 Okay, so I'd like to call this meeting to order. I see that we've got six board members, so that's a quorum, so we can get started. Thanks to everyone who's here. Tonight's meeting we'll focus on, we'll hear from two RUHS reports, a curriculum development one, and then an ends monitoring. We will also hear a budget update from Lane. We will have an executive session and we hope to do some policy governance training at the end. So first off is public comment. We will not be talking at all about modality, so but if anyone else would like to have a public comment about anything, feel free to do so right now. All right, hearing none, there will be a chance later if someone would like to ask questions to either of the high school presenters or to Lane, our superintendent or to the board. So I would like to choose a board member to evaluate this meeting with someone, I know Brian did it last time, would someone else please volunteer? Hannah, how about you? Is that okay? Okay, thank you. Hearing none, I will do the old teacher thing and just call on someone. Thank you very much. I did want to just address the annual report to voters. That's my report that I did send out to all of the board members last week. That will be public soon. I don't think we need to discuss it tonight since I got some comments back and did revamp that a little and then that will just be made public soon on all of our behalf. All right, so first off, we've got a curriculum development update from I guess the RUHS lower middle school or lower grades, I'm not sure. So go ahead, thank you. This is Lisa. It's actually from Katie and I. We're going to talk a little bit about alignment. Great, that sounds terrific. Thank you and thank you for carving out the time tonight to hear some of the curriculum work we've been engaged in throughout the last several years. Lisa's going to share her screen and what we are going to show you tonight are some documents that we use as an English department to continue to check for alignment in our curriculum. So you're going to see first our master document which demonstrates what we refer to in terms of our standards and performance indicators. And it's separated as you'll note into middle school and high school. And this was again derived from the common core standards. And I'd like to also just thank Emily Therrien who is our English department chair and the department members for their ongoing work on this document. I'd like to draw your attention to the date of last revision, which was June of 2020. We as a department revisit this document every year and at the end of the year so that it's fresh in our minds and we can look at it and make sure that it still reflects what we do in our middle and high school. And when we move on to our course mapping document we'll be able to show you how these performance indicators and standards are laid out in our curriculum by grade level and by course. This is really exciting work. This is really dynamic work. And this is some one aspect, one of the many aspects of what we really love doing in our curriculum work. So it's really a pleasure and a privilege to share this with you tonight and to not only show you the documents that we refer to but in our work we actually get to watch how these performance indicators and standards come to life in the classroom. And that's truly a joy. So if you notice in this document we're gonna move over to the course mapping document and we're gonna start with the overview if you mind, Lisa go into the overview tab. And again, this is a spreadsheet that was developed by Emily Therrien as English department chair. And what's great about the layout of this is you can see all of the standards along the top. So you've got writing, presentation, reading, discussion, language, it's all along the top. And then you see the performance indicators right below. And then below that where all of the X's are is basically our audit of how these standards are implemented and delivered to our students throughout their tenure at RU. So what you'll look for and what we look for every year is that there's redundancy where we want it and there isn't where we don't and that a student's pathway through their tenure at RU and through our English department gives them what they need to be prepared for whatever is next for them, whether it is their college bound or they're entering the workforce, whatever it may be, we wanna make sure that they have a lot of practice in these skills. So when I say redundancy, I'm saying that there are certain standards that require, as you know, a lot of practice for students to feel really capable and confident in achieving mastery. So, you know, in the writing standards and the reading standards and the presentation standards, you'll see that those are revisited a lot by grade level, but then a lot also, you know, in the courses themselves. So you will see that a lot of the time teachers are covering standards related to writing, for example, multiple times throughout the year. And then they'll hit a lot of those same standards every year and that's on purpose and deliberate because we wanna make sure that they're prepared writers. So that's how you see how we're auditing our courses to make sure that everything is covered. And you'll see specifically that throughout the courses in seven, eight, nine, 10, we're especially mindful because often, you know, grade 11 students might choose to go to RTCC or different programs. We really wanna make sure that that instruction and the performance indicator coverage is really strong throughout those grade levels. And then students have different options from then on. And there's some of the electives that are there are the ones that are not edited as closely. All right, so we're gonna then move into, I'm gonna show you the English seven spreadsheet. And this is how the, that's further drilled down and articulated into the classroom itself. So you'll see that there are several units and that's what's on the left hand side, then the associated assessments, essential questions, what the text use are. And then again, you have the performance indicators on the top and then another audit of how they are covered throughout the year. And, you know, this is a really important reference document, not only for the current teacher, but again, you know, if we had another teacher transition into the school, this is the way that they would be onboarded so that they know exactly what the grade seven English curriculum looks like. And it's another way too for us to quickly scan through our grade levels and classes to again, make sure that the redundancy is what we want and it's not where we don't. So for example, if we noticed that Rebecca Castellano, which is the tab we're looking at right now, is teaching the same core text as, you know, the grade eight teacher, we would want to obviously revise that. So we don't see redundancy where we don't want it. And again, we wouldn't want a grade eight student writing another personal essay if they'd already had that exposure this year. We might want to make sure that they're being exposed to a variety of text genres and then a variety of writing assignments so that they feel capable writing for different audiences. So if you zoom in further, when I'm gonna hand this off to Lisa, she's gonna drill down further. So what you'll note here is that in Rebecca's first unit, the students are asked to write a personal essay and you'll see that that personal essay covers writing standards 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3, which is 1.1 is maintaining purpose, 1.2 is details and evidence. And so you'll see that those are the performance indicators that are covered as well as one listening standard because the students read their essays and the other students are asked to pull out the main topics from other students' essays. So this is again a way for us to have a document that's living in dynamic and allows the teacher to refer to it throughout the year to make sure that all of the PIs and performance indicators are covered for the year. And also for Lisa and I to go in and observe teachers and also look at how these performance indicators and standards play out in real time with students, which is really an exciting part of this as I noted. So next Lisa is going to show you Rebecca Castellano's Google Classroom and you'll see a description of the personal essay assignment. You'll see the associated rubrics and then she's gonna drill down further and show you an exemplar of what that student writing looks like. So I'll hand it over to you, Lisa. Sorry I had to navigate back in order to unmute so that I could share. So actually the next piece that I was going to share was the middle school writing rubric for the personal essay. And we're looking at this because middle school is really important. It's a place where we're bridging between the elementary school and the high school. So we know that our students have been working on these proficiencies. In the elementary school, they've been developing as readers and writers and then they come to us. And although they're going to be responsible for writing personal essays that scaffold right up to senior project or their portfolios at the tech center, we know that they're not ready necessarily to be tackling that senior project rubric in the language that we'd expect our seniors to use. So the middle-level team has taken a look at the writing rubrics that the elementary school has used and then they've built on those to make sure that there's nothing that's too unfamiliar for students but we're still pushing them to do their very best work. And again, this aligns with Common Core and it aligns with our own standards at Randolph Union and the education quality standards put out by the state of Vermont. So we're trying to create a system where students are consistently growing and demonstrating proficiency over time and where they're developing writing portfolios so they can look at their work from one year to the next and hopefully see their own growth, which is really exciting to see unfold. So this is an example of the middle-level personal essay rubric and here's an example of the high school personal essay rubric. So again, it's a little bit different. It's not as color-coded and the text is a little more complex than we would expect to see at the middle level. So we're consistently working as departments to try and assess where students are at and then where we need them to be to demonstrate proficiency. And on the seventh grade team, one of the things that's important and I'm gonna navigate to Rebecca's Google Classroom, as we said, actually I pulled the assignment so that you can see it ahead of time. So the seventh grade team works together. When we look at that unit of identity and culture, they're really delving deep into those topics and social studies. They're thinking about how land formation impacts culture, how climate impacts culture in science and they're looking at those things in social studies as well. So students were researching countries and they go broad in those ways and then in content areas, they really look specifically at the standards in that content area. So for the personal essay, the assignment is writing, so purpose, organization, evidence, details, tone, the writing process and then being able to also use sensory and figurative language. So this is going to speak to those journal entries that those of you who've worked with senior project are familiar with because students have to demonstrate an ability to reflect. So below we have some examples which we can't go too into detail with in terms of time, but we have the example of a personal essay written at a seventh grade level and we selected a couple of different essays, one at a high level and to then we have some where the writers still have some areas where they really need to be pushed and grow and the teacher is aware of that. So you could expect to see on all assignments from the class this really consistent header where it tells what the assignment title is, the due date, the standards that will be assessed, the learning intentions and then finally the instructions so that students have a really clear sense of what we're expecting. I'm gonna stop sharing just so I can see all of you. I hope that clears up the way that we scaffold the work that happens over time and we'd like to open things up for questions if anyone has questions for us at this time. We also have Betty Young here in case you have math questions. This Katie and I prepared to talk about ELA and about those personal essays. This work of course happens with research papers so even our seventh graders will be writing research papers. Michelle Boulder will work with them on that and those scaffold up to their big senior project research paper and so there's a variety of genres that they write in and then we expect them to demonstrate proficiency in. I did have one quick question just on one of the pages when you noted kind of what the section was about what they were learning in that section. I noticed that it mentioned excerpts from books. Are they reading full text as well cover to cover or just excerpts at this grade level? They are reading full books. They'll be doing literature circles at different points throughout the year where they're reading full books and they have some choice in those and there's also an independent reading expectation so they should be reading full books independently as well. Thank you. You're welcome. I have a question. So this is, is this fairly new and or is this just a compilation of something that you thought we needed to know? It's a dynamic document and so it's something we've been working on for several years but that we revise in an ongoing way. Yeah. So, yeah. So when we were tasked under Act 77 with transitioning to proficiency based grading we began the work of looking at standards, looking at common core, the educational quality standards in the state of Vermont and getting these pieces in place and then over time we've continued to revise and to fine tune our systems. And I'm sure Lisa remembers the same department meeting I do where we started by really printing out all of the common core and then the state's iteration of that, looking at that simultaneously and then thinking about what our students needed and how we could customize it further for their needs. And are you using any of this? I know we're using SBACs for sort of seeing we're getting data that's sort of the objective testing data but are you using these at all to kind of set goals within the seventh grade? Like we have so many students getting exceeding on here and let's push the envelope and see if we can get more to that exceed or more to proficient. Do you use it for that or is this just basically how you assess the kids so that parents get feedback and the students get feedback? We have been recording scores or the year before last with senior project we put scores in VCAT for research papers and personal essays with the senior project scores being the capstone. So that's the final one that we put in. So we do track that data over time. I think we're really working on developing systems so that we're more regularly looking at data with grade level teams and setting the types of goals that you're speaking of. We've been working really hard on alignment and working really hard at fine tuning what we've just shown you to make it really cohesive so that everybody knows what to expect. No rush, but I'm just curious about the long term because I guess you've probably, maybe you've heard me in previous meetings but I like that we're, I'm okay with standardized testing being part of what we look at. But I also think and I would imagine that some teachers might also say some kids just don't do really well on a standardized test but they may be able to be showing in their coursework that they are actually doing quite well. They just may not translate necessarily to a test that you have to take in class on a computer. And I'm just curious if that's sort of long term kind of where you're going with some of this or not. Yeah, I would also add that, part of how we're texturing this too is looking at common summative assessments by grade level which we have and that's the type of data that we wanna continue to collect as well as the adoption of star 360 and being able to have that more kind of quantitative data to be able to compare to that more qualitative data that you're referring to so that we have all of it there in order to get a more comprehensive picture of what's going on. Yeah. And then hopefully then moving to that next stage of saying, okay, here's where we are. Can we push that envelope? Yes. Yes. Awesome. Yeah, I think that's really exciting about what's really exciting about the place that we're at right now because we did just implement star 360 for the first time. We do have systems in place to track this data and so we can start to look at some trends over years and see where we can push things forward. Great. Ashley, did you raise your hand? I did. So I wanna start with, I really like the