really know how we would define spending equity i mean rochester spends more every month in oh let's say teacher salaries because there's the difference in four classes and six classes um so i don't know exactly how we would define uh spending equity but we certainly could show the expenses in real time for each campus bonnie well i want to share so it's it's doable keep in mind that terra is going to get a different direction from the state about chart of accounts i believe this july but you should confirm that date it just sticks out in my mind as that she's going to get a different direction which means that it may not be quite as separated as we're used to or easy to identify but i could be wrong about that that's a direction that she's following from the state um if that were to happen it can be done i want to caution the word real time it's really about a two-week delay because that's the cycle that of how things work and how things get paid so um when you say real time i think of like swiping my debit card at the grocery store and it shows up in my bank account as an expense that i've spent that money and it's not there we use the p o system to track those things ahead of time when they're paid for so they are accounted for so we're not overspending line items um furiously it's not that it doesn't happen because things come up um i think the other thing i want to share and re-emphasize is bonnie's point about we would need some clarification around equity because rochester is a bigger population but it's not that people are going without in stockbridge it just costs more money to support more kids in rochester and that we've also streamlined our spending process and that it all goes through one person at janet whitaker janet whitaker kind of organizes it all so it's a little bit of a system where she sees everything and helps bonnie and i see the big picture meaning she's able to help that so it's not like we are spending separately as entities and nobody's really seeing the other but we can share it and it can be detailed if that's what people are looking for good do we have other comments on this justine well thank you all right carl carl you had your hand up go ahead carl um yes thank you um uh i wanted to echo one of the things that had been said earlier um in general you know i think it's important that that we stick to the you know um population slash grandlets slash whatever ratio equity is 60 40 it is not 50 50 um and that's really kind of kind of a rule of thumb i would also um point out that a lot of what i was going to mention the the centralized personally purchasing that that you guys have been talking about doing through janet over the last couple meetings that it becomes hard to sort of split out how that goes um between the campuses i think trying to you know monitor that and keep an eye on that and tag that as we can is important but i think it's this real i mean we just at the last su meeting had had kind of got the the feel from tara that um as she was posting expenses for the su that monthly was kind of a little bit off really quarterly was where you were going to get your best picture so the word real time you know should should be taken with a grain of salt and i also you know would caution against the spending a lot of resources really trying to pin down out of that you know 200 box of crayons did rochester only get 120 into the stock which get their full aid where do they get 76 or maybe they got 84 and they jipped some some some rochester so carl i do detailed and and and and that we also try not to have it be real time but i do want to share carl that same point we do try to be that detailed and the reason i say that is because i personally and bonnie supports me in this and sometimes mocks me a little bit i personally view our school budget as you guys have essentially given us the power to responsibly spend on those line items like they are our own personal checking account i was taught you don't spend money you don't have and that's how fine level because we can't continue the budget that bonnie and i inherited was not very detailed and did not share information in the only way we can continue year after year to put forward budgets that have accurate money of what we're spending we shouldn't be having these large surpluses we should be as close to zero as possible every year because that means we've done a good job budgeting and tracking what we're actually spending that being said we can't control health care every year and things like that but we try and that's how finite we are trying to be with how we spend the money so we are not just guessing on numbers when we put forward numbers to you guys in a budget for the yeah oh no no no i i'm sorry i i apologize completely no no no i just want to say i appreciate that but that's how nitty gritty work and i do the meetings you guys are laser focused and that is freaking awesome i love that i just don't want it to be that you know we that that we're we're we're slavishly tied to a 60-40 ratio if if if if raw if stock bridge needs 42% of the pencils give stock bridge 42% of the pencils that they need or actually give stock bridge 100% of the pencils they need and give rochester 100% of the pencils they need and don't what i was trying to get to get away from is that i don't want us i think i want us to look at that ratio of spending and you know and appreciate the fact that rochester is 60% of our community and stock bridge is about 40% in grand list in student count in voter count and in those ratios are pretty close so i want us to to understand we're not 50 50 but that we don't slavishly have to tie to 60 40 i i you guys are doing a great job with our budget and i'm i've been amazed at what we've been able to accomplish and i agree i don't want to take taxpayers money for a year while we hold it in a surplus that we