 633 we have any adjustments to the agenda okay I think we'll not assign times or have a timekeeper other than we will limit public comment to three minutes person just to make sure that we have time for everybody to get to speak so move on to the consent agenda we have a motion to approve the minutes of Tuesday October 18th all right all in favor say aye and it's a approved we'll move on to public comment do we have any public comment Bridget go ahead I'll try to be good with my three minutes I've fought a migraine all day so I'm doing the best I can but since as you all know I have always champion performing arts here in the schools I got to shout out I'm obligated to shout out the good folks not just the actors the supporters the adults the volunteers the students who helped with the school play Alice in Wonderland which was an utter blast but I'm also just really excited and happy to watch the school really stepping up to support I walked by the performance today banner in front of the school and it was so great to see it was wonderful to see all the promotion on Facebook it's really nice to have a school that's proud of its student performers it's really great to be part of a school district that embraces students as they are that doesn't make them choose to be athletes or actors or tech folk or whatever and related but not directly related I'm also really proud of us as a district for embracing students of all shapes sizes race gender identity gender expression it's important these kids are our kids and there are a future and we need to love them and it's it's incredibly frustrating me sometimes to see people look their neighbors essentially straight in the face and say I don't believe you I believe a you know right-wing radio host I listened to last week but just to be super clear I'm glad we're following state guidelines I'm glad we're following title nine guidelines and I'm glad we're looking out and supporting our kids both in what they do and in who they are thank you thanks budget is there anybody else who would like to speak this time okay there will be a second public comment time at the end so yes go ahead yes I'm Gene Kraus and I'm a resident of Bethel and if you look at me you might make some assumptions many of which might be absolutely wrong there are things about me you do not know even though you can see some things I was bullied as a kid in high school I won't go into the why I think I might have been bullied but I was my school was not able to keep me safe and I want to argue that no matter what no matter who no matter your race gender culture language educational intellectual ability financial status in this culture no matter you need to be safe and there's our kids and that by the way is not the same thing as being embarrassed or being made to feel uncomfortable you need as a child to be safe to be who you are to not be bullied by other students not be put down by teachers to be defended from parents it's a it's a it's a human right to be an individual and so I encourage you to continue with the policies that you have in place and to stand firm in protecting our kids all of them all right anybody else against students who are regimental boys and girls they're transgender they're gay these all have to be accepted these people are our children and they have to be accepted and they can't believe and they can't we have can't arguments of where they're gonna go to the bathroom or whatever these are children and want to be with them thank you could you just speak to say your name for the minute I'm sorry my name is Allison Grevelle great thank you is there anybody else who'd like to speak at this time okay my name is Acorn Swiggan I live in Randolph and have been you know front and center witnessing our the struggles at our school with the the disagreements about the policies on the facilities of the locker room and not only that but the the local election campaigners all jumping on board to voice their opinions and everything on the front porch forum and it's just been a real struggle for the young people at that school some of them as a result even if they weren't directly involved not feeling comfortable even being at the school and so I just wanted to as a person from your neighboring community who knows that this is rippling out and affecting all of us to voice my concern and your support to please continue supporting your trans students and and following the state recommendations around supporting your trans students it's just been really painful to watch and I don't want to see that pain spread any further and I've also been really moved by our local community coming together to listen to these students and support them and I think that you know part of this also is not is trying to find dialogue and work together with with people who may feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar with trans students and to support people in moving through their fears and and understanding that that all of our students need to be protected from any kind of violence and to not apply I saw oftentimes the double standard applied where it was feared that that trans girls were predators and and people who often say that will then turn around and and not pay attention to the predation that that non-trans voice you know when they do that to girls and so it's just this this real struggle that I would that I don't want to let trans girls be labeled as predators unfairly with no no assessment of their actual actions thank you thanks okay so anybody else like to speak at this time okay we'll move on to board comments anybody like to speak I did want to say Shannon brought up the LGBTQ resolution last month and that was supposed to be on the agenda this month and I neglected to put it on and it was just a mistake and we will be bringing it up on in December so I am sorry that that didn't make it on the agenda that was an oversight okay now the board members want to speak okay them are on to the celebration of learning okay can I introduce of course so I I've had a pleasure we're working with our performing arts boosters our music boosters I think is the title that they go by and I want to apologize as well they were hoping to be on the agenda tonight to talk about the possible expansion that we had talked about last spring that is on for a future agenda in December part of it was there was things that all got moved from last month into this month so but they're going to kick off tonight with a video on the celebration of the performing arts that's happening and then maybe give a little preview to the board about what they'll be giving a full for presentation about as a possibility in December which is on your agenda for future agenda item in December thank you thank you so hello my name is Sandy Alton thank you for having us on your agenda this evening so I am the chair of the Wildcat music boosters and we could not be more thrilled and excited that music is back right in full swing as an advocacy group our primary goal is to ensure that we're providing the best music program for our Bethel and South Earlton campuses right and we think this is an ideal time to look at the big picture and kind of see what you know what lives ahead for us the music department so we have as Jamie mentioned we have put together a video montage and it's featuring community members past and present music program students and we ask them in one minute or less to share with us what music means to them so I think we had like 12 or 14 videos I think Laura and but we thanks to Andy Smith I think he condensed it down to about a three and a half minute video so there's little snippets but I think Lori or somebody will be sending you maybe all 14 or 12 of them so if you know I encourage you to take a look there like I say a minute or less but they're wonderful so anyway are we ready to play let's watch it's growing up who is my whole identity it was so important for me and for so many people I knew it was our entire way to get our creative voices out there I've done music and drama at sorrow and Bethel since I was four ever since elementary school I've found music class to be the highlight of my day and I am currently at Castleton pursuing a music education degree music has been a vital part of my life ever since I started learning it back in elementary school with Kate Liptec it taught me that I was capable of working through tough things and that it was okay to fail and to make mistakes and to work through that I it has impacted my life so much that I've actually decided to pursue music education when I get off the college because it has just made me a more confident person more comfortable in myself that I've actually found something that has really you know given me that identity that I wanted and really taught me how to embrace challenges and just like get excited to do things that are more and more difficult and be fine with failing along the way a lot of the times I love to sing and perform with my friends really hope that we get to have more music at us even though you read music off of a page the music isn't real until I had made the sounds and that was that was huge in helping me become a more independent person and while vocal coaching the musicals I saw hundreds of students build confidence and expertise over the years in music drama tech and lighting but especially in teamwork and mutual appreciation it's just a really joyful way to share music like within like group and like work with friends on creating something and then get to share with a whole bunch of people so it's a huge from events like Pinite and from music festivals that our teacher Josh Pauley single-handedly drove us to and made sure we did to just having a awesome community that would support and rally behind everything we did and I couldn't speak highly enough about all of the opportunities that the music program presented to me and all the dreams that they helped me achieve we see our town well represented at state chorus and band events where the best talents are invited I also really enjoyed singing with my friends having an opportunity to have fun in my school day and connect with my peers and still be learning I gained so much knowledge about people and languages and culture and history that I just would not have learned otherwise because their understanding of music and our heritage continues throughout their life and listening to them perform is great for me and great for them I now live in New York City and am a professional working actor here I am part of the Broadway Asian American chorus and I'm really loving being able to still keep music in my life as an adult and a young professional and I owe it all to the South Wales music program so I'm grateful for the wonderful opportunities and hope our music program continues to grow and reach more and more students thank you so I'm Katie Collins and I am the current vice chair of the Wildcat music boosters so while there's much to celebrate within our music program we do have some concerns that we want to share with you over the past few years we've had the sense that there's been a chipping away at the music program and these concerns do go beyond COVID specifically there have been some scheduling issues with concerts and pie night last year a concert was rescheduled last minute due to a sports game conflict and numerous musicians who originally would have been able to attend the concert were not able to be there the boosters have not been able to schedule our annual pie night for a few years now it's a wonderful evening where any student can showcase their musical talent to the community in a relaxed coffee house setting this is actually the boosters main fundraiser and all the donations that we receive are used for scholarships for graduating seniors students have also had some scheduling challenges just this year some students are not able to take a music class due to a conflict with another class music is an important part of the curriculum and we need to continue to make sure there is accessibility for all best research shows that music excellence improves literacy and numeracy and provides students with life long transferable skills and then another concern is that in the span of just over a year we have lost four music educators this turnover affects the consistency and equity that is needed for a music program to thrive while we are excited and grateful to have our current music educators we feel it is crucial that we provide necessary support and we continue to value excellence as we look forward to the future I'm Laurie Smith a music mom I just wanted to zoom out from Katie's specific concerns a number of us in the room here had the opportunity to work to make the merger happen feels like eons ago I think but I remember in all those conversations that we had over that span of time with community members we would say you know we want to have the merger not just to bring more kids together and not just have more opportunities but we want to take the best of Bethel Whitcomb and the best of South Royalton and we want to build on that we don't want to take away we want to be building up from our strengths that we have and as I think the video speaks to music has always been the best of South Royalton I know I am not alone in saying that my family considered moving a number of years ago and we decided to stay in our community because of the music program and as Katie mentioned since the merger we know how hard the pandemic has been we're incredibly grateful for our music educators but to truly have a thriving program that is you know marveled throughout the state that provides these incredible opportunities for all students we feel we need more of an institutional commitment to the whole music program not just to celebrating the successes of the students and our talented educators but one of the reasons we wanted to come tonight was to celebrate all that's good and all that's really hopeful in this kind of new phase of COVID but also to ask that the board and the administration really take