presentation style. I felt like that was a great glimpse into the work that's being done. And to go back to where you mentioned that the seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th grade relatively consistent with the expectations within those different modules of tracking and such, but then it changes. Within that seven through 12th grade, are there different expectations for students who may be more academically progressive? Is that being modified? I'm thinking about the question of the text that folks might be reading in those grades. Are there varying levels as well at that seventh, eighth, ninth grade or are you waiting for more of that high school influence? Yeah, I think that teachers do something called differentiated instruction in grades seven, eight, nine and 10. And so for example, there's a dystopian novel book project that the eighth grade English teacher implemented this school year. And so she really looked for a range of texts. Kids were reading novels from, oh gosh, now I'm freezing on some of them. But so they read the Hunger Games. Some kids did, some read Fahrenheit 451. And so they were reading, kids who were ready for a challenge were reading that older text. And students who needed a less complex text were reading a less complex text. And there are other ways that you can differentiate as well in writing, often teachers differentiate just by having students choose with these personal essays to write about their own experience to make it really personal. That's one way you can do it. But then also when you give the feedback, there are some students you may just want them to elaborate on what literally happened a little bit more to more completely tell a story where others you can ask them to start to weave in figurative language. So students may not necessarily be aware of the differentiation that's happening, but it happens in those subtle ways, I think all the time, Katie could speak to that. Yeah, I think other examples that I can think of are grounding a unit in a text, but also having a research component to challenge those students who are ready for it. So those students are conducting research in addition to reading the text and they're integrating evidence both from research and informational text and from the novels they're reading themselves. So teachers are really encouraged to challenge where they can challenge and to appropriately level texts so that students feel like they're challenged if they're ready for it and they have what they need if they need to build their skills more in certain areas of their reading and writing skills. Thank you. Thank you. I've got one quick question. You said you use that document to monitor to make sure that the seventh grade isn't using the same text as the eighth grade. Now, are any of those texts kind of required for individual grade levels or is it all by the instructor to decide which texts they use that meets the standards? Yeah. Katie, you can go. I was just gonna say that I think there's a little of both, Brian. Like I think that in some cases we've learned over the years that certain texts really are helpful to keep in the curriculum because they have that flexibility and versatility as far as addressing multiple performance indicators under the reading standard that are really important at that level. And then Lisa and I, I think what's really fun of that our work is we get to be a part of those decisions in those discussions so that if we're feeling like it's appropriate to update in certain areas and allow flexibility and choice in others that the teacher does feel like they have some flexibility but that we're making sure that there's a lot of fidelity in following what is there so that students feel prepared for some of those standardized assessments we discuss but also as Ann mentioned some of those summative assessments that we're really hoping that there's a little bit more texture to. So I would say that it's a little bit of both and I don't know, Lisa, if you'd add to that. Yeah, I think the book has to be a fit in a variety of ways. So for example, I spoke about the dystopian novels that were read at the eighth grade level. So that unit was chosen because Brian Kennedy always does a unit on culture and kids develop their own culture. So they're reading those texts, both looking for the literature pieces that Olivia Podozak is teaching in seventh grade, I mean, eighth grade English, sorry, but then also looking for the elements of culture and using the vocabulary that they're getting in social studies so that they can then build their own cultures, create their own artifacts, they do an archeological dig, so it's hands-on middle schoolers really get into it. And then they use those story elements that they identified in the text that they read together to write their own dystopian short stories. So it's really something where when we're trying to figure out which texts are going to be used, the team is really being thoughtful about the different ways in which the text enriches the learning for the student and that it can be implemented in a few different content areas. So I hope that example made sense. And if I could just add in response to Brian's really good question, the state has treated different banks of standards differently. So for instance, in science, one will see the content that needs to be taught really quite clearly outlined. There's the atmosphere, there's the earth, there's the molecules, all of that gets named in the science standards. Whereas in the ELA standards, it's much more focused on skills. It's not telling us that you have to read Hemingway or Achebe or Richard Wright or Shakespeare. It's not telling us that, it's emphasizing the skills. So at the very level of the state, there's a lot of latitude provided in terms of what you read in an English curriculum as opposed to what you study in a science curriculum where it's much more prescriptive in terms of content. Well, yeah, thanks, Anna. I mean, my question really came from experience that my son had in seventh and eighth grade is that the seventh grade class, the texts were real, they were all prescribed. There wasn't any choice in them and he did not do well at all. He got to eighth grade and the teacher had given them just kind of a genre of books that they could choose from. And so he could actually pick something that was on that topic but he enjoyed it and it was like night and day. We had to pull teeth to get him to do the work on in one year and he was doing excelling in the next year. So that's why I was kind of wondering if it's really built into the class or if it's a instructor decision on what is there. So yeah, thanks. Thank you. I had a question. I was wondering, you know, this seems, this alignment between seven, 12 seems pretty comprehensive. I wondered if the same work is being done for social studies to sort of weave seven through at least 10 together so that kids had a comprehensive understanding of history or social studies. In my experience, it has been quite fragmented did for the students. And I just wondered if there was, if that was gonna be a step in the future or something you're already working on. Yes, that is something that we're already working on and they do have some similar documents that, I mean, we'd love to be able to present again and, you know, different content areas. So you can see the work that's happening across the board in different content areas. You know, tonight we wanted to focus on ELA because that's an area, content area that's implicated in the district strategic plan and, you know, in the N's documents, but we're really happy to present on other content areas as well. And that work is happening in social studies as well. Yeah, when we, a couple of years ago or a few years ago, we made some shifts. So ninth grade is U.S. History One. And then students look more globally at the 10th grade level than in 11th grade. They get the second piece of U.S. History. We also now have AP U.S. History or AP World History as offerings. And the middle level is still really focused on teaching students the skills they need to be able to engage in learning about history and culture at the high school level and research. They focus pretty heavily on inquiry and cultivating curiosity at the seventh and eighth grade levels for social studies. But that is also ongoing work. And the department has really been trying to look at where there are gaps and places where they need to build in order to create a more like cohesive tapestry of understanding. And we really do look to senior project as a capstone project that we work backward from. And so the social studies department has really been, as Lisa mentioned, working on that research process with students so that they feel really prepared to engage in that process throughout their senior year on their senior project and do it more independently. So that's why the junior research paper is housed where it is because that's a really nice way to prepare students for the senior project research paper. So I have one, oh, go ahead, Ashley. I'm sorry, Katie, can you just remind us what is the expectation this year with senior projects? I recall there was mention, but I just don't remember the details. We just, it's really a good question because we just provided more information today based on a lot of feedback that we've received from our senior students and families this year. I'm going to be publishing a document that myself and Tev Kelman as senior project coordinator worked on together to provide students with three different pathways this year through the senior project, all based on where they are right now and how they might complete the project. One of the things that we're really in tune with is how challenging this year is and how difficult it is for some students to carry out the project that they envisioned at the start of this because it requires them to be in-person with a mentor for the duration of it or it requires them to travel and we're just very mindful of that. So we thought that we would use this last deadline for the working draft on December 11th to gauge how students are doing and to figure out how we can support them throughout the rest of the year because our worst fear was that in providing an opt out option we'd have a lot of seniors opt out and then they wouldn't benefit from the project as intended. So we're really holding the line on the senior research paper because we know how important it is for them no matter what they're doing when they leave us that research paper we hear time and time again really prepared them. So that's definitely something that is required of all seniors and then there are some different options among those pathways for seniors who wish to complete the project as the components are laid out which would place them in an exceeds category and then not be penalized if they fall into a category of having a more hands-on project that we need to support them with and be creative with them in a different way. So you'll see that publication go out. Ashley, I'm just waiting to finalize it and it articulates those different pathways for students to take throughout the rest of the year with our mind's eye on. We really, the research paper is a non-negotiable but there's flexibility beyond that. Can I just, I wanna just back up a little bit because we do have a fair number of students who don't stay in the high school. So they're moving to the tech center. Many of those students then are going on they're gonna have to take an English comp class in perhaps a two-year trade program. They still require a research paper. Are students gonna be prepared to be able to do that if they move to the tech center, their junior and senior year in order to get the full value of their tech program? Yeah, so the tech center still, they require students to do research papers as well. And our students write research papers every year that's in that first grid where Katie showed how there's redundancy in some places. We are always, every year students have to write at least one research paper, sometimes more than one. And so we have them do that right up through 10th grade when they may be transitioned to the tech center. The tech center has an English teacher there as well. And so he helps students with their writing and they, in my experience, they help students really transition in some ways to more professional or technical language. So where we're sort of a MLA or Modern Language Association School, really rooted in humanities, they might have an eye toward different style that's more procedural or technical in nature. So kids, I think we send them as well-prepared as possible to the tech center and then they continue to cultivate those skills. So I think it's different, though. I wouldn't say that they're as focused as the kids who go the AP literature route, for example. Is there some coordination there between what's happening at the high school and what's happening over there? Or is it pretty separate? Is there no communication? And what if you had a student at the tech center who wanted to still remain maybe in, and take an AP language class or take, can they do that? I don't think, can they do that? I don't know if I can. We've had students in the past where we've been able to arrange schedules so that can happen. The tech center begins a little bit later than we do. So we've been really creative with that first period class to allow for opportunities like that. We have a lot of tech center students who still need to take history, who still need science. So we are accommodating with those schedules and Bev and Kara are really, really amazing at being in touch so that they're able to continue to audit what students need, provide that feedback and make sure that everyone gets what they need, whether they're at the tech center or remain at RU. Are there any further questions for Katie or for Lisa? If not, thank you very much. That was really informative. We appreciate it. Next, we have an RUHSN report. Lane, are you overseeing that or Elijah, is that you? Yeah, this was the standard kind of report that I've done year after year. It's just coming much later because I think it's folks know that the SBAC did not run last year. But what was neat was the high school was able to get Star 360 up and running. So we've got some Star 360 data that we can share that's specific to this year. We've also got some Track My Progress data that we can share that is from last year. And I tried to put the pieces together to kind of tie in with previous SBAC years to give us an idea of what's happening in terms of this broad overview at the high school. So give me just a second to fire things up. See how well I can do here. So can you guys see this? All right, I was just making sure I had my microphone on there. So, all right. So is that presentation visible to everybody? I think everybody's got their microphones off and I can't hear them or something's not working. Yes, it's visible. Okay, perfect. So one more thing to remember and again, remember that I can't see you while I'm presenting this is that SBAC was not administered at the end of the 20,000, 19, 20 school year. That was last year, right? Due to COVID, March 17th, we all went out into a remote session at that point in time. And the federal government gave a waiver to all states to not have to do their yearly testing. We talked a little bit about this when we reviewed some of the elementary data earlier this year that the state is seeking a waiver to try to avoid that state testing again this year, right at the end of 2020-21. I don't believe that that is going to happen. I think we're gonna be required to do the SBAC, which is actually a good thing. There's been a tremendous amount of work. Some of it you just saw this morning in terms of what, or a little bit earlier tonight in terms of what Katie and Lisa presented. And it would be nice to kind of get a handle on what that impact actually is on the testing that the kids are doing. Remember the students transitioned fully to remote learning on March 17th of 2020. And they spent about 40% of all of last year's learning time in that remote modality. Also remember that improvement efforts at RUHS began in earnest last year. They were doing quite a bit of work, and some of which you saw the fruits of around proficiency-based graduation requirements and standard-based report cards, right? That was a state mandate. And so the focus for the first couple of years that I was here anyway was down at the elementary school. And it was last year that we really kind of hit things up in terms of the budget to start bringing some structural components over to the high school to give them the resources that they needed to do the job that's in front of them. They did choose to use Star 360 as their assessment tool. As you saw in the presentation that was done just a little while ago, they've got this beautiful structure in place so people know what it is that they're teaching. There's enough information there that they can share what they're doing with each other and they can talk about the value with kids