can then celebrate how we you know we took too much money from from you and then we gave it back you know i i i don't want that mentality either i want us to to to be able to be really accurate and like within 5% plus or minus because there's going to be variance but you know i i i want to celebrate our attention to detail and not tie us to ratios just the last thing i'll say even on on budgets is that um i understand the need to to to keep things in perspective but lindy and i we truly look at the rochester stock bridge kids as one group of kids and whatever anybody in that group of kids needs in that group of youngsters need we work very hard to make it happen we don't really think of our kids as two separate groups of kids um so as you said caro you know rochester gets a hundred percent of the crayons it needs and stock bridge gets a hundred percent of the crayons it needs i i do think sometimes and i don't i don't mean to be critical of anyone i do think sometimes that if you're a stranger sitting in our meetings sometimes the way we chat it doesn't sound like all these kids are our kids it sounds like somehow we have this line of demarcation um and i i just have to say that it it it just is it's just frustrating sometimes do we have further comments on number five justine no thank you megan i'm okay thank you jenny yeah i don't i don't see any issue with um getting that information from the sq i think that if um i applaud lindy and bonnie for being so detailed in their budget tracking and i think that if if they're already doing that level of detail that we should be able to get it from the sq and i do think that it's something that the communities have been asking for and i i agree they they definitely are all of our kids um but i think also kind of um going along with the the community as well i think that you know there might be sometimes where it might be good to know i know initially when we first merged there was little detail on um or we were able to get little detail on the the fuel oil expenses and you know some of the telephone expenses and i think that lindy and bonnie are creating a great system to be able to be able to track those excellent okay um moving on to number six and i believe that dina answered this quite forcefully um how does a tiger vote get broken in the school board vote we've never had that yet um but obviously as boards changed that could happen but she said you cannot substitute a board member and there is no proxy vote um you need to be present to vote so i i don't know what else um denny's can be said about that but um uh it may be that that that there is some sort of agreement with the board of if we do have a tie vote that we we get to go back to work until we have gone one way or the other um uh i don't know i'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this if if it comes up carol you want to start um sure uh a tie vote means no action you know the action item you know if the if the vote was to uh put a new slide to the playground there's there's no new slide um if the vote was to lay off uh or to stop busing or to stop food service to save money the food service or the busing stays um a tie a tie is uh i mean i've heard this at vsba trainings for for a decade now a tie is is in action um you know quorum exists to make sure that there's a representative body that is capable of voting so when we go into a quorum when we have a meeting and we have quorum that means we have enough people to vote and that means the outcome of that vote is is is a decision um you know there are certain actions um there are certain actions that have to be worn for a public meeting there are certain actions that have to be worn for a school board meeting for example policy approval has to be worn 30 days in advance um there's uh in terms of personnel actions that have to be worn if they're being taken place in public you know and in general it's bad form to put any kind of uh um pietro lin the guy that is the lawyer that advises basically says he he said that you can but you should not put any substantive action on a on a on a an agenda that was not on the warned agenda so in other words when you make changes to the agenda you can't say hey let's put on putting in a pool um something like that so i mean there are there are uh standard practices and procedures in place about um you know uh school board votes but in general the bottom line is if you have a quorum and there is a and there is a majority decision that more majority decision stand um you know if there's a tie vote whatever that action is does not happen whether it's affirming something or denying something it doesn't happen and like i said that was explained to me as being like dina said straightforward and clear got you um any further comment on this number six justine no thank you beggin carl said it said it very well thank you jenny no comment okay thank you all right and our pending list um that really is i look over this um number two is something that we're already passing over to dina and asking her about and number three i think the answer is absolutely yes it's what the articles of agreement committee is going to do we're going to look at issues conditions that were looked at in the mention in the planning period and in the presentation and bring them back to the board and and um and possibly look at them for reintroduction to the articles the number one is is really this key one and i realized i i realized as i look at it that i kind of dropped the ball on this i did present this to david the idea is that one of these articles and this is a very much a question for dina one of the articles um basically talks about and and charity you may need to help me on this it talks about what what's in the building and that the school has to disperse what what it owns or the district has to disperse what it owns and