a look at how we can keep the promise that was made as part of the merger to take the best from each of our communities and and build that into our school district today so in closing I guess this is our call to action you as a board we would like to ask that you commit or make an institutional commitment if you will throughout our music program we'd like to see a multi-year plan a draft crafted by the music educators and the administration this draft this plan would ensure that the opportunity exists for all that there's equity access for all students who are interested in being involved with the music program I mean I think this is vital this is what we've promised our schools benefit tremendously from a thriving and robust music program and it isn't it's it's as you can see I'm it is such a value to our community I mean we have this this reputation of being you know an excellent music community we have amazing musicians we have amazing music educators and so I think the time is right it's it's now it's right we have we we've emerged um arguably emerged if we're certainly emerging from COVID we have two new music educators we have a new high school principal um we have a wonderful activities director who's been very supportive I think the time is now and we owe it to our to our students um to ensure again that and commit to ensuring that they have the best music program on plain and simple so that's our ask that's our request and um thank you again for for having us in the agenda thank you okay thank you yeah new board member too so forgive me if it's something that I should know but um yeah so when you were talking about um scheduling conflicts yes at what age level are we talking was this high school or or which building or yeah so specifically I think some one of you mentioned there are five currently at the high school that um are not able to take a music class because of a conflict okay five different students you mentioned the individual events that have been cancelled or yes or changed is that this year or is that last year so that was last spring and that at what level was that at that's at the high school level okay and yeah it's very different is for every community it's for the community exactly yeah musicians of all ages and have you tried to um sorry have you have you tried to schedule an event this year in that case I'm just trying to get yeah I think we're coming from we have we have a change of administrator here yeah so I'm trying to figure out is this last year is this this year you know you know how do we yeah we do have a lot to celebrate and I think we're very encouraged by the new team and place quite honestly and in all honesty we started this process the music boosters and this team specifically back at the end of the school year um and so since then a lot has you know a lot has has turned um but again we just want to ensure that we don't take we don't fall backwards we need to keep moving ahead and yes so to answer your question some of those were last year um and they benefit as Laurie mentioned not only the community but in a couple of these particular cases the high school students um so I mean yeah our goal is to keep moving forward and to continue this path of excellence and not fall back and and obviously I can't help you on last year but yeah I guess if there was issues that we're having currently you know if you had those and you know that's something that the board could work with to make sure that sure you know that we can move forward successfully yeah I think I think that's why we're thinking in terms of like if if there is almost like a music strategic plan or or a you know a three to five year like what what is required to have excellence in the music program and it it doesn't really you can't because it's year over year you know these students are so committed to to learning music for so many years it doesn't really work one year to be like oh well we're tight on our schedule this year so we're really we really need to kind of like not offer chorus to whatever great you know it um if it is genuinely one of you know one of the values of this school district having some sort of plan for excellence and access feels like a much um a much better way to to move toward excellence and to and to make sure that we're kind of guaranteeing excellence rather than just decision-making oh well this year was rough because we didn't get support from you know in the schedule with conflict with softball but this year was good you know we're we're looking for a more we're hoping for a more systematic approach to maintain the value and maintain the excellence that that we've been fortunate to experience for a long time I think it also has to do with the fact that music is part of a curriculum and I know when that you know just we just don't want to see something like extracurriculars you know taking precedence over say it was a concert like that was scheduled and stuff like that so like Laurie said just coming up with a plan that will ensure that everybody has equal access to music programs and to continue to move forward I will say we feel like we're sitting in a great place right now right the activities director's been amazing um the new principal has been amazing um and it's finally feeling good to have that support and to see that so we just want to ensure that that continues okay I would just add that um I think last year was part because there was a lot of fits and starts but it would be even be able to have an elementary concert and I know we had an elementary concert that happened to be on the same night as like a senior softball game or a senior something it was like oh my gosh so the previous athletic director and Josh Polly and I sat down and we planned out all the concerts not by night that we knew of for the rest of the year so that at least the high school sports and the limited parking wouldn't be conflicting with all the concerts for the middle school and the high school and elementary but not by night sorry that's why we're asking for more of an institutional commitment for elementary school right on up through high school um and and we like Laurie mentioned to have some kind of a plan a three to five year plan that again is worked on by the administration and the music educators to ensure that this program stays for a long time and that and that excellence is valued yeah I will say you know I I do think we've been trying to push you know like when we set up the activities director and he was a co-curricular director you know we weren't making an athletic director position that right you know we're trying to make it so that each side was equally valued and I appreciate that yeah that's that's wonderful yeah speaking for myself at least you know I think we share these values yeah want to see this continue um does the administration have any you want to speak to this at all yeah I mean I Jeff and I have met with the music boosters I've been meeting I've met with the group that's working on the performing arts lab expansion um I think that we're all we all want the same thing and so I think that you know the key is going to be that we just continue to move forward around defining what excellence is um and certainly you know the goal would be to bring some stability to our music programming I think one of the things we struggle with in the SU in general is some turnover in music teachers in my part-time positions in some of our sending districts which also poses a challenge I think when we think about the hub being our unified middle and high school where we're trying hard Jeff just is getting here from a recruitment effort on our wild cat night um to just make certain that those proficiencies and expectations are consistent so one of the things we are doing this year too and I had shared with the music boosters is that our music teachers are meeting in a professional learning collaborative on a regular basis to really define what isn't that we want students to no understand it do at the end of every grade level cluster um and so that works underway as we revise all of our curricular documents but I think that work goes in part of the strategic plan I also think the conversation we'll have next month about facility space and the proposal around what could be possible um to provide a performing arts lab for students to access um and then the real emphasis I think there's little notes I was able to go to the um performance on Saturday of our drama performance I think it I hope that the public sees the reinforcement around our activities director being there and present that was that was a conscious effort to say that that is as important as any other supporting event so I would just share certainly from the top know that that is work that's underway too and that we share it thank you thank you thank you and I was going to highlight the performance was amazing this weekend and one of the things I think that makes our our district special is that there were students performing in our our performance this weekend of Alice in Wonderland who also had other extracurriculars they were in that they were involved in um in regards to athletics and things of that nature and as someone who has um stepchildren in another larger district that wouldn't be possible meaning they have to choose um they're not allowed to do drama and a sport because there's just too much conflict and it would be really hard to be able to participate in a sport at that level if they chose drama so I just I I really came away there just once again as someone who went through South Royalton in a small school setting I think you take that for granted sometimes and I think that's something that we should highlight and showcase more as well as the district as the district that you do get to participate in multiple things and I'll say with those performers participating in multiple things man they were spot on and I would put that act up against any other surrounding schools I didn't see any lines messed up at all and and they did a much better job than I did guys and dolls and I would add not to get into the weeds on the it sounds like five students who can't get into music because of scheduling conflicts but from a resource standpoint if they have things that they need to take and are not able to take because they want music and they have to get a science or a history you know from resource standpoint I would hope that we could make something available we have online resources we have classes we have so I feel awful because that they're missing music which you really have to do in person for something that maybe they could take online after school or before school so but if if there's any resources that we can make available I would hope you would let us know that speaks to in my opinion guidance I mean I know one student in particular who it was kind of a last minute and she was very disappointed that she couldn't take I don't know if it was band or chorus but there wasn't and I know that that exists but I know because I'm involved and I don't you know not everyone is aware and so how do we make sure we reach those particular students because she just walked away and after I only found out you know three months into school you there could have been another option so we need to make sure that if a student if it's known that a student has to drop a class we need to be proactive with that student say okay these are your options you don't have to drop this if you can do a or b so that's that would be my concern but I yeah I appreciate that and thank you for bringing that up because it reminded me of my conversation with her I would think that if we do have some sort of conflict that that would be an opportune time for the guidance counselors to be involved and help remap that for them right it could be could be an elective that they could take right next year the year after so that they could be involved in music so maybe that would be just kind of a default to a guidance counselor to try to work through that the flexible pathways yeah that's a big reason for it so but it can if it's a sort of a siloed thing where music is just really the job of the music educators it's harder and so some sort of mechanism for planning and well how do we how do we communicate and how do we how do we schedule music classes and things like that like I think I think if the conversation is broader and more of an institutional nature I think that will that will help move forward those things like like that it would be on the counselor's radar screen and things like that I mean I remember when I was in high school ninth and tenth grade in Windsor when I was in high school a long time ago was um you know you had to have band or chorus ninth to tenth grade you choose one or the other or you could do both but that it seems like now that's a more of a choice rather than you know it was part of the educational process well there are many students who want to do both exactly I think that's that's hard but you know making that choice for sure I mean they actually don't have to choose the last time I was at a board meeting I think it was because we realized that the schedule at that time only had seven periods in it and there were and and that they didn't allow musicians to fulfill sort of a college prep pathway and also do band and chorus and to read McCracken's credit he sort of engaged students and parents and educators in a really lengthy process that landed up the schedule they have now with with four different class periods so that was really a great um a great opportunity for people to speak up but I know I will say every year I hear from my son like I don't know mom I hear they're changing the schedule I hear we're going back to seven I don't know what I'm gonna do you know so um it is it is an ongoing concern and I think again having some sort of a like a clear pathway would help help allay that concern and and just um do more to support that ongoing access okay thank you thank you very much yes move to the reports um Bridget I saw your hand