and make adjustments. And typically the next step in the process which they are in the middle of right now, it's bringing in these assessment systems so that kind of on the fly, the students can sit down, they can take the assessments, the teachers can get a really quick readout in terms of how the students are performing so that they can adjust their instruction and what they're doing either right then and there on the fly if it's important or over the course of time, looking at the trends and the data, that might bring them back to actually looking at that structure, at that curriculum that they're using to guide what they do and make decisions about whether or not that needs to be changed in some way to achieve the goals that they've set for themselves. A couple of things in terms of comparison before we get into the data. SBAC remember is administered at the end of a school year typically after the students have completed the course in which they're gonna be tested. SBAC is given in grades three through nine in math and in English. Grades five, eight and 11 in science with that new Vermont science assessment. And in terms of ELA and math, they're tested on the common core standards that are common across about 42 states in the US. And then on the Vermont science assessment, they're looking at the next generation science standards. TMP is for track my progress in star 360. They are two different programs that do the same thing. Basically they are assessment programs. Students can take assessments on these programs and it gives them performance data that we can then try to tie back to performance on SBAC. We can use to inform instruction. The teachers can figure out where the kids are struggling or where the kids are doing really well. In terms of track my progress in star 360, data is collected multiple times throughout the year, right? Choose to inform instruction. So it's helpful to do it fairly frequently. The data for 2020 for last year was taken in the middle of the winter, so January-ish. The 2021 data that I'm gonna show you is actually from October and November of this year. So again, that comparison is important. SBAC's looking at things at the end of the year. Track my progress in star 360 is the data that you're gonna see is actually either from the middle of the year or the beginning of the year, depending upon which year we're in. The students actually, regardless of when they're taking this exam, they are tested on all the standards. It's just that the question difficulty, how deep they have to go into answering those questions gets a little bit more complex. As they take the assessments later on in the year, we track my progress in star 360. Based on the elementary data that we looked at earlier, students actually tend to achieve a little bit higher on the SBAC than they do on the track my progress. Star 360 is newer, so it's not possible to kind of make any comparisons at this point in time that would be meaningful. So after all that talking, any questions before we jump into the two or three little data sets we're gonna look at? Remember, if your microphone's off, you gotta kind of flip it on because I can't see ya. All right, so what we're looking at here with the data in this chart is you were looking at what's called the weighted ELA average. This is what I wrote into the ENDS report a few years back as the one that we're gonna be used to track improvement over time. And what this is showing you is it's taking all the students in grades seven, eight, and nine. It is averaging out their averages on a weighted basis. In other words, if I got more seventh graders than I do eighth graders, the seventh graders count a little bit more in this weighting than the eighth graders would. And then it spits out an overall weighted average for those three grades all at once. Now, historically, if you go back about 10 years, which I do have, what you'll see is in terms of ELA, these students have typically performed anywhere between mid 30 and mid 40. And when we're talking about 30 and 40, we're talking about the percentage of the students that are actually achieving proficiency on the exam. So if a 35 is showing up there, it means that 35% of that weighted average of those students in that weighted average have hit the proficiency threshold or higher. So there was a kind of bouncing up and down, kind of a slow decline for about 10 years, with the lowest year being in 2019. And then all of a sudden in 2020, you get a pretty significant rebound, right? It's over 10 points. Now, remind me about 2020. That exam that was given at that point in time was midwinter. It was just prior to folks going out in March because of COVID. And yet part of the way through the year they were performing at or higher than they ever had before, okay? Would track my progress data. Now, we switch over to the Star 360 data that was collected in mid November of this year. And right now, or a little bit earlier, a few weeks back, at this point in the year, 36% of grades seven through nine have already tested above the proficiency level for the year. And what I've noticed in kind of looking at some of this data over time is those ELA scores will probably rise about another 10% between this testing that we're looking at and kind of the end of the year testing that's gonna happen. So it'll be up probably around 46 or 47% by year's end. So they are doing really, really good work that is having a pretty significant impact on the students. And remember, this 36% that's happening a third of the way through the year on the students that are achieving that, they're achieving that under the hybrid schedule. I can't imagine what that score, how proficient that they would be had we been in here full in person during this time. So summary of findings, they should continue kind of doing what they're doing, right? And the big thing is kind of this focus should be on the grade teams and that's kind of the work that Katie and Lisa are leading, making sure that those teams are becoming self sufficient over the course of the next year or two and using Star 360 and the other data that the English teachers are collecting in the English department to really inform their instruction, right? They wanna see where the students are performing well, where they're performing poorly so that they can adjust instruction and also for another really important piece here. And that's to identify students that may be missing foundational skills, something that in the regular classroom, the teachers aren't gonna be able to reteach to these students so that they can be referred to the reading specialist that we now have in place at RUHS so that they can get the help, they can get those skills that they're missing. Remember, we've identified and we spoke about this a few board meetings back, a need to improve reading and language acquisition skills especially at the lower grades. And we're gonna be working on that. We're set up to have the Stern Center come in and provide some real in-depth training into the discrete skills that are required that the teachers really need to have to teach reading and language acquisition exceptionally well. We're also gonna be working with the special education teachers on this because they're often the ones that kind of pick up and work with the students that have been identified as having problems or having issues. Remember, ELA is like math but it's also a little bit different. The ELA scores that you see are composite, right? In other words, the students have these skills that they learn kind of early on but then over the course of time, they're coming back to those same skills year after year, they're enhancing them, they're refining them, they're getting deeper knowledge about them, getting more skillful and being able to understand communications that come in and being able to craft communications that go out. So it's a little bit different than math. So it makes it a little bit harder if a student has a foundational skills problem sometimes to really weed out what that is and provide them with the extra help they need to get them where they wanna be and where we want them to be. Questions at all on ELA? Lane, Lane, I just have one question. Because we might have say a dyslexic student in the data, is this data, do you pull those students out? How do you deal with the students who might have a legitimate learning disability that's going to really skew the score? They should all be in as part of the score. Oh, they are. And the reason, and again, they're just getting up and running so I can't guarantee that for the Star 360 data this year, Lisa and Katie might be able to speak in but they need to be in there. And one of the reasons is because we wanna track how that subgroup does relative to the general population because if we're doing our job well, especially on the special education side, which is another focus that we've been working on the last year or two, those students should be performing as well as everybody else. And if they're not, we should be providing them with the services that they need so that they are gaining on the regular education students so that sometime in the future, the two shall meet in terms of their performance. So we need to have that data to be able to determine that. And those students should be taking the S back just like everyone else. And the last couple of years they had been, which is great, because it allows us to kind of break things down. And it's also, again, some of this data is diagnostic. It's very useful if you can sit down in an IEP meeting with the team and have some of this data here with all the other testing data that you have to really kind of focus in on what skills the student may be deficient at or need some strategies to be able to promote. So no, they should be a part of this and are a part of this. So very good question. Do you track socioeconomic status along with that as well? I have not been, but S back does. Okay, good. So they, as part of when the students are filling out kind of the information, right? We've got that student information database that they pull information from and connected up with the kids to take the test. Part of what they're doing is they're identifying these subgroups. Typically if you have 40 or more students that have a common trait, they're placed into a subgroup. And then you're using that to kind of compare to the general population, the population as a whole to make sure that they're not falling behind. So, yep. Now that's why that, you know, the S back is interesting. It doesn't give you the detail that like attract my progress or a star 360 does on a day to day basis. But it does all those other breakouts when you're trying to, you know, determine the overall health of all your students no matter who they are, which I think is important. Now, I'm gonna throw this one out here for a minute let people take a look at it because this one is rather impressive. And we'll talk about this in kind of a little bit of the same detail we did with ELA. But math, especially at the middle school level, which is where S back kind of focuses a lot of its testing has suffered for years. And I mean, that was one of the reasons for the work in bringing kind of Lisa on board is kind of the lower house head and making sure that we've got Betty Young, you know, working with the students is because we realize that at this middle school level for whatever reason, you know, the kids will be cruising along, they're doing really well, they're gaining pretty much from year to year at the elementary level. And then all of a sudden at fifth grade things start to drop and then they really tank sixth and seventh grade. And then somewhere between eighth and ninth grade they start going up again. And that's been the pattern in this district as far back as I was able to look which was about 10 or 12 years. And so we talked a little bit about this last year that to me when I see something like that or when we see something like that, it usually means that there's something structural, there's something important that we're not providing to the students that would make this better. And so we kind of settled on this idea of a middle school, right? This middle school model, you know, what can we learn? What can we figure out? What traits can we bring in to help these students out that are going through all these tremendous transitions during these years that might cause some improvement? And it looks like they probably hit on one of them based upon that huge jump in data. So you see that things were very low. If you look in 2018, 2019, you're seeing that what this means is in this weighted average of seven to ninth graders, less than 20% of them were hitting the proficiency threshold for math. And then Betty came in, worked a little bit with Lisa. They had some ideas about curriculum and what they needed to do to revamp things. And you see in 2020 that all of a sudden you have this tremendous jump of about 30 some odd points. You know, around 52% of the students are hitting the proficiency threshold. And not only are they hitting the proficiency threshold, but that testing for 2020 was done in like January, like halfway through the year. So that bit of work that they've been engaged in has had a tremendous payoff. Because remember that 2020 that you're looking at in March, that's when things kind of fell apart in terms of COVID, right? We went out into remote learning and then came back this fall in hybrid. So that is, even though that 2020 is track my progress data, to see a jump of that magnitude, it's irrelevant of how closely tied us back and track my progress, maybe measuring things. That is just such a huge jump that it is due to the work that that crew is doing at the middle school. So they got a lot to be proud of. Same thing with the English piece, to bring that slow to climb down and kind of turn things around. Now, I get a little nervous saying things like that because you like to see trends, you know, things will bounce up and down and you wanna see what the trend lines are, but that's one hell of a jump. And it's gotta be recognized for that. So in terms of math, in terms of this new Star 360 program that the students are engaged in the teachers are using for assessment purposes to kind of track where the students are at and whether they need to go back and reteach to help identify students that may need a little bit more help above and beyond the regular classroom. As of mid-November, 38% of grades seven through nine have already tested above the proficiency level for their grade. As of mid-November. So there's been some significant work and improvements that are going on. And when I kind of went back and I kind of looked, you know, the math scores on these tests, like track my progress because you take it three or four times throughout the year. If Star 360 does what track my progress does, you can expect those scores will probably rise another 20% by the end of the year. And this is why we've been working in hybrid mode. So again, imagine potentially what those improvements would be if we were full in-person instruction. I think one of the saddest that Catherine and Betty and Crystal were at the end of last year was the fact that we weren't able to do SBAC because so much good work had gone in we really wanted to see what the results were gonna be. So it was kind of a little bit of a let down that we didn't get a chance to see that. But in terms of my kind of summary of findings for this, mathematics should continue in its current efforts, right? They've really, because mathematics is a little more foundational, right? The foundations are built on a little bit more than ELA, right? We really have to ensure that, you know, students have the foundational knowledge they need to be successful in their current classes, especially taking into account the fact that they may have lost a little bit last year during the time of remote learning, right? And we've also, the other reason that this data is important is because we wanna constantly be looking at it to get some real-time information on the impact that hybrid learning is having, right? Because, you know, it's not gonna be as good as full in-person. It's actually seems to be doing pretty well, but we need that information to kind of adjust, see what specific things the students may be missing out on as a function of being in hybrid learning and seeing if we can supply it through other means. And again, just like the other departments here, you know, this should become a part of culture. The Math Department members are already working on this, but it's about becoming self-sufficient in data collection for the purpose of informing instruction about how to use these assessment tools, about how to as a department to sit down, use it to ask personal questions, to ask questions that are important to know about the kids and set the assessments up so they provide you with those answers and using that information to figure out where the weaknesses are and to bolster them in terms of the instruction. And if there are chronic weaknesses to go back and take a look at the