that that somehow was conflicting with once we sold the building once we transferred the high school building in terms of how we owned it so that's really the issue that came up in this number one and we needed more information and i presented this to david at some point and um he got back to me and i realized now that he didn't quite understand what i was asking him and uh i that's where i've dropped the ball a little bit um but uh and i will try and find the language here so we can talk about it carl go ahead um i'm a little confused as i understand it um when we divest of the building that that that's the building that's not the lockers or the shot i mean it's the pointing fixtures it's the doors it's the it's the light switches it's the physical building itself it's not the contents of the building like the lockers or the desks or the shop equipment or probably the theater curtains and things like that now certainly as part of disposing of the building the board could agree to say yeah sure you get this you know you get the theater curtains sure you get the shop equipment um we you know there's there's schools that want to buy lockers we're keeping the lockers but as i understand it and we can we we if this you know this if this conflicts with anyone's memory we should follow up with dina but um it's like a house sale you know the appliances and things like that are are are sort of are are sort of spelled out but they're assumed to belong to the prior owner so all the contents of the school belong to the school board we can include them in in in an article of sale for the dollar um or not at our discretion and certainly that's something we can negotiate but those are assets of ours to include or deny at our discretion okay ethan this is charity uh so and justine might need to help me on this one so i think justine and i were both the ones that posed this it's not the language in the articles that was concerning it's that the language in one of the preliminary documents regarding the sale of the high school had potentially conflicting language with the content of what carl just stated the articles state exactly what carl just said but the high school sale building our document has conflicting language that makes it sound as though anything in that building at the time of signing now becomes the property of the town of rochester and in one of the subcommittee meetings patty did say you know the town has no intention of you know taking stuff from the school that they would want to keep for later on and an agreement could be made the problem comes into if you have two binding documents that have conflicting language that that's just a no no and i don't know much about law so that was the piece we just wanted clarified was is there conflicting language and can it be changed to more accurately depict the situation all right i'm going to i'm going to stick dean on that put dean on that is there conflicting language about property content ownership and and do we need to know something about it yeah and just for the ethan this is bonnie just for the board's information um the last i don't know what's it been year and a half linda year uh given that those are still assets of the our subboard we have been moving things around some walkers went to stock bro we move things around that we that we know we need or are going to need so some of the tables lockers chairs things like that have already come out of the high school and gone to our stock bridge and rochester campuses charity what is the second document you were referring to that has the conflicting information i don't actually have a copy of it it's a document that was presented by the board at a meeting i believe in the december meeting as a general statement about the sale of the high school um and i think it was a preliminary document um and i apologize i don't have it right in front of me but we had looked at it during one of our subcommittee meetings and it just struck a red flag that there was you know possible conflicting language about the contents of the building was this the article that david had drafted possibly i think it was in the december meeting let me let me review my email to him because i i also think i i think i had a pretty good handle on it when i referred it to him because i believe that in one of the drafts that david had prepared it had talked about contents and i'd asked him about that and i don't remember it's gotten changed it's certainly always been mentioned in any of the dealings we've had with the select board that it's a negotiation issue you know that we're going to negotiate about what stays and what goes so whether it's conflicted by something else uh you know we need to we can also send david on that and and just look and make sure has anything been gone out that could conflict with the idea that we can release that property and i i can i can take care of that megan you had something to say yes i i do um i guess when it comes i i'd like some clarity on what's being proposed to the to the select board for taking for the town of rochester be taking over the building and i do like the idea it's more of a negotiation of what the contents of the building are inside the building because i mean all those things were purchased prior to the unification so rochester taxpayers paid for the contents of the shop equipment things of that nature that i do think people in town might have in rochester might have some problems if it was just you know we only the town of rochester only got just the building so i i think having to be able to negotiate the contents is is is key yeah it's always been mentioned is that that would be part of the process and we would get i mean that's believe me as we talked you know there's all kinds of negotiations that are going to be part of how the buses come in how the entry way all this shared easement