was up would you mind holding um till public comment it was um addressing what we were talking about which is the only reason I did it okay thank you all right uh reports to the board so you have my reporting hand a couple quick things I wanted to add uh one I'm excited that we're going to be rolling out through our community schools grant something that we're going to be uh coined community conversations and so those will be happening once a month um the second Wednesday of the month from five thirty to seven the first one will be in um South Royalton and it's going to be focused on personalized learning and pathways our personalized learning and pathways folks across the SU are going to be coming together um to offer a conversation and just have dialogue with our community and stakeholders in regards to what's working well what folks may have in regards to uh focus around improvement of the process that we have around personalized learning and pathways and our folks just are still trying to wrap their heads around what does that mean for my grandchild or child um and so that's going to be happening in December we'll have dinner from five thirty to six and we'll have a hybrid model where folks could join us virtually if they want but also have uh in person conversation so there's going to be different topics every month and we will host at each district across the SU so I just wanted to highlight that that information will be coming out for me the first and next week to the community uh also just a reminder that we were recipients of an EPA grant for electric buses um that totaled just over 1.1 million in 60 000 infrastructure that was an SU grant uh we it was spearheaded by um two rivers out of Quichy which services our towns within our supervisor union of Strafford in Sharon so my sense is that those vehicles will discuss this next Tuesday at the full board meeting but would be housed at those two districts as their primary transportation vehicles um and that there would be infrastructure set up in Sharon um our remember it right or we don't own our own buses we contract transportation services the way that that would work is that the SU would lease those vehicles to whatever transportation service provider we contract with moving forward right now we're with butlers we are up for bid for the next several years and um certainly that piece would be a consideration within the contract and bids we get that RFP is going out um and we would also receive um so that whatever transportation company we go with just to give a quick highlight they would then um also pay us back for the electricity used to charge the vehicles and they would be um they would take on the cost of maintenance um and upkeep just like they currently do with the fleet that we have that's a diesel fleet and we would still have diesel buses available to our member districts too we're not using electric buses and then I also just want to highlight in the report um that we have uh partnered with Tri Valley Transit um and you do have students specifically in accessing and utilizing that public transportation in order to access after school activities I'm really proud but Principal Bradley's not with us tonight but we have um 75 students currently enrolled through our community schools grant in middle school after school programming which is significant when you look at after school programming numbers um compared to those districts across the state I myself tried to start one in Williamstown and and struggled mightily so I think there's a lot we can learn and glean from what's happening here um in regards to our after school programming at the Bethel campus and we're certainly going to be using that for one of our community conversations as we look to expand more middle school programming to our other member districts as well um and I'll take any questions folks may have there's a bunch of other topics we'll hit on throughout the board meeting so with the the EPA grant with the electric buses so even though um even though the state will be guaranteeing them for a period of time and doing maintenance and things like that will we still collect that information so that we can use that going won't be the state or it would be our contract to service provider okay but will we have data so I'm just you know if it costs x amount to to to um you know maintenance or or keep running will we be able to have that data or we or not I don't think there's any good data because I believe there's only two SUs right now that have electrical vehicles in their fleet and it's pretty recent but it is data that I asked butler to be able to provide and they're joining us next Tuesday okay anything else we're doing okay we've gone to the principles so you have our report and we also have a academic sorry this is on the chopping we have our academic um report as well so I don't know if we can probably start with our general report yeah uh the the biggest thing um well it there's a lot of pictures but the biggest thing I want to highlight is um on the Bepple campus last year Kathy Fector started partnering with the Bepple food shelf her class was wanted to do some service learning so they were making pies for the food shelf so this year it's expanded she's with the whole school the whole elementary school is making pies to donate to the food shelf and for our our feast that we're having on each campus so lots of pies being made here and lots of pies being donated to the Bepple food shelf which feels really nice so we're excited about that partnership so to at the high school we've had a few recruiting trips we went to Chelsea the other night with a recruiting team and uh met with several families and tonight we had another uh we are a wild cat night and um it was interesting to see some of the several families we met in Chelsea at our campus tonight um so we this week yesterday seems like a long time ago but yesterday we had a veteran's celebration and we had about nine veterans come in and we had three of them speak to our students in the band played and the course was there um and what else has happened our pathways flexible pathways are just really buzzing we have we're now expanding a little bit we're one of our students high school students is working with a fifth grade student and I think that's really kind of neat we had a storyteller in today and the elementary from both campuses were there in the morning and then the afternoon he did the odyssey for the high school so lots of things going on to build great community and then Anna I don't know Anna's here to help with the academic benchmark report but I don't know if she wants to talk or she wants us to talk that's Anna you can kick off you want to kick off yeah yeah sorry yeah I was looking for you to give an overview and then that's all right Andrew could go over elementary and then you and I could could tackle the middle school and Jeff can speak to the high school data yeah sorry not to be able to be there in person but I so you've got in front of you there the academic data report benchmark report for the fall so these are assessments that first through eighth graders took in October and this is for the White River Valley schools this is a new assessment for them this year and so this replaces you may be familiar remembering star 360 but this is replaced star 360 we piloted it in in two of our districts last year got a lot of good feedback on what was you know what people found helpful about it how usable it was in terms of informing instruction which is our number one goal with data is to make changes you know in the classroom with what is happening based on what students show and know they are able to do so we found that a lot of our teachers were responding that they really could use this data in the way that the assessment was set up so they could look at the individual questions that students were answering you know which ones they got correct which ones they got wrong sometimes there's questions that have multiple correct answers and you know our students are maybe used only selecting one and so just really helping them think through how do you read closely know that there might be more than one answer for a certain kind of question seeing how long students take with questions and then also as as with star 360 it's a computer adaptive test and and that it really gets at sort of in a limited number of questions no more than 30 that you're really trying to figure out exactly what students have mastered and what they're still working on and so questions will get easier and harder depending on how you answer them and we we've heard that students say that when we asked them how the assessment went that some of them were like oh it was easy and hard or you know it was it was fun and I learned new things and then it got easy and then it got hard again and so you can like they are actually experiencing that that computer adapting to what they're learning and trying to target in right on the question so all of that has been has been good and we will do this assessment this track my progress in math and English language arts again in January to get a kind of a winter benchmark and then again in April to get our spring benchmark so those will be the next two times and that our students will experience this and we'll have our kindergartners join the assessment in January and have their first try it at this and they have they're able to listen to all the questions being asked using headphones and so that's helpful for all of our students to have that sort of audio support on the questions but that's sort of the overall so I will yeah I'll pass it over to Andrew to talk more about the what's going on with the elementary and what they're learning about it as they look at the data as as sort of as a school and grade level cohorts a few weeks ago we sat down and it's just learning a new test and how how it works so we sat down with on to actually and we were able to look at this data versus our previous data and it's all trending the same way and no big surprises we know we have a lot a lot of catch up to do from COVID and and so I would summarize what we're doing with that is education of teachers we're in a lot of teacher education a lot of focus on math education during our staff meetings during our half days the SU offers two uvm not uvm two courses college level courses and so we are training upper special educators and our interventionists a little deeper on how to react to when kids are not making the gains that we're looking to we're using some new specialized programs that we hadn't used before so it's it's going to take time but I feel like the level of knowledge of our teachers is getting deeper and deeper and I think it's only helping our population so that's in general I would say that's the the answer to both the literacy and math scores and how we're doing and then I'll jump in on and and you can jump after that I mean I think a couple things to remind the board our work in literacy around our our expansion of Fountas and Penel materials across the SU had come in the year just prior to my starting and so that work I'm in going into year three so that your that work is going into year four one of the things we've identified in our data and literacy across the SU is that we're still seeing gaps in phonemic awareness and and phonics and so the White River Unified District is tackling that through an approach called Foundation which which has explicit instruction and phonics which will support students with decoding like understanding blends and digraphs and syllable types for students but also in encoding and so that's spelling right and so we're also all of our interventionists right now are engaged in something called Lead to Read which is professional development with the Stern Center some of our classroom teachers are involved in professional development with the Stern Center for Language and Learning right now as well but they are also doing something called the Dibbles Assessment which also is focusing on giving us data that's even deeper than this in regards to gaps in phonics and so I share that with you to just give one example of where we are still using our Fountas and Penel materials they are great materials in the approach around a literacy block and having guided reading groups is all good work that we needed to do but we also identified that wasn't enough and so what we've done is we've implemented foundations and a hegerty approach around phonemic awareness that we're implementing in all of our elementary classrooms and it's a it's a consistent approach across both of your elementary campuses and we're expecting all of our elementary teachers to implement that I say that because that same example of a strategic approach to literacy we are only in your two-lit in regards to mathematics and so you had no common math materials in one of your campuses going into last year we had kind of some different approaches and you definitely didn't have common math materials across your two campuses and so we went with Envision Math materials again I say materials because a program that we purchase and those are materials to get to our ends that's not our curriculum right we need to be really clear about what we want students to no understand and do and when I talked about the unveiling of an elementary wide report card that is to get really clear about what are the expectations we set forth in our curriculum that we want students to no understand to do at the end of every grade level and so that's what students will be receiving and what parents will get to talk about and learn about throughout the upcoming year is what are those grade level expectations and when we report on them as educators that it means that we know them at a deeper level and that we're teaching them right because a report card is that is a communication tool of what we expect and what we teach and so in regards to mathematics we just purchased a new approach which I'm going to ask Onda a new program which I want Onda to be able to