curriculum itself that you're teaching and refine that, change that in ways that it must be changed. So questions at all on the math piece here. And I do apologize. There's usually a ton more information that we talk about. We just don't have it. It just didn't happen last year. Usually we look at advanced placement SATs and ACTs and all that. AP, I think there were only three kids that took the test last year, so it's not reliable. SATs, they were actually shutting down testing sites at the time last year, so there's not a lot of data out there. So I don't know how relative it really is or how accurate a picture it can actually paint of where students were and what they were potentially learning. A couple of things that we can talk about, and this is something that RUHS should continue to be proud of, is their average four-year graduation rate. If you look at the average from 2010 to 2015, it was 82%. If you look at the next five years, 2016 to 2020, all the way up through last year, it was 91%. So students are connecting very well with the school and they're staying in for the long haul. National averages for four-year graduation rates, depending upon where you go, are typically about 60%. So they're doing really, really well. A couple of things to know. RUHS, the number of students that RUHS sends to the Tech Center, it jumps up and down, but it's been a pretty steady average. When I look back about 10 years, about 45% of the students from RUHS will attend RTCC. But one of the things that was interesting that jumped out of the data when I was looking at it is that if you go back 10 years or so, probably half of the students that were going to the Tech Center were on IEPs. That's been cut in half. You know, these current years, it's closer to about 20%, 22%, 23% that are on IEPs. And that is probably a very, very good thing. You know, these students are choosing that pathway because potentially this is what they really desire. And so I find that kind of fascinating to look at that data and hope to dig into it a little bit more. About 12% annually will attend our seniors, will attend Baster Early College. And this, again, it jumps up and down, but this 12% average tends to be pretty stable over time. And so in terms of the basics, big broad general overview of data that we have available in terms of my traditional reports, this is what I've gotten and am able to present tonight. So I don't know if there's questions on any of it. And you know, Katie, Elijah, we see you guys are willing to pipe in too if questions are coming up, if you will. So either I confused yet? Well, I would add if I, I mean, I can wait and see if there are questions for you. I also wanted to add a few words. Yeah, feel free. Well, I just wanted to, you know, appreciate the commendations you gave to Katie, Lisa, Katie, Lisa, Betty and Catherine Fredericks, who's the curriculum coach in ELA as well. I know I've learned a lot working, you know, with Elaine and Catherine and Crystal and Betty since they started working with us about how we can use our data systems to better study instruction. And Lisa and Katie are really helping to operationalize that year, that this year. I think that sometimes people think that I talk too often about the graduation rate as something that's worth mentioning at RU, but I just want to remind people that the year before I joined RU, the graduation rate was 77% and the year before that, it was 76% and then the year after I joined it was 80%. And so we're talking about dozens and dozens of kids who are not graduating. And so, you know, from my heart, like I felt that my mandate was to engage these students and to care for them in such a way that they felt that the school valued them and that they were fulfilled. And so that's where the emphasis on relevance and relationships has really come in. But it wasn't until, and you know, that the eighth graders that I started with, when I started as a middle school administrator, those eighth graders, their graduation rate is 95%. And so that's part of that five year average that Lane was talking about. So we made an effort and it had results at what, and over those years, and Laura will remember this and Anne will too, every year it was level funding or cuts. And Lisa will remember painful leadership team discussions where we're trying to figure out which staff are not coming back next year. And over those years, none of those years that we work with Catherine or Betty or their equivalents because the resources were concentrated at the elementary level. But when Lane joined, he allowed us to tap into title funds. And so all of a sudden we're working with Betty and we're working with Catherine and we have literacy interventionists and we have a director of targeted supports who's helping us look at the kids who are not on IEPs. So I feel a measure of gratitude towards Lane and the board and the broader community for allowing us to actually the first time in my career at Randolph Union I was invited to increase the budget was the year that he joined. And so it's that those kinds of things are all playing into this, these bumps that aren't enough but that are hopefully good upward trends. And all along the way, we've had kids getting into the nation's top colleges, not as many as we'd like, but you can't discount Columbia or the University of Chicago or McGill or Middlebury or Pratt School of Design or Renslayer. Like kids don't get into those schools if the high school doesn't care about rigor and provide those opportunities. So I know our numbers aren't where we want them to be but I wanted to share a little bit about my own perspective on my leadership here and how it has dovetailed with the guidance and the support of the board, the leadership of my colleagues and also what Lane has brought to the table in the last couple of years. Yeah, a lot to kind of pipe in with Elijah too. A lot of the structures that were built at the high school level at RUHS to try to go after that, the middle school and try to really kind of ramp that up and to go after the high school. Elijah built those, those are his ideas. That came in and so at this point in time, you know, what you've got at the high school is you've got a really good team of people each with their own skill set that each plays into an important facet of making a successful school. And so I don't think that that can be overstated. We joked at the last curriculum meeting. I mean, I was almost in tears. I think I made the rest of them laugh but it was this idea that we did a reflection back to last year in terms of the curriculum work that had gotten started and it was just getting started and things were discombobulated and people were jockeying for what needed to be done. And it was nice to take a reflection back and how smooth and focused and vision oriented they've all become. And so I'm proud of all of them. You know, Elijah, Katie, Lisa, everybody else that's fallen under the work that they're doing because that is the culture you want. And I said it then and I'll say it again. The structure building is so important. You get the best people in that fit the needs of the job. You give them the resources and you get the hell out of the way and let them do their job. And they stepped up to the plate. So I don't wanna understate how proud I am of the work that's going on. And there are some amazing things that are happening there right now. It'll take a couple of years of us getting back to normal for it to actually show up in the testing that everybody sees, the real visible testing but it's there and it's happening. And so there's a lot that the board has to be proud of in this work and there's a lot that the community does as well. And so thank you. It's been awesome, it really is. So good. So questions on any of these parts and pieces. All right. I thank you. Thank you. It is exciting to hear that maybe we're on the cusp of really blossoming here as a school and that will really have far reaching effects into our community as well. It is exciting. It's great to hear. Thank you. Next, we've got your quarterly facilities monitoring report. Yeah. So hopefully folks saw that. Again, we had talked about the revision of this report a while back. It shows the work that is done, has been done, is planned to be done. Or if it's in either one of those stages you know what its priority level is for future work. You can see, unless there's specific questions on this I'll bring up a few. But there has been a significant amount of work that was done over the summer. In a significant amount of work that was done in the last couple of weeks, you know for all the bane that COVID is there is some benefit too. We can bring in the folks, facilities, crews we can bring in contractors to get the work done when the students are in the buildings. And so I think the report speaks for itself but I'm gonna point out a few things. Facilities really stepped to the plate and used this kind of this past remote session that we just came out of today to do all those additional upgrades on the ventilation systems in the schools. They had the UV sterilization units in place at RTCC, RES and RUHS. Those are a part of the venting in those schools so that as the air passes by the air is sterilized any bacteria, any viruses that may be passing by or killed by that. So it's an extra safety method that was put into place. We attempted to do it at Braintree in Brookfield as well but their ventilation systems just weren't conducive to putting that type of equipment and machinery in there. The nurses' stations at all schools have been updated. They came in over the last two weeks with the grant money that the facilities team sought out and those nurses' stations are on separate ventilation systems and they're negative pressure. That way if you have a student or a person who is contaminated, who is actually in the nurses' office the air is drawn into the nurses' office and out of the building as opposed to be blowing out into the actual building where the other people are. So that was a tremendous upgrade that happened. And they are currently in the process of replacing the 25 giant ventilation fans across Randolph Technical Center in Randolph Union High School. They tend to be the older units. And when we upgraded the filters to the ones that really filter out the aerosolized particles that can carry COVID-19, because those filters are better strainers it adds a lot of back pressure to the systems that might wear out those older motors. So these motors that are going in are much more efficient are gonna blow a lot more air and they shouldn't burn out because of the extra strain that's on it because of the new filtration system. So those are some things that facilities should be commended upon. I put in a rather kind of long superintendents report talking about the water at Brookfield. That has been an ongoing issue for years and years and years. The good news is that the final solution is there and ready to go in, we have to drill a new well. If we want the water up there, the way that it should be. Even right now where the students are actually, we brought in a couple of years ago we brought in the bottled water for the drinking water but even the pipes and things are gonna get corroded and we're gonna have to replace all the piping if we're not careful using that old water because the total dissolved solids are so high in there. So we've been working with the state geologists. We've been working with the agency of natural resources. They've helped us identify a potential site up there. Bob and Wes have been amazing. I know they're going around and checking in with some local neighbors and we're offering to test their wells for them because we're trying to find who is drilled into the best aquifer in the area so that we know which aquifer to drill in as well. Total cost of that work, the well drilling is actually kind of cheap. It's the location of the well is gonna require a little bit of a fire road to be put in. So we're estimating the total cost of that work to be about $130,000 and we'll be asking for that in early spring from the facility's reserve funds. And so that's work that is ongoing and those are the next big ones that are coming our way. So questions at all on the facilities report. If you see my signature, my initials next to it, it means I went out and was able to do the direct inspection. That was one of the things that we were worried about wasn't going on in the past. So if we're spending all this money on this equipment, then somebody from the outside should be going out and looking to make sure that it's actually showed up on site or the work has been done or that it's been put into place. And so I'll continue to do those direct inspections so that everything that's going in on these facility reports is checked out to make sure that we're actually receiving what we've ordered and the work has actually been done. I just wanna pipe in and say thank you, Lane, for managing this and presenting the information the way that you are now and have been the last few months here after we had talked about that at a board meeting. I think it's really helpful to be able to have a snapshot as to the updates made at these buildings with that dollar figure assigned to it and the fact that you are ensuring the work gets done. So I just wanted to thank you for taking that on and presenting us those updates. No, I appreciate that. Bob and Wes have been amazing. Just like the work that's going on at the high school at RUHS with Elijah, Katie and Lisa, Bob and Wes have been absolutely amazing. And continuing to get this major work done while managing all the things that go along with COVID as well. So it's really to be commended. Are there any other questions for Lane, specifically around the facilities report? All right, hearing none, we will have your budget update, Lane. Next. Are you sure you want it? Definitely, we're all ears. Give me a second to pull this up. And again, I can't see it while I'm presenting, so just yell. If there's a question in the middle of things that you need to see or that you want to hear, second to switch over. I figure I'd be getting better at this by this point in time, but all right, can you see that? Should be nice to recognize, especially since we've got some newer members on the board is that the district actually prepares three separate budgets. We have a budget that's prepared for the Raven program, which we'll look at tonight. We have a budget that's prepared for the tech center that we'll look at tonight. And then we have the district budget. That's the one that people are most tuned to. And the reason they're most attuned to it is because that's the one that really has the impact on local taxes and on the money that we're drawn from the education fund. Both Raven and the technical center, the majority of the money that flows into them is based upon the tuitions of the students that attend. Go with the easiest one first. You'll see the breakdown between 2020, 21, which is this year and what we're proposing for next year that should say 2022. As I'm getting tired and fatigued by COVID, my eyes are losing it. So I have a little bit harder time kind of seeing the numbers. But on the left is the current year. On the right is what we're proposing for next year. And for those of you that don't know, Raven is a collaborative. It works with students with special needs. It is a very successful program. It's actually housed in the building that's right next to central office. We moved the students to that building because the building was fairly new. The old Raven building was demolished a year or two ago. It was too far gone to actually be able to save. The Raven program itself, if you think about it in terms of what it does, if you look at the tuition lines, for 24 to $26,000 a year, these students are getting placed into a specialized program to help them with their special needs. If we sent them anywhere else, that cost would be at least $60,000. So the same schools that send students to the technical center are also a part of this collaborative. And so they tuition students in to this program to be able to take advantage of it from year to year. Now, if you take a look at the top line numbers in this current year that we're in, total budget's $340,180. The budget is actually that we're looking for is actually smaller next year. It's 266,930. And the reason for that is because we were planning on at some point in time growing the program. And we were getting prepared to bring in a full second teacher. The program is traditionally run historically with a teacher and a paraprofessional. We were not able to secure a teacher in the numbers during this time of COVID. We're down this year anyway. So we're planning on next year having just the teacher and the paraprofessional. So that's the reason that the overall cost is down. And you see it's down quite a bit, right? It's down around 21%. But you'll also see that the tuition is going up. And that's because we're serving fewer students this current year. Typically Raven, typical year, it's about 14 students. We started out with