cooperative all this stuff it's a lot of negotiation that's absolutely process thank you and and that will be contents as well not to mention you know we are going to have to talk about if if the elementary still gets some storage space for like tractors and stuff like that because that's what exists right now this is all part of the negotiations and we'll be bringing it to you um carl you had your hand up yeah i just i did it's actually now it's paybacking just on what you said that by by negotiations i do not mean you know adversarial nickel and diming each other i mean just just the conversations um if the school district can get some money for selling lockers that the the other committee might not want let's do that um if they want the the the you know the elementary school has no need of a table saw if they want that because they want to keep the shop space they can have it it's it's more solving how to make these things work versus how either one of us can can take advantage of the other and this and this this item you know that we brought up here it really was about seeing some inconsistency and it takes a lawyer to look at it to see if we really have an inconsistency it may not be a problem so i will i will follow up and make sure i ask i asked um probably david is the one to really look at this and and and make sure we're covered um that as far as i can see gets us through the list and i think we're ready for um our public comment time we've taken our action and remember we have exactly i don't expect this executive section to take particularly a long time but i just uh we do need to get to it so i will um unless anybody has any objections i will now go to public comment and we will start with charity um thank you so much for your clarity throughout this meeting it's been very very useful i appreciate it um do you have any further comment at this time no i think i've interrupted right along with the meeting thank you good thank you so much joanne mills from stockbridge do you have a comment uh can you hear me yes amazing it worked for the first time in asia so i still love it i don't have a comment i i think the um were people that worked really hard on it and um and uh i would like to say that i heard last night at the select board meeting that um someone from rochester said none of this matters anyway they can always outvote us so i'm just going to leave that right there thank you okay thank you just joanne uh caren rubin from stockbridge do you have a comment uh no i'm a little disheartened by what joanne just said um but no i do not thank you guys for taking the time this evening great thank you caren uh megan pain rob gardener do you have a comment yeah can you hear me yes i can so i have a speaker i'm gonna hope it doesn't give feedback i just i just want to say thank you all for working so hard and make a comment that about this entire process of reviewing the agreements and that is that what was um saddening to me was it seemed to me that a lot of the impetus this had to do with a lack of good faith that that wanted to question the budgets and question the voting and what if there's a tie and all this stuff is based on hypotheticals and fears that exist in stockbridge and not in rochester the merger can't really work except in good faith and i think there's a lot of good faith in these communities i'm sorry joanne said what she did because it makes assumptions that just aren't true i think the merger's been a big success and i'm sorry about what appears to me to be a source of a lack of good faith but a lot of what i heard in this meeting tonight from you guys had a really affirmed a sense of good faith and i appreciate that and i thought it was good thank you rob tim pratt nope you all set okay all right ladies and gentlemen yes uh lindy i would like to sit down and figure out how this google meets i can actually see everybody so uh at this time was much more frustrating than last time usually i'd get all the active speakers on me so um uh great oh wonderful good work thank you all this was you know um this is this is a beginning this is a beginning of of how we we we talk about this stuff and it's important to air it and i think it's really important to talk and we all get our opinions out there about it so i i thank you much um i have my articles i will be talking i'll i'll be talking to you all about a special meeting um to really talk about what we're to start this review process um and other than that if we have no further business um oh so what am i talking about we got an executive session what else thank you um i will entertain a motion to enter executive session to talk about a real estate issue and uh and information from our lawyer and in fight in uh bonnie and lindy so moved second it second thank you um rey you're giving us a separate or we that would be my suggestion heatham okay thank you so if everyone can in the meeting will drop off and then remember we'll need to return to this meeting once we're done with the executive session to to close out okay thank you back from executive session they are subord we have uh a yes we have our forum here um uh the one thing we have to report is that an initial um map uh wastewater map of boundaries was shared with the town and the town has submitted that to their planning board um for a review and we will be waiting for the results of that review but the process is going forward um and that's where we are tonight i would entertain a motion to adjourn our next meeting is uh at this point until i schedule that special one our next one is the official which is the february February 2nd thank you oh i didn't get there February 2nd 2026 30 p.m by google mean very good and now i'll entertain a motion so moved so moved second second all in favor signify by saying aye thank you everybody very good night thank you all much appreciated