speak to because I can't remember the name of it for middle school level and Onda has been meeting with our middle school level math teachers one of the things in regards to middle school math scores that you can see here is we are at we are concerned and we were concerned last year we continue to be concerned about the cliff that we're seeing in regards to mathematics at the middle school I would tell you that that assessment is not just measuring middle school though it's a measuring all the standards leading up to middle school and so we're a team in this we understand we have gaps in regards to our mathematical understanding we have to fill those gaps one of the things we're looking at as well in trying to learn from is you know what are we seeing around math data across our other districts in our SU because we have three middle schools right and so what are we seeing for growth and what what can we learn from each other in regards to mathematics as a cohort of teachers across the SU and we do have teachers diving into deeper professional development and mathematics just like I was speaking to in regards to literacy through the Vermont the VMI the Vermont Math Initiative and so Onda do you want to speak to what that new material and program is that we're using at the middle school because I can't remember the name of it yeah no it's good because it's so it's called open up resources math uh our kind of shortens to our math um and it is an open like open resource curriculum that you are with and materials that you can get online um and we have purchased also the the kind of hard copy materials knowing that that's for a lot of our students that's the best way to learn and it's inquiry based math um which really you know focuses on those mathematical practices that we want students to be able to build their skills around how they're tackling um kind of the conceptual the procedural and their problem solving skills and so um it is not you know it is not it is aligned with envisions math in terms of the thing the concepts won't be entirely different for students who are coming out of our fifth grades and heading into sixth grade um but it is a fairly new resource for our teachers and um they did professional development over the summer to become more familiar with it but it will be it will be a bit of a learning curve this year as they figure out um exactly how to utilize the different parts of the program um and use them with their students um in the math block each day so we are yeah we are meeting actually again tomorrow morning um to talk about uh how we can continue to support the math teachers we also have a math interventionist who's full time in the middle school um who'll be part of those conversations as well to think about really how do we address where we're seeing these gaps in their understanding in student understanding at key concepts in middle school um so that we can be really working on ensuring those up um by the end of eighth grade and then i'll just jump in i mean the other thing we're looking at and i think to just to put it out there is i we are looking at instructional minutes and so one of the things that i i think we have concern about right now in regards and we look at instructional minutes currently at our middle school schedule the explicit instructional minutes in mathematics is the last thing we have in some of our other middle schools throughout the su and so i say that because what we find in research and what i think we find with schools that are doing more interdisciplinary work that mathematics is a really hard concept to bring in to interdisciplinary work and so last month we got a celebration of learning about our pod time which we all celebrate i think there's good things happening i think being able to link mathematical proficiencies to interdisciplinary units of study is mighty difficult and many districts that do interdisciplinary work often will say we're going to have x amount of explicit minutes with math instruction daily and so we have explicit minutes of math instruction daily the problem is we're looking at the fact that we may need to expand those minutes and so i just want to highlight that to the board that that is something that we have identified and that we also plan to tackle when we think about scheduling for next year and you know when you think about interdisciplinary units of study it's much easier to get at proficiencies around close close reading like meaning nonfiction text and explicit writing when you're doing interdisciplinary units of study versus i'm going to work on fractional reasoning decimals in percent that's much harder when we're thinking about project based learning and getting into those deeper concepts around mathematics the other thing that i think we're going to be looking to push on is an su when we do our curriculum revision and it's something on this heard me talk about my goal would be that our expectations are that 80 percent of our students are ready and accessing algebra one by eighth grade and the reasoning for that is is i believe that that sets us up one around the standards and expectations that we see these that the common core state standards measure in middle school math but two if we want our students to have the opportunity to meet calculus at the secondary level without doubling up in mathematics you really need to have algebra one at eighth grade so i do believe that that will lift up our expectations as well from a curricular standpoint if that is really our goal doesn't mean all have to get there right but if we could set a goal that by the within five years that we have 80 percent of our students prepared and ready to access i think that's going to lift up our math expectations in general across all grades so i share that as work that's happening and um and to just say to you that we're using this data to inform instruction but also for strategic planning i have questions yep so it's somewhat reassuring to me to look at the english scores per grade level we need to get better but it's not as clear cut as these math scores that you have four percent of your kiddos in first grade well below expected and that's up to by the time they get through fifth grade up to 40 percent i think we have some problems in the elementary two they're falling behind it is very clear from this graph you don't have to be a scientist to read that they're falling further behind every year instead of keeping up whereas in english it looks like we're not making great gains but we're at least keeping up um i worry a little bit about what are we going to do this year it's november we still have a whole nother semester and we're talking i'm hearing on to say it's kind of a year where we're figuring things out that's great but we've got kids falling further and further behind now and we have to remember that there's a couple hundred kids out there counting on us to get them through math just this year so what's what's happening this year to address this the race ran yeah you're heading out of there thank you yeah no i appreciate you bringing that up so i think two points so one we are we are certainly doing stuff this year we have lots of work going on i was presenting just as we've gone through with other new materials that there is you know there will be a learning curve to some of the some of the understanding of exactly how to utilize the materials in the most effective way for all of our students and that's sort of ongoing support of the teachers while you know while they're using it with students but we've been in the math classrooms they're certainly you know i think high high level math instruction going on in in the middle school math classrooms and we'll continue to continue to support those teachers on the on the first grade graph i actually am really encouraged by this graph because i i think this shows i think this shows what is effectively happening in our pre-k and k classrooms which is not necessarily a place where we have had sort of this you know a unified approach to math instruction and i think you know we actually looked at this date i was with the pre-k k and first grade teachers all together as we are looking at it and the first grade teachers are saying like god like this is this is looking really good why like why do you think this is because this is certainly bucking in sort of a national trend where math has not um has fallen further behind english language arts with covid and there's probably there's a lot of good reasons for that especially given you know where most families are probably more comfortable supporting literacy than they are in math in general but i think we have a lot of really good work going on in our pre-k and kindergarten classrooms around math instruction i think that's starting you're starting we're starting to see that reflected in this data with those with those students in first grade right now so rather than falling off i'm hoping we'll see that sort of that line pushed through the grade levels as it goes through as that cohort moves through while also working with the current you know second through eighth graders and closing those gaps but i do i'm i am more encouraged by the the first grade line than anything on that i would just also add in the elementary the last couple years we haven't been able to do this because we had to pod um but our upper level elementary teachers have uh wanted to instead of teaching a class all things um they are specializing so jamie rainville is teaching all the math for fourth and fifth graders and um and so i think you know it's her passion she's good at it and i do think that with people specializing we're going to see big changes and i think you know to answer your question too shannon the other thing we're doing is our interventionists aren't just literacy interventionists they're also math interventionists so we're looking deeper into this that specific kids and saying okay this kid needs a boost and how are we going to boost them we're going to small group instruction pulled out what do they need and we're trying to just really target it so uh i we are doing things takes a second though yeah is there any way to increase i'm thinking specifically in the middle school where we've talked about increasing minutes to do it this year instead of waiting and switching schedules around just for next year i would say possibly i mean for the next semester it's really a principal question yeah i know it's not here it's not my it's not a jamie question but so i would answer that as possibly i i don't rule out anything but it really is a principal yeah this middle school also operates on trimesters yep um on the interventionist side of things like if you think the interventionist service is supposed to be targeting these people who are in the lower blocks like how do you do it when you have 66 percent of the students it's really about universal instruction so what i what i would say is the same thing i said to a district that had one cohort they were really concerned about um previously this this uh a private board meeting is it's going to be about high quality universal instruction and i would say to you one of the things that we've gotten explicit about is that math has to be taught a minimum of an hour a day and what we were finding around time audits across our su at our elementary levels is that wasn't happening and it's not i don't mean in any critical sense i just mean it in the sense of research shows we have to do it five days a week for a minimum of an hour and so as we think about differentiating math and being able to pull small groups after you deliver your whole group instruction to coach students it really takes a minimum of an hour to get through a whole math lesson so one of the things that i'm really hopeful that you'll see is is that we will see growth from this assessment to the next because we're implementing that hour long math block instead of having it chipped away at 45 minutes on a wednesday and maybe it's only 30 minutes on a thursday as an su we got really explicit about literacy has to be a minimum of 90 minutes i would say that explicit expectations around it has to be a minimum of 60 minutes of math is really taking hold this year but yeah you're right you there's no way to intervene out of these this data it has to be done at the universal level and i know i know when we usually are looking at standardized test scores it's you know is it are we teaching to the test are we not teaching to the test how does that you know um you know just because we're maybe more deficient does that mean that our children really are a deficient or are they just not working to the test but i think out of all the ones i've ever looked at this this assessment here was probably the easiest like i think that shannon was trying to look to was regards of are we teaching to the test or not teaching to the test it clearly shows that our deficiencies in math grow from first grade to eighth grade so there is a there's a very simple easy trend to look at there and then on the literacy end of things is if we're low middle or high we don't know but but we're consistent so you know you can see from first grade to eighth grade that those test scores all kind of lined up consistently so you know i guess depending on you know i guess we don't really know exactly because it's a new test where we land but we can see the trends you know usually you get this and you'll see the trends are all over the place and there is no real trend but here you can clearly see the deficiency in math grows over time yeah i think chris one of the things i think we value about why and why we went to this assessment is the ease of being able to have teachers get in and look at what standards students are lacking in both individually and as cohorts right like you've heard us talk at least heard me talk now for a while and andrew about foundational skills and reading well if you look at our assessment and literacy that's an area of concern in this church but in the sui would say that even shines