that. It's gone down a little bit. So we're projecting next year based upon the current number of students we have this year, which is 10 at this point in time. Which is a little bit low. Again, typically it sits around 14. I've seen it as high as 18. I've seen years of 10 and 12 as well since I've been here. So the Raven budget. So questions at all on Raven. This is about as simple as they get. In terms of our district, of those 10 to 14 kids that are typically there, typically two to three of them are ours. I did a big analysis of the program to make sure that it was still cost effective for the district. Even with those minimal numbers of our students that we tuition into Raven, it saves us about a million dollars every seven to nine years. If we had to send those students out to the other outplacement programs around, that's how much more we pay over a course of seven to nine years if we didn't have this program. So it does have a pretty positive impact, hidden impact, but a pretty positive impact on our district in terms of finances. Technical center, make sure I got my notes here to make sure I don't miss anything that's important. You can see at the technical center, you see current year on the left and you see next year's budget on the right. You know, they're a little over $3 million this year. 2,999,550 is projected for next year. So the actual cost of running the program has gone down by about 1%. But the tuition is going up. And the reason has to do with a decline in enrollment due to COVID. The last couple of years we've been running anywhere from 130 to 150 students. This year, I think we're sitting at 114. And the money that we get from the state for these students to help support the program depends upon our enrollments. And because enrollments are down, this low enrollment is going into that calculation. And so it's potentially impacting our tuition for next year. There are some things that are in the works to try to get the enrollment back up. We are putting together the filmography program with the graphics art programs, combining that into one program under one teacher. So there'll be some cost savings there a little bit. And Felicia's been working really hard on trying to get a dental hygienist program into the tech center for next year. And so hopefully over the course of time, that's gonna draw in some more students, much like the electrical program did this year and start to get those enrollment numbers fleshed out. One of the things that the board has to consider, and this is one where we're gonna need your advice on, because you have to vote to approve the tech center budget here. Eventually it does, not tonight, but in January. Is that tuition increase of $698 per student is that acceptable? And there is a way to keep the tuition the same, but it means potentially giving up a program. And so I'm kind of hesitant to offer that, but I wanna be forthcoming with the board. About two years or so ago, the state kind of mandated that the regional technical centers put into place up what's called a pre-tech program that connects with elementary and middle school and high school students, gives them a little flavor of what a technical center is and what it can offer to try to drum up some interest to see if students are interested in it so that they can start planning their succession through the grades to get as much of their academics under their belt as possible by the time their sophomores to make the transition junior year to a technical center. The only problem with that program, they mandated it, we put it into place. We used it last year to teach classes for RUHS students to see if we could get them interested at the younger grade levels. We also went over to Williamstown and taught classes over there with it, but they never built in a structure to actually allow us to charge tuition for providing those services. And so Felicia right now is scrambling around and try to preserve the program to see if there is a way to actually generate tuition. If we were generating and able to generate tuition for it, our tuition would stay level. And so I'll throw that out there actually while we're on it for the board to discuss with me a little bit. Is that given coronavirus, this is impact on things given what we just talked about, is the board willing to see that sort of a tuition increase for the technical center for next year or should we be trying to level fund it in the board's estimation? And I'll stop talking for a minute to hear some parts and pieces. Well, my question, Leigh, and it was whether that impacts our ability to attract students from sending schools if that tuition increases by $700? It's not supposed to, right? If a student wants to go to a technical center, there are laws on the books that are supposed to be preventing districts from talking them out of it or twisting their arms out of it, but I can't say for sure that that doesn't happen. So I worry about that a little bit too. The other piece that kind of plays into this calculation just so the board has it for consideration is our technical center is run a little bit differently. Most technical centers charge about the, about the 17-5 is probably a reasonable average for tuition, but their technical centers are half-day programs, ours is a full day. So the kids are actually coming here getting significantly more out of attending our technical center than pretty much any other technical center in and around the state because they have the ability to be here all day long and the ability to take any classes that they need to take right here. If they can't offer the academic courses right at RTCC, they actually, they'll set it up, Katie had touched on that a little bit with the AP classes, they'll set it up, those kids can go over and take those classes through our UHS. And so we actually do offer a darn good program. The problem is, is that all the schools that send to us are always used to our program being this way, so they don't know the difference. So I gotta throw that piece out there. So would it be a hindrance? I don't know. The big question here, again, it comes down to that pre-tech program. If we could find a way to start bringing in some money because of it, which the state, again, when they pass that legislature and they pass that mandate didn't allow, I won't say didn't allow for it, it looks like they just didn't think about that aspect of it. If we could make money on it, we'd be fine. Lane, when you meet with these other superintendents from our region, have you run it by them? Like, are they like, oh man, what are you doing with your tech center price? They have never commented on it whatsoever. It's a cost of doing business. We were really, if folks remember that we're here voting last year, Jason was really working on doing some substantial improvements to the facilities there last year, but he was also cutting some programs that hadn't been seeing a lot of enrollments. And so it was pushing the tuition up over 18,000. And we stopped and we talked about it and we said, hey, there's something psychological about this. If we go over that 18,000 number, there might be some sticker shock. So, I worry about it. Do I think it's gonna have a significant impact? No, do I think it might have an impact? Maybe. A lot of the districts that we worry about not sending kids, they're not sending them now. Some of them are building in kind of little mini tech programs within their schools so they can keep their kids at their high schools. If the kids really interested in just a course or two, they'll build the courses there and the things that having the kid come to the tech center so that they can save on their ADM, if that makes sense. So another thing that I'm wondering about with the pre-tech program, you're trying to entice kids or encourage kids to know what's at the tech center. So there may be a payoff down the line because we're doing it. Right, but there are other options too. Like you could have a day where, you know, White River Valley Middle School comes to Randolph Tech to see, you know, and maybe the students in each tech program present, you know, this is, here's a task that we've learned how to do or I mean, I'm sure there's probably some safety regulations and other things, but I wonder if that might also be a way to sort of do kind of a pre-tech, hey, look at this, this is a career day to kind of talk about and show you a bunch of different things that you can do and where kids go from here in terms of into the workforce or, you know, on to higher education and offer that to, you know, maybe a middle school day at the tech center and I don't know. It's another way of exposing kids without having students also. Many of the students that wanna go to the tech center are struggling academically in the academic program, so we kind of wanna keep them there so they get to the skill level that they need to be, but we can throw out some carrots, you know, hey, look at what I do in this program, but, you know, I really had to get through my English in order to do this, you know what I mean? Yeah, no, it's actually interesting that you're bringing that up. There are some of the elementary students as those carrots are offered to them. They do come over, they work directly in the program, you know, a couple of days a week as the benefit for doing what they need to do, and that's actually been pretty successful. I mean, they're all our students at this point in time, but that's been good. I'm gonna suggest if the board is okay with this, again, because budget is, you know, I give you recommendations and whatnot, but this is one of those things that's uniquely yours. Let me have a, because I know Felicia's been doing the research, have a conversation with her between now and January. If she is assured that she can get tuition for next year for these students, I'd like to try to keep that pre-tech program. If it looks unlikely, I think I'd like to pull it just because I'm worried about the tuition and the impact if that makes sense. So we will look for more information from you in January and a more detailed budget for RTCC. Yeah, is that correct? Okay. Yeah, I mean, this is pretty much all of it. You guys do have the balance sheet, I think was in the comparison last year and this year, but most of what is causing that tuition increase right now, right? Yeah, our enrollments went down, but our costs went down as well. So those kind of balance each other out a little bit. It's just that we've got an individual who's doing work. It's not that there's not good work being done, but we have no way of bringing in tuition for the work that they're doing. And this budget at RTCC, like Raven is based on tuition, right? The other place that this has an impact on, and I think this is important to note, we'll talk a little bit about it when we get into the OCCD budget, is that right 45% of our kids are going to the tech center. We pay tuition to send them there. So if the tuition's go up, we're paying a heck of a lot more to send kids to the tech center than we would before. So that one's a little kind of self-serving and that's not my reason for bringing it up, but it's a part of the calculus, right? If the tuition's go up for the tech center this much, we did the calculations, Robin and I, I think it's a $60,000 increase in the tuition that we'll be paying to the tech center next year from the district budget. Questions on that before I pop back into the presentation. January is usually the big vote on the budget, especially RTCC and Raven, because January 25th, they have to publish the tuition rates. So that's in terms of the budgeting process for folks that are new January is an important date. All right, can you still see that presentation or do I need to restart it? Still there? Yes. All right, so let's jump back in. Yeah, these budgets are a lot simpler because we're getting a lot closer to the overall goal and that's a level service budget, right? So we started off two years ago, where there's a huge jump in the budget that we're exceptionally appreciative of because that allowed us to start building these structures that's getting us towards the knowledge ends that are in the board's mission. Last year, it shouldn't have been as much as it was, but the thing that threw things for a loop was the state negotiated healthcare, right? We ended up eating a lot more in healthcare when there should have been savings. And so that through last year's budget, but we're actually this year when we're looking at things we're getting very close to what I call a level service budget. And that means we're just increasing what we need to to maintain our current operations as they stand. We're not adding anything, but we're not cutting anything. And then as some of the programs that we currently have in place are meeting their goals, that money has then shifted to a new initiative to help advance things further. The other thing just to be aware of that are complicating factors this year is just the student safety in terms of the ongoing pandemic, right? We had a lot of costs that we had to pay for to be able to operate under the pandemic. And then again, we're continuing this push forward on what I call the district strategic ends plans. Remember, the board has an ends document that has probably a dozen to 16 different ends to be working on. It's not possible to work on them all at once. So we've chosen four that we're going after. We've chosen the four that are the most visible to the community and the world outside. And also the four that are gonna have the greatest impact on student success in the other ends, right? If you're really good, really good in English, if you're really good in math, you're gonna be a heck of a lot better in social studies and science. If we're getting students off their IEPs and giving them the skills so that they're independent, they're just gonna do better overall, no matter what they do. So when I'm talking about this strategic ends plan, what I'm talking about are those four ends from the board's ends that we're focusing in on and leaving the others until these are accomplished. And just a quick reminder of what those are, there was a lot of transition down at the elementary schools this year in terms of their service delivery plan. What we're really trying to do is take these students that are on IEPs, right? And they're not that not as independent as they could be. They have other people that are in there helping them with their work, helping them overcome the issues that they face and trying to do that work and trying to transition it so that we're really training those students with the skills they need to do this on their own. So the hope is that we're bringing down the IEP population. We're sitting anywhere from 21 to 23% of our overall population is on IEP at a time when the national and the state average is about 14%. So if we do our job well, we should be able to cut the number of students that are dependent on IEPs to be successful almost in half. And the goal with all this work is getting these student IEPs who want them to be less restrictive over time. There are some students that will always be on an IEP but the hope is to make them as independent as possible so that our interventions are as minimal as possible. Lows the student to have a much more enjoyable kind of normal life in the regular education setting when that can happen. The other thing that we're working on and you kind of saw some of that with the presentation from the high school tonight, right? We're really looking at ELA and we're really looking at math and we're really looking at science and trying to make sure that we're striving to get about 70% or more of the OSSD students over that proficiency threshold. So that we know that they've got the foundational knowledge and skills as a body as a group of people to really achieve well with any of the other courses that they take and to get them set up so they got the skills for what comes after, right? One of the big goals. So again, I actually got the numbers right this time. You see on the left, it will talk a little bit about where the differences are coming from in the next slides. Total budget currently is 20 million six. Budget for next year, we're looking at potentially 21 to 44. So a change of about $643,000 or an increase of 3.13%. Now, I got to keep bringing people back and remind you we are only looking at expenditures. We're only looking at costs. We won't get the revenue side of things, the formulas we need to calculate what our revenues will be until tomorrow at the earliest December 15th, sometimes a little bit later. And hopefully that that's gonna bring that 3.13% down a little bit. Talk about where these expenditures are coming from. That $643,863 additional dollars. Well, some of it is just plain old mandatory. We don't have a choice. We have to estimate what the teachers are gonna negotiate for their salaries for next year because we're back in negotiations again for next year. There was a 10% increase to health insurance. Those are mandatory things, we just have to do them. And then this also takes into account if