a brighter light when you see our sui data on tuesday is that is an area that that's really highlighted when you break out the different domains of the assessment and so i'm hopeful that as we use this assessment over time that you see that in the board you continue to get this that those domains where you see that we have weaknesses that you'll see us over time strengthen those areas because that's where we're putting focus work in both per through professional development through resources provided to teachers but not also teachers putting time in to really hone their craft in those areas i just also say um andrew and jeff and and oh and who's not here um i don't i don't envy you your jobs because we just all said how much we value the music program and now we're saying teach more math and i'll point out that students who take music often get better math scores but teaching all the things all the time is not easy to do and finding the minutes in the day so it's a balancing act and i don't i don't envy it so but thank you um one thing i'm wondering about is you know we frequently talk about not wanting to put things in the budget that we're going to have to like take away later but when we have scores like this does it make sense to have like an extra interventionist for two years to try and you know blitz us or whatever and really try and make a difference on these kids who are going to be going from you know the kids who were on our sixth seventh and eighth grade are going to be our high school in a few years and so like would it make sense to try and you know we do have a surplus coming up and like yeah i can take that back to the principles and find out i would say the other thing that i think would be helpful for the administration is that the board gives us a hard charge on making certain we are explicitly teaching math okay because i don't want to speak for the principles but certainly what i said is a superintendent that is an area where i think i can hit barriers and i do think it's with competing interest at times and in my competing interest i'm talking about interdisciplinary units of study i'm talking about making certain we have over essentials talking about that we have outdoor at time and having the board give a directive to me that that we are explicitly teaching math max a minimal number of minutes a week and possibly added intervention i would want to talk to the principles to talk about like capacity if we were actually fully staffed with interventionist is that going to be helpful or not because remember we're still not fully staffed with interventionists right now that a difference but i can tell you certainly where i sit i'm looking at andrew because she's been here with me for a while now three years a real directive from the board around mathematics instruction and a priority around explicit instruction is a helpful tool for us sometimes when we navigate those competing interests because they happen right and they're all for good reasons but just getting really clear around it i think could be really powerful so if we did you know blitz the sixth seventh and eighth graders because that seems to be you know the area i mean is that an actual goal that can be accomplished i mean we can put whatever in the budget but if we can't hire somebody you know it doesn't mean so is there the option right now doing intervention at our middle school but if we if we all of a sudden you know added an extra one or two for two years is is there the ability to get high quality individuals out there to do that yeah possibly right i can't guarantee it i think the other key piece to it is we don't want to pull kids out of universal instruction to intervene i mean i don't want to pull them out of a class in order to provide intervention so the problem like with these theories are right i don't want a student to miss first universal instruction with their math teacher or their ele teacher to get math intervention and so i want math intervention to happen at the end of a longer block when the teacher goes into coach mode so think about a lot of us have experiences in reading of a teacher working with a small group doing guided reading right even most of us sitting in this room while we worked on independent read to self or some type of reading response what we want to get is to a place in our math instruction where that math teacher can also go into coach mode and pull small groups of students while students are practicing at their level the math the math instructional place that they're at so that we could double dip meeting the student would get a warm-up routine they get whole group instruction they would get to work with their classroom teacher and also get intervention how do you do that it probably takes a 75 minute block to really get to where we want to get to what i would say to you now is if you said to me you have two math interventions at the middle school i don't know how to right now not pull students out of universal instruction with the teacher with two people doing it right and what i'm saying is i don't have a schedule that allows us to have two people doing math intervention and not have them also miss first instruction so i don't have that answer right now doesn't mean we couldn't work on a schedule that increases that ability just right now i don't know how to do that um one thing that i remember you guys talking about over the covet time was utilizing the after school programs to really provide targeted supports is that i know like we've got these club things that are going on at the middle school which is great but like would it be possible to do some of that yeah and i need to check in to see no it's a great idea and i gotta check in to see if we are and if we're not why and ask that question yeah i do like the this report is like the the view of the grades lined up was great and the the seeing from the fall to the fall is also very helpful to kind of see the progress although i didn't realize those are two different um scores it would be interesting to see like for the winner one like the kids that are receiving intervention like how do they progress compared to the kids who aren't or whatever and you know kind of to see how what we're trying to do to fix things is is working um yeah i don't know but i i do like this report format um um so some feedback at the end of the day i think we're a school and we need to teach math so um i i'm absolutely support a uh motion or whatever to to uh make math a priority and and literacy i think math and literacy should both be priorities in our in our teaching blocks but like you said i think you can teach literacy in some ways in interdependent of interdisciplinary ways but math has to have its own time so i'd be curious to see you know we have the curriculum that we're trying to get through in each year like how much of that curriculum are we actually getting through you know like if if we're seeing it this drop in scores is that because we only got through 70 percent of what we were trying to get through for the year how do we make sure we get through 100 like is are we getting through what we're trying to get through and the kids just aren't getting it or are we not getting through what we're trying to get through and so we're falling behind you know there's a kind of two different potential issues you know are we teaching it and they're not getting it or are we going too slowly which i think we could look into that yes i know i know some of that work was done this summer with some of our interventionists as they were looking i think a little bit more at the elementary level to start so i will also circle up again with um bonnie born and see how the process they looked at and how it's helping so far and i know our middle school a selected number of our middle school math teachers met yesterday to be looking again at the that there are proficiencies and really making sure that we are targeting sort of the right critical you know priority performance indicators as the as the state likes to call them and so that's a conversation that they had yesterday afternoon and i think that will also contribute to what i'm understanding too about making sure that right now we are we are staying sort of on pace and hitting all the content areas that we need to or whether right we are we are hitting them but we the students aren't quite getting them i think that's i mean i think that's a great question for us to continue to to dig into across uh kind of all the all the grade levels but particularly looking now at that you know at that at those upper elementary and the middle school grades so did that sound like that for the next meeting maybe well that james will look into see if we could make this happen for i guess the second half of the year is that is that kind of what we're talking about here yes i can come back yeah with the principal and report out where we're at and whether or not a change is possible but like this year you added minutes to the math program this year we're definitely at the elementary level we didn't get as far as we would have liked to have gotten at the middle school level obviously if you're not getting through all the material we need more time on it yeah um i guess it will be interesting to see how things look in the winter whether we're gaining or holding steady or you know like this report definitely makes it look like we're kind of going in the wrong direction but it is kind of looking for the fall so that would be you know it's not necessarily what's happening this year it's what happened over the previous full year and so i guess the only challenge is if we wait for the winter data yes of course and by that time you can't make any adjustments right i mean that's right yeah so it seems like we have far enough to go that even if we overcorrected that's not necessarily a bad thing you know right like well i would make a motion um that that the board vote to support um an explicit focus on math um at least at the elementary and middle school levels for the time being and i think that we're focusing on ELA at summary i will leave that out for the moment but but that we focus on math um and that every student should be taking a math course and not just getting that in an interdisciplinary way um so what's the motion like is that what you had in mind jamie i was really i was i was really looking for the board to give a directive to the administration to dig in and come back with a proposal how we plan to address these concerns both in the near term meaning this year but also in the future uh does that sound good okay but i do we need to i think i think both i i think that um that you said that there is pushback against explicit math instruction and i i think that that is unwarranted given this i think it's it might be the explicit amount of minutes yeah um because there's just competing interest and again i'm not saying this critically i think it could be taken that way i think that there's competing interest that can happen and i think we have not gotten to be able to get to a sweet spot around math instruction that we would like to see across all grade levels and so i think if if the board would give a directive to the administration to come to address that that concern the concern in math both in the near term and the future that would give us the tools to say we need to relook at this yeah and i so i would move that i'll second yeah we want to see more math so yeah i'll amend the motion that we want to see a plan to address these results um as soon as possible in the near ends okay long term so yeah Shannon had made a motion so we'll have her motion de amended in second second second okay all right um all in favor say aye aye aye okay motion passes okay so we'll move on to the business manager report here uh with us terry you with us oh yeah she's still going as Sharon she was going to join us in person oh Sharon Bea just ended and then she's driving here um but she'll be with you for the budget presentation but you have a report she has the meeting dates i will say one of the things that was really excited that i was going to let her share was we did you saw it in my report and it had to do with the use of s or three funds for the plan work we have upcoming for the heating system and hvac we got approval today from the agency of education to move forward with a sole source which i don't even know if eric knows that yeah i see eric eric lafayette here with us from the ei who's going to have a presentation tonight for you so that's really exciting news um because it allows us to access we've now been approved to access those funds for those um for those projects as a sole source so that that's good news concept approval is still awaiting for each each concept but i fully expected those will be approved because it really is to improve hvac and things of that nature so i'm not i was more concerned about the sole source um piece of it so that was good um and then i can take any questions about the dates in terra's report that you may have in regards to reporting um i do know she met with the auditors two weeks ago um and that we're expecting that we will have draft audits to you here within the next two months to take action or sorry a final audit audit to take action on by your january meeting at the latest and that she expects fund balances to be confirmed by no later than your december meeting um from last year um and so that's the report i can give you on the audit as well our end is done we're just waiting on the armors to finalize great okay um policy committee policy on board protocol and code of ethics did the policy committee hasn't talked about i just put it on there so um one of the things that's that's come up is that we we adopt the vsba code of ethics and some of our district boards have adopted board policies and procedures for how they govern themselves they're a little different across the su and that there seems to be a willingness and a desire i think at this point for the su policy committee to consider what would