we leave the technical center, if we leave those tuition rates at that 18,000 rate, that is gonna have an impact on our budget here in the district. Now, there is some new spending. So you got the mandatory, it's kinda just what we gotta do. Don't have much of a choice in the matter. That's $559,000. In terms of new spending, this is discretionary. It can be changed. If we have to, I would prefer not. Some would be easier to remove than others. We've got 8,000 that set aside to support the lower housework that's going on. That's the work that some of which you just saw tonight that's really geared towards seventh and eighth grade to try to get a real middle school program up and running in there and really have a positive impact on those students. So we're not seeing that dip in performance during those years. And hopefully, if the numbers supported at some point in time, because this was the agreement with the community last year, of being able to bring sixth grade up from the elementary schools and bring it into RUHS to have a true middle school. Now, should that happen? Because it's before people get a little bit nervous about that discussion, we do have a significant amount of money in the Facilities Reserve Fund that could be used to help separate those two programs, you know, the nine to 12 high school from what would be the six to eight middle school. We have our technical director. This is not our TCC tech. This is our informational technology director who for whatever reason is on what we call an admin one contract, admin two contract. She really should be on an admin one based upon the definition. I don't know why that was done the way that it was in the past. The cost to make that move is about $5,000 to put things right. The board had some discussions which I support in terms of the social justice initiative that was presented a little bit earlier this year by Amy, by Emily and by Dana. And some of that work is actually ongoing now, but if we wanna actually support that work into perpetuity so that they can continue the work they're doing, that's gonna be about 25,000 added to the budget. We have a potential transition next year in a pretty big position in the district. And so what we wanna do is put aside some money so that the person who is leaving can come in and mentor the new person during their first year. Mentoring is required under the state licenses for that first year. And so that's what that money is for. And we can talk about that in a little bit more detail when we get into executive session. There was also, there's this 35,000 that is out there. As part of all this work that the teachers had been doing remotely and in the hybrid modality, we did bring in about almost $55,000, $60,000 in new software to support that work with kids. And so what we had them do is go through it and say, okay, someday this is COVID is gonna be behind this, we're gonna be back full in person. Of that $55,000, $60,000 in new software that we brought in to support you, which of those platforms should we keep that you are going to continue and want to continue to use as part of your regular programs. And that's what that 35,000 represents. So you have a total of about 85,000 in new spending, 559,000 in what'll be mandatory. If you look at the breakdown of what this looks like on a chart, that total increase that we're looking at from this year to next year potentially, 87% of it is mandatory, we don't have control over, 13% of it is for kind of new costs. So we are really taking a huge step towards this idea of a level service budget. To throw some other numbers up there that'll put things I think in a little bit better perspective. What we're potentially looking for right now as an increase is 3.13% on the expenditure side. If we remove all the new expenditures from that, what's left over is what we have to do. That would be 2.73%. And I put that number in blue for a reason. If we're doing normal salary increases for the staff that are in line with what's happening across the rest of the state, 2.73% increase in expenditures will be our normal increase from year to year, once we're level service funding things. Does that make a little bit of sense? And now probably a good time to answer some questions before we jump into the last parts and pieces. And it's not reactions. It's like, you need to tell me, oh my God, this is too much or you know what? After the last two years, this is such a heaven sent. You know, that's part of the information and the feedback I need from the board. So I don't know if you can do this yet, but I always like it when you say, like this means this much per $100 value on... We might not be able to do that just quite yet, right? Until we get the revenue side of things, the formulas from the state, we can't do that. That comes a little bit later. I'm hoping we have it before your January vote. I don't even know how accurate those are because the state changes stuff even after, but at least it gives people a general idea. Is it going up a lot or is it going up a little? I don't know, you know, typically December 15th is a deadline for them to give us those formulas, but given everything that's going on in terms of COVID, they may be very well maybe behind like they were last year. So I'm hoping, but again, you know, we got that January deadline that's looming that we do have to do the votes regardless, just because there are things that have to be published in a certain timeframe. So that is my hope is that I have that for you for the January meeting. And my hope is that our revenues are good. We've actually, over the last couple of years, our revenues have been going up because of school choice. We've been getting more and more school choice students. I think, you know, last year was probably around 400,000 in revenues we were bringing in just from school choice alone, but I can't say much until those formulas come out. So yeah, I'm with you too. It makes a lot more sense when people can put it into how it's gonna hit their pocketbook. On the, go ahead. I do have three questions, Lane. The first one on the software that you mentioned, this is a two part question. I know you've been sharing with us that we have been tracking our COVID expenses associated with the modifications needed. Do you foresee some of that software expense? I would imagine would be able to be covered if indeed we get the reimbursement we've been promised. So the software, you know, you usually pay a little bit more for the initial year. And then there's the ongoing cost, the licensing that's year after year. That 35,000 is the year after year licensing if we're gonna keep it. So that- What is the actual software that you wanna keep? I can give you a list of them. There's about 20 different little platforms. They're learning software for ELA, for math, for science. And each one is kind of geared to kind of a different grade level. That's why there's so many of them. Yeah, so if that helps. And then you said you had a third. I have it. Well, that was just my first one. And my second one on the mentor, that's just for one position if I heard you correctly. For one position for one year. And well, I'll go into detail in it in the executive session. Okay. And then the third question on the social justice initiative. Originally when we heard that presentation from Emily and Dana, I thought there were no costs associated with that. Well, there are costs. It's big ones too. Okay, so are we gonna get a breakdown of what that is in our, even if that's our January meeting? Yeah, I can give you the full details on that. Most of it's stipends. They have a set of trainers that they are developing at each school that is then gonna go in and teach that curriculum to both staff and students. And so that amount may go down after this year. Right now it's for the stipends and the training that they are receiving to become trainers themselves. After that it is just the stipends. So the 25,000 is probably a one year thing. It'll probably be down around 10 to 12 after the first year, if that makes sense. But I'm happy to give you the breakdown on that. I think they sent it to you. I'll see what I can find with that. Okay, thank you. Yeah, no good questions and glad you guys are on the ball. Keep me awake tonight. Yeah, I was just gonna kind of had the same question as Ashley on the social justice one. Cause I thought it was gonna be mostly paid through a grant that Emily had. And it wasn't necessarily gonna be coming out of the school's budget. So the grant that Emily had was through the Rollins Foundation. And so they actually, they've worked with one or two of our staff over the last couple of years. That gives them kind of training and gives them time to kind of pull together a district wide plan that they are then expected to implement. So you're right, there was a grant for it. That got her trained and gave her the ability to be able to develop that district wide plan. Now that they are trying to follow through one, which takes the support to do that. And again, I put the new up there as separate because if cuts need to be made, that's the place we can do it. You know, it's a minor impact if we cut any of those things. Are there any other questions for laying around the budget? Okay, I see a question from David White in the chat. Where'd you come from? Okay. Is that okay, time Laura? Yes, this would be fine, go ahead. So it's not directly related to the budget, but right before hand, there was some goals for the proficiency and other. And I liked seeing the metric around reducing the IE plans from where we are today to where it was. I was just curious, and I remember the 70% goal from a few years ago, I was just curious, is are there state or national averages to compare that 70% proficiency to? Are there enough other states doing proficiency grading? And just how do we come up with that 70% goal? Yeah, actually I can talk about it in a couple of different ways because you ask a bunch of interesting questions there. So when no child left behind came out back in the second Bush years, the requirement was is that all the states were doing this proficiency testing. Problem is, is that all the states are doing their own version of proficiency testing. A lot of them created their own tests. Some share a common test like some of the New England states had NECAP, right? You guys are together with Maine and New Hampshire. You purchased, put together one test at all three used. It's kind of hard to compare from state to state because those tests are so different. The MCAS in Massachusetts is probably one of the more renowned ones and one of the more difficult ones to kind of compare things to. So state to state is a little bit difficult. So what we can do is compare in-state. Typically until recent years we've been usually a bit, not a lot, but a bit under the state average historically. We are as much as we can tell. Remember there hasn't been a lot of data last year or two. We should be at or exceeding it at this point in time. 70% was a reasonable goal to drive to given the resources that the community has given us. And we may be able to push far beyond that. Before SBAC stopped last year the elementary schools and mathematics two of the elementary schools were already almost at the 70% threshold. So we've made some pretty good jumps. The reality is, David, that the no child left behind that has been put into a new act, I don't even remember what the acronym is for it now requires a hundred percent, right? That's what no child left behind means. It means that a hundred percent of kids in every district across this country are supposed to be reaching those proficiency thresholds based upon their state testing. So is it possible to get a hundred? Massachusetts worked on it since 1993. They got close in most schools. The schools that I was in, ELA was always the highest. It typically hovered between 96 and 97%. Math was typically between 94 and 95% and science was typically around 90. They never put the resources into science that they did into the other two. But it is 90% 10, 15 years from now is a possibility. 70% is, we'll hit that within five years. We're already, like I said, at the elementary level, two of the elementary schools were already hitting it and mathematics are pretty darn close. Sounds like we're comparable to other schools though in Vermont. We're much more comparable than we were. But we are at least, I would guesstimate that we're at least at the average or a little bit above at this point in time. Okay, thanks. Yeah, again, it's hard to tell without the data. Hopefully we do have the S backgrounds this year. Not sure how much meaning it'll have after all the weird modalities the schools were in with COVID, but at least it'll get us back on track so that we do have some comparisons there that we can make with other districts. It's a good question. All right, give me a second here. Let's go back to that. Okay, so we kind of just talked a little bit about this expectations between now and we meet again in January. State formulas for revenue, they really either do tomorrow, they'll probably be a little bit later than that. On a positive note, our enrollments really didn't go down. They didn't continue to go up like they were, but we were kind of steady state for the most part of this year. But the state has promised at least for districts, not for technical centers, to hold districts harmless for any decline in enrollments this year. So if our numbers did go down, we're supposed to be getting the same counts that we had last year. One of the more kind of unnerving things that came out recently, we got a request to supply some survey data a couple of days ago and they wanted it quick. It's probably information that they're trying to bring into the legislative sessions. They wanna know what people staffing levels are. I hope they're not doing it because it won't fly in this state, but I think what they're looking at trying to do is try to establish a ratio for staff, the student, and tell folks this year you have to cut your staffs. The data that they collected and that they're collecting, that's kind of the only purpose behind collecting it. So it makes me a little nervous of what may be going into the legislative session. I do know in talking with the superintendents, a little bit of a tangent here, but it's important that one of the goals that we have with the legislative session is you're holding the district's harmless for a change in enrollment because of COVID. How come you didn't do that for the tech centers? And so it is possible that there might be coming, some legislation might be coming out around that for the technical centers to help them out. And this year that's gonna be down for most of them in terms of enrollments. We had talked a little bit about this kind of contingency planning, going into a really problematic budget year potentially. My gumption is to put the budget out normally, see if it passes. And then if it doesn't, we come back on the contingency plan that I kind of talked about with folks a little bit earlier. And that's this creation of an operational reserve fund, right? This way we've got money that's available to cover kind of any shortfalls that we may be experiencing with COVID. And then if the budget fails, and I got a whole bunch of money in this operational reserve fund, I can use it to subsidize the budget for a year. Not preferential, because if there's an increase to the budget this year that was subsidized and then an increase next year, two years down the road, they're gonna get a little bit larger increase overall than they would normally. So there is a cost to pay on the other end, but it might get us through a difficult year. We focused very heavily at the end of last year on saving as much money as humanly possible. With this in mind, because there were no plans at the end of last year. We didn't know if the federal government was gonna be coming through with anything. We didn't know if we were gonna be on our own to pay for all these unexpected costs that were related to COVID. We knew at the time that our costs were about $950,000, but we did manage a heck of a surplus at the end of last year, about 1.1 million, it looks like. It's gotta be confirmed by the auditors that we could potentially put into this operational reserve fund. So I wanna throw that out there is that we're not just planning for next year in normal circumstances, there has been a lot of thought going into, okay, if everything blows up, how do we help the community get through a tough year? And this was the plan. It's very important to recognize that for this to work on that March vote, if it happens in March and we'll talk about that a little bit later in our discussions tonight, is that the town votes to allow us to have that operational reserve fund and then votes to put the surplus in it. They've always done it for our other reserve funds, but I just, we gotta make darn sure that when we're talking about this and they're hearing about it, that they know this is an extra money we're asking for, it's money that we already have that we're trying to put there