a policy look like on board protocol procedures and and code of ethics um and so i'm going to be working on getting a draft to the policy committee on that um for their december meeting their november agenda is already booked um and the other update ronnie you can fill in the gaps i may miss the policy committee did take up the conversation of a flag policy the committee um has requested that our legal council join the policy committee next tuesday from five to six there's going to be a redrafted flag policy that is specific to the flying of the us and vermont flag in front of our buildings but also to provide procedures within the policy that allows for a space that's identified with each of our schools within each of our schools to allow for the hanging of other flags and or banners that students have proposed to administration to want to convey something that they're that's they're passionate about and so there's going to be a policy that encompasses both of those concepts shared with the board the policy committee um next tuesday that was the the wish of the policy committee after receiving feedback from all of our district boards right did i get that all right ronnie this sounds about right i think it's a two separate policy the flag policy i think the plan is to encompass both that there's a flag policy that also addresses banners and it'll talk about banners so clubs and groups can express themselves with banners but not on the flag poles but i haven't seen the draft the policy yet so i haven't either our legal council's developing it okay any questions for the policy committee now i'm just trying to get it on the calendar so yeah anyone that's interested public and board the policy committee will meet next tuesday from five to six at the su office and virtually okay all right uh the full board updates um so at our full board retreat um we were talking about setting up a um board mentoring program so when new members join the board having some um board members with some experience uh be mentors for them and kind of give them some um help in acclimating to the board and and you know learning how to become productive board members um so we haven't really specified how that's going to look but um i think we uh we're going to be setting up a committee to kind of figure that out so um one of the things for the that we should come to the next board meeting for would be people who would be interested in being mentors and also interested in figuring out how the mentor program would look like um does anybody have any thoughts on that anybody interested in volunteering i mean my schedule is really full right i would i don't know i i mean i was at the meeting i think a lot of things are good ideas i just don't you know a lot of us are pretty stretched out as it is on sure different committees and i think i think there are other committees that need to be filled before the mentoring one but um and then us being down a member right now you know we we're all on at least one committee now yeah um okay yeah i think the idea with the mentor thing is that it's not necessarily a separate committee it's something where you're meeting one-on-one with somebody for advice or something like that and just talking once a month there's something like that so hopefully not a huge time commitment um anyway i guess think about it and then we can uh if you if people are able to make the Monday and Tuesday next next week's full board meeting that's where we'll discuss it further i think um the other thing that's happening at the uh full board level is um the full board goals um so SU board goals and the idea with those was um you know we have our superintendent goals which are kind of jamie's priorities for where this um you know how his leadership the his goals for his leadership and so the idea was that we should have separate goals which maybe support jamie's goals but also provide goals for where we want to be as an SU board and how we can support jamie and also you know provide guidance and leadership for the SU as a whole for the best of our ability so um if you haven't did everybody see those goals as i think those went out um to the SU members so would have been a while ago yeah so they'll go back out in the packet again Thursday for the SU board um so if anybody has any feedback on those either let me know or um bring them to the board meeting on Tuesday all right um task force updates um we can start with financial task force we didn't we're going to be meeting on this Thursday um we had to delay Tara had a conflict so we pushed back a week so financial task force is not not met other task courses um the recruitment task force has not met Kate has had to cancel for various reasons i'm hoping that gets up and running again soon um but it sounds like there's some great recruitment efforts going on um even though we're not talking about them um and then the the child's care task force has not met um recently i will say the other uh committee that i'm on would be the negotiations committee and we are starting to just talk um we have our first meeting this week forget which week it is sorry thursday it's it's not wednesday yet jamie um yeah so thursday we have our first meeting and we will be doing the support staff um at this time so stay tuned thanks shannon i mean facilities we'll be talking about the yeah and we've got a tour set up to in a couple weeks to do walkthrough on the buildings but you'll hear more about but why are that here in a few minutes okay we should be moving to that you know let's do it all right we did the ei proposed summer you have 2023 heating it's back writing patrol word answer at red schools hey guys how you doing i'll try to be quick tonight and just give you an update on where we're at on the project um i think jamie mentioned um you know getting that sole source letter from the aoe is a big step um at this point in the project we have mechanical drawings complete electrical drawings are finishing up as we speak um and we're finalizing some civil um locations of our um storage silo and underground propane tanks um pricing is coming in as the drawings are getting developed um overall i feel good about the budgets that we originally shared um with you guys a couple months ago um it's looking like those budgets are are looking pretty good that they should be coming in pretty much in line with what we had originally carried some numbers are up some are down but overall it looks like the total number is looking pretty good some other news that we're working with right now um it's just one of the major components of our project is financing the energy savings so um what we do is we help communities go out and finance these projects with the energy savings that are going to be realized through the fuel switch the controls upgrades and the other performance upgrades that we're doing at the schools um before we were anticipating about a four percent interest rate on that loan um that interest rate has gone up to about four and a half percent it sounds pretty confident that that rate um will probably stay about that through the end of this year um they have better rates obviously than what you see on the market right now but one of the things that Jamie and I were talking about what we're doing with other districts um is trying to get another task force meeting a facilities task force meeting and go over the drawings again um and just go over the projects with the idea that we can get into real in-depth conversations about what the actual scope is um with the idea that that task force could come back to the to the school board and essentially either recommend what project they want to move forward with um but at this time you know we are looking at doing the full conversion at Bethel we just completed um some additional asbestos testing there that I just got the reports back on today so that's actually looking good um and then um we are meeting back out there again later this week with some structural engineers to look at the rooftop equipment at Royalton so with the Royalton we're looking at um HBAC design for both the cafeteria new ventilation equipment there and also the library um both of those units would incorporate dehumidification um in those designs are moving forward as well so we have some drawings that I'd be able to share with people if we wanted to set up another meeting and go over them but ultimately that's what my proposal hopefully I can get on the docket in December and present it to you guys um if not if it's January that's not the end of the world we are still looking at a 20 to 24 week lead time on our equipment so if we're releasing this in January I'm anticipating it showing up mid to end of May um which would work out really well for our schedules so overall it's going well um we're you know kind of crossing our T's dotting our eyes with the state on different grants um in different ESER requirements um but that stuff is going out the door and at the same time um we're kind of finalizing pricing with local subcontractor groups in the area so Eric I don't know if you've seen your email yet yesterday I suggested a bunch of meeting dates and times for each of our districts I don't know if that date works for you or not but Rudd was one of those I can work I mean I'm gonna be there that whole week so um I'll move stuff around to make whatever time you guys can make work but my kind of thought was okay you know we literally bring the drawings we meet at Bethel um once we get done at Bethel we drive over to Royalton and you know we walk through each school I show you exactly where the equipment is going to go um what you could see or expect for work um and hopefully at that point um you guys are comfortable with what the scope of work would be um and then we would be probably meeting back again in maybe like a week or two probably just before um your next board meeting of when you would want me to present and at that time I would kind of show you guys all of the final schedule of values on the project um and hopefully it comes back to that at or below that original budget and one of the things I'm doing with my project is I am I do have some different items on it kind of what we call alternates on the project where we can either add or delete them from the project if it's within you know the budget or above or below the budget so I'm just going to try to show you guys as much information as possible when we meet and really let you guys make the decisions of you know how much you guys want to dip into the capital reserves or um you know is it doesn't make sense to cut back on the scale of the project at this time okay that may have any questions all right thank you all right on to budgets so in the packet you have draft two of your student support budget and draft one of your general education so on draft two of student support the only change that was made was I updated the health insurance rate increases based on the rates that were released to us by vihi that they have submitted to the department of financial regulation for review and approval and then as you may recall your benefits for all of our staff are negotiated at the state level so they made a funding change to the hra for professional staff effective in january so I've made those adjustments in the hra funding so that's all that changed in draft two of the student support and then draft one I'll just briefly go over it and then the principals can chime in on the details behind it so this is only looking at the salary and benefits for those in the different um function codes in your budget and draft one for regular elementary it's updated per your current staffing and adding a 1.0 fte it reduces pe to your current staffing of 2.5 which is a reduction of 0.5 fte reduces foreign language to your current staffing of 1.4 which is a reduction of 0.6 fte increases global citizenship from 3.6 fte to 4.6 fte increases drivers add from 0.5 to 1.0 and then increases the work-based learning from a 0.8 to a 1.0 and I'll just jump in real quick before the principals add a majority of this is reconciling where we currently are and what we're feeling like we need for staffing when you see things like the global studies and when you see things like what we're currently at with PE the and also in regards to the foreign language that was my question and so and so that's where we're currently at and so right now we have students accessing foreign language at the middle school because we weren't able to find the foreign language teacher for the middle school via a vtvlc for so for through vermont virtual learning and so this budget proposes that we continue that method that's something that we're going to need feedback on from the board about and the other thing to know is in regards to why an additional elementary teacher when you look at our current enrollment numbers specifically at the royalty campus we underestimate it where we would currently have enrollment to be at the kindergarten level right now that's a good problem to have and so this would give us an additional elementary teacher for andrew to then deploy however we best see the need and you may say well how does that number go down just remember that this budget figure incorporates all staff salaries and their benefits right so and remember a family benefit plan is 25 000 so it is easy based on when changing of staff at the if prior staff at a full family plan versus now a new hire just has a single plan or they don't take insurance that can adjust that budget figure significantly so i just wanted to be able to answer that question of how can you add someone but see that budget line go down that would be the reasoning as to why so like global citizenship and some of those where we added a full time but it went down by a percentage that was pennies and things like that okay yeah because that's all figured in to that that figure you're seeing right now and so you know overall across the two you know we're still up over 300 000 as you look at staffing and that's purely staffing next