to try to moderate costs next year. So questions on that at all. Other thing, go ahead. I have just a quick question on the staff, staff student ratio thing. Do you have a sense that some of that may be the legislature still trying to push more consolidation of schools because you've got these small schools and they wanna try and push them into bigger schools? I don't see that as their immediate need. They're looking at a $60 million shortfall in the Ed fund. I think that's their immediate need. The other thing that they did that they pushed off for two or three years now is this transition from a reimbursement model to a block grant model for paying for special education. So they went out and they did this waiting study to say, hey, in terms of figuring out how much money each school around the state gets, it shouldn't be an equal amount. There are certain factors that affect a school that would require them to need more money to get a fair and equal impact from the monies that we give them. We're a district with 40% poverty. We should be getting more assistance than a district that's got 10% poverty has to do with your IEP rates or a whole bunch of characteristics like that that they took into account in the waiting study. And what came out of that waiting study is they started to take a look at potentially what the budget impacts of this would be. And some districts were looking at up to potentially 40 cents per $100 of an increase in local taxes to pay for what they were intending to do. We had a couple of towns a year ago that had like a 13% increase, which was huge. I couldn't even imagine what a 40 cent increase would be. And so I think some of this is, oh crap, we've got this coming down the line. It's a lot more than we ever imagined it might be. How do we pay for it? Well, again, I'm doing my best prognostication here. It looks like what they might be doing is examining schools to say, okay, you're all over staff, you all need to cut 10, 15 employees and there's our money that we need. And that's a dangerous, dangerous path to walk because the context of every district and every school is different. The needs are different in Vermont where you do have towns of exceeding wealth and towns of exceeding poverty, what those towns require to be equally successful is not inherently equal in terms of finances. And so yeah, so again, they're just collecting data right now. Odds or something like that ever passing are almost nil, but again, the only reason they would be collecting that specific data is probably for that purpose to do that kind of an analysis. So I'm not saying they're gonna do anything with it. They may just be looking, but they've got some real budget issues at the state level like all states do right now. And they got some holes to fill and they gotta figure out some ways to do it. So a good question. Yeah, a lot going on. It's hard to keep up with it all. It really is. Last piece is just so folks know where our current reserve levels are. If we had to subsidize the budget a little bit more, we could pull as part of that March vote to transition some of this money into that operational fund. Right now in the buses and vehicles fund, there is $1.2 million. Typically what that is used for is we replace school buses and the little red trucks when the time comes. There is much more money in there that we need. We're kind of on this rotating schedule where we replace two school buses a year. And that's what Danny and I were talking about at the beginning of all this is it's time to replace two more school buses. Replacing two school buses is about $180,000. So there's a significant amount of money in that reserve fund. Facilities, right now, after replacing the entire roof at RES and their HVAC system, after replacing, actually I shouldn't say replacing, after putting in a generator at Brookfield after repaving the majority of the RUHS parking lot and our TCC parking lot and replacing the loading dock. And after an enormous amount of district-wide repairs, most of the buildings getting painted inside and out, we replaced some roofs on the barns, the storage barns at the smaller schools and other repairs. There is still $2.9 million sitting in that facilities fund. The cost of replacing those roofs, we figured that they would cost about a million dollars. I think that was the planning way back when Brent sent these up, which was an awesome idea he had to set these up. But the reality was to replace that roof was really closer to five to 600,000. We did start about two years ago. The town voted to allow us to start a reserve fund for special education. This was in preparation for the transition to the block grants that we just talked about because we had no idea and have no idea what the impact is gonna be on the district. So it made sense to have some money set aside if the impact is incredibly negative, that we've got the money, some money on hand to apply to it if we have to. And then we always maintained a legal fund to try to help out in case the costs due to negotiations are high. And of course, we've been negotiating every year that I've been here. I've probably done, after this next round comes, I've probably done more negotiations with you guys than a superintendent who's been in the business for 20 years. So just kind of interesting. So just other information to throw out there for you. So that's kind of the high level view of the budget. I don't know if there's questions or concerns or things folks wanna talk about. It seems fairly pretty reasonable. You haven't, I mean, we aren't completely level funded but it's not like we are having, our expenses are all of these mandatory expenses. When you look at it, it's so negligible what that other little increase is. And I haven't seen yet what's going on with the town of Randolph to see sort of where our town budget is and whether or not. Sometimes if there's a huge increase from the town and then there's another increase from the school, people get a little anxious. But I haven't looked yet to see sort of where things are with that. So does anybody know? Has anybody seen or heard? And I don't know if that matters so much with the, with Brookfield and Braintree but I know Randolph, sometimes we get hit. I haven't heard much, the biggest talk. Actually, Linda kept feeding the paperwork to me because it was a little bit off my radar but the biggest talk right now is about town meeting whether they delay it. Given COVID, the other talk is whether they actually do any on the floor votes at town meeting or whether it's all Australian ballot. So they've got some decisions to make there. I know that as far as that March vote goes, anything that might delay that is going to be very difficult on the schools, right? So I don't know how wise that that legislation was to put in. But there's got to be some discussion around it. I haven't heard much about what they're going to do. They're also potentially in a transition year, but also after three, four years is, I think heading back out to California. I love the guy. I'm going to miss him an awful lot. So I'm not sure when that transition is happening. You know, it was brought to folks' attention a couple of months back. I don't know if that's a January thing or if that's a July thing but that may have an impact too on their budget. I'll see if I can get some answers for you. Yeah. So in January, what kind of budget presentation shall we expect? You can have anyone that you want. I would say that it's very similar to this. It's kind of the high level because there's not a lot of real changes, right? You know, if you look at the tech center, you know, the only real change there is do we keep the pre-tech teacher or not? It's not like we're adding much, matter of fact, costs are down. Raven, you know, costs are down. In terms of the district budget, you know, you got the mandatory expenses and you got the new stuff. Potentially you could say to me, you know, eliminate the new or all the newer part of the new to try to modify stuff a little bit. But other than that, there's not much else in there. Again, the town has been awesome, all three towns. They've given us most of what we need to do the work for the ends. You know, we're getting the structures into place, especially at the high school level. Now we just need to keep a focus on them and let them do their work, which they're doing. There's not more that we need at this point in time. So I don't know, you know, outside of what's new there, there's not much that we could cut. Yeah, no, I appreciate that the increases are really pretty targeted. So great. All right, so we'll take those votes next month then. And if there's things that, you know, as a collectively that you guys want, just make sure you let me know and I'm happy to bring it. Okay, are there any other further questions from anyone at this meeting? Okay, then we will move on. Next, we have just a review of the board member terms. Megan, Rachel and I all have our terms expiring in March. If you choose to run again, you do not need to collect petitions this year. All you need to do is sign a form of interest for your name to be added to the ballot. So that makes it easy. By January 25th. Yes, by January 25th. So you need to contact your town clerk if you wanna do that. Next, we've got a draft of the OSSD annual warning that's in our packet. Linda, do we need to sign that in person? Do we need to stop by the office to do that? Nope, yeah, I turned your mic. Yep, trying to turn it in the wrong spot here. Not till January. I mean, I think probably we should all have your signatures, but it won't be improved till January. So there'll be some time. So. And so maybe if everyone can swing by the OSSD office at some point to just sign that form, they are open, someone's there every day until 3.30. Is that correct, Linda? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, but you probably won't wanna do it until we have it more finalized in January. Cause there'll be like a couple of weeks between when you guys approve it and I gotta post it. So, yeah, I would say not till after our January meeting, but then I'll want you to stop by fairly soon. She can't fill it out until you vote on the budget. In terms of that draft, the one thing that will be added to it is, there's the line there. It talks about, what are we gonna do with the surplus funds? We're gonna ask the town to move it into our reserve funds, but there will be one more line on there that is asking for the creation of the operations fund. So that'll be the one major change from the draft that you currently have and what you'll see. But we gotta get the actual numbers in there, which will come from your January vote before, yep. Okay, good. Discuss negotiations with unions. Lane, do you wanna tell us about that? Yeah, there's some stuff we can talk about here. I do have one or two slides. Some of it is about the state of this year, right? We're still, we've got these tentative agreements out there on what this year's contract should be. And then we should talk a little bit about getting prepped for the negotiations for next year's contract. So what I promised I would do for the board this time, we were hoping we'd actually have the documents completed and brought so that the board could vote on it and sign it. They didn't, they're not quite ready yet. The union got the draft document, right? They put the new wording into this draft document. It comes to us and we review it to make sure it says what it's supposed to and then we send it back. And what they had sent over, they sent it over just before Thanksgiving. I had a chance to review it, I sent it back. It had everything in it it was supposed to but it was missing all the language about healthcare, which is quite extensive, right? Because what's happening in terms of the healthcare splits is all defined by the state law. So they gotta put the state law in there so they're working on that. Once that's done, you should have the document in your hand. But what I propose, and again, you don't have to go along with this if you don't want to, is I can review what is in that CBA, what is in that document. And if the board wants to, you could tentatively approve Laura to sign that. If the paper document, the final paper document we get matches this like it's supposed to, we can just sign it and be done with it. But let me present the kind of the overall here so we can find what I'm looking at. There's not a lot, this one's a little bit shorter than the others, but it's easier for me in these types of meetings to have them on slides. Might help if I want to present a view, huh? Alrighty, got that. So again, this is the collective bargaining agreement, the teacher master contract for this current year that we're in that we reached tentative agreement on it back in October. There are some minor changes, a whole bunch of them. And then there's a major change which we'll talk about separately. The minor changes, we added to the CBA the fact that teachers have to have an AOE license if they're covered under the CBA, right? So this came out of talks a while back about whether our title funded folks should be under the collective bargaining agreement and the agreement that we reached on this was, yeah, you know, if they're working directly with kids and they have a license to be working directly with those kids and they should be under the CBA. So this was just making sure that that language was in there finally. It changes things that allows most communications to be sent by email. Prior to this point in time, communications had to be sent by registered mail either to the board chair, the superintendent or the union president, which seemed kind of ridiculous in this day and age slows things down. This was a really important one. It equalizes the number of days each side gets to respond to the grievances. So right, if they file a grievance, you get so much time to respond to it and it's very procedural. And if you screw up one of those dates, you've lost the grievance on procedural grounds. And the old contract, and I don't know why this was in there for years and years, the union would get like 10 days to respond to the next step. In our case, in one case, they gave us two days to respond to it and in another case, they gave us four. And again, the only reason to have that type of language in there is to make sure that we are procedurally unable to meet those deadlines. Because remember, if this is a grievance, we often have to confer with legal counsel, we have to collect information and data, and then we have to draft a written response, and then we have to make sure it gets into their hands by the deadline. So they did agree to actually equalize those times to something that was reasonable to both sides. I'm very thankful for that. It does change the healthcare costs, right? Basically, we just put in the language of the new state law because everybody has to follow it and nobody can change any part of it. It requires a grade of B minus or better to be reimbursed for coursework. We have a very generous policy about courses teachers can take. We had no grade requirement for them to get reimbursed for those courses we do now. It cleaned up a ton of language that was in there that was no longer applicable is now out. This contract is only for one year, and that was done on purpose because no one knew what next year would look like in terms of COVID and in terms of finances. It includes a 3.25% salary increase, and we can talk about this a little bit. They automatically get a step increase of 1.48% that's built into the contract that happens regardless. So this was an additional 1.77% on top of that. What this does, and we fought it for a while, though I'm actually recognized the truth of it, they ended up having to each pay on average about an extra $1,000 for their health insurance that they didn't have to pay for before because of the change in that state negotiations. And so what they did was they sought to get that money back, right? Which is reasonable, right? You know, they lost funding yet they're still providing the same services so it's reasonable for us to make them whole. So that 1.77% compensates them for that $1,000 of pay that they lost each year because they're paying more for their health insurance. Matter of fact, on average, they didn't quite get the $1,000 back. It was actually a little bit less than that. In terms of other contracts, of folks that were in similar situations with us, we were on the low middle end of things. So where most people kind of settled was a bit higher than where we settled on the contract. The one major change was they gave up some of their sick and emergency leave in exchange for a sick bank. So they agreed to give up two sick days and to give up two of their emergency days. In exchange, we're gonna create a sick bank for them. So if somebody has a true medical need and they've been able to establish that they have that with evidence, if they've exhausted all their personal leave, they can apply to the bank for more days. But the big requirement here is to be able to qualify to pull or draw leave from that bank, their condition or their family person's health condition has to meet the same qualifications for FMLA or VP, FLA, so Family Medical Leave Act, Vermont Parental Family Leave Act, I think it is. So it's gotta meet one of those. Those days, they're not getting any extra days. Basically where the sick leave bank days come from is to start it off, every staff member donates a day to the sick bank and then when it gets used up, they all donate another day with a couple of qualifications in there. And so those are the basics. Actually, that's everything about the new contract that's coming out. So I don't know if there discussion or questions or thoughts on any of it. Lane, this might be a silly question, but. Sure. This is for this year, 2020 to 2021? The year we're currently living in. So. They thought the salary piece and it went to, didn't go to arbitration, it was a step before fact-finding. We had a mediator, it went to mediation. It failed in mediation. It was going to fact-finding. And then they came back and were fairly reasonable coming back while we were waiting for fact-finding and said, you know what, 3.25% we're done. And so that's what we agree to tentatively. None of this is agreed to unless and until the full board votes on it and says that it's agreed to. And none of it is agreed to until the full union votes on it and says it's agreed to. So this is just the tentative agreement. Is there a reason that the union is hesitant to agree to this now? No, they are willing to agree to it. We're all just waiting for the damn final document to be written up by the lawyers in the union so that we have it in front of it so people can read it when they, you know, know what they're signing on to, especially at the union level. So they want the actual final document. And what I was suggesting is to make things a little bit quicker is, and again, you do not have to do this. It's just a recommendation that may save time. Is it the board could move to vote to approve that document when it comes in, if it matches what I presented here tonight and give Laura the authority to sign, but you don't have to. You can wait for the actual document if you want to read all 60 pages of it. I'm comfortable making that motion, you know, because we're staring down the barrel of more negotiations for next year. I remember all these things and Lane has presented them clearly and has, as I remember it. So I'm prepared to make that motion right now that we give authority to Laura to sign that document on behalf of us all when it comes down as long as it matches the changes Lane just presented. Is there a second to that motion? I'll second that. Any further discussion about that or questions for Lane before we take a vote? Hearing none, all those in favor of us delegating me the authority to sign on behalf of all of you if the contract is as Lane has described. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Or wave, okay. Any nays? Okay, great. I will do that and let you know when that happens. Thanks. That will make it a little easier and smoother. All right, next we've got EL reports. It's nothing but you tonight, Lane. We have two reports, one which will need to discuss an executive session. Do you wanna discuss emergency superintendent succession right now? Yeah, I can talk a little bit about both of them, but one kind of plays potentially into personnel. So that should be an executive session. So executive limitation 2.4 is the one that we should probably talk about in session, the majority of it in executive session. EL 2.4 has to do with financial planning and budgeting. And really what it's about is it's making sure that Rob and I in the district are taking into account the current financial landscape when we're creating a budget and presenting it to the board, right? And it's vitally important that we do that, that we try to make the best predictions that we can and we rely on the data and the information that's out there. Because remember, we're always voting on this budget at least nine months before it goes, before we can actually use it before we tap into it. So a lot can change in that time. I do report compliance on all parts of that report, but there is a personnel issue. We had a potential issue with this that needs to be discussed, but the protocols that were in place, work is intended. And so there really were no issues in the end, but we'll talk about that in executive session. Executive limitation 2.5 is the simple one. It's about succession planning. If something happens and I go Kaboom one day, is the district able to continue to operate? I kind of has split this in amongst two people. Most of the vital concerns that would come up in the short term are typically either around human resources issues, right? Staffing issues or around finance, where we're spending money and where the money should be spent. So if it's short term, if it's a week or less, I have provided Robin, our business manager with a letter that gives her my full authority if I am incapacitated, because she works diligently on human resources and finance. If it's longer than a week that I'm incapacitated for, Erica McLaughlin has a letter that gives her all my powers and authority so that she can carry out the bigger stuff, not just the HR and the finance, but she's in with the cabinet. And everybody in the cabinet is aware of the initiatives that we're working on because they all have input into them. And with a little bit of time, Erica's awesome. She can easily figure out the little bits of pieces that might be missing and just keep things moving in the right direction during a time of incapacitation. So executive limitation 2.5 is also in compliance. Unless there's questions on either one of them. Some of them aren't that long, so. Yeah, this is our first reading. So please be prepared next month to take a vote on this. There are always background documents available at the OSSD office or make an appointment with Lane if you want to chat a little further about it before taking that vote. All right, so for Nick or I guess February, we will be planning a meeting with our legislators. Lane, did you want to speak to that? Yeah, that's easy. That's all Linda, she's smiling. We talked about it the other day, Linda's willing to go and get it prepared and get it set up. Okay, so that will be our February meeting. Great. Okay, so for our consent agenda, we've got a number of minutes enclosed in our agenda packet from November. I had a potential addition. Just because timing is kind of screwed up this year for everybody. And again, the board would have to vote to add this to the consent agenda. And again, if you're not comfortable, don't do it. We'll figure it out in January. But every year, there is a school choice agreement that comes out. I work with 12, 13 other superintendents in the Winooski Valley region, the Winooski Valley Superintendents Association. We have one master agreement that we all follow for how we manage school choice. But one of the things that has to happen is that those agreements have to be ratified by the boards of the individual districts. This board has always ratified it. There is nothing substantive in there that has changed from last year to this or even over the course of the years that I've been here. The other thing that this does is it actually sets the limits on how many students we will allow to leave the school for school choice and how many students we will allow to enter. I've traditionally left it allowing 20 to leave and allowing up to 100 to enter. We had one year where I think we had 35 that actually came in, which was awesome because every kid that comes here is somebody paying tuition for here. So those numbers wouldn't change. Elijah and Katie and those guys, even David, when he was here and talking with them, there is capacity in that building when we're outside of COVID to take that number of students at our UHS. So it wouldn't be putting anything in harm's way if we brought in potentially 100 kids. We won't, but it's nice to dream. So those are the pieces. They typically, they just got this to us Friday and it's usually supposed to be back in their hands by January 1st, they were late anyway. But if it's possible for the board to approve this, it'd be great to be able to get that back into the Winniskey Valley Superintendents Association's hands and I'll leave it at that. So your proposal for this year is 100 kids in and 20 kids allowed to go out elsewhere. Yeah, those would be the limits. Okay. Does anyone have any objection to adding that to the consent agenda as we vote on that slate? I see some noses. Is there anyone who does, would rather wait till next month? Okay, I don't hear anyone or see anyone. All right, so we've got minutes from November 9th, minutes from November 19th, minutes from December 7th and then we have to approve financial management questionnaire which is enclosed. We can ask you about that if you have anything to add. We also have to approve over-the-counter medications. Is that correct for the FSAs and HSAs? Yeah. So you wanna speak to those last two things? Yeah, those two pieces are, I believe are the same thing, let me double check. Prove over-the-counter medications for the HRAs. Oh, financial management questionnaire, that just comes out every year. Robin and I sign off on it. It's about the controls that we have in place to make sure that we're following proper accounting protocols in that proper financial management. We check off on it and sign off in a test that it's true. It's supposed to go in front of the board. You're not checking to see if we're truthful. You're just able to say that you've seen it, that we've signed off on it so that if something blows up, you can hold this accountable for it because we signed off on it. The HRA piece with the CARES Act, the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act that came out is part of trying to help folks out. They passed some legislation that said, okay, with your HSA or your HRA, your healthcare reimbursement accounts, you are allowed to buy over-the-counter medications, because we're in the middle of COVID, with those funds without needing a prescription to do it. So that's already law. Our job is to give approval to the group that manages our HRAs and HSAs and tell them it's okay to do. So that's what that's all about. Thank you. And then at it, of course, is this, is this, I don't know, WAVE or what are you, I don't know exactly what you call it, to send schools to the Wyniewski Valley. Yeah, it's the school choice agreement. School choice agreement, okay. So that's the sixth thing. Any questions about the consent agenda before we have a motion to approve it? Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda then? I make the motion that we approve the consent agenda as presented. Second? I'll second. All right, all those in favor, please WAVE or thumbs up. All right, any opposed? Okay, great. It is approved. Next, we have reports and incidental information. We have Lane's superintendent report, most of which you've covered already. Is there anything else that we need to know or hear about? And again, I hate to keep taking time, but there's a couple of odds and ends. I think it's important to have on the radar. Just the good one, and then we'll talk about the more problematic ones. We did finally receive reimbursement funds from the Coronavirus Relief Act to cover all the costs that we've spent on COVID since the start through the end of this month to the tune of $973,000. So that was good to hear, considering we had spent a little over a million so far on additional expenses. There is still the ESSER funds that we can apply to for other costs that we incur between now in December 2022, I believe it is. I don't know how much money is in there that we can tap into, but I'm sure it is significant. Couple of parts and pieces as we've been getting prepared for a potential return to full in-person. We're not talking about modality, but this is important because it is financial. The smaller schools, the three elementary schools had all transitioned to having tables instead of desks. Can't sit kids at tables while social distancing is in effect, so we need to buy desks. Based on a rough assessment since last Thursday, we're looking at needing about $60,000 worth of desks to be able to go back to full in-person at the elementary level. We have it, and to spare in the facilities funds, and it may be reimbursable under the ESSER funds, but I just wanted to throw that out there as a potential hiccup in all this. And then the question is, is if we go and we order these, is there even a supply out there? Can we even get our hands on them? Because with COVID, people haven't been building stuff. They haven't had the manpower to do it. So I'm just throwing that out there because next month I'll probably be asking for a total from facilities reserve funds that we will replenish with ESSER funds if we receive a grant to get reimbursed for. The other piece that we kind of already touched on is at the next meeting I'll be asking for 176,000 from the Transportation Reserve Fund that is to replace two school buses. We have about 14 buses. We try to replace two a year, so our oldest buses tend to be around seven years old. The two that we were replacing have massive holes in them due to salt corrosion. We tried to do some replacements last year, but again, COVID got in the way. People, those buses when they're ordered, they literally have to be built, and then we received them. They didn't have people to build them last year. So we've got an opportunity this year to kind of rectify that. And then again, financial-wise, we kind of touched on this as well. We may be seeking funds from the facilities reserve fund to start the well work for Brookfield. And that's it for me on others. Let's just questions. So are there a question? I have just a thought. If perhaps, Lane, you are met with the issue of not being able to secure a desk. I wonder if there's any opportunity for us to reach out to the schools that have consolidated and may have an inventory that could help us in the short term as a way for the students to be able to move forward, be in school in person and not have that be an obstacle that prevents from happening. Yeah. No, I'm happy to. I'll actually, I'll bring it up at my next superintendent's association meeting. We've been meeting weekly. I think we have the big one on Friday too, which is helpful. The other thing, just to kind of point out, it may not be a bad idea to purchase some or all of those desks. And the reason being is that one of the things that the old facilities manager didn't do was he didn't purchase these. Usually you try to keep like 50 on hand so that as they break at the high school, right? You got replacements and you can just go up there and do it. So it would be nice if the elementary schools went back to tables afterwards to just throw them in storage. And I told them, I said, if we order these, I want you to order in the larger ones wherever you can just to replace the breakage and things that just normally happens over time at the high school. That would probably cover us for five or six years. You know, the number of desks we're talking. But I will check. It's a very good idea, Ashley. I appreciate that. I'll check with the superintendents on Friday and just see what they're thinking. Any other questions or comments for Lane around his report? Next, we also have reports from the other principals and RTCC director, financial report. Lane, anything to report about this year's current budget? How are things going financially? Any concerns? Looks good. And with the CRF funds are back in the black. So we're on par for where we need to be this time of year. Excellent. Board self-evaluation. Hannah, any comments? What do you think? Yes, I'm gonna, I have it printed out so Linda, I can send you a signed copy. I scored us well all the way down. The meeting was not as well attended as say last week's special meeting, but we're all here. You know, I think time management is always something we can improve on, but gosh, that's the case for any meeting I'm in these days. So I don't give us a pass. It's something we should keep in mind. But other than that, we were respectful, heard from different people, flipping back and forth here. Diversity of viewpoints, participation was balanced. And as always, we treated each other respectfully and I appreciate that. So it's just the time management issue that I docked us on. Yeah, and we deserved it. So thank you for being so gracious with the rest of it. Right now we, next is executive session. So we're gonna need a link to leave this meeting and enter executive session. So I sent that link out just before the meeting started. So you should have it right in your emails. Thank you very much. And yeah, so we're gonna leave for, do I have a motion to go into executive session for personnel issues? Okay. I think the motion, sorry, go ahead. Brian, if you wanna make it, I'll second it. Okay, I'll make the motion and we move to the executive session. Second. Okay, thank you. Good night. Good night, Danny.