month just a reminder you'll see every budget line as fun as far as your function budget so when you think about operations the fact that we know we want to continue to i hope to contribute to our reserve funds in regards to prioritizing getting our reserve funds built up around strategic planning around deferred maintenance things of that nature that will all come into your next round of budgeting too and i don't know andrew if you want to hit on anything else that i didn't mention you know i can't the foreign language again i really looked to the principles to make these recommendations so i can't speak to that reduction completely other than i supported it enough to bring it to you and so because the principles the first step of the budgeting process principles meet with taren and i and they really speak to how is staffing going to support their work and programming at their building level so an example would be andrew ab you know advocating that an additional elementary teacher is needed i certainly agree with that based on our current numbers um and you know principle bro bradley advocate that he felt like foreign language could be addressed via vtv lc and so i felt comfortable enough to bring that to you for consideration is the vtv lc something that individual students are doing as a flexible pathway or is it yes okay it's not like that is my understanding does yeah those that wanted to pursue foreign language were able to do it through a pathway i would also say i think one of the things we've struggled with frankly and it's not just here is performing arts teachers and foreign language teachers seem to be a real area well and special ed luckily not what we've done whole right in that department here recruiting but i would tell you that performing arts teachers and foreign language is a significant concern and i've got vacancies in foreign language across three districts right now um and so it just seems to be an area with these part-time positions you would think what we did before is we did add them up into a 1.0 i think the challenge is the geographical nature of su rsu makes that challenging meaning teaching foreign language and stock bridge rochester sharon and beffel which is what we were doing poses a challenge to make a 1.0 position um the so what i want the board to know is that we advertise all summer in both those part-time and the full-time to see like is there somebody that wanted a part-time position or no i really wanted the full-time position with benefits and so we did advertise them those different ways um and so that is something to consider i think if foreign language is something that we wanted to pursue it really may be one of those things where as a district you need to increase it to 1.0 in order for us to attract a high-quality candidate just to be straight up with you about that i think that that's part of what we're facing is that some of these part-time positions can be challenging so the reduction of the half of a pe i know there's been a little bit of a hot topic at the middle school level this year where we reduce some of the instructional pe time and replace some of that with some of the outdoor ed um so the reduction of a half of position is that going to reduce the pe time at all or we're going to stay the same you would stay the same okay um yeah i think with the foreign language yeah i'm definitely torn on it because that was one of the things we kind of added with the merger to try and take advantage you know like provide more and you know i think the younger levels are where they learn the quickest but my sense is that we're running into the time of the day and like providing quality instruction in elementary and middle school well also dealing with our test score you know like math instruction and time and all that stuff so yeah i mean i i think i'm okay with going forward with this it would be nice to have high quality foreign language instruction but i think our priority needs to be on getting our core subjects solid um the driver's ed number seems high for one FTE that is a figure that we've been using with family plan in the event that we have to hire a experienced educator it wouldn't come in high and when you look at the top of our salary schedule and our family benefits and that's how we've been budgeting um for this coming school year specifically when we think about driver's ed it is one of those that is another position where the state is really short it's also why we're budgeting at 1.0 um and we're currently right now um our athletic and activities director is doing us a favor by continuing to fill that position part time um it is not an ideal approach that we want to do as we want to look to continue to expand activities within the district i really want that focus to be on that 1.0 position but mr perot is helping us because he's a licensed um driver's ed teacher too um and as we look to expand the high school i think having one of the selling points i do believe that we should be marketing i think principal thomas is doing this is that we are able to provide our students drivers in and some some of the high schools around us are not able to um and so we think about the ability to recruit a driver's ed teacher um and have them in place is important um and make certain our kids can access it and i also believe that we're in order to do that we're probably looking at someone who is a real veteran on our salary scale versus someone who may have limited experience just because driver's ed seems to be a licensing area where folks aren't going into it that was going to be a question i had is is there the ability to partner with an outside source to provide the service without having to come with all the full benes and stuff you know yeah we we tried to do that and their timing is uh in the afternoons only so there are a lot of private drivers and classes or instructors and so they they can come from like three to five and we found that a lot of our our students are involved with extracurricular activities from three to five whether they're working or whatnot so we when we didn't have anybody before tim stepped up we called the state and the state sent out all the information to all the people that are driver's ed certified in we got maybe two calls and there were calls that said that i'm teaching i'm instructing and i'll be at woodstock on this night and bradford on that night and that meant our kids had to travel to go to those classes and again i think that's what some of our competing schools are doing that for chair and academy and so forth so when tim decided he would take that position it was pretty pretty good so and chris we've had this discussion at the board level before and just just to point out that um it's a significant cost for some of these families who are sending their kids to share and they desperately kind of wanted to make a deal and come over here and we said no we've got got too many kids we have to teach to drive here so i think that it is a recruiting tool and and something we should be um still supporting um it's something that a lot of our surrounding towns are a little bit jealous of no my comment wasn't eliminating it it was it was the opportunity to have someone that you might so i'll make it up instead of paying someone with full benny's a hundred thousand dollars a year to do it could we contract with somebody that might charge us seventy five thousand dollars a year that would come in and still provide the same services an independent contract right you know then you don't have to get into paying you know twenty five thousand dollars with the benefits the only way we could do that is if we couldn't secure someone because the driver's ed teacher is a bargaining member of our cba but this year we were in a jam so it would open up the ability for us to try to use a contracted service for that but otherwise that is a license educator in the state so we would have to move forward with filling that position do you think like in the ideal world how many fte's do you think is appropriate for would you want a full full-time driver's ed instructor given the demand and number of students that we'd be serving or like as a half-time appropriate i think it's in between and i don't want to speak for jeff it seems like right now we're getting by with about we figured about point five to point six ish depending on the time of the year in driving schedules the hope is that we continue to grow our high school around the recruitment efforts and also what we've been doing in the ideal world with a full-time driver's ed which i think we're still somehow making it happen right now although i worry in the future that it could become an issue is also offering driver's ed for our students who access the tech center because we what we didn't in the past randolph was able to service some of their tech center students via driver's ed that we sent but they're also triggering driver's ed so they didn't have capacity to serve receiving students they go to the tech center so the idea would be that we also could continue to serve our tech center students i would say to you this i would recommend that we if we have the ability this is one of those things when we see the full budget in december and if you're not feeling good about where the yields lining up right in our bottom line budget this is an area that i could see us as administration going back and saying we could trim i think right now we're presenting to you ideally what we could do with the idea being that we want to try to recruit someone to do it um yeah my other question was how much education does somebody need to take in order to be a licensed driver's ed teacher they need to educate a license but to add that endorsement it's actually not that hard meaning that the higher ed collaborative the vermont higher ed collaborative has created a sequence of courses for folks to take in order to get that endorsement the difference with that endorsement versus others is of course they're providing the teaching toward a licensure and so it's not an endorsement that i can go get provisionally licensed someone which makes sense right like they're teaching someone how to be in a machine that could cause bodily harm to someone or other people so meaning if i had a teacher interested in it we would fully support them getting licensed and there is a course way and there is a sequence of courses to take in order to do so it takes about a year um what i can't do is hire someone who has a teaching degree in a different area and get them a provisional emergency like i can other content areas has that been communicated to our current staff of anybody that might be interested in pursuing they don't want to lose an element when we were looking before tim decided it was able to step in yes the teachers were asked and then we laid out what the program was that they needed to take classes for jim hewitt was interested but he decided not to good thing yeah okay um any other comments on the or feedback on the first draft of the general education budget um what was the global citizenship increased by one we got just that's current f t yeah it's it's based on we've got um some folks that are dual licensed and it's based on their actual f t break down on what they're teaching right now okay meaning english versus social we have some folks licensed in both i think we have one who's teaching foreign language and that's correct does the foreign language reduction kind of reflect that no okay all right um thank you i hope they look forward to seeing you full yeah and stay tuned i mean i'm not i don't know if tear us hearing anything i've heard zero thus far on any predictions around yield are you hearing anything it was not it's not at all on friday so just meaning you know remember the yield really impacts our tax rate um around the statewide property tax so that piece is what really creates that statewide tax so um stay tuned because that's a huge thing for us and we get their first estimate december 1st yeah usually there's a little scuttle but about it but i haven't heard anything okay um we've gone to the appointment um so shannon has been our vice chair and board clerk um she had to step off the board when she moved from Bethel to royalton and then was reappointed so um those positions are technically vacant right now um so we need to appoint uh vice chair and board clerk so um would anybody like to volunteer or nominate for those positions well the uh vice chair is supposed to be from the out to town is a chair um by law i believe i think traditionally that's what we've done yeah we've traditionally done that i don't know that it's been in i don't see in your articles of agreement right i thought it was but i'd have to check i the last time i checked your articles agreement was memorable when we talked about the elementary conversation um which i need to give you guys an update on next month when i checked those because there was some interesting information in there about the conversation about elementary isn't that from the articles agreement yeah okay but i don't remember seeing that right when i read it through it doesn't mean it's not there it's just yeah it certainly has been kind of like initially we were going to have the board chair position swap swap town every year basically right but i think we value the consistency of having somebody you know with experience and Lisa did a good job so she had the position until she stepped off the board and we haven't had it since so i don't know that we're necessarily doing that per se i think we're just um this is a discussion at this point of what makes the most sense i mean if we feel that we need to have a balance which i don't know if initially do or not but i'd be willing to help out as as vice chair um until march i guess because who knows what happens at march but we'll do a reorganization meeting and meeting after anyway and vote for those all over right right so i guess i mean my my thoughts are yeah we always did the chair was from one pound in the co-chair from about the opposite town so i'm not interested in being the or co-chair vice chair so since i'm not interested i would nominate chris is being the vice chair i would second that all right i need discussion all in favor say hi hi all right okay chris we're the vice chair make sure you keep coming to the meeting zander yeah i had to run away yeah no getting sick it's been more uh more whenever coaching it i think it means um all right board clerk yeah i have even less interest in being a board clerk so i would nominate shannon as board clerk thanks do we make that so it has to alternate each year okay do we have a second for shannon as board clerk sure i'd second that okay okay all in favor of shannon as board clerk see hi hi okay thank god for tammy yeah who takes all our minutes i just have to review them the next day okay all right all right we don't have any um action items at the moment um new hires resignations okay uh we're on to the second public comment period um is there anybody who like to make a public comment question okay we um just repeat your name and did i understand from the minutes of the october meeting that the lgbtq policy will be considered next month or yeah so i was confused about next tuesday that the policy committee versus so clarification so the yeah it wasn't a policy it was a board resolution which is just the board kind of stating something um not an official policy that the administration you know directs the administration or something that needs to be followed um so shannon had had proposed it last time and um we tabled it for this meeting and i didn't get it onto the agenda so we're putting it into next month so that's it's a resolution in support of our lgbtq plus students and staff just um it doesn't change any current policy right so but it's an already existing policy we already have we already have policies around non-discrimination but this is just a resolution that said the board stands with our students and staff who identify in that manner thank you uh rebecca hi um i'm rebecca stone i'm bethel parent with a middle schooler and an elementary kid and i wanted to pass along two comments one is actually from my fourth grader aliza who was shy and not able to say this on the microphone in the first comment period so she typed it in but she was extremely excited to hear about the electric bus grant and read the article in the herald and really said she hopes that the su will accept that grant and institute electric buses to help with climate change in the planet so that was her comment um one for me as well i'm i'm so grateful for all the great work happening in so many corners of the school actually all the schools um as an elementary parent and the middle schooler though i do want to say a lot around academics is challenging for us both of my kids have wanted more challenge over the years and we've struggled to get it we know it's really really hard to teach to kids of all different levels to deal with pandemics and everything that's going on and we're grateful for so much hands-on learning and experiential ed too um but i will say we definitely have concerns about this especially in the middle school having just gone through parent conferences i walk away and feel like i have no idea how my child is doing academically in classes there's no room in the reporting process that we saw through at least to really hear how they're doing where they're struggling where they need more support where they're doing really well we do hear that um there's not a lot of input even getting to the kids in some classes about what they're doing there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of rigor so i would just love to ask whether there's more that could be done even within the instructional time that exists to make sure that kids are really being challenged at whatever level they're at and to make sure that all of our kids are getting challenged i'm not quite sure the best way to approach this conversation there's a lot more detail we'd be happy to share whether the best format is a letter or a longer comment um and the last comment i'll make is i'm also disappointed to hear that there won't be a foreign language position or at least not in the budget right now at middle school i have a middle schooler who loves language and was so excited to learn again she takes both band and chorus which means she doesn't have flexible pathways time in her schedule so there's no pathway for her to really find out about that as an option or to see where she might be able to fit language into her schedule and that feels like a big gap thanks thank you um go ahead hi i was here to observe tonight and i came to um support any conversations we had about our lgbtq bus community my name is dana um my student i have a child who goes to school in district i'm a community member i'm also a special educator at stock version Rochester and i help with the equity coordination here and i couldn't help but say something when you're talking about math and elementary schools being um at the forefront um and i would like to say it's really important for board members to come into our schools and see what's going on in our schools because that's how you get to know how hard our teachers are working and how hard our students are working so i wrote down a couple of things i know i only have three minutes but what i see at the schools that i work at um are teachers trying to teach across the board we're shorthanded um i have at stockbridge i witness and observe on a daily basis um a teacher teaching fourth fifth and sixth grade bridges math um and that's really hard to do um especially when you're talking about quality education um and i agree with what jamie said you can't pull out of direct instruction to get interventions because then you're missing and you're just creating more gaps and that doesn't work um and i also like to say at at rochester um again there's um you know a teacher shorthand we have one teacher teaching third fourth fifth and sixth grade math and i see lindy constantly trying to figure out how to make everything work so we have quality education so it's not that our kids aren't getting math they are getting math and we are doing the best that we could do but it's really hard right now so i could not just sit here and not say that thank you yeah thank you we'll say from our perspective it's how can we support and you know push to make it easier for the staff to be able to do their jobs so um michelle hi i just to uh kind of piggyback what becky was just saying um also middle school parents uh my name is michelle sama i um have three kids elementary and two in middle school um i just i feel like one of the challenges that might not be seen from looking at the the data in the charts is are there other issues outside of the teaching that are interfering with students being able to to learn and to advance um it does seem as though there's a lot of waiting for kids that are meeting the standard or doing their work and um that's time that i see is as also preventing them from moving forward and so i just wonder if um if there's some issues in the classroom not related to the academics that are interfering with these core subjects from being taught and from being learned and i don't know if that's something that we can work on that doesn't require additional staffing or i mean i i'm probably speaking very naive about this but um i would love to see more rigor and i would love to see students that want to learn um to be able to learn all the time instead of um when it's on the same time frame as the rest of the class um or for a few students thank you is there anybody else who'd like to speak at this time i'm susanne long um i haven't had kids in the school for a while but um i do remember when they were in school i i farm um so in the winter i was more available um and i offered several years to see if there was a place for community involvement to you know to lend a hand and and there wasn't um i don't know if that's changed i don't know if there is a way um to um enable interested community members to maybe you know be in a classroom to you know even help kids go through some of their math problems um uh you know just to be that another adult while the teacher main teacher is working in a pod with the rest of the group you know i know that anyway um does this do you have you guys considered or you do you already do that i'm not i haven't i've been so busy no you're right no i so i i've been asking for people to consider subbing and sometimes will you subs that way way indoor volunteer and so part of what i think special right now and why i think the middle school after school programming is working is there's been a lot of community volunteers coming in to offer programming and so i would say that's a way to get the foot in the door but i would tell you that if you have any interest in serving our students and our schools please reach out and know that we would love to have you and i'll just follow as an employer and a farmer the whole math thing drives me crazy i have employees that have a hard time you know figuring out okay we have this many pounds of carrots and we have to divide it up amongst 30 shares i i end up having to do so much really basic problem solving because those young folks i'm in there in their 20s you've been out of school for a long time and they didn't go to south ralton necessarily so it's not this is a pretty universal thing at farmers market people who can't make change it is so hard as an employer i have to do so many more pretty basic things um so and you know just hearing you say that it's hard to integrate math boy math is in every moment of my life how can you not integrate math i think it's what i was trying to say is i think it's hard to provide explicit instruction yeah through the integration i think that math is one of those things that you really have to have a student understand the conceptual understanding behind what a fraction is and i think that just takes explicit teaching in time because i think in general it it is something that we let what and i think covid shined the light on this i think in general the english language in oral comprehension and reading tends to be in a majority of our households right we have conversation even if it's about something orally i think in general we don't have conversation about math as much definitely maybe some households but in general so i think what we find is is without that explicit time to do it that we we have a really hard time providing that core conceptual understanding of it that's what i was trying to get at doesn't mean we can also integrate i think we should i just think we need the explicit teaching on top of it is there anybody else for yep go ahead and a real quick comment i just want to say as a volunteer at the vet the food shelf i can't tell you how thrilled people were to get those pies i think they're doing pizzas at some point too i know my my fourth grader is very excited um kate so i kate jarvis i have two daughters um one in the middle school and one in the high school seventh grade and ninth grade uh just a couple questions or or comments relating to to the budget and thinking tonight so foreign language i think i share the same concern as some other parents and maybe i was not clear but can you elaborate on what the current offerings are in the middle school for foreign language do we have a full-time teacher teaching foreign language is it just virtual yeah so it's it was budgeted for a point six ft at the middle school which is what we've had previously we haven't been able to fill that position and so it's just virtual so from experience my daughter graduated in 2020 and she i think when foreign language first came out as an electronic or virtual option she really after maintaining years of of good grades and honorable grades she struggled with virtual foreign language so it kind of makes me question again how many current students are enrolled in virtual learning for on for foreign language do we know those numbers the principal could answer that i can't give you a a factual number off the top of my head i think i as a member you know of the community would support additional funds in that aspect and then uh andrew you had commented about the after-school program i think that they they did used to help out with tutoring after school and math and language so i remember kaley used to volunteer and help out with that so i don't know if they're currently still doing that in the after-school program or not uh we haven't started tutoring yet this year but we always do offer tutoring to the after-school program yeah awesome yep yeah i was thinking foreign language might be a good thing for at the middle school after-school club yeah you know if we aren't able to operate in the midday um thank you thank you kate uh anybody else yes if i may uh my son when he was in high school ran through all the languages being taught at the high school went to virtual and thrived so that so whether it's virtual or in-person learning instruction is going to vary a great deal with an individual student so virtual is not while it may not be ideal it is certainly not the it's not something to just ignore you know um look like somebody put something in the chat if you want to yeah please mariah cleveland uh middle school used to have a homework club after school sounds like there's some interest in bringing it back okay um any other public comment okay well thank you everybody for coming out we're going to be going into executive session um after this and there shouldn't be any action taken afterwards so do appreciate everybody coming out it's great to see people coming to the school board thank you hi andrew for the virtual session who's being invited to stay i'm well we need just me just jamie somebody want to make a motion i'd make a motion that we go into executive session to discuss a personnel issue uh with the superintendent all right rodney seconded it thank you have a good night you too thanks dammy thanks